Page 22 of Wanted: Rogues and Bards

Malfas snagged the last muffin. “You’re curious how we all came together as a group?”

“I am. Very much,” Maxie admitted.

“Well, some of it isn’t that exciting.” Malfas jerked a thumb to indicate Belstrom at the head of the table, to his immediate right. “Me and Bel are childhood friends, from around the Ringager Mountains. Have you ever been there? The area is just gorgeous, with jagged, snowy peaks all year long and this cute little green valley where people have herds of sheep and goats. In fact, the very best goat milk and goat cheese in all of Moorwood come from the itty-bitty town of Bowen. But that’s not where Belstrom and I are from. I grew up in the village of Caster, while Belstrom grew up in the village of Longbourne. Our villages were side by side, basically, only a valley and a river separating the two, so we played a lot together as kids. Neither of us wanted to stay there once we grew up, so we became adventurers together.”

“Ah, splendid times,” Belstrom said with a sappy sigh. “That was a good twelve years ago now.”

“Looking back, we were still so young and full of ourselves. I was barely sixteen when we left, and Bel was a strapping eighteen. We were optimistic and naïve about how that would go”—Malfas grimaced—“and almost immediately got ourselves on the wrong side of the law through no real fault of our own. We came through a town where the sheriff was forcing a younger woman to marry him, and she hired Belstrom to beat him up so she could escape. But the sheriff was wise to her plan, hired on some men as temporary deputies, and set them on both me and Belstrom. It ended in a bloodbath, with nearly all of them, including the sheriff, dying in the process.”

“To be fair, he was a vile man.” Belstrom didn’t look at all bothered by this memory. “It was the catalyst for our wanted posters, though.”

“But you saved the girl!” Maxie looked outraged on their behalf. “Your actions were those of a hero. I cannot understand why either of you would be regarded as villains.”

Belstrom shook a finger. “The appearance of good is more important in society than actual goodness. Anything that goes against the norm is evil by default. Standing up to a person of the law will always get you branded a villain, which was a hard lesson for our young selves to learn, but necessary.”

Fenric winced. Damn, he was spot on. Then again, leave it to Belstrom to summarize the great injustice of the world so succinctly. A wordsmith, that one.

“While we were on the run, we ran into Rain,” Malfas said, continuing the story, still happily tearing into his muffin. “He’d been scuttled, and his crew had mutinied⁠—”

“Damn faithless, sister-kissing rat bastards,” Rain snarled, expression dark.

“—and he was in a fine pickle. We wanted to get out of the area in a hurry, of course, and figured we could help each other out. We told him the story as we got his ship free. Outraged on our behalf, he offered to band together with us for a while if we’d help him with the ship. I thought it was great to get some experience with something I was ready to learn, and Belstrom loves to learn things, so he was on board—on board, get it? Ha!—and anyway, that’s how we gained Rain as a party member. Still adjusting to the whole bathtub thing, though.”

Maxie tilted his head as if he weren’t sure if that last comment had been a joke.

It hadn’t been.

But he’d see for himself shortly.

“Anyway, we’d been traveling around for several months when we ran into Hapi.”

Hapi let out a long, pained groan that ended with a sigh of resignation. “Yes, so you did.”

Maxie gave him a searching look. “Was that not a good thing?”

“Well, it ended up being one,” Hapi acknowledged. “But the reason for it wasn’t.”

“Hapi’s family discovered him with a necromancy grimoire,” Malfas said, “and he was found to have necro power within his core, so his family threw him out. You have to understand, elves are creatures who celebrate life and all that nourishes it. They don’t do necromancy under any circumstances. It is the very most taboo thing any elf could do.”

“Thank you, Malfas,” Hapi cut in, grinding those three words out between his clenched teeth. “Necromancy works well with the magic naturally existing within me and is also my own form of celebrating life. I’m bringing it back to things that have lost their life. What’s greater than that?”

Fenric reached over and patted Hapi’s tense shoulder. “Nothing. You’re better off without those close-minded assholes.”

“Anyway,” Malfas said, picking up the rest of his tale as if Hapi hadn’t spoken. “He was just trudging along the shoreline when we spotted him. We thought he’d been shipwrecked or something, so we stopped to say hi and see if he needed help, especially with a storm brewing and all. He said he wasn’t lost, but he was a necromancer and to leave him alone, and that’s basically all it took because Belstrom heard interesting new person and saw a book he hasn’t read yet, so he insisted we take Hapi on board⁠—”

“It was not just for those reasons!” Belstrom protested, but he was grinning.

“Uh-huh, sure it wasn’t.” Malfas rolled his eyes. “And with the storm coming and all, we talked Hapi on board just until we reached the next town, but by the time we reached it, we realized we all got along rather well, and here he was, a brand-new necromancer who didn’t have the right level or knowledge to really raise the dead or create his own skeletons, so it really wasn’t safe for him to be out and about on his own, he needed a party for protection. So we talked him into staying for a bit longer.”

Hapi seemed amused, judging by the way his blue eyes crinkled up at the corners. “I recall the conversation going something along the lines of ‘Just stay,’ with my answer being ‘Fine.’”

“Didn’t take much to convince you,” Malfas agreed cheerfully. “And I’m glad, as you’re a buddy.”

Hapi inclined his torso in a seated bow, his earlier irritation with Malfas vanishing. “I too am glad. Even if you have the habit of talking to thin air.”

“Hey! I’m talking to my constellation, that ain’t talkin’ to thin air, you’re painting me like I’m crazy⁠—”

“If the look fits,” Fenric drawled, mostly to get a rise out of Malfas. Which was admittedly easy.