TIMBER!
I realized I was in trouble when my realm-appointed lawyer showed up drunk and asked for spare coins. He made a valiant effort to defend me in the courtroom, but his lack of judicial knowledge, poor grasp of language, and mispronunciation of my name proved futile against the realm’s brilliant case. It didn’t help that the prosecutor was an experienced medium. He used my incorporeal, perpetually disappointed mother as a character witness.
I was sentenced to death. The executioner immediately wheeled out a guillotine to a short round of applause.
“They always like this part,” the executioner confided. “It’s a bit dramatic, but it keeps things flowing.”
“I’m glad they’re having a good time,” I said.
“That’s why I got into this line of work.” He tied up my hands and placed my head underneath the blade. “It’s a people business, you know?”
I looked up. “This is a rather small guillotine.”
“Travel-sized! The brochure says it has the class of a full-sized guillotine, but the portability of an axe.” The executioner leaned in. “Honestly, do you think the wheels are too much? They cost extra, but I believe they were worth it.”
“Completely worth it. It’d be hell to carry.”
“Exactly! If I hurt my back and I’m stuck in bed, how am I supposed to live my life? I might as well be dead.”
“Be careful what you wish for.”
“Ha, good one!”
Then the blade came down.
IT WAS MY FIRST BEHEADING, but my gut told me something didn’t go right.
I woke up face down on a rug. The rug was in a library, so I guessed I was there too, but I was loopy and didn’t trust my logic. I sat up and waited patiently for the room to stop flipping end over end.
“You’re supposed to be thanking me,” said a voice.
When the world settled, I saw an old man. A shabby wizard’s hat hung so crookedly on his head that his left eye peered through a hole in the brim. There was a steaming teapot sitting on the table next to him.
“Well?” he prodded.
“What?” I managed.
“The thanking.”
“Oh.” I paused. “Thanks for the tea.”
“No, not for the tea!”
“It’s not mine?” I suddenly, desperately wanted that tea.
“It is yours,” he assured. “But it’s essential that you thank me for saving your life. Then you will feel indebted to me and we can work together.” He straightened himself. “You see, I enchanted that guillotine to summon you here when the blade came down.”
He leaned forward, as if anticipating a treat.
“Thanks?” I said.
“Great! Now, to business!”
The old man jumped off his stool, circling as he spoke, each word awkwardly punctuated with a tap from his cane. He complimented my many ingenious confidence schemes. He was honored to meet the man that resold the Arduian Queen her own castle, convinced the Farwellian fishermen to drag the Desert of the Dead, and tricked the entire town of Lamden to go without pants for an entire year.
It seemed quite impressive, save for a single problem: I had no idea what he was talking about. However, he clearly went to great lengths to save my life and I didn’t want to disappoint him into reversing that decision. I played along, saying “Thank you” and “Honestly, it was child’s play” throughout his rant.
“My name is Pinion, grandmaster enchanter,” he said at the end of his rant. “I’m sure you’ve heard of me.”
I hadn’t.
“May I call you Dunri?” he asked.
“Why would you do that?”
He blinked. “Isn’t that your name?”
“Yes, of course,” I lied. “I’ve had so many names it’s hard to keep track. Dunri, Jeremiah, Copernicus, Hansel, Delilah.”
Pinion led me to the window. His movements were excited and fast, like a bird walking on hot coals. I looked out the window before his excitement caused him to burst into flames.
Outside was a vast, moving forest. The giant trees swayed back and forth, snoring as they slept in the afternoon sun. A few were awake and picked at some deer carcasses.
“Treants,” I said. I had heard of the mystic living trees, but had never seen them with my own eyes. “They’re magnificent. Are you studying them?”
“No, nothing of the sort,” Pinion replied.
“Then what?”
“Seeing as they are such magnificent creatures, I thought you’d help me round them up and cut them down. Tea?”
I DRIFTED IN AND OUT as Pinion lectured me on his craft, especially during the portion on arcane standards and regulations. Luckily he repeated the important part several times: Pinion had discovered that treant wood could hold stronger enchantments than simple glass or stone.
“Really?” I asked.
“How tall do you think you’d be if it didn’t?” he replied.
I instinctively rubbed the back of my neck, remembering the wooden guillotine.
He needed a steady supply of treant wood, but was held up by activists. Their leader, Merri, had completely shut down his operation. She had forced his team of lumberjacks into a holding pattern.
“That’s where you come in,” he said.
“You need me to kill her?” I asked.
“No, trick her into leaving my lumberjacks alone. Why would you kill her?”
“Who said anything about killing her?”
“You just did.”
“Violence is a last resort.”
“There’s to be no violence.”
“Then why do you keep bringing it up?” I asked. “I’ll accept your job, but only on the condition of nonviolence.”
“Very good,” he said. “Now, your fee. I have heard rumors that your special talents in deception and trickery do come at a price. Shall a thousand kovacs suffice?”
By my conservative estimates, I was worth about three kovacs.
“I accept!” I declared. “Now, let’s discuss my advance.”
“There will be no advance,” he said. “However…”
He waved his hands and started to mumble. I asked him to repeat himself a few times before I realized he was casting a spell, not trying to get my attention. A wooden guillotine magically glided into the room.
“This is the twin of the guillotine you met earlier,” he explained. “If you fail, I need but repeat a simple command word and you’ll be summoned underneath it. This blade is also enchanted.”
“So, when the blade comes down I’ll be transported back to the courtroom?”
“No, it chops your head off. The enchantment will light your corpse on fire afterwards. Now, shall we be off?”
THAT NIGHT, PINION LED ME into town to show me the inn that Merri frequented.
Along the way, I did what I believed any good conman would do, and practiced all of my fake voices. Pinion didn’t seem interested and told me that most of them sounded the same. I found this a little insulting, as half of them were supposed to be women.
When we got to town, I immediately went into a store of fine gentlemen’s wares and bought a fake moustache. I didn’t have any money, so I traded my belt for it. I walked out wearing it proudly.
Once again, Pinion didn’t seem amused.
“She’s never seen you before,” he said. “Why do you need a disguise?”
“A disguise is always a good idea,” I said, using my wiseman voice.
“She doesn’t trust people with mustaches.”
“And how can you possible know that?”
Before I could explain the true correlation between mustaches and trustworthiness, he tore it off my face and suddenly I was worth only two kovacs.
JUST OUTSIDE THE INN, I employed my best confidence scheme to persuade Pinion to give me beer money. After relenting, he confided in me that he had a hard time telling the difference between trickery and shameless begging. I told him that was exactly the expertise that he’d paid for, explained there were countless tools in my arsenal, and ran into the inn before he asked any more questions.
I went straight to the bar. The bartender had some enchanting skills of her own. She poured me a beer and tapped the glass, which sent a web of frost up the sides. I was so impressed I quickly spent all of my money to see her do it again.
I was being wobbly and sad that my money was gone until I remembered that I was supposed to be looking for Merri and doing conman things. Then I realized that I had created a great cover identity, a common drunkard, and spent a moment congratulating myself.
I scanned the bar and spotted a likely candidate. Pinion had given me a detailed description, but had bookended it with two long rants, making it hard to concentrate on what he had said. I prepared to make my move, went over a few opening lines in my head, and fell off my stool.
Somebody pulled me up. I kept my bearings on where I thought I saw Merri, but was disappointed to realize that my target was actually a stuffed panther.
“That is a big cat. Not Merri,” I said aloud to prevent making the same mistake again.
“I’m Merri,” said the stranger holding me up.
I turned to look at her. She did, in fact, look very Merri-ish. I told her so.
“You must be a bit of a lightweight,” she said.
“I haven’t eaten since I was beheaded.”
“Pardon?”
“I said thanks for helping me up.”
She was very pretty, in a blurry sort of way. She got me a glass of water and stabilized me in a chair with armrests.
“So, what made you take a few too many pulls from the barrel?” she asked.
Even in my hazy state, I knew that was a good opening.
“I am frustrated with the cold, careless bastards that exist in our realm!” I leaned over and used my secretive voice. “Did you know there’s an enchanter around here that’s trying to chop down mermaids?”
“The treants, right? Not mermaids.”
“Of course, treants! Mermaids? Ha! Nobody cares about mermaids.”
“Actually, I’ve led a few marches against the wrongful fishing of mermaids.”
“Naturally,” I said matter-of-factly. “Everybody loves mermaids.”
“But you just—”
“Said that I’m infuriated they’re chopping down treants. That’s what I definitely said. I remember it. I was there.”
Merri paused and looked me over. “Well, if you believe what you say, perhaps you’d be interested in volunteering tomorrow?”
PINION PREPARED A BEDROOM for me at his tower. I stumbled in late and he woke me up after only a few hours of sleep. He flung open the shades and sunlight came barging through the window like a horde of barbarians.
“A conman needs his sleep,” I told him sagely.
“We have to go over your plan,” he said.
I thought carefully, and added, “If a conman cannot get sleep, then bacon must be provided.” I then explained to him the long tradition of bacon and confidence schemes and how they were perfectly wed like the stars and the sky.
As he cooked, a fleet of enchanted brooms swept in and gave the entire room a once over. Pinion explained how he had carved each one from treant wood. I only half-listened because they would not stop chasing me around the table.
We sat down and I tried to eat, but my wooden stool kept walking away from the table. I chose to eat while standing. After I was done, I noticed that Pinion was staring at me. I leaned a few inches in either direction and his eyes followed me the entire time. He sneezed, but his eyes didn’t close.
“Well?” he asked.
“Are there eggs?” I asked.
“No. I mean, there are eggs, but…”
I made him cook me eggs before we continued. They were a bit on the runny side. I told him so.
“Now, please,” he begged. “The plan?”
I chuckled knowingly to show I was in control. It seemed like something a good conman would do. I got carried away and soon I was howling with tears in my eyes.
“Merri has invited me to march with her today to stop your lumberjacks,” I said, wiping my eyes.
“How is that good news? My lumberjacks will still be stopped.”
I realized that I hadn’t thought the next part out. Getting to know Merri was the crucial first step. On the third step I stopped her from ruining Pinion’s business. The second step was still nebulous. Since Pinion eagerly awaited an answer, I distracted him with another knowing, knee-slapping chuckle.
He seemed irritated at first. His hat quivered and gave away his mood. Then something dawned on him. His hat settled and a smile crossed his face.
“I understand,” he said. “You will acquaint yourself with Merri, find a weakness, and exploit it!”
I felt instantly relaxed. Now I had a second part.
“Yes, exactly,” I said. “That is my great plan! Thank the gods I’m here.”
TREANTS ARE WONDROUS CREATURES, but they, too, have to eat. People have witnessed treants devour sheep like peanuts. In Buklivia, a forest of treants ate so many sheep everyone had to wear clothes made out of wheat for a decade. Nowadays, shepherds put up scarecrows with axes in their hands.
“They sleep during the day, right?” I asked as we entered the forest.
“Most of them,” Merri replied.
Pinion’s lumberjacks were just arriving for a day’s work. Although, thanks to Merri and her team, they hadn’t swung an axe in two months.
The plan was a simple man-to-man affair. I was told to find a lumberjack and stand in front of him until the sun went down. I found the least threatening lumberjack I could and ran between him and a treant. The lumberjack was instantly displeased.
“Don’t stand there,” the lumberjack ordered.
“That’s the point,” I stated. “I’m purposefully in your way.”
“I know.” The lumberjack rolled his eyes. “But you’re not doing it right.”
“What?”
“I can still sneak an axe past.” He nudged his axe past my leg. “I could chop a few inches out of the trunk with you standing there. Move a little to the left and I couldn’t scrape bark.”
I moved where instructed.
“Good,” the lumberjack said, satisfied.
“Don’t you like working?”
“I love working.” He leaned on his axe. “I just hate to see people doing a bad job.”
AFTER A WHILE THE LUMBERJACK got bored and fell asleep, so I went looking for Merri.
I got lost instantly. I selected a few Treants as landmarks, but some of them were sleepwalking and my mental map fluttered away. Merri found me trying to build a compass out of two pinecones and a dead squirrel.
“Isn’t that the lumberjack you were stopping?” Merri asked as she ran to me.
Sure enough, the lumberjack had woken up and was now mid-swing. We ran up to him just as his axe sunk into the treant’s side.
The treant let loose a scream that sounded like wood being struck by lightning. It reached down with a branch, grabbed the lumberjack, and bit off his top half. It stuck the rest of him in its sap to save for later.
Then it charged towards Merri and I.
Instinctively, I stepped in front and told her to run. The treant bit down on my arm and it was, I quickly decided, one of the most unpleasant things I ever experienced. The other activists chased the treant away as I rolled around and screamed. I didn’t stop until they pointed out that the treant had, in fact, only eaten a chunk of my sleeve.
THAT NIGHT THE ACTIVISTS celebrated a successful protest. I joined them, but was not amused by their mockery of my near-death experience. Every minute or so an activist would bend down and bite the sleeve of another, who would then cry like an infant. I pretended to be too high-browed for their sense of humor.
I saw an activist came up to Merri and bite her sleeve, but she pulled her arm away. She turned to me and caught me staring, so I glanced at random objects around the room with feigned interest.
A moment later Merri sat down at my table and passed me a drink.
“I wanted to thank you for saving me,” she said. “It was very brave.”
Her smile made my language skills drop. She talked while I mumbled incoherently and agreed with everything she said. Naturally, her main topic was treants, but she soon turned to Pinion. She listed each of his flaws as if she was sentencing him to death, a tone I was unfortunately familiar with.
“You’re not too fond of Pinion, are you?”
“I haven’t been since I was a kid,” she said.
“You defended treants back then?”
“No.” She blinked. “He’s my father.”
My jaw dropped.
Merri laughed, guided my mouth closed, and kissed me lightly on the lips.
“You’re cute. Maybe tomorrow night we can spend some proper time together,” she suggested.
I managed a nod.
WHEN I RETURNED TO PINION’S tower, I found him enchanting a wooden pipe. It was going poorly. The pipe kept floating around, sticking itself in his ear, and lighting stray hairs on fire.
“How’s the plan going?” he asked while patting out the flames.
“Why didn’t you tell me that Merri was your daughter?”
“I thought it was obvious. How did you think I knew so much about her?”
“Magic,” I shrugged. “Divination.”
He laughed. “By the Gods! If I could use magic to understand women do you think I’d be working for a living? I’d be up to my eyebrows in gold!”
I thought about it, and conceded he had a point. “You should’ve told me. A confidence scheme is a delicate creature and secrets can be poison.”
I smiled. That was a particularly good bit of conman wisdom. I was about to ask for a piece of paper to write it down when I realized Pinion was staring at me with very intense, fatherly eyes.
“What?” I asked.
“Are you planning on sleeping with my daughter?”
“I’m afraid it’s crucial to the plan.”
THE NEXT NIGHT MERRI and I met for dinner.
Gigantic, domesticated fireflies illuminated the restaurant. A musician played a thousand-string harp and her huffs and puffs only mildly interrupted her music as she ran from one end to the other. The meal was lovely, and we stayed past when the fireflies rebelled and dropped glowing excrement on some of the guests.
We talked and laughed and poured drinks into one another until we ended up in her bedroom. She gave me a wink and a smile and disappeared into her dressing room. I immediately kicked off my pants in anticipation. I decided that being a conman was a suitable next step in my career.
As I waited, I admired the paintings and sculptures she kept in her room. I made a mental note to pretend that I knew everything about art. I noticed a glass box that had something strange locked inside of it.
“Why do you have a giant walnut?” I asked.
“That’s a seedpod,” she called out. “The treants plant them to start a new forest. I rescued it last year.”
I stared at the seedpod for a moment and a plan formed in my head. I hated the plan, because it required me leaving a seductive Merri behind. Sure, I could wait until after Merri and I had our sensual rendezvous, but would I have a second chance? The mental image of Pinion’s endless parade of cruel guillotines convinced me to act now. I was particularly attached to my head, and I knew I would dearly miss it. Also, Merri gave little indication that she was into shorter men.
With a heavy sigh, I smashed the glass, stole the seedpod, and ran.
WEEDS AND THORNS TORE at my shins as I ran through a field and I sorely regretted not putting my pants back on. I consoled myself by imagining the vault of pants I would be able to buy when I delivered the seedpod to Pinion.
Enchanted brooms assaulted me the moment I entered the tower. They swept me from the foyer to the library, down the stairs, up the stairs, into the dumbwaiter, and around the bedrooms until I slid into the study with the seedpod gripped in my arms like a child. Pinion had fallen asleep while working and awoke with a start when I slammed against his desk.
With red, wide eyes he looked at me, then at the seedpod, and then back at me.
He screamed. It was a long, feminine scream that yellowed his open books and left him winded.
“Do you know,” he panted. “What that is?”
I stood up, smiled, and presented it like a trophy. “It’s a seedpod. The treants plant them to start a new forest. What did you think it was?”
“I thought it was a seedpod,” he said flatly. “The treants plant them to start a new forest.”
We stared at each other in silence. It continued until the silence itself felt awkward and flew out the window.
“One of us is missing something,” I admitted.
“Why did you bring that here?” Pinion asked. His face was growing whiter by the minute and was moments away from becoming transparent.
“We can use it to plant a hidden forest that you can harvest in secret. It’s the perfect plan!”
Then I felt the tower quake.
Later, I would learn that treants are fiercely protective of their young. Once a seedpod had fallen in the Mercian river and an entire forest followed it downstream with a vengeance. The region never recovered.
“They’re going to tear this place down!” Pinion screamed. “What have you done?” Books toppled off the shelves. Brooms stampeded into the room to clean up the mess.
“I’ll admit that this is an unexpected turn of events.”
“And how is Dunri, the genius conman, going to make this right?”
“Who?”
“You, you imbecile!”
One of the walls fell off and I could see the moving forest surrounding the tower.
“I’m not entirely who you think I am,” I admitted.
“What do you mean ‘not entirely’?”
“I’m a small-time thief named Francis.”
Flames appeared behind his eyes. “What did you steal?”
“A lime,” I said sheepishly.
“The Ystarians were going to execute you for stealing a lime?”
“The Ystarians are very particular about their limes.”
I thought about explaining the complex social and religious history between limes and the Ystarian people, detailing the great scurvy epidemic, the barbaric Feud of the Lemons, and the annual Festival of the Martyred Cistruses, but since the floor was falling out from underneath us I decided to leave it at that.
The tower shook and shed another wall. A naked servant fell from the floor above and his bath followed him a moment later. The bathtub smashed Pinion’s enchanted guillotine to pieces, saving me from a second beheading. A mop glided from a closet and attempted to clean up the soapy water.
Pinion grabbed the mop and swung it at me.
“This is exactly why I asked for an advance! If you’re a little dissatisfied with my service…” I was interrupted when the mop caught me in the stomach.
I curled up into a ball. The tower rocked again and I rolled towards the stairwell. Pinion charged at me, so I just kept rolling. I ran as soon as I hit the ground floor. The treants lashed out at me with branches and roots and I was plenty bruised by the time I made it to the safety of a nearby hill.
Exhausted, I sat down and watched the chaos.
“HE’LL MAKE HIMSELF DISAPPEAR before the towers come down,” Merri said, appearing beside me. She handed me something. “You forgot your pants.”
I took them but didn’t bother to put them back on.
“You knew about Pinion’s plan, didn’t you?” I asked.
She nodded. “I helped the real Dunri escape in exchange for somebody else to be sent in his place.”
“How did he guarantee that?”
“He played the executioner.”
“He was very talented,” I said, rubbing my neck. “You knew I would take that seedpod.”
“You were a little predictable. But…I didn’t expect you to step in front of that treant.”
“I didn’t expect a tree to be so mean.”
“You are, in all respects, a terrible conman.”
“Thanks?”
“However, I could be convinced to let you buy me a drink.”
“Really?”
“The treants are safe at the moment. A drink will help me find a new way to irritate my father.”
“How’s that?”
“Well,” she smiled. “I’m certain he won’t approve of you.”
