Emony

The three entered the Garland quietly with pouches full of silver tied to their waists and Aylard up in front, talking to the villagers calmly to lessen the fear Tiphaine’s appearance inspired in the humans.

Out of the corner of his eye, Emony saw the children being ushered away towards a backdoor as they approached the bar. That was fine. It wasn’t them that they needed to talk to. Thankfully, a good number of villagers were still gathered around the tables and bar, likely afraid to leave, as according to Aylard’s words, doing so might anger Tiphaine.

Perhaps he was a somewhat useful human to keep around.

They made their way to the small wooden stools, paying the patron who was still deathly afraid of them handsomely and asking for ale.

“Come on, are you really going to make me drink from under the veil again?” Tiphaine complained like an idiot.

“We’ve only come to ask you some questions,” Emony said loudly to the humans, ignoring her and repeating Aylard’s words. “We will not hurt you in the slightest, and we will pay you well for anything you tell us. Nobody will be petrified.”

“We want to help you with the men of the lake,” Tiphaine continued after a moment. The men were still desperately avoiding looking at her, even though she was wearing her jeweled mask. “Don’t you want to be rid of them?”

“Very much!” shouted Aylard, of all people, to their audience. “Please, help us get rid of the undead scourge! What information could you possibly need?”

“We just need to know about the rebellion that happened here ten years ago.”

The villagers began looking over amongst themselves, casting nervous glances and whispering too quietly for Emony’s newly insensitive half-mermaid ears to hear.

“Right! The rebellion!” responded Aylard. “The time our esteemed bastard king Raynardt went and murdered the rightful one, and took his place! Hey, why don’t you help, old man? I’ve no doubt you’ve been here all your life. You must have seen it.”

“The insolence… to call him a bastard…”

“The rightful king…”

As people murmured amongst themselves, Emony and Tiphaine turned to look at the old human Aylard had pushed their way. He was shaking slightly, staring in any direction other than theirs. He sensed Tiphaine wanted to comfort him somehow. As if that would work.

“Well?” Emony asked. “Do you know anything? I’ll give you a silver if you tell me one thing I don’t.”

“Um… The coup… It was years ago, maybe ten… It wasn’t very big, it was quite peaceful, considering what it was… I took no part in it…”

“Really!?” said Emony loudly, annoyed, yet trying to hide it. “I didn’t know that! Here, take a silver! Do you know anything more?”

“Well… Sir Raynardt became king after that. He proclaimed that he’d been naturalized, that he was Ovesen’s true heir. And he’d just killed the last trueborn heir anyway, so…”

“That’s interesting. Anything else? No? Well, thank you. Anyone else? Who knows anything more about the old king? Does anyone know anything about his wife? It doesn’t matter how trivial the information; I’ve got plenty of silver.”

“It’s not cursed, the money,” Aylard added. “The knight commander gave it to these two only an hour ago, there’s nothing to fear. He trusts them, and you know what he’s like. You should, too.”

The villagers looked amongst themselves distrustfully. The old man stepped away from Emony in some haste.

“The last king, he came here while surveying the lands he was to rule,” said a woman’s voice from one of the tables. Emony and Tiphaine looked over towards her. She was a grubby human approaching old age, with the distinct smell that that entailed.

So, my nose does work, after all, Emony thought.

Tiphaine slithered over closer to the woman, stopping when she showed the first sign of discomfort.

“He came from Terrena, right?” she asked.

“Yes. From the capital. Though he probably went elsewhere before making it to Coldbarrow,” responded the woman. “Anyway, he… he was cruel. That was one of the reasons why people accepted the new king so quickly.”

“Cruel?”

“To us. To the lowborn.”

“Unlucky for us,” said a man sitting quietly behind the old woman. He dared to look at Tiphaine’s jeweled-covered eyes for a moment. “After King Aulduyen arrived, he spent all his days crossing swords with and making fools of the youth. Peasants, he called us. Never bothered with names.”

Emony put another two silvers on the table.

“So, not very kingly.”

“No. He was unrivaled with his sword, though.”

“How did the rebellion happen, then? How did it begin?”

“He… fell in love,” the old woman interjected.

“Hm. That’s right. He fell in love with a girl here. I remember all the girls were gossiping about it. It was the strangest thing – for days, he’d been calling us peasants, lowborn scum and the like – and then, all of a sudden, he fell madly in love with the very lowest among us. This strange girl that used to live on the shore by the lake with her sister. The two kept to themselves, we never really saw them, but their parents were gone, so we used to give them soup. I think… My memories are somewhat muddled when it comes to them.”

Emony placed another silver on the table. The man’s eyes flitted over to it. Things were progressing well. Emony smiled – perhaps he wouldn’t have to turn into a female.

“Do you remember their names?” he asked.

“They were strange ones, I recall.”

“One of them was Imarah,” said a voice from another table. “And her sister was Verena. Come to think of it, my memories are all fuzzy, too… They used to splash water on me from the lake when we were little, though. They were playful, but… shy.”

Probably because they were a different species, and you humans would hunt them down and kill them if they gave you the chance, Emony thought, a dark memory surfacing for a moment.

“Yes, they were. I liked them. It’s a shame,” said another voice.

“What is?” asked Tiphaine.

“What happened to them. The king back then, Aulduyen, fell in love with the younger one. Nobody knows how or why. She had nothing to her name – not even the roof of the little shack, which was falling apart over her head. Yet the king suddenly became obsessed with her, and afterward, he… well, first, he started making an effort.”

“He became a better person?”

“I don’t think so,” the man replied. “Not in his heart. But in his actions, yes. He tried to remember our names and to be good to us. He was polite, even to the women. And this one time, he went fishing with the other men, instead of thrashing them around in a sparring match. He had materials imported from Terrena to repair our boats, bought us new nets… It was unnerving.”

“It must have been true love,” said Tiphaine.

“Strange, to tell you the truth. It happened so suddenly. One day he was… well…”

“An elitist snob?” asked Emony.

“Yes, that. And the next, he was a lovesick fool. We certainly welcomed the change, though.”

“For as long as it lasted,” the old woman sighed.

Emony glanced over at them and added more silver to the pile. He spied Aylard looking at it with envy. He finished his drink, grimacing, as he could only use one hand for everything, given that his other was broken.

“He’d stayed here for quite a while, even though he was supposed to have left to tour the rest of the kingdom. The lords accompanying him kept urging him to leave, to do his duty. He refused. And then someone spied him standing in the shallows of the lake one day, with Imarah. They said they saw him give her a ring.”

“They married.”

“Yes,” the man grunted. “Just like that. And that must have been the last straw. She was a commoner! He hadn’t even introduced her to any of the lords he called fools and churls. I heard they were enraged by his insolence. He’d already been betrothed to a princess of a neighboring country.”

“Anyway, I remember the one time I met him in person. It was later on that I brought him water as he trained with his sword. That thing, it was as long as he was, and he was clearly ghastly good at using it. He told me they were trying to part him from his love, make him marry a cur. That he wasn’t going to let that happen. To me, he seemed insane.”

“I see. Then this story doesn’t have a happy ending,” said Emony.

“No, it doesn’t. The lords started conspiring amongst themselves. The king was often nowhere to be seen, who knows where he went off to for whole days at a time. They planned to put his bastard half-brother – Raynardt – on the throne instead of him, saying Aulduyen was too much trouble. They said the kingdom needed stability. And, well, they succeeded. I heard the king was coming out of the lake one day after a swim with his new wife when they captured them both – forced them onto a boat and went out to the middle of the lake. And I suppose they killed them there. They killed all of his personal guards, too.”

“It was strange, actually – the man that told me, he said they needed a fishing net to catch the girl, Imarah. I can’t imagine why.”

“I heard she had a tail,” murmured the woman. “That she was a monster.”

“I think I heard that too, though I think it was just that they wanted another excuse to kill them both. They later said that she had bewitched the king, rid him of his senses. I don’t know.”

“Do you think she might have been a mermaid?” Aylard asked.

“Well… she certainly knew how to sing a tune. But no, of course not! There was nothing all that special about her. She seemed like a good person.”

Emony suddenly noticed the man scratch his head, uncertain of something. That same motion continued among many of the patrons of the tavern.

“Yes, she was normal enough.”

“She was our friend.”

“Normal enough.”

“Agreed. Even if she was a little weird, she was kind. And one time, she brought me the biggest fish I’d ever seen.”

Emony leaned over to Tiphaine. “You see it too, right?”

“Well, she was a siren,” she whispered back, nodding. “She obviously used that.”

“Maybe she was as bad as the king,” he murmured. “We’ll have to ask Verena about it. Why must you make friends with the worst of people, Tiphaine?”

“You’re lucky I do.”

“Mhm,” Emony said, “and don’t I know it.”

“So, this completely normal girl that never left the lake and seduced a horrible king in no more than a minute… What do you really think happened to her? I don’t think she died that day.”

The old man closest to them scratched his chin again, lost in memories. “I don’t know. I never saw her again after she had been taken onto the boat. Her sister Verena must still be here somewhere, though. I saw her swimming a few months ago. The usurpers were looking for her all over, back then, but they couldn’t find her. You should ask her. Oh, well, actually, I suppose she might be gone now. The men of the lake…”

Emony put a few more pieces of silver onto the table and lifted his pouch, shaking it so the remaining coins could be heard, before putting it back down and discreetly slipping most of them into his pocket.

“The rest goes to whoever tells me what really happened to Imarah.”

All around the tavern, the humans’ eyes lit up in surprise, then dulled as they raced madly through their thoughts.

“They killed her!” exclaimed one man quickly. “I saw them take both her and the king onto the boat! She was tied to the mast!”

“No, she was trapped in a net!”

“Where is her body?” he asked.

“At the bottom of the lake, must be,” the same man said. “His, too!”

Emony shook his head, tapping Tiphaine’s shoulder. “My friend here assures me that’s not true. She’s a seer, I tell you, and she says the woman managed to get off that boat.”

“That can’t be!” the man protested, angry, staring at the pouch of silver.

“The traitor knights took a good deal of our fishing boats, but the bodies of the king’s personal guards were piled up on the deck of the largest boat,” said an old man smelling of fish that hadn’t spoken before.

The men murmured in consensus.

“Many of us worked on the boat they killed the old king on. It was full of supplies – they stole them afterward, the bastards.”

“I remember that, too! They took my sail!”

“Where did they go?” Emony asked. “Back to Terrena? South?”

The men looked amongst themselves nervously. They would probably only be guessing at this point. After some talking in hushed tones, the oldest of them spoke up.

“Maybe… We don’t know for sure where they went, or if they took her alive, but we might know someone who does. If we tell you of them—”

Emony threw him the mostly empty pouch of silver.

“Tell me.”

“Garrick,” the man said hoarsely, looking astonished after catching it. “Garrick, the merchant. He would know. They took the bodies of the king’s personal guards off the boat, to cart them around the kingdom and send a message. They used him and his carriage, and had him drive it after them on their way. He returned to us a while later but without it. The thieves must have kept it, though he refused to say. Still, he might know where they went.”

“I want to talk to – huh? What the—”