Kallist stood in the crowded market street. Her long brown hair was braided and held in place under her hood, and she was bundled into her oversized fur jacket to keep away the cold. She pretended to browse rows of fruits and vegetables, occasionally picking one up as if to inspect it for ripeness. She had been waiting for just the right moment. When the four Shrakn she had been tailing were directly behind her, she turned abruptly, walking straight through the middle of their formation. Kallist was a small woman and the Shrakn, as expected, paid her no attention as she passed through their ranks. She was careful not to touch them; that would give her away as she moved within a hair's breadth of each of them. She worked the small dagger hidden in her sleeve like a surgeon's scalpel, slicing the coin purses from the belts of the patrolling Shrakn with the slightest motion of her wrist.
The final pouch snagged on her dagger and pulled slightly at the fourth Shrakn's belt before falling loose into her hand. She felt her heart stop as the imposing Lizard turned and his red slitted eyes met hers. She froze and held his gaze.*You felt nothing,* Kallist thought to herself. *Turn around and keep walking,* She screamed the command in her mind as her hand tightened around the dagger, and she prepared to fight. Kallist, daughter of Karvr, would not go down a Coward. If the Shrakn wanted a fight, she would make sure to take at least one of them with her.
They stood there staring each other down for a moment more, and then suddenly, the Shrakn turned away from her and walked off as if he hadn’t noticed anything. Kallist almost collapsed in the street then and there. She was sure the guard had seen her snag his coin purse, and he had definitely FELT her do it, but her father had taught her long ago not to look a gifted Dragon in the snout, so she decided it was best not to question her luck and move on. She made sure her dagger and purses were secure, tucked away in her shirt, and continued walking towards her Tavern.
The Fortress City of Kurash was busier than usual since Prince Ejudas' soldiers had returned from a successful raid on one of Prince Traxians settlements. The humans who cleaned and maintained the keep were hard at work, ensuring the returning warriors had clean streets to parade through and warm food to fill their bellies. Kallist loved days like today when the Shrakn were either too hungover from celebrating their victory or too weary from fighting to pay the humans in Kurash much attention. It made It all the easier to rob them blind. Kallist passed by a few more stalls, producing iron rings from her shirt to buy food and supplies to use for dinner. The other humans in Kurash either maintained the fort or worked in the mines. She was responsible for feeding those workers, and that job came with a few perks. For one, she received a stipend to spend on food goods by the city. She made a decent amount of money, and when you added her “extra” income into the equation, she had managed to stock up on quite the small fortune, in human terms at least; It was no Dragons horde, but it helped her keep her people fed. The other perk of her job, the main reason she fought so hard to keep her position, was that the Shrakn liked her. At least she was as close to being appreciated as a human could get. The giant lizards had cooks among themselves, but she assumed the food they received was barely edible at best, and apparently, many of them preferred her cooking. She had to put up with the Shrakn frequently in her tavern, something she detested, but they paid well, and her father had always taught her to keep her enemies close. Kallist made no mistake; the Shrakn were her enemies.
She arrived at her tavern, unlocked the heavy oak door, and pushed her way inside. After taking a second to shake off the loose snow on her leather cloak, she hung it from a hook on the wall and stepped behind the counter. The tavern was clean and organized, her father had instilled in her from a young age the importance of preparation, and a clean working space was crucial for executing her best work. She lit her wood stove, began chopping vegetables, and trimmed some of the larger slices of fat from the meat she had bought while at the market. Kallist knew she was on the clock. The fortress servants would be returning from their evening duties soon, and the moment she lit the stove and allowed a small trickle of smoke to begin streaming from her chimney, she had started a countdown to when hungry workers would flood the room.
Not even 10 minutes later, the door burst open, and a short man with a patchy beard and light brown hair stormed into the room in a panic. “I’m so sorry Kall, I know I’m late. It’s just my ma forgot to close the window in the living chamber last night and..” Kallist couldn’t hear what he said next as the man took that moment to shove his face into a small washbasin by the door. The moment his face surfaced, he continued speaking as if he had never stopped talking, “... told her not to worry I could clean it, and she needed to get to work at the keep. If she hadn’t left, the Shrakn might have beat her Kalli, and I knew you could cover for me” he panted heavily. Kallist imagined he had run all the way here. She took a small sip of the soup she was working on while the young man caught his breath. Then she smirked at him, “I don’t know why you even try to make excuses anymore Jas, I’ve come to expect you to be late, especially on market days. I don’t think you’ve ever not been late on a market day.” He relaxed and scratched at his beard, “Well.. I..” he clearly was searching for how to respond, “I’m sorry, you know that I don’t handle stress well, and your…. other work rips at my nerves. If I was there, I imagine I’d just create suspicion for you and get us both killed.” Kallist nodded at him knowingly. “It’s fine Jas, I know you don’t like it when I steal from the Shrakn, but we both know I don’t have a choice. We need the money.” Jas came behind the counter and laid his pack down, pulling out more firewood and general supplies. “I owe you so much, Kall, but I just can’t risk it. If you got caught, especially because of me, I don’t know what I’d do” Kallist put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay, Jas, I won’t force you to help me; hell, I prefer you not being there. What I do is dangerous. If I get caught even once, they will kill me, or at the very least take my hands, and I don’t want anyone else paying that price.” Jas let out a tense breath. “Thank you. I’ll do anything else I can to help you; I owe you more than I could ever repay for what you did for my Ma.”
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The door opened after that, and the first of the Fortress servants came into the room, cutting off their conversation. Jas began handing out the workers meals; those that looked tired or sickly received an extra loaf of bread or a cup of warm broth. Today, the servants were in good spirits since they had completed most of their work the days prior; their only duties today had been seeing to the Prince’s needs and cleaning up after the returning soldier’s procession through Kurash. Kallist fed them all and spoke with a few men; she asked about their families, knowing most of them by name. Overall, everyone seemed to be doing as well as she could expect, and that was a marked improvement over the previous years. Two men did mention having children who had taken ill. They both told her it was nothing but a head cold, but each of them would still leave the tavern that day with a small bag of Iron rings for medicine.
Kallist and her father Karvr worked hard for the last few years to do anything and everything they could for their people. It was incredible what a little extra food and coin could do. Karvr was the first to steal from the Shrakn. *Never take from too many of them at once and be sure to take only just enough to tilt the scales in our favor,* he had told her. He was also the first to see the benefit of letting Shrakn eat at her tavern. *Keeping our enemies within our walls means that we always know where they are. We can study them and learn the way they think*. He, of course, was right again, and Kallist had learned a lot about them. Mainly that they were every bit as stupid and ignorant as she had thought they were. They were strong, monstrously so, and faster than any living thing had a right to be. They were deadly with a weapon and worked well in groups. Kallist even thought they had some way of communicating that didn’t require speaking, but she couldn’t prove that. They made up for all they had in power and strength by being dumb as a sack of bricks. Kallist had learned early on that she could manipulate them into letting her get away with handing out extra food; all she had to do was make sure they got theirs first. She had also learned that their eyesight was poor up close, and they lacked peripheral vision. That was how she had managed to steal the four purses that morning. She snatched them right under their noses, in a blind spot they all seemed to possess. That explained why most Shrakn carried pikes or long spears. If you could get in close, you could make short work of one with a dagger or short sword. At least that was her theory. She had never actually killed one. Not yet, at least.
Kallist continued cooking and helping Jas serve food whenever he needed an extra hand. They fed almost a hundred men and nearly as many Shrakn. When the Tavern had finally emptied, the sun was beginning to set. Jas left hurriedly on Kallist’s insistence. She wouldn’t risk him missing curfew on her watch, so she finished cleaning on her own and locked the door. She shuttered the windows and checked one last time that no lingering Shrakn were watching from the street before disappearing into the kitchen and shutting that door behind her as well. Latching it tight, she went over to her spice cupboard and opened it wide. She reached inside and pushed firmly on the back until she heard a small pop, and it came loose. Setting the false back beside the open cupboard, she climbed inside and into a small tunnel. Ducking her head, she descended a small flight of stairs and emerged into a small room dug beneath the Tavern. She turned up a small oil lantern and looked at the group of men and women huddled around the room. Each bore an injury. Some were less significant than others; broken fingers or infected cuts across limbs. Others were missing arms or had bandages covering severe wounds. Kallist moved to each, checking bandages, offering words of encouragement, and more than a few times, she closed eyes that were lifeless and covered pale faces.
Those in her care could no longer work due to sickness, injury, or age. The Law of Dragon’s was clear; those unable to work did not eat. Kallist would not see them stave, so she hid them and cared for them. They would return to work when they recovered, leaving the Tavern with the other workers. The Aschora kept track of workers leaving town and made sure that there were no runaways, and the Shrakn checked houses during the day to ensure that no workers were being lazy or skipping shifts. As long as Kallist kept them out of sight, no one would look for them. She arrived at the last person in the room and knelt before him. Her father looked up at her with a feverish smile.
Many of the miners in the town came down with a sickness of the mind they had begun to call Cavern Fever. A combination of being in the dark, breathing the mine dust, and the back-breaking work led to men becoming feverish and delusional. The only way to recover was to take time away from the mines, rest, and drink plenty of fluids. The miners were not allowed this time to recover, so Cavern Fever was a death sentence for most. Kallist’s father was a kind but complex man who worked in the mines for nearly 30 years. He had outlasted every man he had known in the mines for almost three generations. The Fever took them all eventually, but Kallist would be damned before it took him. She grabbed his hand as he started to shake in a cold sweat, “Relax, father, I’m here; it’s okay now.” She whispered, and the man began to relax. She had always been the only one who could calm the men when they slipped into fits. That’s why her father had brought the first of them to her years ago. He always tried to save as many as he could. Now she would save him, *I will not lose you* she thought as a single cold tear slipped slowly down her cheek, “not you too.”