CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Surprise!
There’s a peculiar phenomenon that occurs when a group recounts a shared event—particularly when they’re a few mugs deep before the telling even begins. Certain voices rise. Others drift.
Arguments flare over the inconsequential: what color someone’s socks were, whether it was raining, or who tripped over the barstool. But there’s always a shared certainty when it comes to the crucial parts: who threw the first mug, which chair was sacrificed, and the role the skeletal cat played.
So it was with this lot, as they described what happened after Jonath revealed himself to be very much… not Jonath.
As a scribe, I have spent years recording a large number of recounted events.
Some were miraculous. Others, less so.
I once documented a farmer’s sworn testimony that his barnyard animals had begun speaking fluent Dwarvish at dawn. Another time, I transcribed no fewer than seven witness accounts of a berry crop that bore the unmistakable smiling likeness of Jovian, the god of merriment and mischief.
But none of those stories involved quite so much flying furniture, secondhand bravado, or fire.
This is what happens when the man unconscious on your bar turns out not to be the man you thought he was.
“He was fast,” Umberto cut in, standing and nearly toppling his chair. “Like really fast. One second he’s clapping like a smug prick, next, bam!, Tufulla’s about to get his throat rearranged.”
He mimed the lunge, tipping over a stool in the process.
“Furniture went flying,” Carrie added, hand to her chest like she was giving testimony at a murder trial. “I leapt over the table and threw a candleholder at him. Saved Tufulla’s life.”
“You tripped on the stool,” Day corrected. “The candleholder missed.”
“But it drew his attention away from Tufulla” Carrie retorted.
Wikis winced. “He moved like he knew where every piece of cover was. Slid behind the bar, rolled across the table, flipped a stool in Umberto’s path.”
“I’m not sure he was ever really unconscious” Trunch countered, “He seemed to have a pretty good understanding of each of us, and of the place. I think he’d been awake and listening.”
Yak stood suddenly. “I was here,” he said, dramatically stepping onto a nearby bench. “He was there.” He pointed at nothing. “The air was thick with tension. The molotovs hadn’t even…”
“No molotovs yet,” Din interrupted.
“Right. No fireball cocktails. But the energy was electric.” Yak leapt down, spun, mimed drawing twin daggers. “I vaulted the bar, caught the edge, swung around, landed silently behind him…”
“Molotov cocktails?” I asked raising an eyebrow.
“Not yet” Din replied flatly
“Anyway, I vaulted the bar, caught the edge, swung around, landed behind him and…”
“You fell on him,” Day said.
“It was a strategic and well considered attack. I keep forgetting that bar isn’t regulation height.” He looked at it with a mixture of pride and betrayal.
I raised a hand in interjection, quill poised above the page. “Did someone try and burn down the bar? Where did the molotovs…?”
“Not. Yet.” Din and Trunch chorused in unison.
“He kicked a mug into my face,” Wikis said, rubbing her nose. “My mug. I was still drinking from it.”
“I got him with a barstool,” Umberto said proudly, miming the swing. “Full overhead. BAM.”
“You shouted, ‘SURPRISE, BASTARD!’” Trunch grinned. “To be fair, the bastard was surprised.”
Umberto raised his glass in triumph.
I shook my head and rubbed my temples, “And Tufulla? What was he doing in all of this?”
There was a beat of silence.
Day leaned forward. “Dodged the first blow. Barely. Got clipped in the ribs and stumbled into a table. Trunch pulled him out of the way while the rest of us tried to keep ‘Jonath’ occupied.”
Carrie bolted upright and gasped “Not Jonath, that’s what we’ll call him.”
Yak nodded. “Not Jonath, or whatever his real name was, had caught us off guard.” He said. “He used the furniture to his advantage, making sure we couldn’t all try and attack at once.”
“But we didn’t want him breaking any of the furniture,” Umberto added, chest puffed up.
I looked toward the pile of broken barstools, tables and chairs recently stacked on the stage area then looked back at Umberto.
“You said you hit him with a barstool?”
Umberto placed one hand on the table and leaned in, pointing to his own chest with his thumb. “I said we didn’t want him breaking the furniture. We can break as much as we want, it’s our tavern.”
The group nodded in collective agreement.
“Anyway,” Umberto continued, “we worked together to keep him away from Tufulla and draw him away from furniture.”
Trunch pointed around the room as he explained. “We started moving like a pack, slowly herding him toward the far corner. Limiting his options. He was very well trained, able to take us all on.”
“I saw Redmond and Osman hiding under a table with the grace and usefulness of two decorative ferns” Day added, “So I quietly shepherded them out the door.”
Yak looked at Din, who nodded approvingly, and then looked at me with a wide smile. “Moments later, the molotovs came.”
“Thrown from outside, through the windows.” Umberto scowled. “They were accompanied by a voice saying ‘Thornstar sends his regards!’. I knew we should’ve properly taken down that scumbag in the fight earlier.” he spat on the floor in disgust.
“Not Jonath took the chaos as an opportunity.” Wikis added. “He grabbed a full bottle of spirits and lobbed it low toward a growing flame on the floor, right near where Tufulla had ducked.”
“At first I thought Tufulla had started dancing” Carrie giggled, “but then I realized it had ignited and caught his robe.”
I paused to picture the scene: the group, still wounded from the forest battle the day before. Redmond and Osman, once again, cowering behind something inanimate. The bar rapidly filling with flames. Tufulla flailing, trying to smother his burning robes. And in the middle of it all, a smiling master assassin, toying with them.
Wikis placed a hand on my arm “Tufulla managed to put out his robes” she said reassuringly, “And then Din put himself between the two of them.”
“He wasn’t getting past me,” Din thumped the table with a fist. “Not while I still had a beard on my face and spells left in my fingers.”
Wikis raised a finger. “There was a moment, though. Just before the fire started. When they were face to face.” She frowned. “He said something. Whispered, cool, calm, like a cat toying with a trapped mouse.”
Din didn’t look up. “It wasn’t how he said it.”
He shifted in his seat, eyes dark and distant.
“It was what he said.”
A beat passed.
“He looked right at me,” Din said. “Smiling. And he said he’d never expected to see one of my kind again.”
Silence.
“He said he thought they’d wiped us all out.”
“He meant Sparkwhiskers,” Yak whispered to me.
Din nodded once, his jaw tight. “After that, I stopped trying to kill him. I needed him conscious. I needed answers.”
“But while all the fighting was going on I heard something upstairs.” Wikis hissed, “Someone else.”
Carrie fluttered dramatically onto the table. “Wikis and I bolted upstairs,” she said, miming the dash mid-air. “There was someone else. She was poking about in the rooms upstairs, like she was looking for someone. She was wearing these unflattering long, dark robes. The slouch didn’t help. Terrible posture for someone of her figure.”
“I threw a dagger at her, but somehow it missed” Wikis scowled, “And then she started running toward the stairs.”
Day rose from his chair and headed behind the bar. He poured a round of ales and returned to the table, hands filled with handles, and slid one over to me. I’d barely touched the first, listening and writing as they laid it all out for me.
“Bones chose that exact moment to dash out from behind the bar and head for the stairs.” He said calmly, as if a skeletal cat dashing across the room was a normal occurrence in a tavern.
“Not Jonath saw Bones and hesitated.”
“The look on his face! He was all … what the? You people are messed up” Yak laughed.
Trunch raised his head. At first it was hard to tell if he’d been sleeping, or just intently listening. “In that moment, when everything else could have gone even more wrong.” He said “Tufulla acted.”
“He stood up straight, brushed his robes with his hands and shook his wrists like a motherfucker.” Din’s face was full of reverence. “He raised a hand.
Spoke a single word in a voice that cracked through the room like old timber splitting.”
“And Not Jonath vanished.” Day finished. “Gone. No smoke. No flash. Just gone.”
“We all fucking panicked” Umberto said.
“I didn’t” Carrie replied smugly. “I didn’t see it happen.”
Umberto glared at her “We ALL panicked. Thought he’d made a run for it”
“He hadn’t,” Din added calmly. “Apparently Tufulla just cast a banishment spell. Told us he’d be back. About a minute from then. Right there.”
Trunch silently pointed to the corner of the room, we all turned to look. There was an eerie little scuff mark on the floor, as if something had been suddenly pulled away but not without resisting first.
We sat in reflective silence for a moment before I dared to ask what happened with the intruder upstairs. The woman.
Trunch caught my eye, a look of candid seriousness in his.
“You have to understand, Klept. This all happened so quickly. Choices were made, in the spur of the moment. There wasn’t time to think things through.”
I nodded, signaling to the group I was ready for whatever gruesome chaos was about to be delivered.
I was told that the woman, busy trying to avoid Carrie and Wikis, noticed the cat coming up the stairs at the last minute. She recoiled, raising a foot and putting herself off balance.
“I saw an opening and shoved,” Carrie said, sending her hand forward with flair. “She tumbled down the stairs in an undignified tangle of limbs.”
She bowed and dusted her hands.
A beat of silence followed. The group nodded in unison.
“She landed hard. Didn’t move,” Day rocked his mug in small circles.
Yak raised his mug. “Fires still going.”
“Plus an unconscious intruder,” Carrie added cheerily, as if checking items off a list.
“We had to make sure she really was unconscious first,” Umberto pointed out. Punctuating the point by jabbing his finger into the tabletop. “So I whacked her on the back of the head. Wikis tied her up and threw her into the kitchen.”
Wikis gave a confident thumbs up, paired with a paranoid grin, like she was proud of her handiwork, but also half-expecting the woman to burst out of the pantry at any second.
“Which left the fires,” Day said with dry inevitability, “and the potential return of Not Jonath.”
“Umberto and I ran outside,” Trunch added quickly.
“Trying to catch the bastard who set our tavern on fire,” Umberto growled.
“But Umberto ran out stark naked,” Carrie giggled, nearly spilling her drink. “He used his loincloth to put out one of the fires on the table near the door – on the way out!”
She was practically weeping with laughter by the end of the sentence. I refrained from asking Umberto how often he used his loincloth as fire safety equipment.
“All this happened so quickly,” Wikis said, rubbing her forehead. “We almost forgot about Not Jonath.”
“We had the fires under control, and the mystery woman tied up,” Din said, more to himself than to the group. “For a moment, we let our guard down. We forgot.”
“He popped back,” Day sighed. “Right where Tufulla said he would. Then he promptly vanished again.”
“We thought Tufulla had bought us more time,” Carrie said. “That, maybe he’d cast something else to give us a window.”
“But when we looked at him…” Yak stood, adjusted his posture, and shifted his face into a passable imitation of Tufulla. He shrugged with just the right amount of weary dignity and said, in an unnervingly accurate voice:
“I didn’t do that one.”
Carrie nodded solemnly, gesturing toward Umberto.
“We all panicked,” she said, as if it were an official statement. “Din and Day went to see if he was outside, Yak checked upstairs. Wikis and I stayed here.”
“And Tufulla poured himself a drink.” Wikis added matter of factly.
Day leaned forward, hand steady on the handle of his mug. “Din I had barely made it through the door before we heard shouting from in the alley.”
Trunch began punctuating his points with wide hand gestures, spilling ale across the table and floor.
“Umberto and I had gone out to see if we could catch whoever threw the molotovs. We ran straight into young Iestyn—the boy who’s been hanging around.”
I gave a small nod. “Ah yes, Iestyn. Sort of acts as Tufulla’s eyes on the street, him and his little band.”
“He remarked on Umberto’s lack of attire. Quite astutely, I might add, before telling us the culprits ran off toward the square.”
“He said, ‘Um, Mr Umberto, Sir. Do you realise you are not wearing any pants?’” Umberto grinned. “I told him I didn’t have time for pants, I needed to catch the bastards who tried to burn down my bar. Then I turned to the window across the way and told that nosy old broad to get an eyeful and mind her own business.”
Wikis buried her face in her hands at that part. Carrie went scarlett.
“We were about to run after them when we heard the shouts from inside,” Trunch said.
“Then, right there in the alley, bampf!” Umberto shouted, slamming his mug on the table. “Jonath reappeared. Right in front of me.”
Trunch chuckled. “You surprised him. Again.”
“It’s my impressive stature,” Umberto said, raising his eyebrows with a cheeky grin. “Like Thistlewick, in Barbara’s All Choked Up.”
Din groaned.
Wikis giggled.
Carrie snorted.
Trunch smiled and shook his head. “I think it was more to do with the fact that he didn’t expect us to be there than your physical appearance.”
“That was about when we ran outside.” Din motioned across the table to Day. “He tried to make a run for it. But we were ready.”
“Eldritch blasts from the left,” Day said, ticking it off on his fingers as Trunch sat back and crossed his arms. “A witchbolt to the ribs.”
“And this,” Umberto said with relish, miming a full axe swing, “to the spine!”
He swung an invisible axe over his head and flung it with a grunt. His drink narrowly avoided disaster.
Din, however, did not look pleased.
“I wanted answers,” he grumbled. “Real ones. About who he was, where he came from. About what happened to my people.”
There was a pause as Din’s voice lowered. “So I used a little spell to keep him alive.”
“And that’s when I –” Umberto began.
“Beheaded him,” Din finished flatly. “While I was kneeling. Mid-spell. With your entire naked body blocking my vision.”
“ – dangled my nuts in his face and then took off his head,” Umberto declared proudly. “I regret nothing.”
“That could change later,” Din muttered.
Then, more quietly:
“I picked up what I could salvage. Figured the head was all I really needed.”
Trunch folded his arms, frowning. “I was more concerned about the corpse in the alley. Public street. Early morning foot traffic. Potential legal issues.”
“We were all concerned,” Day added, “until Iestyn shrugged and said ‘Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it’.”
“He winked,” Trunch whispered. “I saw him wink. Normal kids don’t wink like that!”
A brief silence followed. Even Umberto nodded slowly at that.
“And then?” I asked.
“Then we walked back into the Grin,” Din said. “Carrying the head. I set it on the bar while I thought about what to do next.” His beard filtered bread crumbs from his ale as he drank deeply.
I glanced over at the bar. A dark stain lingered in the corner, spatters trailing down the side and onto the floor. Or perhaps it was just the lantern light, playing tricks on my mind.
Trunch cleared his throat. “Just as we crossed the alley, there was a faint gasp.”
“Oh yeah,” Umberto grinned. “The old busybody.”
“Blind swung shut like a mousetrap,” Yak added, pleased. “Followed by a thud that I assume was her fainting.”
I resisted the urge to peek through the alley window. Some things, I decided, are better left undocumented. I made a final note in the margin, though I wasn’t entirely sure what to label it: ‘Victory?’ ‘Tavern Incident?’ ‘Wednesday?’
Some stories don’t end with answers. Just with slightly less fire.
The Chronicles of Klept 