The Ale Boy's Feast Read Online Free PDF Page A

leaving.” Then he began to groan, his face reddening, his hands splayed on the table, pressing as he tried to stand.
    The herdsmen gasped.
    The longbeard’s rump remained stuck to the bench.
    “He’s glued!” someone shouted. “His backside’s been affixed by stonemastery!”
    The newcomer stood and bowed.
    Weese began to tap the club against the bar to remind his customers that he was watching.
    “Well, then.” The driver drained his glass. “My passenger said he’d prove it. Now he’ll want to move on.” He slid unsteadily from his barstool and staggered toward the door. “I’ll prepare the horses.” He chirped a friendly farewell to the twittering birds on the sill, and they fell silent, watching him go.
    Meanwhile, the red-robed stranger made slow progress, his hands raised as if to deflect the praises of herdsmen who followed him to the door.
    As Weese calmly dragged a towel down the length of the bar, he looked at the birds in their cages. They were staring out the window, watching the driver.
    As the new hero and his admirers left the bar, Weese hurried to the table where the longbeard was furiously trying to free himself from the stone bench.
    “He’s no mage!” the impostor snarled, spitting a spray of beer. “That wasn’t stonemastery! Can’t you see? This here’s just a plate of fast-drying clay. He slipped it beneath me while I was standing. I just didn’t see him do it.”
    “Another impostor?” Weese sighed. “I thought we might really have Scharr ben Fray in our midst this time. Let me get my tools. We’ll set you loose so you can run.”
    “Run? I’m not running anywhere.”
    In the distance Weese could hear carriage wheels and the horses’
trip-trap
. The departing carriage had reached the stone bridge over the snake-stream.
    “That mob? They’re coming back. And they’re going to punish you for lying.”
    The old man’s anger vanished on a sudden surge of fear. “I’m an actor,” he stammered. “Sometimes I … I just like to practice. Why would they punish me?”
    “They spent drink money on you.” Weese jerked a blade from his belt and cut a square from the back of the old man’s leather trousers. “And worse, you got their hopes up. They all wanted to meet the real Scharr ben Fray. He’s independent. Untethered. Won’t take orders from anybody. He is, to all of us betrayed by the Aerial, a hero.”
    Just then the cheers and laughter outside diminished. In the awkward hush, Weese sensed new troubles brewing.
    “They’re coming.” The impostor leapt forward, dashing like a young athlete through the bar and out the back door, his hind parts plain to see.
    Weese ran to the swinging front doors and stepped outside. The mob of herdsmen was not coming back. They were charging toward the bridge. The carriage was rumbling off crookedly into the distance as if it had no driver. And the red-robed stranger was on the bridge over the snake-stream, down on all fours.
    “What happened?”
    “The driver!” Rik-pool, the dishwasher, exclaimed. Wiping his soapy hands ona towel, he went on. “The driver kicked the mage out of his carriage. Then he gave the fellow a reprimand. And the mage … he sank up to his elbows in the stone of the bridge!”
    Weese blinked. “Wait. You’re telling me that the
driver’s
a stonemaster?”
    “See? That red fellow’s stuck on the bridge. Hands and knees sealed in the stone.” Raising an eyebrow, Rik-pool added, “Perhaps he’s not the real Scharr ben Fray after all.”
    “Of course he isn’t.” Wiping his tattooed arm across his brow, Weese looked out at the escaping carriage. “You think the real Scharr ben Fray would come bragging into Mad Sun’s? He would know that the Aerial has eyes and ears everywhere.”
    But that driver
, Weese thought.
He knew so much about happenings all across the Expanse. And it turns out he’s a stonemaster
.
    “Poor impostor,” said Rik-pool as the man on the bridge was surrounded by