The child watches the bird, the centipede and the snake. The bird screams but she can’t speak bird. The centipede shouts but she can’t hear it. The snake hisses but its tongue has no fork. They battle and the child watches.
Shadows grow longer and the forest grows quiet; the sun goes to sleep. The child grows restless as the struggle grows desperate. The bird tastes victory as it clamps a beak around the centipede. The snake despairs and chokes on it’s tongue; it cannot hiss.
The sword swings out and the bird is no more. The centipede scurries away but the snake cannot follow; phantom pains. The child watches as noise leaves the glade, and from the silence the forest is heard.
The snake sees the birds on the branches, the child does not. The snake shuts its eyes as the child plays with the stick. The birds look on from the trees.
O – O – O – O – O
“Dinner!”
A sharp clamour rings out from the kitchen. A small boy leans bodily out the window, slamming a ladle against a copper pot as obnoxiously as possible. I blink dumbly as awareness trickles back into my skull. My arms still mechanically rubbing linen against the washing rack, fingers frozen against the fabric and water dripping down my shirt. A pile of linen looms in my periphery and muscle memory does the rest as the old shirt in my hands is flung onto the top, my fingers left grasping at nothing as the work day apparently draws to a close.
Gods, laundry is something else.
I struggle to my feet, fighting against the cramp that had developed some time in the past few hours. My washing companion rises without a hint of discomfort and bundles up her own, significantly larger, pile of laundry into a wooden tub. She grunts softly – possibly the first sound I’ve heard from her yet – and carries it over to a set of washing lines across the courtyard.
I gather the sodden and questionably cleaned fabrics against my chest, not having my own tub, and follow awkwardly after her. She barely acknowledges me and we quickly hang everything on the line. I half expect her to raise issue with me as I fling the sheets haphazardly, but it soon becomes obvious that her silence and concentration is completely in service of efficiency over any professional pride. I can get behind that.
We finish quickly and I follow her into the kitchen. The door opens a crack and I squeeze into the room, which now plays host to what must be the entirety of the mansion’s staff. I turn and Emily, the laundry girl, has disappeared. Pressed against the door frame I strain to peer over the assembled heads and spy her somehow on the other side of the room, talking to another servant girl. I try, but I can’t for the life of me see any way to penetrate that far into the rabble of hungry servants – no idea how she managed it.
I try to edge my way around the outside, hopefully towards the siren call of the blazing oven. Unfortunately, the oven, and probably more so the pot of stew bubbling above it, happens to be the sole focus of the entire room. As it is, I’m left sodden and shivering and pressed against the cold cobbles of the far wall.
“Right, food’s ready!” shouts the severe looking man who had welcomed us in. Shockingly the seething mass of bodies becomes an orderly line within a metre radius of the stew pot. A burly workman sidles up to the pot and proffers his wooden bowl – where did he get that anyway? Everyone else seems to have one. The chef makes no move to hand over the ladle, his eyes boring into the other man. The contest lasts an impressive three seconds – I’d only experienced the second-hand effect from standing behind Scab and it had still been terrifying. The workman tries to rally once more but, in the end, he sighs and his shoulders drop, his mates forming a gap in the crowd for him to retreat back into.
Chef rolls his eyes and taps the stew pot with his ladle, beckoning the next challenge. The party of workman stay put and a little girl hops up and receives her stew without a problem. The burly guy grins to something his neighbour says, not in the slightest bit upset or embarrassed. No one else raises issue as the line of children give way to the older serving girls. Something tells me that the charade goes on just about every night, it must be hard to preserve masculinity while letting the munchkins eat first.
The group around me, that is the stragglers, are just about all around my age or older. Most of them lean against the walls, settling in and chatting away, apparently well aware of the unspoken hierarchy of the soup kitchen. My stomach growls, looks like I’m in for a long wait.
Sometime later the crush starts to thin as people begin to filter out, stew in hand. I watch longingly and sneeze into my elbow. I know they told me I couldn’t use magic, but will anyone really notice if I light up a fire-bolt? There’s an old torch next to my shoulder, it shouldn’t be too noticeable if it were to suddenly burst into flames.
“Hey, Lucien.” Snatching my hand back I turn around to see Evelyn offering me up a wooden bowl. It would be nice if it contained anything, but baby steps.
“Evelyn,” I nod, “have you eaten yet?”
“No, I got stuck behind the beefcakes over there. Missed out on the whole ‘women and children first’ thing.” Rolling her eyes as if the concept was ridiculous, she leans against the wall next to me. I reach awkwardly for the bowl with numb fingers, giving a neutral sounding hum in what I hope passes for a response. She seems to buy it for a second before but something manages to get her attention – it’s probably my clammy corpse fingers pawing at the proffered bowl. She turns back to me with a furrowed brow. “Why are you soaked?”
She makes it sound like an attack on my character.
“I was washing clothes,” I say – somewhat more defensively than was probably called for. Her eyebrow ticks upwards and so does my defensiveness, I counter her relentless assault with peerless rebuttal. “W-well what did they have you do?” Attention redirected – flawless victory.
“Well Hubert took me to peel potatoes – I think they were potatoes, greyish-green and really lumpy?” I nod, that is indeed what a potato looks like, has she not seen one before? “Well anyway – I got to peeling with Sheryl – she’s the head cook, apparently she didn’t trust a newbie to handle the spuds properly – and we just peeled for a few hours. Trust me, that stew is going to be THICK, I must’ve peeled like a million of them.” Her tone turns self-congratulatory and I dutifully look suitably impressed – that is indeed a lot of potatoes, and now I’m hungry again.
She lets the applause die down before continuing, “So anyhow, within like three potatoes, Sheryl just started gossiping – turns out she’s like the head of some servant-based intelligence network. She’s got an in with the guy who collects the owner’s shit, like the cooks actually lay off the spice for a while if it gets too runny.” I suddenly don’t feel quite so hungry anymore. That’s disgusting – our toilets are self-vanishing back home. Evelyn must catch my look, mirroring it back, “I know right? I don’t think I can ever hire a plumber again.”
I sigh, once again relieved that I wasn’t back at the manor. “She told you all that while preparing dinner?”
“Yeah, didn’t even have to prompt her, any chance to talk shit about your boss, I guess. Anything like that with you?” I cast my mind back to the endless void of Emily the washer girls’ eyes, soul numbed like her fingers, heedlessly raking delicate silk shirts over the rough wooden washboard.
“Us laundry folk are of a different breed.” My eyes go distant as for a split second I feel a true spiritual bond to my workmate.
Evelyn leaves me to my theatrics before continuing. “I actually did manage to get some spicy intel,” she says, nudging me with her hip and breaking my burgeoning soul bond. “Apparently literally everyone in this room is a plant for one lord or another.”
What.
“What.”
“Yeah exactly,” at some point her face had completely split in half as a grin began its conquest of her entire head. With a giggle threatening to overwhelm her, she continues, deriving some sick pleasure from this absolute shit-show. “Sheryl straight up complemented me on it, ‘you’re th’ best one we’ve ‘ad yet from Fourey, th’ last one was just some mercenary – hack’d up the onions like you would a training dummy’.” The silly accent just makes it worse, one of the guys down the wall from us smothers a grin at Evelyn’s impression – not like this was a sensitive conversation or anything. He gives me a sympathetic look before turning back to his friends, camaraderie born from mutually pointless espionage. Gods, they’re all in on it aren’t they? No wonder the head-chef looked so annoyed with Scab.
Evelyn promptly loses it, giggling as I stare helplessly down at my sodden clothes. The queue has barely moved in the time since, so it would probably be a while yet until we eat. Screw it – apparently the whole things a farce anyway, Sylvia can choke on it for all I care. Snapping my fingers I stretch out my shirt and light a small warm flame under it. There’s a few inquisitive glances from those closest to us, as is the inevitable reaction of a peasant coming into contact with anything remotely arcane. Within seconds they lose interest in my magical feats, faster than people usually do, that’s for sure.
Surrounded by fellow press-ganged, disillusioned infiltrators, everybody is a veteran of minding their own business. The chunky lads across the room – who I now recognise as blatant mercenaries – get a bit edgy but calm down pretty quickly. I think I’m starting to see the humour in this as I watch the head chef dole out soup to a bunch of hapless spies. God’s, what if Fourey wants results?
Eh, whatever, I can probably just ask about. These guys must be masters of fake espionage.
Our turn comes eventually and we step up to get our stew – mostly potato, just as Evelyn promised. With most of the servants having filtered out after being served, we find an empty table in the corner and sit with our meals. I taste the broth, savouring the warmth. I even detecting the watery echo of the deer meat that had long since been supplanted by potatoes as the base of the stock. Honestly, it’s about as good as Annie’s cooking back in Weld. Significantly better than that rabbit I set on fire on the journey over here.
The sun fades behind the houses and a younger servant boy weaves through the stragglers, lighting candles and stoking the hearth. The chef who greeted us wanders over as we finish up our soup, Evelyn gives him a wave as he bears down on us.
“Heya Hubert,” good try, but he still looks as annoyed as he did when we arrived.
“We don’t have any spare beds for the either of you.” He sighs at my nonplussed look, “just sleep here for tonight, hopefully some of the other idiots give up and bugger off tomorrow.” I wonder what their turn-over rate is like here. He turns and stalks off, stopping to gently push one of the straggling children out of the kitchen.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“So, did you bring a pillow?” I ask. I still have my dirty coat, but I don’t really want to put my head on it.
“Not unless you have a spell that turns tables into beds,” she gripes, before her eyes light up and she makes a grab for my satchel bag. My chair rocks and I abort a lunge as I realise that she’s flippantly flipping through my most treasured possession. Instead, I find myself nervously hovering over her shoulder, stuck between irritation and excitement as this illiterate troglodyte casually scans through the impenetrable arcane cipher.
“Careful, careful,” I mutter over her shoulder, she hums in return but slows her pace through the book as she jumps from spell to spell. I jerk slightly every time she flicks through too fast, the chair back creaking as my fingers dig into it – Gods, I can barely stand to watch this.
“…Try the transmutation section” I say over her shoulder, eyes following hers as she checks the chapter index before jumping halfway through the tome.
“Er… Sunder Earth, Magician’s Ascent, Aersim’s Outcrop… Ah – here we go!” Hey what were those other ones? I almost feel like crying as the obvious flight spell disappears once more into the endless reams of parchment. Evelyn slams Darke Mag’kx down on the table and leans over it, her finger tracing underneath the scrawl as the ink wriggles around her pointer, “Spongify, perfect.”
“Spongify?” I ask, apprehension dripping from my voice, “you aren’t seriously suggesting I learn an entire spell tonight.” I’m still stuck on the firing mechanism of the bloody grease spell – not that I’ve had time to really practise lately. Evelyn waves away my valid points with a put-upon sigh – Hey, it’s not like you’ve made any progress with firebolt.
“C’mon Lucien – It’s meant to be really simple, here look” she points at a chunk of squiggles that actively writhe as I dare to try reading them. “Spongify is the perfect gateway to the wonderful world of transmutation. This simple spell will give you the groundwork to delve into this fascinating subject, as well as make sure you’ll never be uncomfortable on long carriage rides again!” She taps the page with a devilish grin, “See, Old Rothy says you can do it – you don’t want to let him down, do you?”
“Please don’t call him Old Rothy,” I grimace as I despoil the good name of A. E. Rothmore, such blasphemy cannot stand. “Whatever, start from the top.”
I won’t lie – I would give my left arm to read another page of the book, seeing as how that seems to be the only reliable method of actually progressing my studies. Isn’t that a depressing thought? Either way, I didn’t even have to ask her to do this for me – can’t miss an opportunity like this. I lean forward as she continues reading.
“Alright… so take a deep breath and reach for your magic.” She pauses and looks expectantly, nodding towards my vacated chair. Prising my fingers off of her chair-back, I sit down and reach for some magic. Feeling the cool flow prickle its way past my elbow I nod for her to continue.
“Extend your hand, fingers together – like a paddle,” I do so, fingers primed with the pins and needles of readied magic. “Now pretend like you’re beating eggs with a whisk.” My hand stills and I look up in confusion. Evelyn shifts her focus from the page, “that’s what he wrote,” she spins the book around, as if it illustrated her point, “he literally spends the next two paragraphs going on about using a sponge cake as your mental image.”
“What? Sponge cak-” I cut myself off – one thing at a time. “No, that’s not–” I take a breath, “what I mean to say is, what motion am I meant to make?”
Her nose twitches, likely readying another smirk before the expression switches to vague confusion, her wrist slowly twisting this way and that. Obviously, it isn’t obvious for her either – I huff internally.
“Er… like this?” she trails off, rotating her hand as if wafting a particularly pungent odour. Her hand speeds up as she injects some confidence into her voice, “Yeah, like this. Then – uh – say ‘spongify’ and that’s how it’s done.”
“Spongify.” I invoke, using my invoking voice. Nothing happens and while I continue to invoke and beat eggs at different angles and intensities, nothing continues to happen. I decide to cut my losses when the beating becomes flailing and no amount of deep voiced annunciation has provoked any sign of magical phenomenon. I sigh and slump a little in my chair, “what was that about sponge cakes?”
As it turns out, Rothmore in all his authorial wisdom, had included quite a bit about sponge cake.
“-sift flour mixture over egg mixture while simultaneously folding in-”
“Sorry, is this still the spell or am I actually meant to be baking a cake?” I interrupt Evelyn as she moves to turn yet another page. My voice muffled as I hold my head in my hands, massaging my eyes. “Is it all like that?”
“Yeah, seems that way,” she says, turning another page and giving it a quick scan. “Looks like it’s the movements and the magic words, the rest is cake recipes.” She watches me limply wave my hand about as I picture baking a sponge cake.
“Firebolt wasn’t like this,” I grouse. I don’t think it was anyway – there were a lot of squiggles that never seemed to go anywhere. Flipping back a few chapters to the most heavily weathered section, her eyes dart across the page.
“Hmmm. Yeah, there’s a bit more on meditating next to candles. Some sweet magical techno-babble actually.” she snorts and flips the page around, “C’mon, what the hell does ‘phlogistize your aether space’ even mean?”
I shrug. Flogi-what?
“Wait, there’s an arrow,” she says while tracing a line around the paragraphs. “Here we go, Phlogistization…” she snaps the book shut and Darke Mag’kx goes back in the bag. “Instructions to reheat cabbage stew.” She sighs, “Is this actually how magic works?”
I don’t think I’ve ever even had cabbage stew – mother wouldn’t have even allowed it at the table.
“I remember meditation, repetition and burning my fingers a lot. Though I don’t know how necessary the last one was.” Evelyn blows a raspberry and pushes her chair out.
“Whatever. I’m going to go brave the outhouse, watch my stuff while I’m gone.” She sashays away, leaving me alone with MY bag. I rifle through it and fish out that godawful script Fourey gave me, only after pushing through all of Evelyn’s old clothes that she’d stashed in here. She’s lucky that the bag is already stained with goblin guts, or I’d almost find the energy to be annoyed with her gross unwashed clothes squatting with my things. My own unwashed, goblin crusted clothes. I rethink my plan to use the thing as a pillow.
I try to get past the first act but I can feel my mind revolting against me as I reach the third sex scene in as many pages. Maybe Lord Havaille is a lover of the arts. I can think of worse ways to induce suicide. Perhaps this Rhapsody guy really is a genius.
Evelyn wanders back in, muttering under her breath and looking disgusted. I squirt some citrus fresh mana at her and she sticks her middle finger up at me. She drops back into her chair and plucks ‘Apoxolas Nox’ out of my unresisting hands. She doesn’t get a page in before she scoffs and throws it back into my pack. Weakling.
“Christ. What the fuck.” Giggling, I slump over the table.
“Do we have a plan to deal with this?” I gesture broadly at the play, unable to encompass its vast scope any other way.
“I was just going to wait around for someone to check in on us,” she reaches for the bag, throwing out Darke Mag’kx and fluffing the rest up. “Seems like that’s what everyone else is doing.” She jerks her head from the bag, gagging and coughing. “God that’s rank.”
“Yeah, sounds good enough,” I say, resting my head on Darke Mag’kx. It’s not like I was going to put in any more effort than that for Fourey of all people. The hearth is still glowing with a steady flame and Rothmore had hardly written his book with comfort in mind, but my eyes grow heavier by the second.
O – O – O – O – O
The child grows tired and its belly rumbles; the growl is swallowed by the forest. Its hands delve into pockets. Grasping.
But there is no food to be found.
The snake and centipede don’t look particularly appetising – the child begins to cry. High above the bird looms larger – vultures ready to feas-.
“Wait, are the birds going to eat the girl? Aren’t the looming shadows meant to represent the real threat?”
“What are you, an idiot? They’re both the same, they just represent an unseen threat.”
“Then why not just stick with one? And didn’t the bird die last time?”
“What? …Did it?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Whatever, we can’t exactly go back and check. I’m keeping the birds either way – it’s in tone regardless.”
The Child looks around, but the glade has been picked clean. A snap of a twig from a careless crow and the Child turns its gaze upwards.
A single green apple. Hanging above.
“Stop adding things! You’re just muddling up the message.”
“Will you buzz off? It’s fine as is!”
The centipede and the snake…
O – O – O – O – O
“Get up.”
Hurk. Those dulcet tones and a sharp kick to my chair greet me as I jerk awake, and almost fall out of my chair. With sensitive eyes and severe neck pain, I stare blearily at whichever cretin deemed this an acceptable hour to wake up at.
Laundry girl – Emily – meets my gaze, waiting just long enough to see me awake before turning around and heading for the front door.
“Come. We are to buy fish for the Lord’s supper,” she says with as much energy and enthusiasm as I’ve come to expect from my brief contact with her. Sitting up and trying to stretch out the crick in my neck, I cast my eyes around in hopes of finding Hubert. Unfortunately, he’s nowhere to be seen. I sigh, I don’t want to go back out there – especially not back into the markets.
Evelyn passes by, all bright eyed and insufferable, somehow having managed to score a clean smock in the past few hours. She drops a scone onto the table in front of me and swishes by, falling in step with Emily.
“Hurry up Lucien, wouldn’t want the country boy to get lost in the big bad city!” she calls over her shoulder. I seethe and absolutely do not blush. Yesterday was completely irregular damn it. Nevertheless, I stuff my things in my satchel and hurry after them, scone in hand.
I catch up quickly. They had stopped just around the corner of the servant’s quarters. Rounding the corner, I catch Evelyn smirking as I stumble my rush into a measured walk. Why do I put up with her anyway? I trail behind the two and busy myself with breaking my teeth on the breakfast scone. Hopefully my lack of charming dialogue properly communicates my displeasure with this morning in general.
Evelyn doesn’t seem to catch on, but I reckon she has always been a bit off socially anyway. Case in point, she spends the walk through the manor’s gardens and out the gate attempting to chat up Emily. The fool. Obviously, Evelyn is rebuffed on every occasion through sheer force of silence. It’s actually a wonder to watch Emily totally ignore every single thing that comes from Evelyn’s mouth – going beyond being merely shy or rude, into a space where you start to wonder if there’s something wrong with you. Are we getting this treatment because we’re new? Evelyn has given up as we start to wind our way through the nicer districts, staring out as dully as I am. Are we being hazed right now? Is there even fish?
That’s a good question actually.
“Hey, how are we getting fish anyway? Havale is landlocked, right?” I ask, for a moment forgetting the awkward threat of being completely ignored. Shockingly, Emily answers me. Even more, she stops and turns to face me. Her eyes locked with mine with an intensity that I don’t think my question warrants.
“I believe that there are some merchants who sell fish from live aquariums to the nobles. However, that is immaterial.” I blink rapidly in the face of her stare boring a hole through my skull. Gosh, maybe this is why she doesn’t talk much.
“Why is that?” I feel compelled to question. Gods know why.
“The aquariums are only brought here on market day.” She replies, her tone low but with a startling intensity. Again, gods know why.
“Er…” I try to say something in return, her eyes seemingly pressing me on. “And today isn’t market day?” I question. The roads aren’t nearly as nauseatingly packed as they had been yesterday. Her eyes narrow in response.
“Correct.”
With a sudden motion she opens the door to a small house that I hadn’t even noticed. Emily walks straight through the door and in that moment a shadow looms behind Evelyn and I. The next thing I know, we’re through the entranceway and the bear of a man who threw us in has shut the door behind us. The sound of too many locks sliding into place echoes through the room as Evelyn and I find ourselves in a large room dominated by a table strewn with all manner of maps and diagrams. Black-robed figures mill around the room and we’re pushed towards the table where a woman in the most ornate black robes pouring over the building schematics that lie in front of her. Emily, walking to the woman’s side brings her fist to her heart in some kind of salute before introducing us.
“Ma’am, I have captured Fourey’s agents as requested.” She takes a step back and stands in a pose that looks worryingly close to military attention. The woman turns around, her silver-patterned robes flaring dramatically in such a way that is blatantly impossible without gale-force winds. She said ‘agents’, didn’t she?
The hood she had been wearing is flung open and bright crimson hair – impossibly silky and lustrous – spills out, somehow conforming to an elegant wave even after having been under a hood for any length of time. Her fancy robes give way to overdesigned black leather armour that looks several notches north of ceremonial to offer much in the way of proper protection.
I take a half step back from the woman only to find myself wedged in by a wall of black robes. And then someone rips my bag away.
There never was any fish, was there?