Jester

Chapter Three: Let Us Consider the Sky

“Do you know where the term ‘thick as thieves’ comes from?” Duncan asked me in a “you’re-going-to-be-so-impressed-by-this-little-bit-of-useless-knowledge” tone of voice.

I sighed a little and looked away from the long stretch of dusty road we’d soon be marching down. “No, where?”

“I dunno,” he replied in a dreamy voice as he contemplated the sky.

Silence.

“I hate you,” I muttered. I resolved never to humor him again. “Where is she?”

Grima had shoved us out into the middle of town, told us to stay, and floated off with her flowery dress trailing behind her like a luminous mist. I was desperately hoping she had gone to taunt the priests and had subsequently become not my problem.

Duncan was calmly leaning against a tree, calmly chewing on a piece of grass, and calmly whistling tuneless little snippets of songs that he kept leaving half-finished, shrill echoes in the air, and it was driving me insane.

I normally don’t put up with him unless hogtying is somewhere in the equation. Grima would have hell to pay provided she wasn’t currently being burned for heresy, in which case there wasn’t much I could do to her besides leave off the ‘gods bless her soul’ should I ever mention her again. And that wouldn’t be nearly as satisfying.

“Why are we doing this?” I whined, trying to get a rise out of Duncan. And that’s like trying to draw some sign of sanity from a priest. Either way, I always end up more miserable and irritated than before, damned to hell, and yet I keep trying.

“We are doing this because we are caring citizens of a proud and respectable country, and we do not allow helpless old women to wander alone on roads infested with malevolence and ragamuffins,” he answered promptly, like he was reciting a lesson.

I glared at him suspiciously. “Who told you to say that?”

“Madam Grima,” he said with a shrug, flicking away the piece of grass and stooping to pluck another one.

“Helpless old woman my ass,” I muttered. I glared at him now. “Don’t you get what she’d trying to do? She’s trying to drag me off on some crackpot adventure! She’s trying to get me killed.”

“A funny way to put it. I think you misunderstood. And anyway, you said no, right? She can’t make you do what you don’t want to, so why are you worried?” His expression was bland. It’s always bland.

“I’m not…worried. Per say. And she can make me. What do you think she’s doing now?”

“I think she wants someone to see her safely to Brienn,” he said with an amused cock of his eyebrow.

“You would think that, you moron.”

“Maxili,” he said with a sigh. If only I had a brother with whom I could exchange witty repartee. Instead I get the goofus with a heart of gold, the alleged face of a god, and the muscles and brain of an infantryman. Where is my scholarly kin? Why am I the smartest one in my family?

Besides my mother, of course, but you wouldn’t know it from the way she struggles with rolling up parchment. Most often she resembles a thrashing turtle, and she sometimes ends up beating it on the table repeatedly and with great perturbation. The parchment I mean. Not a turtle. We have no turtles. Not domestic ones at any rate.

“What? You don’t see what she’s trying to do! She’s trying to enslave me to a cause that she probably dreamed up over a case of bad indigestion! She’s a wiry little demon, and she’s already got you marching to her beat while she’s tottering around like the weak old woman she isn’t. You know what we call this? The actions of someone with an ulterior motive.”

I took a deep breath after that lengthy expulsion, and then decided I was too tired to continue and settled for crossing my arms and regarding the world at large with a sullen brow.

“You always get worked up over little things,” my brother decided to announce, a fond look passing over his face.

“Oh, genius,” I muttered, digging my toe forcefully into the dirt. The sun was only climbing higher, and if Grima didn’t come back soon, I was going to find myself a cave and hide in it until she left. “Normal people tend to become a little agitated when abnormal people announce the end of the world.”

“Grima is not abnormal,” he puffed in an offended tone, straightening and sending a chastening look my way. I ignored it and met his eyes stonily. “And our elders deserve our respect, if not our obedience.“

“You’re waxing eloquent here,” I sneered, cleaning my ears as if I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Which I couldn’t. The boy was unbelievable. What kid actually listened to that tripe our parents spouted off? Of everyone I knew, Duncan was the only one who ever took that stuff to heart. Of course, that sort of thing didn’t extend to bedding virgins or committing other acts that might incur a celestial thunderbolt.

“I’m not an idiot. I know you like to think I am, but my marks are just as high as yours,” he retorted, and I was almost gleeful at the anger I saw marring his angelic face.

“There is a difference between being stupid in studies and being stupid in life, Duncan. You have no common sense. You bumble about with a goofy smile on your face and believe the best in everyone. Therefore, though idiot may not come to mind, buffoon paints a perfect picture,” I said smugly.

He briefly looked like he was about to pop, and I briefly entertained the color I could make him turn. Unfortunately, he gained a hold of himself and sighed again, shaking his head.

Grumpily, I stomped off to the side of the road.

After a while I grew tired of craning my neck to catch a glimpse of the road’s inhabitants, and I turned my thoughts back to various ways I might rid myself of my Grima problem.

She chose that moment to return. She arrived about three inches behind me and breathed heavily on my neck.

And I want to say that I do not normally shriek like a little girl.

“I can sense the fumes of darkness emanating from your soul, Chosen One,” she lamented, hopping around me and waving her hands mystically in my face. I grimaced and carefully stepped away.

“Then, oh great one, wouldn’t Duncan be better suited for this—“

“One must know darkness to defeat it!” she crowed, stabbing the earth with an enormous staff she’d somehow laid her hands on. “It is well that you need not be taught evil when a cesspool lies within your soul.”

“Say what?” I demanded. “Now see here, I’m a good boy. I always have been—“

“Actions are meaningless,” Grima intoned, her wild green eyes darting about as if evil lurked behind every wagon and pottery stand. “It is what is within the heart that makes a true man.” She waggled a swollen, knobby finger at me. “Make no mistake about it, you have the scent of evil.”

“Well, if that’s all,” I said with a roll of my eyed, “Perhaps we’d best be off? Are you sure you can’t dispose of any minions of evil on your own? Because I have some assignments that need be edited, and I can’t—“

“Only the Chosen One can make this journey.”

“Yes, yes of course. Stop interrupting me, and then why are you coming?”

“Because the Chosen One must have a companion!” she announced, drawing herself up to her full height and puffing out her chest.

“But you just said I—the Chosen One was the only one who could make this journey.”

“Do not pretend to understand the stars, lad!” Grima finally boomed, knocking me on the head with the staff.

“Ow, gods! You see, Duncan? You see what we’re traveling with?”

Duncan regarded me stolidly and, I think, pretended that Grima was an inanimate, benevolent apparition. “You are awfully obnoxious. I hit you all the time.”

I stared at him, disbelieving. Really, how could he believe that the woman was sane and harmless when she was waving around a staff twice her size with the facility to use it for ill? Not to mention the inclination.

“Listen, you.” I paused to get my bearings. “First of all, I only let you get away with hitting me because Mom already thinks I’m an ungrateful changeling who certainly shouldn’t be beating up my wonderful older brother, which, aside from being embarrassing for you, would put me in the position of all-around bad guy to the general feminine populace of our fair city. Secondly, I am not obnoxious, I am realistic and maybe a little jaded. And if your sentence had been longer there would be more points to make and refute, but you are obviously incapable of stringing together a more comprehensive line of bullshit, so I’ll just wrap this up here and now.”

Sweeping dramatically across the town square, my nose was too far up in the air to put my eyes on line with the band of squat, militant priests who stood directly in my path.