The Tale of Mally Biddle by M.L. LeGette

something one of them had just said. Mally noticed that everyone else in the inn had taken tables far from the knights.
    “What can I get for you, dearies?” asked a short woman with a round face and graying auburn hair. She hadn’t looked at them, as she was busy trying to pull a quill and piece of parchment from her apron pocket. When she had extracted them and spotted Ivan, her face split into a wide grin, her eyes dancing. “Why, Ivan Finley! What a surprise. Where’ve you been?”
    “Blighten,” Ivan said, grinning. “Olive, I want you to meet Mally Biddle. Mally, this is Olive Dunker. She owns the Lone Candle.”
    “It’s a beautiful inn,” said Mally, shaking hands with Olive.
    Though Mally felt she was being polite, she thought she saw something flash behind Olive’s eyes. There was certainly something strained about her smile. Over Olive’s shoulder, Mally spotted a large painting of a man in knight’s attire. The knights laughed loudly again from their corner.
    “Thank you. What would you like?”
    “Are you still making the stuffed quail?” Ivan asked, rubbing his hands.
    The annoyance flashed in Olive’s eyes again and for a m oment, Mally thought she had cut her gaze to the loud group of knights.
    “No. Sorry to say. But I’ve got a nice pork stew.”
    “We’ll take it. And I’ll have the amber ale and …” Ivan frowned at Mally for a second before saying, “and Mally will take a cider.”
    “Cheddar?”
    Ivan nodded.
    “It’ll be right out,” said Olive, scribbling away.
    She left their table and disappeared through a door behind the bar. Mally turned her eyes on the knights who were waving their empty mugs in the air for refills. A girl around Mally’s age took their mugs as quickly as possible, nearly tripping over her own feet in her haste to leave their table. The knights roared in merriment. Mally’s stomach turned from the whistling and jeering.
    “They’ll stay for hours,” Ivan muttered darkly, indicating the knights. “They’ll eat and drink and scare all the other cu stomers away and finally leave without paying.”
    “One knight left us gold,” said Mally. She said it more to try to convince herself that all the knights weren’t horrible.
    “We’ve heard some stories about that,” Ivan whispered, leaning over the table to her. “Some family will have a small bag of gold left in a flower pot. A women will be about to fill her kettle with water and nearly faint from the silver she finds in it. We don’t know who is leaving those gifts but we do know they have money—and the knights have lots of that.”
    “So you think that some knights are good?” Mally asked, hop eful.
    “I’m no more sure than you are,” Ivan answered, shaking his head. “But someone is trying to thwart the knights. And whoever it is is quite serious about staying anonymous”
    “For obvious reasons,” said Mally, thinking of Gibbs and imagining how quickly he would turn in a traitor.  “You don’t have any ideas who these good knights—if we assume they are knights—are?”
    “Not enough to feel confident in naming them,” Ivan admi tted gloomily. “Whoever they are, they act well—they’d be dead if they didn’t.”
    “TO CAPTAIN MOLICK!”
    Mally nearly jumped out of her chair. A woman sitting close to Mally had flinched so badly at the sudden outburst that she had flung her mug to the floor. Ivan swiveled in his seat, glaring daggers at the knights who seemed oblivious to what they had caused. Their mugs full, they were cheering and clanking their beers together, waving at the painting of the man near them.
    “Disgusting,” Ivan spat under his breath.
    “Who is that painting of?” Mally asked.
    “Painting?” Ivan repeated, confused. But when Mally poin ted it out his face soured. “Captain Illius Molick,” he explained. His voice dripped acid. “You haven’t seen one of those?”
    “No,” said Mally.
    “Humph,” Ivan snorted. “Well, get used to it.