Eintirp’s boots were slipping, and so was her grip on the stupid crutches. Her cheeks puffed up as her face flushed from exertion. The twin sticks were twice (at least) as tall as she was, and they only fit around the stairwell at the most specific and awkward of angles. The padded crooks at the ends had gotten stuck everywhere too, which had made the little goblin want to scream.
The only reason she’d made it up at all was the Ser Irving: he’d pushed from below, and bent the poles if they’d gotten lodged too badly, or tangled.
The page gave one last mighty (relatively) yank, and the crutches pulled free from the door. She lost her balance immediately, and fell over onto her back with a whumph.
“I’m still trying to figure out the colors,” gasped the Hero from below. His hand emerged from the dark and wrapped around the central support column, and the sound of his body sliding upwards was accompanied by an agonized groan. “Like, I know gray plus green is Viper.”
Eintirp wasn’t moving from the floor. The crutches lay over her, and she petulantly shoved them over to the side. She shut her eyes as her glowing daemon fluttered over and settled on top of her forehead. “Nuh, uh. Rupul-grip – Guglepip – Yun-Yun’s boss-boss house is those colors.”
“Right,” the homunculus replied. His weird, tiny square head appeared from the shadow, and his other arm snaked forward and slapped against the edge of the wooden floor. “But Rugelgridt supports the Vipers. That’s why they sponsored Yune, right?”
She waved the bird off, so it flew over and settled on a nearby shelf.
“I dunno, who said that? Maybe? But they hate Veikre. One time me an’ Yun-Yun put sand in Veikre Tobb’s bread.”
“I don’t know who that is, but I guess they’re affiliates with Viper too?”
“Bein’ a lady’s hard. There’s too many houses, an’ they’re dumb. It’s complicated, and memorizing’s hard,” the page flung her hands and feet into the air and let them fall back to the floorboards.
“The palace people are um, Malachite?” Rhode grunted. He dragged his elbow beneath him to prop himself up and angled his head towards the pantry. “And I know they’re green and copper. But the Illuminance guys are new. I never saw them until recently, but their colors are kinda the same, except shifted towards red?”
“I don’t knoooooooow,” Eintirp wailed. Then she swung her arms to sit up, and dusted off her uniform as she got to her feet. The homunculus was emerging, so she pulled his crutches forward around a shelf to make way.
“And I kind-of get the sense that that rust red color – and some of those yellows – I think means that the lord it's for is maybe less rich. Is that true? By the way, what are Jern’s colors?”
“We don’t got colors, ‘cause we don’t got an heir for Yun-Yun yet. I had a blue an’ orange dress for special stuff when we was just gobs, that’s regular colors. I think we should be pink and yellow, though.”
The glass bottles in the room shuddered and clinked as Rhode rose to his full, towering height. There were surprisingly few cobwebs, and little dust in the cramped space; but the presence of either would leave obvious signs of the false shelf, so the room had strangely demanded regular cleaning to stay the perfect level of calculatedly filthy. Rhode took his crutches back and squeezed around a counter-top stacked with empty boxes.
“Huh. I haven’t seen any blue-orange. Your idea sounds pretty though,” he said as he caught his breath. “What would your symbol be?”
“Knives stabbin’ people,” giggled Eintirp.
The Hero and his guide stepped through the attached abandoned buttery, and out into the empty halls of copper ring. The walls were paneled in staid, dark-stained wood about the narrow, efficient corridor. The long, stacked rugs beneath their feet were made of sturdy woven hemp. The halls were pocked with small-paneled, smoky glass windows that peered into dark, unused rooms.
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The goblin stuck her finger up her nose and fished about as she waited for the homunculus to stretch.
“Oh, hey! It’s a little claustrophobic, but I like this better than the other place,” he said.
She shrugged and wiped her hand against the rug.
“So which way do we –”
But Rhode’s question died on his lips. The tramping cadence of marching boots rose from around the turn, and the crunchy clamor of iron chain-mail too. The palace was on lock-down, and the powers-that-be had meant it. A squad of grizzled spears appeared, in their thick, pot-like helmets.
The captain’s grotesque [Extra Eye] bulged from its shared socket, and swiveled to lock onto the homunculus. He raised a fork to the side of his head, and the tines vibrated with a whine. “We have contact at position three-one-eight stairwell. Repeat. I have the monster now.”
Ten cruel points lowered towards Rhode, aimed at his heart. The patrol guard had found them out.
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What a busy night it was! And though dear reader, we have not yet dug into the half of it – the meat of consequence is still ahead of us.
The life of a gob is an uncertain one. It is sometimes easy to forget they all have dreams and hopes of their own. What a confusing jumble of voices, what a tangle of wishes! How sad is it to know that they live every day under an uncertain limit that they cannot break beyond or above. No matter how clever, or cunning, or bold one might be, no matter what they build, an ever-present threat hangs unspoken over their ears: that the slightest turn of the wind might draw the attention of their betters, and have it taken all away.
Should we continue then? Let’s us meet Goode Merchant Ux of Horse Hoof Creek.
Ux had known that this job had been too good to be true. He’d rarely took the road to the lands of Malachite, and never reached their heart. He’d known the woman who used to do this route, and she’d claimed it for years. The change, the request for his commerce, had been unexpected and suspicious too. But coin was coin, and few were the gobs who got ahead by asking questions. He decided he’d ask his silvers their opinion afterwards, and their gleaming answer could satisfy him greater than the plots of elves ever could.
So the merchant took his brothers, and hired a few distant cousins as guards.
He didn’t complain when the customer delivered his time table in a sealed envelope, or that the breakneck pace they asked for would risk laming his horses. He didn’t touch the locked iron strongbox that a stranger in Vine-Burl had added to the bottom of his wagon. He just swapped his animals out at Trickling Lilies, ate the cost and kept his head down low. Oh, and he switched wagons with his brother Baurkin just in case the box exploded.
But he did his job. His caravan had fought off hooting [Sonic] baboons, and [Mud Wake] land eels too. They’d dragged through rains, and crashed over root snarled roads. They’d even escaped that innkeeper in Vista View Valley who wanted to steal their skin to replace the leather upholstery Baurkin had vomited on.
And yet, Ux had brought his cargo in on time. That’s professionalism.
When the soldiers that greeted him at Four Ring Hill appeared wearing the Second Prince’s colors, Ux kept his mouth shut and told his kin to do the same. When his wagons were impounded, when all seven of his crew were confined to quarters in a guest bedroom on the second floor of the derelict north-eastern quadrant of copper ring – remember: Ux did as he was told.
He knew the golden rule, and he knew damned well to keep it. But his brother…
Damn this job, and damn his drunken lush of a brother twice over. The only reason Ux kept him around was because of a promise to his mother, and every passing day made that promise harder to keep. Trox could at least behave, but Baurkin kept antagonizing the guards, and even the servants who brought them food. He threw tantrums, and broke House Tintalline’s mirrors. He shaved gold paint off of the wallpaper to stuff his pockets. He climbed out a window twice, and was carried back bruised.
It had only been three days. Three. Ux wished he had the luxury of screaming, of venting somehow. He wished there was some way to cut out whatever piece of himself carried his patience, and transplant it into his sibling so at least the fool could have half.
Needless to say: Baurkin did not take it well when the soldiers told the second-finest merchant family of Horse Hoof Creek that their internment would be extended indefinitely. What DOES need to be said however, is that the alcoholic terror had responded by clubbing the messenger-boy in the skull with a table-leg.
Ux tore at his hair. Tears rolled down his face. Baurkin raised a stolen goblin’s stiletto high above his head and crowed like the feral he surely was. The rallying pull of [Boys’ Night Out] echoed through the hall. What choice did Ux have? Him, Trox and his cousins ran pell-mell in pursuit of their treasonous blood: for if they did not reach the stables now, he had surely killed them all.