Preserving the Ingenairii (35 page)

“Does anyone have any money?” Alec asked, as he considered entering one of the taverns for food and information.

“None that they’d accept here, but I can make a lot in a hurry,” one of the guards unknown to Alec said.

“How?”
Alec asked.

“With you,” the soldier, an apparent schemer named Pryce, replied.
 
“These are sailors in these places.
 
They’ll gamble and spend their money away as fast as they get it.
 
We’ll walk in and challenge anyone to arm wrestle with you, and place bets on the outcome,” he explained.
 
“You look kind of spindly, begging your pardon, sir, so we’ll have lots of takers, especially after you beat the first one or two.
 
I’ve been in the army for ten years, and I know these sailors just aren’t all that bright; they won’t be able to resist the challenge!”

“It’ll work,” Givens agreed.

“It would even work with soldiers, for that matter,” Stracha added.

Danel gave a mock threatening scowl.

“We’ll give it a try,” Alec agreed.
 
“But if anyone pulls weapons on us, we need to just walk away.
 
We don’t want to get in trouble and attract any attention to ourselves.”

Pryce led the group down the road towards the riverside, inspecting each tavern they passed,
then
finally stopped in front of one he seemed to judge was seedy enough to suffice.
 
He looked back at his followers, then entered the door and drew all eyes.
 
“I’ll gamble an hour of pleasure with my sister against your money that my boy here can beat any one of you in arm wrestling!” he said as he surprised Stracha by pulling her up to the front of the group with him.

Stracha shot a malevolent stare at Pryce, but kept her mouth shut.

“Judging by the way she looked at you, how are we supposed to believe she can give a man an hour of pleasure?” a voice in the back of the dark tavern room asked, resulting in a round of raucous laughter.

“We’ll give you the first match with no money on the line, just to show
you
 
how
weak you all are.
 
We can talk about the girl for the stake in the second match, if you like,” Pryce subtly shifted the attention of the room from Stracha to Alec.
 
He took the cue and walked to an empty table, where he sat down at the corner
and
 
placed
his elbow on the table.

Within seconds, an average-sized man, one who had already drank a pint or two of ale, rose and then sat down across from Alec.
 
“Let’s see what you’ve got, youngster,” the erstwhile opponent said as he raised his hand and placed it against Alec’s.

Pryce placed his hands over the two clasped antagonists.
 
“You’ll start when I lift my hands and say ‘go,’ and the winner
has
to force the back of the other’s hand onto the table.

“Are you ready?” he asked and looked at each seated figure, who nodded.
 
“Go!” he shouted and raised his hands abruptly.

As soon as he did, Alec slammed the other man’s hand against the table.

“I wasn’t ready!
 
I must not have been ready!” the man exclaimed, after three seconds of stunned amazement.
 
“Trammer, check to see if the boy was holding onto something under the table or getting leverage!” he irritably directed his drinking companion.

“We’ll do it again, and everyone can watch closely,” Pryce announced.
 
“This is a second, and final, free try,” he announced, as several men rose from their seats and came closer to watch.

Pryce positioned the two battlers and made them lock their non-working, left, hands together so they could be seen by all, then released their hands and shouted “Go!” once again.
 
Just as quickly, Alec engaged his powers and pressed his overmatched opponent’s hand to the table.

“There you have it; proof positive that no man alive can defeat our young soldier, er, Gordon, a natural phenomena of strength!”Pryce began a well-delivered patter that made Alec wonder what he had done before entering the army, and what scams he pulled on his fellow soldiers.

“Not so fast,” a deep voice called from the ring of observers, and a huge barrel of a man pressed forward from the crowd.
 
He placed a hand on the shoulder of Alec’s still seated victim, and casually pushed him down the bench, then heavily landed there himself.

“The little lady in red will hold your wagers,” Pryce continued in his
patter, that
suddenly reminded Alec of the carnival barkers he had known when he had worked with Richard’s carnival.
 
Alec flashed back to the scenes he had watched with the carnival.

“Go!” Pryce shouted, and Alec came out of his revere as he felt his hand flying towards the table.
 
He frantically engaged his powers and stopped his hand just an inch above the table.
 
Regaining his composure, Alec looked up from the table to look in the confident eyes of his opponent, then steadily raised his hand and watched the face across the table change from a confident grin to a chagrined scowl as Alec won the match.

“I wasn’t ready!” Alec said through clenched teeth to Pryce.

“You did great.
 
Way to build the drama!” Pryce replied.

“Who wants to go next?” he shouted.

Up stepped another large man with powerful arms, who Alec beat, and then a wiry man, who Alec beat.

“Here’s the problem, he’s got an advantage,” another man shouted.

“He needs to have a drink of ale.
 
You put a pint of the stout in him and I’ll wrestle him two-out-of-three,” the man in the crowd spoke loudly, holding up a sheaf of bills.

“What do you say, Gordon?
 
Want to wet your whistle?
 
You’d do more business!” Pryce urged.

“I remember the last time I drank in a tavern,” Alec said.
 
“I was sick for three days and told a girl I loved her, and I’d never met her before!

“And I don’t even like ale,” he added.

A round of laughter went up in the tavern.

“I haven’t had anything to eat yet.
 
I’m hungry,” Alec tried a new complaint.

“Here lad, have a plate of hearty meat on the house,” a serving man miraculously delivered a lunch plate and a tankard of ale to Alec.
  
He was clearly pleased with the spectacle and the crowd that was gathering, and boisterously drinking even though it was only mid-afternoon.

Alec inhaled deeply, took a bite of food, then drank from the tankard, to cheers from the surrounding crowd, as he closed his eyes and swallowed the bitter brew.
 
The other members of his squad were also eating, he noticed, and some were drinking ale as well.
 
For several minutes he methodically ate and drank, then pushed the empty containers away.

His erstwhile opponent sat down across from him, and Alec used his powers to summarily defeat the man.

“Make him drink another pint and I’ll take him on,” a new member of the crowd shouted.

“I really don’t think it’s a good idea,” Alec told Pryce.

“You’re on a roll!
 
Just do one more,” the confident promoter urged.

Alec saw the serving man already approaching with another mug, and he dutifully accepted it,
then
took a large swig.
 
It tasted less bad that the first pint had, so he took a breath and drank again.

“Can we just do it now?” Alec asked.
 
“This will be my last bout of the day.”

Although he hadn’t finished his pint, the man across the table seemed satisfied that Alec was catching up, and he placed his elbow on the table and gripped Alec’s hand.
 
Alec watched with unfocused eyes as Pryce placed his hands on top of the two at the table, then released them and shouted “Go!” again.

Alec felt his arm bending backwards, and tried to ignite his powers to stop it, but found that he couldn’t find the path to tap into the energy realm.
 
He clenched his arm and stopped the backward momentum, but could make no progress forward as he held his hand inches above the table top.

The other man had his face wrenched in determination.
 
Alec renewed his effort to find his powers, but the beer and the increased cheering and noise around him were too distracting; his hand began to drop lower in increments of fractions of inches, and he strained to prevent it from falling further.
 
But momentum and gravity had set in, and he felt the end of the match as his knuckles banged against the table.

Pandemonium reigned in the tavern as Stracha and Givens returned coins to patrons for the first time that afternoon, and Alec’s opponent held both hands over his head in triumphant celebration.

“Sorry, son, but we all know that a pint of ale is a great equalizer,” he told Alec amiably as he slowly stood up, despite the rain of congratulatory blows that were pounding his back and shoulders.

Alec looked up at Pryce, who was smiling down at him.
 
“Don’t worry, this was perfect!
 
You always want to give something back to your victims so they leave happy.
 
We’ve made all the money we needed this afternoon anyway,” the cagey promoter told him.

Alec belched in reply.

“I don’t know what assignment you’re on that your patrol has managed to spend the whole afternoon here entertaining my patrons,” the serving man said as he stood by Pryce, “but there’s often a patrol of imperials that stops by here just to keep an eye on things around this time of day.
 
If a squad of Canare who speak with Dominion dialects can explain their position, that’s fine by me.
 
But otherwise, you may want to poke your heads upstairs in the private rooms, or leave the tavern altogether.”

Alec suddenly wished that he could be completely sober.

“Let’s go upstairs to a room,” Alec suggested, as he stood up, discovering that his legs were slightly wobbly.

“You don’t drink much, do you?” Lewis asked as the squad began climbing the rickety, narrow stairs.

“No, not much at all,” Alec agreed as he looked down and concentrated on each step.

At the top of the stairs the servant showed them down a dim hall to a large room in the back of the building.
 
“Is there a back way out?” Pryce asked as soon as the door was closed and the Dominion squad was safe.
 

Givens looked out of a small, dirty window.
 
“We can go out this window.
 
The drop isn’t bad.”

“I have to go out,” Alec said abruptly.

“Go where?” Stracha asked.

“Go,” Alec said just as abruptly, feeling a fierce call of nature.
 
He opened the door.
 
“I’ll be right back.
 
Wait for me here.
 
If we get split apart, meet me in the plaza across from the palace gate, the square we came through earlier.”
 
He walked out the door and stumbled at the top of the stairs.
 
He looked up as he started to fall forward, and saw the ceiling above him in a flash, as he felt his shin hit a step hard, then his head banged into something, giving him sparks of pain, and then he was lying still, his eyes closed, and pain the only thing he was conscious of.
 
He opened his eyes and saw two men in black and red uniforms standing over him.