SESSION ½
Possibly Drunk, But Punctual
The crystal ball stuttered all evening. Every time Finbarr looked into it, an old woman’s face froze halfway through a smile, lurched forward three words and froze again with its mouth open. The innkeeper blamed the valley. Magic ran thin out here, and the stone that carried it through the inn sat in a locked back room whose key had gone to bed with the landlady.
Finbarr tried holding the ball closer to the window. He tried holding it higher, standing on a table, and then standing on a chair on the table. For a glorious moment the old woman said “and now I’d like to ask you” quite clearly, then her face went still again with one eyebrow raised, which Finbarr felt was a bit much. He suggested knocking the stone over and standing it back up. Nobody listened. Around the ninth frozen smile he climbed down, put the crystal ball back in his pack and went to find out what the inn kept in barrels.
At breakfast the innkeeper proudly announced that the stone was fixed. They had knocked it over and stood it back up.
“That’s what I bloody said! Last night!”
The letter in his pack had changed as well. In the same unbothered typewriter letters it now said: Applicant did not attend. Applicant has been hired regardless. Please report to the nearest Everpost office.
The front door of the nearest post office refused to open. The brown door round the back opened before he knocked. Behind it was a kitchen that smelled of roses and baking, and an old woman in a faded red uniform who looked at him the way grandmothers look at a grandchild who has come home late and slightly on fire. It was the frozen smile from the crystal ball, working properly now.
“You must be Finbarr,” she said. “I’m Maggie. You missed the others by an hour, dear. Sit down and have a biscuit.”
“Only if ye’ve got two.”
He had six. In between she asked him the one question she had meant to ask through the crystal ball, which was why he wanted to work for the Everpost.
Finbarr thought about it with his mouth full. “If the mail always arrives,” he said, “then so shall I. Possibly drunk. But punctual.”
Maggie laughed so hard she had to put her teacup down. Then she told him about the others: a half-orc who carried the book, a girl in a red dress who drew things, a young man with a spear, an elf with a bow, and a rabbit in a hat who expected to be spoken to directly. Finbarr asked whether the rabbit drank. Maggie admitted she had never asked, and Finbarr decided he liked the rabbit already.
The cellar belonged to a mushroom. It stood in the darkest corner with its back to the room, and when Finbarr shouted good morning it turned around with the face of a fungus whose worst day had just been given a date.
“Portobello Grimm. Mr. Grimm, to you. You are one day late for your interview, which paragraph nine does not cover, so I have written a new paragraph.” The new paragraph was longer than the old ones.
The stamping test took Finbarr eleven seconds. He did all forty letters with a stamp in each hand, and when the bell rang he asked whether there was a version with drinks. Mr. Grimm made a scratching sound on his clipboard that did not sound like approval, and blew his whistle.
A shelf swung aside and wolves poured out of the dark. The old heat rose in Finbarr’s chest, Larksong and Gladespark arrived in his hands, humming and green, and he went through the first wolf before he noticed that it had never been there. Neither had the second. He stood in the middle of the cellar, breathing hard, with a very real sword stuck in a very real shelf.
“Illusions,” said Mr. Grimm. “Paragraph two hundred and six. There is now a paragraph two hundred and six.”
“Ach, they started it.”
He got a badge anyway, blue with a silver globe and a white envelope on it. It went on his belt, next to the tankard.
The elf waiting in the white void had gray skin and a green cloak, and had clearly been warned, because he skipped the knife.
“Talon,” he said. “I’d normally teach you how to hit things, but I watched through the door.”
“Aye, I’ve had some practice. Where are the others?”
Talon pointed down one of the lamp-lit paths. “Lethmere. Third lamp, left at the smell of hay. Try not to start a war before you find them.”
“I cannae promise that, pal. Last time I was in Lethmere I was king.”
“Of Lethmere?”
“Briefly. There was a paper crown involved.”
Finbarr set off down the path, counting lamps out loud. He smelled the hay at the third one, and behind the hay he smelled beer.