Goblin Precinct (Dragon Precinct) (13 page)

Every spare moment, though, that was spent with Honig, the bard who performed at the tavern most nights.

Honig was a tall, thin man with a thick beard and a mellifluous voice. He played a lute, and for a long time, Sam thought he was the best lute player in all Flingaria. Later in life, Sam learned better. While Honig was talented, and he always kept his lute more or less in tune, he was far from the finest. Over the years, Sam had heard dozens of lute players who made Honig look like a barely talented amateur—but when Sam was a boy? Nobody was better than Honig.

Every moment of spare time that Sam had, he spent with Honig, trying to learn what he knew. Honig showed him how to pronounce words clearly so that they could be understood, how to use the cadence of particular syllables to his advantage, how to use dramatic pauses and rhymes to good effect, how to listen for when the lute went out of tune, and so on.

And then, one horrible day, Honig left. He gave no notice, no warning, merely left a piece of parchment behind with the words, “Gone to Cliff’s End. My best to young Sam.”

Mother and Father were furious, especially since they hadn’t had a replacement for that night’s entertainment. They wound up hiring a terrible juggler, who didn’t understand that free drinks were not part of his payment, and his bar tab exceeded his night’s pay by a factor of ten—and then he refused to pay it, though Mother and Father didn’t give him his pay, either.

However, Sam wasn’t in the least bit surprised at the bard’s departure, though he probably took it better because Honig actually acknowledged him in his brief goodbye missive. Honig had always talked about Cliff’s End as being the best place to be if you were a bard. They had the most taverns, the most inns, and the most people coming through. “Here in Treemark, young Sam,” Honig had always said, “you get lots of regulars, which means you have to keep coming up with new material. But in Cliff’s End? The same tavern could have entirely different people from one week to the next. You can tell the same story, sing the same song, over and over again.”

Sam had pointed out that part of Honig’s appeal was that he always had new songs to sing and new stories to tell, but the bard’s response had been, “Yes, but after a while, young Sam, you really start to run out of material.”

That, Sam had never understood. There were so many great heroes, so many wars going on, so many battles being fought. Every day there was a new story from someone who came home from some war or other, or a traveling bard with some new tale.

Just as Sam envied Honig his life, Honig envied the traveling bards theirs. When Sam had asked him why he didn’t become one, that bright smile would peek forth from behind that thick beard, and Honig would say, “I could never sleep out of doors, young Sam. I would fear a troll would eat me in the night. Better to stay under a roof.”

After Honig’s departure, Sam begged and pleaded with his parents to allow him to take over as the tavern’s bard. They were reluctant, for his assistance was desperately needed around the tavern itself. Mother and Father were not getting any younger, after all, and their attempts to have additional children had all failed. In fact, one of the saddest songs Honig had ever sung was a haunting dirge he wrote in memory of Sam’s stillborn little brother.

As a compromise, they let him perform once a week, while carrying out his other duties as waiter, bartender, and cook’s helper as needed the rest of the time.

To everyone’s surprise, he was quite popular. Sam was more surprised than anyone because, while he always dreamt of being a bard, he was never entirely sure he was any good at it. Yes, Honig had made encouraging noises, but Sam was his employer’s only child, and Sam could never be entirely sure that Honig wasn’t simply trying to stay in good with the people who put gold coins in his pocket. (“The tips are useful, young Sam, but the steady pay is what keeps a bard from starving.”)

But while Sam couldn’t hold the crowds the way that Honig could, they did applaud when he finished telling a story. It helped that he knew many of Honig’s most popular tales, and Sam had even come up with a tune to sing one of Honig’s spoken stories to, though he sang it unaccompanied, of course, since he didn’t have an instrument of his own.

Mother and Father didn’t pay him a salary, but he was allowed to keep his tips, and eventually he collected enough coppers (and even the occasional silver) to finally buy his own lute, so his songs could have music, and he could even sometimes strum to go with his spoken stories.

He kept abreast of current events as much as possible, telling tales and singing songs of some of the great heroes of Flingaria: from the noble Gan Brightblade to the mysterious Pirate Queen to the mighty King Marcus. When the infamous killer Bronnik was captured by agents of Lord Newcastle and Lady Belle, Sam had actually been commissioned by the Lord and Lady to compose a song celebrating the foul killer’s capture and execution.

It was right after Bronnik’s capture, however, that the fever spread through Treemark, and Mother succumbed to it.

Father was despondent after that. He barely spoke following Mother’s memorial service, and the tavern went to seed fairly quickly. Drinks weren’t restocked, waiters weren’t paid, entertainers weren’t hired. Sam tried his best to keep things running, but while he, Mother, and Father did well as a trio, all helping each other out, it was not a job one person could do alone.

Then one night, Father went to sleep and didn’t wake up. The healer Sam called said he could find no cause for his death, but postulated that he simply died of a broken heart.

Sam hadn’t realized you could die of such things.

He sold the tavern after he buried Father, and used the money to go to Cliff’s End.

There, he knew, he could thrive. He just needed to find Honig.

Sam traveled in a caravan of coaches that was en route from Treemark to Cliff’s End. Most of the passengers were people getting ready for sea voyages, or visiting people there. Only a few, like Sam, were intending to live there.

One was actually returning from a trip to visit family in Treemark, and he said that he had heard of Honig as the bard who sometimes played at the Ogre’s Breath. Prior to that, he had played in the Dog and Duck. “The OB,” as the man referred to it, was located in a region called “Goblin Precinct.” Sam had no idea where that would be, exactly, but he was soon able to determine that the city-state of Cliff’s End was divided into four sections named after various creatures, and that Goblin was where the less well-off of the city-state resided.

Sam was fine with that—after all, the poor needed somewhere to drink and be entertained, too—so when he arrived at the terminal clearing just outside the city-state’s borders where all caravans ended (or started) their journeys, he immediately inquired about how to obtain a horse that would take him to Goblin Precinct.

He quickly learned that that would not be possible. The thoroughfares were too crowded to allow horses. If Sam had known he was going to have to walk through the entirety of the city-state, he wouldn’t have brought quite so much of his stuff.

A gnome offered to store his luggage for a mere two silvers, and he and his friend took it all away, providing Sam with an address where he could pick it up later. It was only the next day that he discovered that the address didn’t actually exist anywhere in Cliff’s End. The member of the Castle Guard to whom he reported this crime informed him that his possessions were likely being sold on Jorbin’s Way.

But Sam’s disappointments were only beginning. He arrived, after a lengthy and tiring walk, at the Ogre’s Breath only to discover that Honig no longer worked there. A particularly surly bartender informed him that the bard had been arrested following a brawl. That had rather surprised Sam, as the bard had always been a peaceful sort, but he supposed that Honig might have been trying to break it up and was arrested along with the true malefactors.

After being told in no uncertain terms that no, the Ogre’s Breath was
not
in the market for a new bard, Sam walked some more, this time to Goblin Precinct headquarters. A sergeant whose name he never got directed him to a female guard who appeared to be half-elven and half-human. She was also the single ugliest woman Sam had ever seen in his life, and that was after living for almost twenty years with his mother.

“Honig?” she said. “Oh, you mean that untalented drunken shitbrain that they hired to pretend to sing at the OB? Every witness we spoke to after that brawl last week said he started it.” She snorted, a very unpleasant sound, and added, “Not that it takes much to start a fight at the OB. Anyhow, I sent him to the hole, and a buncha people filed a complaint, so I had to kick it over to the detectives, since I’m apparently not worthy to fill out boring paperwork.” She sounded more than a little bitter. “If you want to know what happened to that drunken shitbrain, talk to Lieutenant Iaian in the castle.”

That led to another lengthy walk, this time all the way to the seat of the city-state—a castle located right near the clearing that had served as the terminal. Sam was allowed to see this Iaian person, who wore similar leather armor to that of the guards he’d met at Goblin Precinct, but with a gryphon emblem on the chest instead of a goblin, and Iaian also wore a brown cloak.

“Yeah, I took care’a that. It was weird, ’cause I been in the Guard for coming up on ten years now, an’ they’ve been fightin’ in the OB for all that, but this is the first time anyone actually put in a
complaint
. It was weird. So I had to take it off Goblin’s hands—after listening to that bitch guard. What the hell’s her name, Tresyllione?” Iaian shrugged. “But anyhow, it wound up not matterin’, ’cause Honig hung himself in the hole.”

That nearly caused Sam to faint right there in the castle. Iaian looked annoyed, and he got his partner—an elderly gentleman named Linder—to assist him.

Honig’s personal effects had been confiscated by the Castle Guard and auctioned off to line Lord Albin and Lady Meerka’s treasury, so Sam had nothing to remember his mentor by.

On Linder’s recommendation, Sam went to the Dog and Duck—which, he recalled, was the last place Honig worked before he went to the Ogre’s Breath—and met with Olaf, the owner, a bald man with a thick black mustache.

“Hiring a bard, I am not doing,” he said. “Sorry, sorry, but after Honig I swear off bard forever. They are worth less than they are trouble, yes?”

Sam didn’t understand, as he could testify to Honig’s talents, but Olaf just shook his bald head.

“Fine, he was, at first, but Honig, he start to drink, and then downhill was all that it went to.”

That, at least, explained why that guard woman— Tresyllione?—called him a “drunken shitbrain” not once, but twice.

Sam’s attempts to explain his own teetotaling lifestyle fell on deaf ears. “Honig, he say the exact same words to me when he arrive. I not be fooled a second time,” Olaf said while wagging a finger in Sam’s face.

Disheartened, Sam moved on to several other taverns, before finally being hired by the Stone Kobold. Sam performed three times a week right under the object that gave the tavern its name.

On the night of his third performance, a man came running into the Kobold crying, “The war’s over! The Elf Queen is no more!”

As the night progressed, more people came in saying things like the Elf Queen was dead, or the Elf Queen had gone into hiding, or the Elf Queen had abdicated her throne—but it all boiled down to the fact that the war was over.

The next ten years were simply
awful
for Sam. Peace spread throughout Flingaria. The Elf Queen’s defeat ended the elves’ imperialism, King Marcus and Queen Marta’s forces were so devastated by the fighting against the elves that any thoughts of war needed to be put aside, and the dwarves just wanted to live in peace, which they finally could with the Elf Queen’s defeat.

Which was all well and good for the people of Flingaria, but it played merry hell with a bard’s ability to make a living. People got tired of hearing the same old tales and the same old songs.

It wasn’t so bad at first, of course. There were lots of songs to be sung about the final battles, and the triumphant return home of all the soldiers and heroes who won the war. Olthar lothSirhans—the nephew of the Elf Queen, whose betrayal of his aunt was the key to victory—alone was good for half a dozen songs.

Initially, the very thing that attracted Honig to Cliff’s End, to wit the heavy turnover of clientele in the taverns, worked in Sam’s favor. But as time went on, the Kobold modulated into a neighborhood tavern with a cadre of regulars. And they quickly grew weary of hearing the old standbys over and over again.

Sam kept trying to find new places to work. He occasionally would be hired by some rich family or other to perform at an event, and of course every midsummer he’d sing songs on Meerka Way for tips.

But steady work proved impossible to come by. The Kobold reduced his frequency to twice a week, then only once, eventually letting him go all together. He managed to survive—barely—on the occasional wealthy patron, but those gigs were few and far between. When Olaf remodeled the Dog and Duck, he advertised for a singer, and Sam auditioned for the gig, but it went to a younger bard. “His songs, they are new, yes? I like songs that were invented since the time my nephew, he was born.”

Then the Pirate Queen seemingly disappeared—no one had heard of any new exploit from her or her crew in years. King Marcus grew old and became more a ruler than a general. The dragon who came every midsummer burned down a house on Oak Way; rumor had it that the Brotherhood of Wizards had gotten rid of the ancient creature after that, which may well have meant a cancelling of the largest festival in Cliff’s End, with a concomitant loss of income for Sam.