The Jack of Souls (Multi-award winner!)

Chapter 1a - Cursed

"You written your will yet, lad?"

Someone shouted the words in Harric's ear over the din of the crowded barroom. He turned from the group of knights and house girls he stood with, and found the brewer, Mags, leaning across the bar behind him. The old man fixed him with a look, drunk and earnest, and indicated the winch-clock on the bar. Five minutes to midnight. Five minutes left of Harric's nineteenth year, and his last full day of life. "You'd best write it quick," Mags said, "or Rudy'll snatch up your things before your corpse is cold."

Harric's throat tightened. He clenched his jaw against the rage rising in his chest-rage at the unfairness of his fate, at the madness that spawned it, and-

He shook it off. He would not end like the others, howling or blubbering for mercy. He drank deep from his wine. "The night is still young," he said, voice hoarse.

"Don't make light of it, son. This is the day."

"You think I don't remember?"

"Just trying to help."

"You're trying to clear me out before my death spoils the party."

The old man scratched his stubbled chin. "Well, it would cramp the mood considerable...."

Harric managed a wry smile. He pointed to the winch-clock that towered above him, a column of woodwork on the bar, like a coffin on end. "When the twelfth chime sounds at midnight, my precious doom has till sunset tomorrow to find me. Plenty of time to write a will."

The brewer nodded, and grimaced as if struggling with emotion. He drew Harric close, old eyes glistening with unshed tears. "You know there isn't a one of us here wouldn't have stopped your mother if we'd known. I'd have killed her if I had to. I swear it."

Unable to speak, Harric downed the last of his wine. "You're right about one thing," he said, pulling away. "It's time to leave the celebration to my guests." Before Mags could object, Harric stepped on a chair and onto the bar beside the winch-clock. From the back of the clock case he drew out the crowbar he'd hidden inside, and in two quick moves he wrenched out the mainspring to the accompaniment of cracking wood and outraged chimes.

"Wha - ?" Mags choked. "Who's gonna pay for that?"

"Keep your hair on." Harric dropped his purse of coins on the bar, and steadied himself against the clock, forever stopped at one minute to midnight.

The clamor drew all eyes to the bar. A few present could read clocks and understood his joke; most simply saw him on the bar and fell silent, expecting a speech from their host.

Harric looked out at the sea of upturned faces in the smoky hall. In the gloom at the back, orange embers of ragleaf pipes pulsed like fireflies. "Almost time," he called, with a room-filling bravado he did not feel. "And it's going to stay that way for the rest of the night!" He raised the mainspring in mock triumph, to a roar of applause.

"I have no gloomy speech for you," he assured them. "We've said our farewells, and this night is for celebration. I leave you now to finish the wine and continue as if this night would never end. I paid for all the wine in the bar, so it will be a great affront to my memory if a drop remains at daybreak."

Applause shook the timbered walls. Gentlemen and free men saluted with swords or raised cups. House-girls and maids threw flowers and other favors on the bar. In their faces he saw affection and curiosity and pity. Most were friends and Gallows Ferry locals with whom he'd grown to manhood. Others were strangers passing through the outpost on the way to the Free Lands. He'd invited them all, and not a single enemy stood among them, for he'd drugged Rudy and his crew and left them sleeping with the hogs. A double pleasure, that.