Free Shadewell Shenanigans by David Lee Stone

his soggy lips. “Um … I don’t know who you mean, Your Highness,” he said.
    “The mercenaries!”
    “W-w-which ones, Your Highness?”
    Susti grimaced. “Don’t play games with me, you insolent fool! My father will have you”—she paused, trying to think of the worst punishment she’d ever heard her father’s chief torturer refer to—“castrapitricollapulated.”
    The guard’s eyes practically bulged out of his head, and he began to talk very fast.
    “They were heading for Rintintetly, Highness. You’ll never catch them, though. Once you get into those hills, Highness, there’s any one of a hundred ways you could go to get across the Washin.”
    “Hmm … Rintintetly, eh?”
    “Yes, Highness. But please don’t go—you’ll die! They eat women like you in the dead city; eat ’em alive! I don’t know anything else, Highness. Please don’t castrapitricollapulate me!”
    The man promptly folded up and sank onto his knees, but Susti wasn’t paying attention to his whines. Instead, she was staring at Bronwyn with a look of sheer horror on her face.
    “Everything all right, ma’am?” asked the servant, approaching her mistress with the horses trailing behind her.
    “We need to move fast, Bronny!” Susti exclaimed, snatching one of the reins and thrusting herself up into the saddle. “They must be quite a way ahead.”
    She watched impatiently as the servant tried and failed to get into the saddle. However, the girl’s fifth attempt proved successful.
    “Good. Let’s go.”
    Bronwyn gave an impassive shrug. “I don’t rightly know that we should, ma’am,” she said. “The king would be terribly worried about you.”
    “Well, he should have thought about that before using me as an instrument of—of—of destruction!”
    Susti waved her hand, and the two girls urged their horses into a healthy gallop.
    “You know something really strange …” Gordo muttered, as the innkeeper’s geriatric nag pulled their cart along the dusty track.
    “Yeah,” rumbled his companion. “Moffs dunt die.”
    Gordo shook his head. “No, I—what did you just say?”
    Groan shrugged. “Moffs, they don’ die.”
    “Moths? What, as in ugly butt’flies?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Don’t talk rubbish.”
    “I’m not; bloke in the pub tol’ me.”
    “And you believed him?”
    “Yeah.”
    “You silly sod.”
    “No, I ain’t. He dun proved it an’ all; he jumped off a cliff wearin’ a jacket made o’ moff skins, and you know what ’appened?”
    “Surprise me.”
    “He bounced.”
    Gordo rolled his eyes. “Is this the same bloke who told you that mohair comes from a tiny creature called a ‘moe’?”
    “That was TRUE! He was fightin’ ’gainst all them teddy bear makers what steals the fur off ’em. That’s why you see loads o’ bald moes when you’re out ’untin’ bear fur.”
    Gordo smiled at his friend. “Groan, there is no such thing as a bloody ‘moe’. Mohair comes from goats.”
    “Does it ’ell.”
    “Look, I’m not getting drawn into a debate over it. If you want to pay five crowns for a moth-skin coat, then that’s your own lookout—”
    “How did you know ’bout that?”
    “I guessed.”
    They rode in silence for a while, then Gordo glanced over his shoulder. Gape was fast sleep in the back of the cart, and their prisoner was roped up and running along behind it.
    Gordo sighed. “I can’t believe we’ve ended up capturing Mad Count Craven’s nephew,” he said. “I mean, what are the odds?”
    “Yeah.”
    The dwarf sighed again. “Come to that, I can’t believe anyone can run while they’re asleep,” he said. “Amazing, isn’t it?”
    “Maybe he’s dreamin’ o’ runnin’,” said Groan.
    Gordo admired the simplicity of this, and nodded. “You could be right, there. Still, brings me back to what I was going to tell you earlier …”
    “Yeah? What wazzat?”
    “Well,” the dwarf began, passing the reins to Groan, “when I checked that he was