Family Matters
© 2022 by M. Mitch Marmel

Thumbnail art by  shuffle99


Part Fifteen.


Matt:

Whee!

There’s very little that beats flying, and with Low-chan on my three o’clock in her own VF-1, life was feeling fairly complete. Everything would be right in the multiverse if Tali were on my nine o’clock, but since she was now in the family way and never mind the hows and whys of it, she was grounded. I knew she was a bit disappointed at Low’s order, but she accepted it. It helps that Low’s not only the senior and superior-ranking officer, but also the senior wife in our little ménage à trois.

I love them both equally, thank you very much. To quote a wise person, love doesn’t add – it multiplies.

I twitched the controls, and my Valkyrie rolled left and dove, with Low hot on my heels. I went vertical and descended below five hundred meters before pulling up inverted and pulling out to level flight. I shook my head a little, thanking Whatever for g-suits.

“Matt?” Low’s voice echoed in my helmet. “You all right?”

“Five-by,” I said promptly. “You okeh?”

“Yes. Check your terrain scanners.”

So I do, and oh, crap.

We’d been cavorting and dallying about in our planes and not paying attention where we were going. It was clear on my display, and we were within visual range of a seacoast. I had no idea how good Elves might be at seeing long distances, but – oh, double crap.

There’s a village on the shore.

I break right and start heading back out to sea, homing on the Musashi. From what Tali tells me, at least some Elves can throw magic missiles, and I wasn’t keen on finding out.

“Think they saw us?” Low asked. She was on my left wing.

I gave an Annoyed Grunt (DOH-1a). “We weren’t flying cloaked,” and never mind the fact that the VF-1s aren’t equipped for it, “and it’s a cinch they heard the engines."

"Not to mention the contrails," Low added helpfully.

I sighed. "Whether they saw us and can be bothered to tell someone is, of course, a crapshoot . . . ”

“Let’s head back to the ship,” Low said, “and we’ll move her further out to sea.”

“Good idea.”


***


Winterbough:

“Kill who?”

Well, someone had to ask.

Red loomed over me, axe in paw, and glowered. I didn’t move, because I knew that I wasn’t the target of his anger. He and I gazed at each other for a few moments before his shoulders sagged slightly. “Well, Master, I’ll tell you. Yesterday we had a trio of big wagons come past the place, not from around here. You know anything about that?”

“Yes. They came from a place called Eastness.”

“Huh.” He gestured with the axe at the crowd. “A few of them told me that Elves were coming through, but I thought they were just making spraint up. Anyway, one of the wagons stops, this little menace gets out, and they ride away.”

“All right. Then what happened?”

The former Red Cap started to see the humor in me questioning him like I was constable. As Master, well, in a way I am. “He pays for a couple nights, pays in gold. My wife serves him dinner, and he starts acting funny.”

“Funny ha-ha?”

He gives me a look. “He starts sniffing at the baked fish, looking at it, turning the plate around, and then he eats and starts grumbling. Maisie didn’t hear him, but Dorcas did, and she told me that he was grumbling that he wouldn’t feed that trout to a dying ant.”

“Ooooh,” came a low descant from the boys of the chorus. I had to agree with them. Elves live a very long time, and the art of cookery can be sacred.

I gave the others a look, and they shut up. “Go on.”

“But he eats it, and goes to his room, still grumbling. Breakfast, same thing. Come lunchtime, and the little indefinite has the gall - the sheer, unbridled cheek – to complain about my roast lamb!”

This raised a growl from all the Wolves in the audience. Despite being a roebuck, Red learned how to cook for anyone who came into his place to eat. It’s one of the reasons I leased the place to him, knowing that there were at the time a few bachelors among the ex-Prisoners who might want a meal that they didn’t prepare.

[Note appended to manuscript: “Get on with it.”]

[Note appended to manuscript: “Shaddap.”]

“And now he’s chased Maisie out of the kitchen with a knife,” Red concluded, holding his axe at shoulder arms, “and I’m going to sort the little bastard out.” The pack of roebucks and wolves all nodded, looking quite ready for mayhem.

I pronked to get between him and the door, and held my paws out placatingly. “Hold on a moment, Red.”

“Step aside, Master,” Red said, a grumble that seemed to emanate from his chest. “He may be shorter than you, but he’ll be a head shorter than that when I’m done with him.”

“Look, just give me a few moments to talk to him and find out what this is all about, please?”

Granger and the crowd were of one tongue and voice. “NO.”

I fixed Red with an intense look. “You’d do it for Rhandh-olf Skoht.”

An ancient hero of the Elves, and the name worked its magic. The crowd hushed and doffed their hats, murmuring, “Rhandh-olf Skoht.”

A fanfare thrilled through the air all around us, with a choir singing, “Rhandh-olf Skoht!”

Don’t ask me. It just happens.

Red sighed and grounded the axe. “All right, Master. Go ahead.”

I went inside, aware that I had a very small budget of time, and I had to be thrifty.

I paused just inside the entrance, hearing an unfamiliar voice swearing under his breath (it sounded like through clenched teeth as well) coming from the kitchen. “What the ____ are they _____ thinking of, I ______ ask you, putting things like this _____ piece of _____ ____ in the cold storage.” This was followed by a clatter and another spate of profanity. I recognized the accent. He was from Eastness, all right.

And his swearing would have made many a squaddie proud.

I peered around a corner, and saw a white-furred tail with a black tip whipping back and forth like a Household cavalryfur’s saber as the owner of said tail was bent over in the Grangers’ magically-chilled cold storage room. “Excuse me,” I said.

And immediately pooked to the left as a kitchen knife, a big one, sailed past me and embedded itself in the doorframe at about my eye-height. “Oi!” I shouted. “What the Netherhells are you doing?”

"What the ____ are you doing here?"

"I own this place."

"Fine. You're my boss. Now stand the ____ aside, or this fish will be _____ ruined." The tail retreated, and the tail’s owner presented himself.

Red was right; he was shorter than me, by about an inch. He was an ermine, looking half-dwarfed by the trout he held in his paws. He muttered a cantrip that cleaned a space on the counter, threw the fish on it, and drew a long, thin-bladed knife from his Elfintory. “This _____ fish has to be _____ cleaned, so if blood _____ bothers you, you should _____ leave now,” he growled as he started scaling the trout.

I stood my ground. “What’s your name?”

He paused long enough to hiss, “Ernest _____ Ramesie.”

“Westersloe Winterbough, the Fifth. You’re from Eastness.”

“Yes.” This punctuated by a solid chop with another knife that severed the fish’s spine.

“Why are you here?”

He didn’t reply until he had finished gutting the trout, muttered a cantrip over it to keep it fresh, and took it back into the cold-storage. He came out wiping his paws on a rag. “I’ve been a Chef, in Service,” and my ears twitched, “for a lot of years, but I got _____ sacked from my last job. My boss there told me to join the embassy, and the _____ _____ _____s put me out here.”

I raised an eyebrow. I could sense the capital letters, and they reminded me of Nippy’s speech. “Now, you listen to me, right?” He nodded and started cleaning the counter. Knew his cantrips pretty well. “The Grangers run this place, and right now I’m telling you to go back up to your room – and stay there – until I figure out what to do with you.”

“Or?”

“Or I let Mr. Granger do what he wants to do with the axe in his paws.”

A heavy cleaver and a butcher’s knife appeared in Ernest’s paws. “Let him try,” he said, his teeth bared.

I smiled, letting him see my silver-steel teeth. “You would lose. Now, get upstairs. And stay there until I call for you.”

He grumbled, but put the blades away and stomped off. I followed him at a discreet distance until he was in his room. I warded the door for good measure, and went back to Red.

It took some doing, but I explained to Red that I had essentially placed the ermine under house arrest until I could figure things out. In the meantime, his upkeep would be charged to me, along with any damage. Red looked grumpy about that, but nodded and went inside without the axe.

“Now, you horrible lot,” I barked, rounding on the crowd of bucks and wolves, “hop it! Back to what you were doing.” They grumbled too, at having missed out on any fun.

I headed back to the Lodge. Maybe Anastasia could think of something.


***


Anastasia:

“Thank you, Nippy,” I said as the ermine poured me another cup of tea. Across from me, Mrs. Fletcher sipped at her own cup with great deliberation, and as Nippy withdrew I asked the roe-doe how she was getting on with Tessie.

To my pleasant surprise, I received a favorable report. The raccoon was learning quickly, and was graduating from cleaning the Fletcher house to preparing meals. She had also achieved a good grasp of Elfhamian and the other does had rewarded her with a rolling pin.

I also received word that a suitable candidate for Sixth’s mate had been found, and Mrs. Fletcher told me that she would be informing Brother Cellini as to when the public announcement would be made. All in all, a very satisfactory meeting, and we chatted over a few more little items before she left to see how Tessie was doing.

“Excuse me, Ma’am,” Nippy said. “Missy Sage is at the door, wishing to speak with you. May I add another cup to the tea service?”

“Yes, Nippy, and please show her in.”

The wolfess came in, and I was surprised. I have only rarely seen her smile when Ooo-er isn’t around, and even rarer to see such a happy expression on her usually dour face.

Elves don’t lie, she looked positively joyful.

“Your Highness,” she said, and after accepting a cup of tea she sat down.

“What did you want to see me about?” I asked.

She was about to reply when I heard my mate enter the Lodge, calling my name.

Now what was that all about?




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