A young prince, busy spreading his oats far from his home country is found by a noble dame sent to fetch him back, as his father's death and grandmother's failing health leaves him the heir to the throne. Joined by a young woman after she attempts to rob the prince, their journey is dogged by assassination attempts that seem to originate with a shadowy elven noble. This idea makes no more sense to them than the condition in which he finds the colony he has been sent to govern makes to a young elven noble and his entourage. Both, having passed each other in the midst of the night, struggle to survive and overcome the challenges posed by servants of an ancient and almost forgotten enemy who hates all creation and the two of them in particular.
A young prince, busy spreading his oats far from his home country is found by a noble dame sent to fetch him back, as his father's death and grandmother's failing health leaves him the heir to the throne. Joined by a young woman after she attempts to rob the prince, their journey is dogged by assassination attempts that seem to originate with a shadowy elven noble. This idea makes no more sense to them than the condition in which he finds the colony he has been sent to govern makes to a young elven noble and his entourage. Both, having passed each other in the midst of the night, struggle to survive and overcome the challenges posed by servants of an ancient and almost forgotten enemy who hates all creation and the two of them in particular.
Skunkfen was never a pleasant place to visit, Alastair thinks to himself, as he leads Dame Brionna through the stews of the generally undesirable enclave.
On the other hand, there are several very desirable things that are for sale if one knows where to go in Skunkfen. Cut rate jewelry, if you don’t ask questions about sourcing; surprisingly honest games of chance; sassy tavern wenches at taverns with amazingly good food given the surroundings; and bonus: Escape Tunnels.
On the other hand, there are annoyances… like apprentice thieves with undeserved self-confidence.
Like lightning, his hand darts out and catches the wrist of the waif whose fingers were in his pocket. He drags her around into view.
“And what do we have here?” He asks of no one in particular. “Someone whose hand inadvertently found its way into my pocket?’
“Sir, I never.” The person belonging to the hand splutters in faux outrage.
“Oh, you certainly have, and most times successfully, I suppose, since you still are alive and with both hands. What is your name?”
“I’m Kit, if you must.” The waif pulls at her arm in a futile attempt to free her hand.
“Well Kit, I’m Alastair, this is Brionna, and we are looking for a safe place to wait to talk to your…” He hesitates. “Master.”
“Don’t have one of those, Alastair. Just me. That’s all.”
No longer as annoyed, Alastair takes another look at the waif. Waif-like, yes, but not as much an apprentice thief as… a hungry young woman, perhaps?
“Well then, Kit, just a safe place then, and you can join us for a good meal, there may be men following us.” On a gamble he lets go of the hand.
He was correct, she is now intrigued, and she does not run. She does rub her hand and looks him and the knight over.
“Safe place would be a good idea, I'm thinking. She stands out, she does.” Her chin gestures in Brionna’s direction. I’m knowing one, I’ll take you there, I guess. Food's good, you’ll like it.”
She turns and leads the way deeper into the stews.
*****
It is a hidden gem of the type you often find in the poorest of places. From the outside, it is nondescript at best, but within the grungy walls, however, it is clean, well lit, and with good, solid, tasty food. The owner himself attends the table and two other tables of guests. There is no menu parse, but on a slate there is a picture of a bowl of stew and a loaf of bread next to a chicken with a pile of what the artist must have believed to be root vegetables. A vertical line divides the two offerings.
Kit points to the bowl and bread without saying a word. Good at following a lead, Alastair points at the same. Unsure of what may be among the bowl’s contents, Dame Brionna points at the chicken. The Host nods and hurries away. Returning only a couple of minutes later with heavy brown fired ceramic bowls full to the brim with a rich, thick stew, in which large chunks of well cooked beef marinate. A neatly dressed woman, with a large apron and her hair done up in a bun, follows him with a platter of matching brown ceramic chipped just slightly on the rim with a whole roast chicken, that is surrounded by a generous assortment of roasted root vegetables. The skin of the chicken is crisp and crackling, generously sprinkled with herbs in one hand and a small cutting board with two medium sized loaves of still warm bread in the other. The platter she lays before Brionna with a smile and a small flourish.
The cutting board and loaves of bread are slapped down between Alastair and Kit before she draws a small bread knife from an apron pocket and lays it down between the loaves. The host, probably her husband, pulls knives and spoons from a drawer and lays a set before each diner. A lad, probably their son, follows the two carrying a large brown ceramic pitcher full of small beer, which is placed on the table in the midst, together with three heavy brown ceramic tumblers.
Alastair reaches into his money pouch and pulls out a singular thin orb of gold, stamped on one side with his grandmother’s face, and on the other with the seal of Canberry. The host’s eyes widen and the hostess gasps. Laying the coin upon the scarred, but clean and polished table top, Alastair begins to spoon up the rich broth and its load of vegetables, tender meat, and herbs.
For a full minute there is no sound, except the sound of eating. Long enough for Dame Brionna to reflect that the chicken prepared in her father’s kitchens during her early childhood, thousands of miles to the south, was no better than chicken prepared by this quiet couple in this humblest of eateries.
Finally, the host speaks. “My Lord… I do not believe that I can break such a princely coin. Forgive me.”
Dismissively, Alastair waves one hand. “No change is required, goodman. I require but this excellent food and that you arrange a meeting with,” he pauses, “the right people.”
The host’s eyes travel at once to one of the other tables, a table of five, where an older, whipcord-thin woman seems very interested in the exchange.
“I believe that will be easy to arrange, my Lord.”
And at that moment, bedlam. The door in the entryway bursts open so forcefully it is left hanging from one hinge. Three men stride arrogantly in then, the foremost one with a loaded crossbow pointed toward Alastair’s table.
The thin woman leaps to her feet. “What is the meaning of this? The One-Legged Man will have your heads. This establishment and its guests are under his protection.”
Without pausing, the crossbow shifts its target and thumps as it sends its bolt directly into the woman’s chest, knocking her back over the table. Dame Brionna knows at a glance that she is already dead. She also notes that the sides of the wound are oozing a yellowish green mist and the flesh near the impact seems to be boiling. Poison.
If the crossbowman thought to cow the other members of the woman’s table, he failed. “The Thin woman is dead, avenge her!” As the words ring out, the four men at her former table close with the crossbowman and his companions. A bread knife in one hand, the serving platter, devoid now of chicken, but still raining vegetable chunks in the other, the host joins them.
“I neglected to mention this before, but I know of a way into the tunnels and sewers from this very eatery.” Kit announces, while watching the progress of the fight intently. “I think we should probably go.”
Dame Brionna, sword in hand, also studying the fight, nods. “It’s best we do.”
“Right.” Kit takes firm hold on both Alastair’s and Brionna’s belts, and leads them through the kitchen, down the stairs into the cellars, and wrestles a sliding wine rack to the side, revealing a staircase. “Go on, I’m going to seal this up and then follow you.”
“Come, your highness.” Brionna heads down the stairs, Alastair following behind. Thirty feet below, they come to a steel walkway over the flow of the storm sewers, which in Skunkfen are not all that well maintained. Moments later, Kit joins them.
“There, if they can even find the panel, they can’t open it until it is opened from this side. They will have to hack it apart, piece by piece. That should at least slow them down.”
“So, where do we go from here?”
Kit hesitates, and a rather sullen pout appears. “I said I knew how to get in. I didn’t say I had any idea what to do once we were in. Where are you trying to go, anyway?”
“The Riverbank, where the smugglers land.”
“Oh! Alright, so we just follow the flow and we will reach it.”
“Are you certain?”
“No, but it's more of an idea that either of you have.”
Alastair and Brionna exchange glances.
“True.” Brionna nods slowly. “So lead the way, then.”
“Me? Oh, alright. Too bad I didn’t eat faster, left half my stew back there. How did they find us anyway?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh.”
“I mean, I know how they knew I was in this city, but not how they knew I came to this enclave and to this place.”
Dame Brionna snorted. “Finding the city is easy. You draw your allowance as a member of the royal family from the embassy wherever you are and it is reported to the Exchequer. That’s how I found you. Then, I tracked the stories of a wealthy bard who spent profligately on wine and women until I found you.”
“Royal?!”
“Yes, yes, Kit. Enough time for that later, now we must find our way out of here alive.”
“What’s profig-, er proflit-, er… that word?”
Simultaneously Alistair says “Generously” and Dame Brionna says “Foolishly.” They glare at each other for a moment while Kit looks on amused. Then deciding that she best get them moving, she says, “Well, it's sluggish, but the flow goes this way. We should go.”
Both glance at her. “Right.” The trio trudge along the aging walkway, following the flow of the storm sewers.
It takes two days. While Kit’s sluggish flow does go the right way, it turns back on itself from time to time and is blocked here and there until finally, the sluggish flow pours out into the much more robust “Master Sewer,” deeper, and shared by all the enclaves. Following the steel platforms above that noisome flow all the way to the outlet, the trio have to backtrack a short distance before finding a slightly off-color wall panel, which can be slid open to give access to a clearly more recent and inferior tunnel that slopes slightly upward. Following that path, they come, in time, to the back of a natural cavern. A cavern stacked with piles of boxes, bales, urns, and piles of other goods.
By now paranoid, and far more hungry than they were when they were attacked in the nameless eatery, the three creep from cover to cover until they are near the front of the cave.
They are overlooking from that vantage a completely normal looking river village. Perhaps three dozen sturdy cottages with neat fields and gardens in a ring around the buildings. A herd of cattle grazes near the cave mouth. A small sunshrine of Glor'diadel: Lord of Light is in evidence, and an inn, named the “The Hooked Fish” from the sign, showing an unlikely seeming smiling bass, with a hook through its lip, leaping in apparent joy. There is also a boat launch with half a dozen small boats docked. The River Rushing, on which the boat dock sets, lives up to its name, nearly three hundred feet to its opposite shore. Three hundred feet of water rushing to its distant joining with the sea.
Here, and there bands of two or three men wearing leather jacks, and bearing truncheons and dirks, walk among seemingly unconcerned villagers. After studying them for several minutes, Alastair abruptly stands up and starts forward.
“Your highness?”
“The One Legged Man is still in control here, Dame Brionna. It’s time to sleep in a bed, gorge ourselves on a simple fare, hear the news, and charter a boat.”
Kit, at least, needs no further encouragement. She is up and after Alastair in a flash. Dame Brionna sighs and follows after.
No one seems to pay any particular mind to the trio as they make their way to the Fish. Further, to Brionna’s dulled, but still present shock, the proprietor recognizes Alastair on sight.
“Ah, sir Bard, it is good to see ye. It was to Old Charles that I said it. ‘He’ll come here, he will. Where else? And it won’t be to go see Sheila the Red this time either. Derring do and escapes, that’ll be it.’”
“And what did Old Charles say?”
“That it would be worth ten silver to me if I sent you to his boat when he returned in the marrow morning with.” He glances at the armored, though bedraggled knight. ”A load…
‘And don’t you worry, lad. Poor Stewart survived, and the One-Legged Man has declared war on the Slayers Guild. Coming into our territory and killing the Thin Woman. It ain’t done. Pursuing a contract in our territory, it ain’t done either.”
“A contract?”
“Aye, laddie. A thousand pieces of gold for proof of your death.”
Brionna gasps. One thousand pieces of gold? A hundred thousand silver? And she is the only loyal knight to guard the heir?
“But don’t you worry none laddie, lasses. The Unseen Guild makes its money through honest smuggling and common crime and no amount of gold can buy our honor.”
Amazing mental gymnastics there, the Dame reflects to herself, but, if it helps…
“Don’t worry, old Charles will get you safely to Crow’s Landing. No idea if they’ve been there yet, but even if they have, the House there will protect you, if only to stick one in the eye of that Sheila the Red. From there, you can take a bigger barge on down river, or… obtain a horse, and go cross country. They’ll never catch you.” He cackles and then starts coughing.
Clearing his throat he continues conspiratorially. “Not sure whose wife you futtered, or what merchant's fat self you cuckolded to be worth a thousand gold, but we applaud you. Now, come up to the private dining room and eat your fill, you all look famished.”
Later, feasted, bathed, and with their clothing drying by a heated brazier after the thorough washing, the three sleep. Until, in the wee hours of the morning, they are awakened.
“Bard, bard.” The Innkeep sounds frantic. “Dress, I’ve prepared a cold breakfast. Old Charles is tied at the lower launch below the village. You must go now. I don’t know how, but they know you are here.” There is agony in his voice. “Someone has dishonored us all.
"They came back, with more numbers. The Gnarled Woman put them to flight with her witchcraft, she did, and she’s called for help from both the Unseen and Special Carter’s guilds, but it be best you be gone from here.”
Rushing down an unlit path from the Inn toward the Lower Launch, Kit is glum. “I never knew the guild to leak. He’s right, it's a disgrace.”
Thoughtfully, Alastair shakes his head. “I’m not sure that it did leak. I guess it could be chance, but somehow they seem to know exactly where I am.”
At last, seeing a single lamp lighting the lower launch, the three rush to Old Charles’ flat-bottomed boat.
Alistair Ashberry is the prince and heir to the archduchy of Canberry, an amateur bard, and, unfortunately, a debauchee, who is very neglectful of his duties, but he is torn out of his prodigal lifestyle as Dame Brionna of Stanway, Knight of the Order of the Knights of Valor, Holy Knight of Glor’diadel Lord of Light, comes, sent by his grandmother, Archduchess Ameila Ashberry, to take him back to Canberry because Ameila is dying and Alistair must return home to take his place as archduke before she dies lest the throne be left vacant. Upon the way to Canberry, they meet many perils, but are joined by a young thief named Kit who ends up having a romantic thing with Alistair and also Bogdon of Pudova, who becomes his page. All the while, they must flee from mysterious pursuers.
The B-plot line follows Hinuusita Moriquendi’rim, a Proconsul and Noldorian Elf. These names may call to mind various races from J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, but they are somewhat different. For one thing, the Noldor in this tale, are the six houses that followed Morgrath, roughly the "evil god", as it were, in Professor Jones' legendarium, as opposed to Tolkien's Noldor who are very much opposed to Morgoth, whatever their other flaws might be. Hinuusita himself is a mere elven child but a proconsul who must investigate a mysterious plot involving strange deaths and unsettling magic.
Professor Jones is generous enough to provide three appendices at the back to explain lore and it might be worth reading that, perhaps some of it before even reading the book. It is clear that a lot of thought has been put into the world-building which shows very well, so any world-first fantasy reader might enjoy this, and if the reader has made it through The Silmarillion, A Tale of Two Courts might be comparatively easy. In the first two appendices specifically, Jones offers both a creation story and an explanation of the various races and peoples in this world.
That said, this very fact may become a drawback to other readers, such as more character-oriented ones. A Tale of Two Courts does not spend too much time on introducing the characters but rather jumps quickly into the plot. Nor indeed are there many colorful descriptions per se, which might lead the narrative to seem mildly stiff to some readers. With a few exceptions, the personal emotions of the characters are not described very vividly, wherefore there are a few times when they might seem not to react to perils as much as they might. There is characterization and character growth, of course, but those who are not so familiar with this kind of story might have difficulty following it.
The characters are not always the most heroic either. Alistair is, of course, a debauchee and something of a liar, and Kit is a thief. That said, they do have moments of honor which keeps them from being entirely unlikeable. For instance, at one point, Alistair allows an enemy to rise to his feet before fighting him, which surprises the enemy. Dame Brionna definitely has stronger moral convictions than either of them, as one would expect from a knight. That said, if one wishes to be motivated by larger-than-life heroes worthy of imitation as one might get from The Lord of the Rings, Beowulf, or certain Arthurian tales, this is not necessarily the place to go.
Nevertheless, if what the reader desires is lore, A Tale of Two Courts has lore, and as it ends, it seems more than likely that this world and its lore will be explored even more so in the future.