The Wizard's Chalice, page 1
part #2 of Gags & Pepper: Protection Agents Series
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Book Two
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By
Guy Antibes
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
Author’s Note
Map of Mephis
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Epilogue
Gags & Pepper Characters & Locations
A Tinker’s Dame
A Bit About Guy
Books by Guy Antibes
Copyright Page
The Wizard’s Chalice Copyright ©2022 Guy Antibes. All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without the permission of the author.
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This is a work of fiction. There are no real locations used in the book; the people, settings, and specific places are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblances to actual persons, locations, or places are purely coincidental.
Published by CasiePress LLC in Salt Lake City, UT, July 2022.
www.casiepress.com
ISBN:
Cover Design: Kenneth Cassell
Book Design: Kenneth Cassell
Principal Reader: Bev Cassell
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Author’s Note
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If you are of an archeological bent, you may notice that the “digs” in this novel are inspired by similar finds in Egypt.
I used the term “boxwagon” in this and the previous book. In the Gags & Pepper’s series, a box wagon is a cheap carriage being a large wooden box with seats around the perimeter. All the sides are enclosed, but there might be small windows or openings to let in light and air. Box wagons are ubiquitous in Mephis, Gags’s world.
The title (The Wizard’s Chalice) doesn’t come heavily into play in this volume, although there is a wizard’s chalice, and its importance is clearly stated. The value of the wizard’s chalice in this book increases as the series moves along.
Another goal of this book was to re-introduce characters in the first book of the series and enhance the team.
— Guy Antibes
Map of Mephis
Map by Cassell Design
Book Two
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The Wizard’s Chalice
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Chapter One
~
T he morning sun shone into the small dining room of the hunting manor Vingus Gags used as a conference room for the Gags & Pepper protection agency. He waited for his first client, a beautiful lady named Portia Dapple, to arrive after meeting with her the previous day. The woman arrived in a fancy carriage that remained in the manor’s drive as she entered and was shown the office.
“I’m sorry I spent so much time telling my stories, yesterday,” Gags said to the woman.
“A warrior-magician’s wartime adventures and the sorrowful tale of a love thwarted by an evil wizard? I loved every minute of it.” She sniffed and put her lace handkerchief to her nose. “Now it is my turn. It won’t take much time at all, unfortunately.”
Gags looked at the door, waiting for Tibbeus Pepper to arrive. His diminutive partner was late for breakfast, and now late for the meeting. It wasn’t an auspicious start to their partnership.
“I’ll have some tea served,” Gags said, stalling for time.
He left the meeting room and accosted one of the cleaning ladies continuing to make the manor presentable. He needed a housekeeper to manage the manor staff.
“Would you mind fetching some tea for three? I have a client. When you are done, have a cup and a long break, yourself,” Gags said with a wink.
The older woman blushed at the wink and nodded, scurrying toward the kitchen. As Gags watched her go, Pepper sauntered down the stairs.
“Has she arrived, yet?” Pepper asked.
“She has. We are ready to start. Come along, partner,” Gags said, thinking that Pepper needed some training, since he was just starting out on his journey toward respectability after an early life spent as a thief.
“Pepper!” Portia said, rising from her seat and presenting Pepper with her hand.
After looking at Gags out of the corner of his eye, Pepper managed a smile and took the client’s hand and kissed it lightly. “I am pleased to see you looking so bright, so early in the morning.”
Gags was surprised at the gracious note by Pepper and wondered how many social skills his partner had picked up after Pepper left Karkle Cross to seek his fortune.
Sitting down with paper and pen in front of him, Gags asked, “Now, are you ready?”
Portia nodded and folded her hands in her lap. “I am. I fear for the life of my husband, Mexius. I am afraid he is involved in a questionable venture with his brother. We have been living in Artport for the past seven years while Mexius has been establishing himself as an ancient pottery dealer. I have run the paperwork side of the business and have been worried about the supply part. I fear that too much of our inventory have been fakes.”
“Have the Artport authorities been snooping around?” Gags asked.
“In dealing with antiquities, fakes are common.”
Pepper took a deep breath and sat down. “Uh, Gags is a magician, but I’m good at identifying fakes, so we can help along those lines.”
“I learned that yesterday,” Portia said, managing a smile. “Mexius is going on a business trip to Caless next month where one of his suppliers lives. I wanted you to accompany him.”
“As I mentioned yesterday, we don’t take illegal jobs.”
The tea arrived and Portia took a long sip. “If there is anything illegal, you can immediately return to Artport and tell me. I want my husband protected, but I also want to know if he has involved me in an illegal operation.”
Gags looked at Pepper, who didn’t give Gags any indication of his thoughts. Gags wanted his first job badly enough that he decided to take the risk. “In that case, consider us hired, Mrs. Dapple.”
“Portia, since we will be friends for a while.”
“Friends,” Pepper said with a beaming glance at the pretty woman who was at least a decade older.
“For a while,” Gags said. Beneath the stack of papers, Gags pulled out an agreement and a copy, and he presented them to the woman. “Are these terms sufficient?”
Both men waited for Portia to go over the papers, which she did a few times. “I think this will do, for now. When can you start?”
“Give us two weeks to travel to Artport. We can leave in two or three days.”
Portia signed both copies of the agreement and handed it to Gags. “I will be leaving from here,” the woman said. She wrote her address on the back of one of the agreements. “I look forward to receiving you in two weeks and three days.” She left a fat purse for the deposit and rose to leave the manor.
Gags and Pepper stood on the porch watching the carriage disappear down the drive.
“Our first job, signed, sealed, and delivered,” Pepper said.
“Signed, only,” Gags said. “We will see about the rest when we arrive in Artport.”
~
Pophius stared at the contract. “Our first bodyguard job,” the former captain said, tossing the document on Gags’s desk. “I’ll follow in a week.”
“No,” Gags said. “Don’t bother. We have to learn to do these jobs on our own. This is going to be different than guarding a wagon train.”
“Then I’ll stick around here and begin to list what we will need for the mines, now that we have a mining manager hired as of this afternoon.” Pophius made a disagreeable face and turned to Gags. “I hate that kind of paperwork. Our new manager made me promise a minimum of accounting, but who else do we have to do it while you are gone?”
“Do your best. The contract is for a month or whenever Portia’s husband acquires their next batch of antiquities,” Gags said.
“Promise to write if you need help,” Pophius said.
“I will,” Gags said.
“We will,” Pepper said. “I know how to read and write, too.”
Pophius smiled. “That’s great, Pepper. You write and I’ll read.”
Pepper grimaced but nodded. “Gags would say something like that is what teamwork is all about.”
Pophius maintained his smile and looked over a t Gags. “I’ve heard him say words to that effect before.”
“If I’m in trouble and He Bin and Lucian are back from the north, let them come with you.” Gags said as he tucked the contract into a black leather valise.
~
Pepper grinned as Gags and he walked their horses through the cobbled lanes of Yearsend. “They don’t treat you like their lord,” Pepper said.
Gags laughed. “Do you treat me like a lord?”
“No!”
“There is your answer. Yearsend is our home base, so drink it in. If you ever wish to leave the manor and live somewhere else, there are some nice houses and inns in this village. It is almost the size of a town already, and as the mines begin producing again, I suppose it might rival Karkle Cross, someday,” Gags said. He looked around at the buildings, mostly one or two-storied buildings with an equal mix of thatched and tiled steeply pitched roofs.
“Dream on. Do you really feel like you own all this?”
“It is a fief,” Gags said, feeling a bit paternalistic toward his partner. “I own everything that isn’t owned by someone else, but my title comes from the king of Hosand. If I screw up the stewardship part, I can be replaced.”
“Is that why your cousin gave you most of the fief?” Pepper asked.
Gags laughed. “Of course. I’m glad you figured that out. He knows himself well enough to know that he doesn’t have the talent or the interest in managing all of the fief, so he elected to shrink his potential responsibilities or he won’t keep Karkle Cross for long.”
“And you’ll do a better job with Yearsend Vale?”
Gags pursed his lips. “Do you doubt me? I don’t want to have a partner who doesn’t trust me.”
Pepper raised his hand to protest. “I didn’t mean that, it’s just that all this is still overwhelming me, a bit. I know I couldn’t handle running a fief.”
“And I don’t ask you to. We aren’t 50:50 partners, you know that, so don’t worry. You’ll show your worth soon enough.”
“As long as you think so,” Pepper said.
“Let’s go in here to get something to eat.” Gags tied up his horse to one of a line of hitching posts.
Pepper wouldn’t object to trying out a new restaurant, and he followed Gags inside, letting his senior partner pick the table.
After a lunch where Gags ate three times more food than Pepper, they exited into the early-afternoon sunshine.
“Leave the horses. We will go across the street to the bank, pull out some funds, and get a letter of credit to present in Artport,” Gags said.
“How do you know about all the banking stuff?”
“My lawyer sat down with me for two days teaching me the rudiments of being a business owner. I did retain a few things,” Gags said.
As they reached the sidewalk on the other side, Gags heard an unpleasant voice from his left.
“You stop right there, Vingus,” Gags’s stepmother, Leana Wilter Gags, said.
Gags stopped, as much as he was tempted not to, but he didn’t want to get into an argument with the woman out on the village street. “Can we go into the bank?”
Leana Gags shrewdly smiled. “Very fitting.” She walked past the pair and walked through the door, closing it behind her.
Gags sighed at the act of spite as he re-opened the door and let Pepper go in before him.
The stepmother glared at Pepper. “Who is this creature, one of your army friends?” she sneered.
“You’ve met Tibbeus Pepper, before. He was a playmate of mine when I was younger. His family moved out of Karkle Cross when I was fifteen or so,” Gags said.
“The urchin that incessantly begged in our kitchens?” Leana said.
Gags smiled. “The very one. He’s my partner, now.”
Leana snorted, looking up and down at Pepper. “A lot of good all the food did. You aren’t as tall as any of my boys,” the stepmother said. She turned to Gags and narrowed her eyes. “My sources have told me that you are reactivating my late husband’s mines.”
“Your source is correct,” Gags said.
She slowly blinked malevolently at Gags. “I’m sure your father would want my children and me to share in any of the proceeds. We want fifty percent of the profits.”
Gags pursed his lips. He was waiting for the request for more funds. “No.”
Leana sucked in a breath before narrowing her eyes and staring up at Gags. “Your father sacrificed our livelihood for those mines.”
Gags folded his arms. “My father ignored the mines once my mother died, not that he was serious about granting her wishes to make Yearsend a more successful place. He was making enough running the fief without getting his hands dirty managing mines. You might have had something to do with that, Stepmother. I’m more than comfortable with dirty hands.”
“Bloody hands, most likely,” Leana said. “I’m going to engage a Bashing attorney. You have already stolen the best one in Karkle Cross.”
Gags sighed. “Fighting me for a share of the mines is a waste of father’s money,” Gags said. “He wouldn’t want to see you spend your funds on a futile legal action. Karkle has already told me my claims are iron tight and have been registered in the capital. It is your decision to sue, but I suggest you waste your money elsewhere.”
Leana’s eyes grew as her face turned red. “Are you insulting me?”
Gags smiled. “I’m glad that you recognized that. I was a little uncertain that you would. Now, if you excuse me, I have real business in the bank.”
She huffed and walked toward the door. “Leaving your poor mother penniless and your siblings without a shill!” she said in a very loud voice as she rushed through the door.
“Rejected evil stepmothers can get a little touchy,” Gags said to the laughter and smiling faces.
The residents of Yearsend were more than eager to have Gags invest his money in the town and its environs. Gags imagined they all knew that Gags’s father wasn’t all that interested in their well-being, at least not after Gags’s birthmother died.
They returned to the manor. Pophius had just interviewed five women for the position of housekeeper.
“You get to make the final choice. There were fourteen applicants,” Pophius said.
Gags chose Narcissia Hedgewhistle because she was a little older and had worked for a few of the more notable families in Yearsend. He didn’t have the time to talk to the woman, since he had to leave for Artport early the next day.
When they left in the morning, Pophius had left word that he had another site excursion with a mining supplier. That was all to the good, Gags thought. Pophius wrote a postscript about being intent on getting an education from the vendors.
The road led through Yearsend, and once on the other side, Gags rode west, a direction he had never been. Pepper was better traveled through western Peria, but it wasn’t long before they were both riding through lands neither had seen before.
Gags had a few misgivings about heading west instead of north to Dixoia. The Dapple job wouldn’t get him any closer to finding Miria or discovering the spell to remove her unicorn enchantment. Pophius had told him when he accepted joining Gag’s enterprise that information came from different directions at unexpected times. He could only hope the bodyguard engagement would yield a little something to further his retrieval goals, but Gags concluded any success was likely to be elusive.
Chapter Two
~
T he pair trotted alone on a hard-packed road leading to Festus’s Ford, a small town on the shore of the Pleasant River. Gags figured the road would be a sea of mud in rainy weather. He glanced at the road and noticed a dark splotch ahead and stopped.
“Signs of a fight,” Gags said. “I’ll teach you scout craft that I learned in Atto.” He tied his horse up to a bush and waited for Pepper to join him. “This looks like a dark spot on the road but look at this.” He splashed a little water on the blotch and stirred it with a stick. The end if the twig showed deep red. “With that evidence, what would you guess happened?”
Pepper stared at the dark spot and looked up and down the road. “There might be some more of these things up there.” He pointed west where they hadn’t yet traveled. “A fight?”
