Angry Lead Skies

22

I went to Playmate's stable first. He'd have to show me where to find Kip's family.

"I don't know if that'll do any good," Playmate said when I explained what I wanted. "I guarantee you his mother doesn't know anything useful. If she did she'd already have been out there wherever yanking those elves' ears till they talked."

"Thought they didn't have ears."

"Maybe they ran into Kayne Prose already."

"Hardcase, eh?"

"A very determined mom. You don't mess with her kids. Otherwise, she's just a hardworking widow looking for enough work to get by."

There're a lot of those in TunFaire, though in the final few, most desperate years of the war the Crown tried taking younger conscripts so there wouldn't be as many widows created.

"Uh... " I said. "I must be confused. You didn't say anything about her being a widow yesterday."

Playmate looked at me like he wondered if I was really that dumb. Widow is a euphemism as old as mothers without husbands. "She wouldn't brag about having three out-of-wedlock children by three different fathers, one of them maybe off the Hill. Though two of the fathers really are dead. And the maybe wizard probably is. He hasn't been seen since the supply boat he was aboard left the TunFaire waterfront. When Kip was still a bun in the oven. The Leitmark never made it to Full Harbor."

"Pirates?"

Playmate shrugged. "At this date it doesn't matter. Kayne has bad luck with men. They die on her. Or they go away. But she's an unswerving optimist. She keeps on trying. After Kip came along I finally managed to convince her she should invest in avoiding any more pregnancies. She owed that to the kids she already had."

"You sound like you might have a little emotion invested in the Prose family yourself."

"I like the kids. They turned out pretty good, considering. And Kayne is a good woman who doesn't really deserve everything she's suffered. But she does bring it on herself."

"Self-destructive, eh?" I might know a little about that myself.

"Definitely. But mainly in the area of men. She keeps rejecting everybody who might be good for her and welcoming the villains who're sure to treat her badly."

There might've been a slight hint of disappointment there. If so, it was so faint that I didn't think it was worth pursuing.

Time would tell me about Playmate and Kayne Prose. I was about to see how they acted around each other.