Dandelion Is No Forgotten Princess

“I didn’t sleep well that night and tossed and turned as much as a person possibly could in a hammock. Who was that girl? I had been doing street hustles and high birth extortions for two years at that point, and, surely, Dandelion and I had never crossed paths. One would think that if she was running the same types of street games, she would have attempted to pick the same pocket as me at some point. She had to have been new to the city, but where did she come from? She certainly was nothing like the girls in the orphanage whom busied themselves with delusions of being forgotten princesses.

“Another question kept sleep elusive. What exactly did she know? She had bragged that, supposedly, she was able to tail me all evening without my detection. If that would have been true, that would mean she would have witnessed the drunken rounds with the intended messenger, picking up the coded letter of assassination, and, most importantly, she would seen me step into Philip the Fool’s carriage. It wouldn’t have taken a genius to guess that the message was read, and if she was truly playing the same sorts of scams, she would already be wise to counterfeit wax seals.

“Who was that Dandelion, besides being extraordinarily irritating, I mean? Who giggles besides six year old children? I am sure her pixie-like figure and all-so-adorable (you know what other adjective starts with the letter ‘a’? Try ‘annoying’.) mannerisms win her points with less experienced guys, but not me. She got lucky with that drop on me, and that is all there is to that story.”

A young werewolf with bright white teeth elbowed Treu, who was just a number two ball away from having the eight ball his sole pool target. They shared a chuckle.

“Oh, shut up,” I said.

“As I was saying, I had a gut feeling that the partnership with Philip the Fool had stumbled unto numbered days, and his talk with me a week after that night of the intercepted letter confirmed my feelings.

“‘Feel free to climb up after you have locked the front door, Garland,’ Philip the Fool said to me between puffs of smoke. A knave meeting had adjourned, which is something always relative when committee members consist of beggars pretending to be lepers, and Philip the Fool was enjoying a hand rolled cigarette while perched upon the rafters of the dining area of the Choking Giant Bar. Seeing that everyone had already been ushered out and that the door was, in fact, already locked and bolted, I jumped up and seating myself across from him in one fluid motion.

“‘What’s on your mind?’ I asked.

“‘Tell me, Garland. What do you think of last week’s midnight message?’

“‘I think that we should stay out of it. I don’t see any direct profit for us. Only headaches.’

“‘You have so much to learn,’ said Philip the Fool. ‘Sometimes the richest profits, the greatest cons, are not the direct ones.’