“Ten to one he holds like an ox,” I say.
What I meant was, I sure as shit hope he hangs on to her. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t trust my friend, but I’m betting with coin I don’t have. I’m not saying I’m not good for it, because I am. Just, you know, my pockets are empty today.
So I sit and watch between the legs of elves and hope he keeps her off the tavern floor.
I nod at the barman for another drink and slide him some coin while the good bard Pussywillow balances the poor girl on his shoulders, his knees vibrating like lute strings.
“Nay, Milo,” Bertrand says. “Make it twenty to one,” and he’s got his hand held out to make our simple gentleman’s agreement into a done deal—a slit-your-throat-if-you-don’t-pay-up sort of bet. It’s not the sort of bet I want to make, yet I’m shaking Bertrand’s hand, allowing the ale ravaging both my innards and inhibitions to make the decision for me.
I can see it in Pussywillow’s dour face. He knows he’s going to drop her dumb.
I slap Bertrand on the back, pleasantly surprised by the absence of his usual musky odor, and hand him my last coin.
“Next round is on me,” I say, and slip out the door, noting the unmistakable thud causing the crowd to crow is not from the door slamming behind me, but the poor girl falling—and perhaps my luck.
“You asshole,” I say.
Pussywillow lounges in his chair.
“What?” he says. “You’re the one who bet in favor of me in matters regarding a feat of strength. I’d say that makes you the asshole.”
“Because I believed in a friend?”
“A foolish asshole.”
“Bertrand isn’t going to let it go this time,” I say. “How much coin do you have, by the way?”
Pussywillow leans forward, his brunette coiffure still flattened from the tavern fiasco.
“What—why?” he asks. “I’m not bailing you out.”
“Well,” I say, making sure I’ve given myself room to dodge whatever he’ll throw at me once I tell him. “Because you’re…well. Sort of roped into this too.”
He grabs an apple from the table.
“How? Explain to me how I am responsible for your financial misgivings?”
“I mean, you dropped her,” I say, and I’m flat on the ground while the apple zips past my head. Better than the last time. I still have a scar from the cat.
Pussywillow chases me around the room while I create obstacles for him from chairs and end tables and various decorative baubles.
“How much?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I said ten to one…”
He’s slowing down, giving up.
“But then he raised it twenty to one,” I say. “But I don’t remember the initial wager. Honestly, I’m not sure how gambling works. I’ve never been much of a betting man.”
I pick the apple off the floor and take a bite.
“Oh no,” Pussywillow says. “There’s that look.”
I’m more of a thinking man.
“I have an idea,” I say.
We wait until the moon creeps behind a drapery of clouds to make our way down the docks where, if my intel is correct, a vessel storing bags and bags of coin floats, ready to be burgled by yours truly. A handful of guards patrol the area in the early evening to protect the slew of vessels, but by this hour, they’ve gone sea-legged-drunk and can most often be found shagging behind crates or paying anyone to give them a lonely wank in an alley. I’m not a proud man, but resourceful, and can appreciate the hustle. They always say, sometimes you have to spend a load to create your load.
“I want you to know I do not approve of this,” Pussywillow says. “At all. Not one bit. I’m a man who earns his keep by entertaining good people far and wide, not thieving and kniving.”
Even his whisper could wake the dead.
“Will you be quiet?” I ask. “And don’t even start. You sing-song types steal all your material.”
“Excuse me?”
We wander past a sleeping guardsman, sprawled out next to a deck of cards and empty flask.
“Your last big hit was about your brother and his husband. A ballad of two lovers, cast aside by family, but carved their own lives in the bedrock of love.”
“Well,” he says. “We all draw inspiration…”
“Yeah, sure. Do you pay your brother a portion of the keep you earn from his story?”
“I bought him a lovely wedding gift.”
“So did I,” I say. “Thief.”
“Oh, fuck off,” he says.
“Shhh.”
“You always bicker and then—”
I slacken my pace and hold an arm against Pussywillow’s chest.
“No. Shhhh. As in, kindly shut up,” I say, pointing to the vessel that will solve our Bertrand problem.
“You remember the plan?” I ask.
“You sneak in, steal the coin. I stay and keep watch. If anyone shows, start playing like a common busker, begging for change…did I remember it correctly?”
“Don’t pout.”
“Might I remind you I opened for Bardi-B last month. I have self-respect. As a person, and as an entertainer, and I don’t appreciate my talents being used as a distraction for your shoddy scheme.”
“Well now you’re being rude,” I say.
He’s whisper-yelling a retort again. I nod along to give the impression I’m hanging onto every word while boarding the vessel.
“Keep your eyes open. Be back in a jiffy.”
The tide is gentle tonight and rocks the boat slightly, luring me into a calm disposition. A small glow emanates from the cabin and shakes my mind back into a collected focus Pussywillow no doubt takes for granted. Shoddy scheme. Pah!
Now, I’m no boat expert, but I assume the goods are stored below. I skulk toward a large, dark hole in the main deck. A ladder leads to a stuffy room that smells of sulfur and salt. I can’t see for shit, save for the ambient light trickling through the gaps in the main deck. I feel around for sacks of coin, but discover only barrel after barrel of black powder. I consider the valuables may be held in the captain’s cabin, above. Seems reasonable enough, but now the plan must shift to Pussywillow’s even more careful watch, followed by a distraction if anyone comes around. And to be frank, I’m not all too confident in his ability to keep cool under pressure.
I slink to one side as the boat rocks and am frightened by a clanging noise and rattle of chains. A familiar musty smell wafts my direction, permeating through the scent of salt-seasoned wood and creosote.
“Bertrand?” I ask.
The only answer is a gruff, “Hello? Milo?”
I find Bertrand behind a stack of crates, easily a man-and-a-half tall. I notice shackles on his hands.
“Am I interrupting something? Some damsel-in-distress-role-playing thing—”
“What? No, you ass,” he says. “I’m being held against my will.”
“Were you here for the coin, too?” I ask. “Tell you what, we can split it. Whatever I owe you, first, then we split the rest.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Did the owner of the boat nab you?”
“This is my boat!”
I make a mental note to make sure my informants provide me with more thorough intel.
“Wait, are you trying to rob me?”
“Technically burgling.”
“Help me out of these chains you ass,” he says.
“No, that’s braying.”
Speaking of braying asses, the faintest hum of Pussywillow’s lute resonates above us as he sings in a register I don’t believe suits him, if I’m being honest. The singing clashes—an unpleasant duet—with the chains rattling beside me in the sort of violent chaos I often attribute to burly types like Bertrand.
“Would you calm down? Gods,” I say. “What are you doing chained up in your own boat? Are you sure I didn’t walk in on anything? I won’t tell anyone how to spend their coin.”
“Hold on,” he says. His temperament shifts from a clumsy aggression to pensively focused, as it often does when one remembers matters of coin.
“You said you owe me coin?”
“Did I say that?”
“Yes,” he says. “But tell me, why do you owe me coin?”
“Caught me,” I say, giving him a friendly-don’t-stab-me gesture. “But perhaps you should lay off the ale, Bertrand. We’d made our bet only hours ago.”
“Impossible,” Bertrand says. “I’ve been chained up for days.”
By now, Pussywillow is bellowing above, guttural and not at all music-like, and I’m having a hard time concentrating on Bertrand’s predicament.
“Odd, because the fellow I bet twenty…ten to one…really more of a gentleman’s agreement with looked an awful lot like you. You wouldn’t happen to be a twin, would you?”
“No.”
“Well damn.”
I pull thieves’ tools from the pouch at my hip and begin to pick at Bertrand’s chains.
“I can’t believe you planned to rob me,” he says.
“You should thank me,” I say. “I brought my kit and everything.”
One of my picks bends in the lock.
“Would you quit moving?” I ask.
“Yeah, quit your moving,” Bertrand says, only it echoes from behind.
“What sort of thaumaturgy is this? You can really throw your voice,” I say.
“It wasn’t me, you ass! Turn around.”
I do.
Another Bertrand stands before me while the chained-Bertrand lets out a heavy exhale my direction. One most foul. A fist connects with my nose. And then a body, as Pussywillow is shoved in my direction—nose bloodied, hands bound in rope. Soon, my hands are bound and my nose is equally bloodied.
“Did you not hear me singing?” Pussywillow asks.
“That was the distraction-song,” I say.
“No, it wasn’t,” he says. “It was the holy-shit-someone-is-coming-song.”
“Well, the key was off.”
Both Bertrands yell, “Shut up.”
The bard Pussywillow and I are shoved, a bit too aggressively if you ask me, toward the wall. Other-Bertrand says, “Can it. You’ve wasted too much time.”
“Forgive the inconvenience,” I say, solemnly shaking my bound hands.
By now, Other-Bertrand has lit a candle and has set it precariously close to the barrels of black powder. Smooth, I think to myself. Either he’s dumber than he looks or he’s trying to commit fraud. And murder.
“Let me guess, insurance?” I ask.
Other-Bertrand’s face sinks.
“That obvious?”
“A bit,” I say, nodding at the candle and barrels of volatile powder. “But why don’t you take the coin and leave us be? You can be rich without being a murderer.”
“I’m already one of those things.”
Chained-Bertrand leans in and whispers his insurance policy recently lapsed.
“You,” Other-Bertrand says. “What did you say?”
Chained-Bertrand laughs and says, “There is no coin on this ship. I was to set sail and deliver black powder down the coast to the mines.”
Gods be damned. For my shoddy intel and for pairing me with a burly dolt like Bertrand. Any thinking man would know he should have said he has no insurance, but he can keep the barrels of coin if he let us go.
Pussywillow starts to hum a tune and through the dim candle light of doom, I see the flicker in his eyes as he connects the lyrics of the distraction-song chosen not from Pussywillow’s catalog, but from Bardi-B’s Invasion of Privacy, chronicling the exploits of a swindling changeling. And in a small, but not insignificant, turn of events the gods have reminded me that my pairing is not with the dolt Bertrand, but the good bard.
“Hold on a minute, changeling,” I say, quickly coming up with a way to balm Bertrand’s blunder. “I have an idea.”
I’ve always been a thinking man.
“You unchain Bertrand and snuff out your candle. I bet you ten to one that I will be able to determine which one of you is the genuine Bertrand. If I fail, I owe you the debt—and you let my friends go. But if I succeed, we all go free, and you will leave and never return. Nobody has to die here tonight, changeling.”
“Did you think I’d forget you already owe me a debt?” he asks. “If you fail, you owe me the original debt and I take the boat. I’ll deliver the black powder myself and keep the profits—and you will join me and work off your debt, with interest.”
“Fine by me,” I say, because the odds are in my favor. I can smell victory.
There’s a skepticism to his demeanor, hidden in his borrowed, furrowed brow.
“Let’s make it a real challenge,” I say. “Blindfold me.”
After some fuss and tired, untrusting looks, we arrange ourselves on the main deck. It doesn’t slip past me that on my way up the ladder, the changeling had moved the powder kegs directly beneath the hole—the same hole in which he’s placed a lit candle. The slimy bastard.
“All right, turn around,” the changeling says. “I will blindfold you and we will commence.”
There’s a shuffling of feet as the changeling Three-Card-Montys their placement upon the deck. It makes no difference, because the real Bertrand’s familiar, musky odor will reveal all I need to know. I spin myself around a couple of times to give the appearance of a more difficult and fair competition. I hum and haw while paying close attention, waiting for the familiar, odorous musk to whisk its way into my nostrils.
Only there is no smell.
Usually, I’m plagued by a clogged nose around spring and again during the harvest, but it’s barely a week past the summer solstice. I suck in a mouthful of heavy air, remembering that you can often taste Bertrand’s brand of funk on the worst of days, but I’m left with only a slight salty, fishy aftertaste. I decide to go for the nose again and take a deep breath. My throat is overwhelmed by the coppery taste of my colossal fuck up as I choke on blood, my senses corrupted by my nose’s previous run-in with the changeling’s fist.
“Well, then?” the changeling asks. “What is your decision?”
A great question, I think to myself. What are we, but a culmination of our decisions, good or bad, arbitrary or carefully considered? And how about the ones that are heavy and burden more than the bearer? How quickly gambling for coin turned to gambling for my friends’ lives. If only I hadn’t opened my mouth in the tavern, I wouldn’t be here now. But had I not, poor Bertrand, oafish as he is, would have been left to die alone, chained to his own boat.
In the end, I choose the Bertrand on the right.
I pull the blindfold from my brow and use it to soak up the sweat slicking the nape of my neck. I walk toward the changeling to shake his hand. To put an end to the deal once and for all.
As I do, the tide rocks the boat. The three of them are thrown against the rail along the deck into a fleshy pile. Bertrand—genuine or not, I can no longer determine—stares at the hole in the main deck, or rather, the candle falling into it. Pussywillow looks around, screaming about his precious lute. The Bertrands yell obscenities. And I watch the world in slow motion and curse the gods, because would it have killed them to shift the tides after we’d left the boat? I truly believe it may have. The gods can’t go five seconds without watching us suffer. And like clockwork, five seconds go by, and before you know it, we’re diving into the murky, freezing water. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Another five seconds and Bertrand’s vessel is blown to bits. A beautiful spectacle of suffering for the gods.
Several sleepy-eyed guardsmen stand on the docks and shout toward the three of us who surfaced, asking if we’re okay. Clinging to flotsam, we respond in the affirmative.
“How did you know he was the right Bertrand?” Pussywillow asks, his quaff now flat and swooping along the left side of his face.
I spit seawater in an arc like a cherub fountain.
“I didn’t,” I say.
Bertrand grips the flotsam tight and says, “Well, you chose right.”
“Sorry about your boat.”
“It’s okay, insurance ought to cover it.”
Michael Bettendorf (he/him) is a multi-genre writer from the Midwest. His fiction has appeared at The Drabblecast, The Martian Magazine, and elsewhere. Michael works in a high school library where he talks to students and ghosts all day about books. He lives in Lincoln with his partner and dog where he tries to convince the world Nebraska is too strange to be a flyover state.