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Princess Elsanne Eikenaar
Any tavern & at any port
Part II
-Bottoms up sister-
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Wow, Elsanne thought, her second attempt to squeeze herself into Selussa’s tight leather trousers finally successful. Either something is wrong with that girl’s hindquarters, or you’ve taken up weight sister.
Hmm.
“Can I turn around Mistress?” Jasi asked.
“No you can’t,” that was Loes.
“It’s fine Loes,” Elsanne intervened. “Give us the room if you please.”
“Princess I’m not sure—”
“I’m a eunuch,” Jasi deadpanned. “Above all suspicion.”
Loes glared at him unconvinced, but then relented and walked out leaving them alone.
“Above suspicion?” Elsanne queried knowing the man’s shady relationships with the female staff.
“What one doesn’t know, won’t harm her,” Jasi retorted, adding with a curtsy. “Illustrious mistress.”
Eh, nice save there.
“Fine. Now, is everything arranged?”
“May I ask on the provisions?” Jasi asked. “They appear excessive.”
“For a two-three weeks journey?” Elsanne fired back. “I don’t think so.”
“Is this a real journey Mistress?”
Elsanne stared at him austerely.
“It is Jasi.”
Jasi stood up straighter and clasped his hands behind his back assuming a worried expression.
“What if we are discovered? Traveling without the Prince’s knowledge would be frowned upon.”
“That would be unfortunate,” Elsanne replied dismissively.
“For your brilliance it would be,” Jasi agreed pressing his peach colored lips tightly. “For myself, it could potentially be deadly.”
“I shall take the blame Jasi.”
“This is what usually happens in most noble peoples cases,” the Eunuch eagerly expounded. “One takes the blame, whilst another –of lesser station- receives the punishment, oh thee great mistress.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Yet, it is what occurs unfortunately time after time,” Jasi deadpanned.
Elsanne sighed at her strange image on the mirror. Could I use a low-heel with that? These boots look atrocious. She turned towards the waiting eunuch and nodded.
“You shall be rewarded Jasi.”
“What reward can convince a diminished person such as myself bargain his life? I’ve nothing left to lose.”
“I could order you and call it a day,” Elsanne warned him.
“But you won’t, since that would put me in a dilemma, seeing as I’m bound to the Prince, as to where my priorities lay in this instant.”
“Help me get to Eikenport and then you are free to do whatever you want.”
Jasi sighed and used a perfumed linen hankie to gather the sweat off his forehead.
“Tossed aside, but free,” he finally said. “I could work the streets I suppose, a drunkard would slot his cock in any hole.”
“What do you want Jasi?” Elsanne murmured, her patient running thin.
“I want to survive in certain luxury,” Jasi replied. “Free or otherwise, I love being in a position of power.”
“I’m trusting you as much as Loes,” Elsanne said.
“The girl can’t do what I can, or offer insight in difficult matters Princess.”
“Fine. I suppose I could keep you around. Are you certain?” Elsanne relented.
“I wish to serve your highness in her quest for vengeance,” Jasi replied. “Most certainly.”
“I’m not in a quest for vengeance,” Elsanne corrected him with a frown.
“Semantics. Emancipation was my meaning mistress,” Jasi yielded with a small smile.
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It had taken them two days to cross the bridge over Third Claw and half-a-week to pass by the rebuilt Jadefort towards Mid Claw (Dragontoe’s River middle tributary). Elsanne riding next to a hat wearing Jasi, a large flamboyant affair with flower patterns on it, was both elated and horrified. The feeling of seeing where you are going –even if you couldn’t due to the heavy jungle- and the nature booming outside the walls of Dia, where she’d spent the last months, was exhilarating.
Also scary, since the nights were wrought with strange sounds and the bugs nigh persistent. So the Princess got a hat over her head and then a light cloak with a hood. She had wrapped it around her body, preferring the sweat from dealing with beasts buzzing right and left over their heads.
They made a stop to rest their two slow moving horses and feed them. Elsanne had to begrudgingly stop using so much of their water for washing her body, hand and feet, as they were running out and that meant finding a clean spring, or tasting the Jade Lake’s sludge.
Probably die right after from dysentery, or worse.
“He did take the fort,” she said, trying to cut down an orange bug with black stripes that kept bumping on her head with a long thin stick. Elsanne had managed to whack that thing twice, but it just wouldn’t die.
“The Horselords had abandoned it,” Jasi explained looking around their wagon nervously. “Rumor is even the workers and slaves had left.”
That doesn’t sound very heroic you lying turd, Elsanne thought and hit the bug so hard, she cleaved it in two still moving parts. The smell of its innards stomach-turning.
Literally.
She dry retched a couple of times, probably green in the face alike a hobgoblin, but thankfully saved by her dark Issir complexion. Jasi was secretly enjoying her predicament and she wasn’t about to further his enjoyment.
“Gone where?” She croaked, tasting vomit at the back of her throat.
“Goras.”
“I thought Horselords don’t take slaves,” Elsanne murmured and used the long stick to hurl the parts of the bug away from their wagon. The stench remained.
Ugh.
“Well the Khan was a Horselord once,” Jasi replied thoughtfully. “So is your husband.”
“What’s the difference?”
“With the Peninsula?” Jasi shook his covered head and climbed on their wagon again. “Come mistress. A patrol might pass here. We were lucky the Prince left so few men behind.”
Elsanne let out a groan of frustration and climbed on the narrow bench next to him. Given Jasi’s considerable bulk, not much room was left for her on the covered wagon.
“Well?” She probed fixing the hood on her head.
“We need to cross that bridge before nightfall,” Jasi replied with a sigh. “Travel during the night next, as in this part of the lake nobody wants to linger long.”
“Right, as if this is a better spot,” Elsanne griped and stared at the horse’s hindquarters with a pout. She had never smelled so foul in her life. One of the horse’s moved its tail away exposing a pink arsehole and then immediately dumped the largest shit she’d ever seen. It went on for half a minute. Mostly light brown with a bit of green in it.
It was so disgusting, the shock muted her for an hour.
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The horses stopped on their own before crossing the second bridge, neighing disturbed and Jasi cursed their lineage colorfully, his frustration the highlight of the day. Elsanne slowly got down from the driver’s bench, her back hurting and slapped her hands repeatedly to chase her limb numbness away. Jasi had walked up to the bridge in the meantime, the place buzzing with activity and the sounds of the lake bugs covering the sky. Whilst the cobblestone road was clear, roots and plants had started encroaching over it and knowing the sneakiness of the local flora Elsanne eyed the thick vegetation with a hefty amount of apprehension.
“It’s empty,” Jasi reported coming back, his hands keeping his robes from sweeping the road. “We should get moving.”
Elsanne turned to stare at the wagon not really eager to climb back up on it and then at the sun slowly setting over their heads. With a sigh she decided it was pointless to duel on it more and watching the ground for any nasty surprises turned to find the step.
A metallic gleam coming from the foliage stopped her. The sun had shown on something there just out of her sight.
“What was that?” She asked a huffing and puffing Jasi.
“A bug?” The Eunuch retorted reaching her.
“There’s something shining over there, behind that tree,” Elsanne insisted and pointed at the side of the road, not twenty meters from the bridge.
Jasi groaned and stared at the spot. Elsanne walked towards the phenomenon not waiting for his answer. Whatever that was, the sun coming through the palm trees was bouncing off of it.
“Princess,” Jasi warned her seeing her standing so close to the shore’s thick vegetation. “That’s not prudent.”
“It’s a steel spur,” Elsanne replied and stooped to have a better look at it. She found a riding boot attached to it, a leg leading to a torso and part of a man’s bloody jaw hidden under the undergrowth.
A familiar voice cut through her panicked screams sounding as much frustrated as disappointed.
“Just go over the darn bridge. Waltz straight over it for crying out loud,” Selussa grunted and jumped down from the branch she’d been watching them from. She landed bending her knees with ease and stood up in all her lithesome awesomeness. Elsanne had never seen a woman being so confident, or as fit. Having said that it made her a bit jealous as well. “Close your mouth Princess,” Selussa snapped frustrated and glared at a shocked Jasi. “And you ball-less fat trout, you can’t call her that. If I can hear it, so can everyone else. There’s amateur and then there’s idiotic.”
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Elsanne returned her glare puckering her mouth.
“You’ll address—”
Selussa cut her off with a wave of her arm and looked at a sweaty Jasi. “Why is she talking?”
What?
“We are working on it annoying woman,” Jasi retorted.
“Pretend I was this dead guard,” Selussa snapped. “Now answer my query!”
Wait.
“Why is he dead?” Elsanne asked glancing at the bloated corpse.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“He fell from his horse,” Selussa deadpanned.
“Ahm, something scared it?”
“Probably,” Selussa replied looking at her with amusement. “Found a broken sharp branch with his neck. Teared through his carotid artery,” she snapped her fingers before her face. “Just like that, he was a goner.”
Elsanne narrowed her eyes. “That sounds suspicious.”
Selussa rolled her eyes and turned to Jasi again. “You lead her. She’s a slave. Not the other way around. You’ll call her girl from now on. Can you do that?”
“We are not stupid Selussa,” Elsanne hissed. “If there are people around we can play it out.”
“Bullshit. There were people around and you didn’t,” Selussa admonished her. “You expect them to announce themselves in advance? No courts where you’re going girl.”
Ah, now I don’t like you that much again, Elsanne thought, but Jasi’s voice snapped her out of her angry pout.
“Am I freed mistress?” Jasi asked her.
“We talked about it Jasi!” Elsanne hissed.
“Your lady friend is my witness then. Lady Selussa?”
Selussa raised a mocking brow. “Get on with it bitch,” she snorted. “You need to get moving, his friends will come looking.”
Jasi frowned at the insult but kept his tongue. He turned to face Elsanne assuming an austere expression, quite comical and equally insulting. “Girl,” he said and Elsanne flinched in shock. “Get your arse on the wagon, or I’m getting the whip out.”
“Are you serious?” Elsanne snapped very angry.
“Use the long stick,” Selussa suggested with a chuckle. “You don’t want marks on her skin.”
What?
“Up the wagon girl,” Jasi warned her a final time and Elsanne realized he meant to hurt her. “Now.”
All of sudden the Princess turned into a girl named Anne.
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On the third week of their rather arduous journey the wagon reached the dry patch of land that led to Felmond River and its bridge. Many of the bigger ruins of Eikenport gleaming in the strong summer sun.
Jasi eyed the small Guard Tower beyond the bridge and the Cofol patrol lazily resting next to their horses. He crooked his sweaty face and puffed out. Elsanne had lost weight during the travel, a bout with a stomach bug helping in that, but the Eunuch looked completely different now. With the folds of extra skin under his chin melting away Jasi appeared rather sweet, for a cock-less seal, according to Selussa.
“Right,” their companion said and wiped the sweat off her tanned face. “I’m off ladies. You should come right after me and smile a bit Jasi. I know you’ll miss me.”
“I rather not hear about you for a year,” Jasi replied solemnly. “Then be informed you unfortunately died of gangrene, after months of agony.”
“Aww, look at you flirting,” Selussa teased him and then winked at a scowling Elsanne. “Girl,” she said, turning all serious. “You need a bath. Find a barrel and stay in it, for a while.”
Elsanne made to speak, but got a slap on the face by Jasi that almost knocked her off the wagon. The guards watching them started laughing as they approached their party and Selussa paused to talk to them for a bit, before riding towards the city.
“Not much need for slaves,” one of them said, a rather fancy looking young Cofol. “But some brothels might get a great interest in her, if she doesn’t bite a lot.”
Uher, this is utterly ridiculous, Elsanne thought seething and holding on to her burning cheek.
“What’s with the new wall?” Jasi asked trying to change the subject away from her.
The guard, probably a scout given his bow, grimaced. “Some wealthy criminal bought a whole neighborhood, put a wall around it.”
“You don’t say,” Jasi said shaking his head. “That’s unusual.”
“Nah,” one of the guard’s friends said and got up. “Having a Prince of Rin-An-Pur here is crazier,” he grunted and then clapped his gloved hands to get the others attention. “Pack it up boys, we’re moving afore the sun boils our brains here.”
“We better move as well,” Jasi said and bowed his head.
“Right,” The first guard said staring at him strange. “You better.”
“No free man bows his head to a guard,” Elsanne admonished him, the moment they cleared the soldiers.
“I was bloody nervous,” Jasi blurted and glanced at her. “Apologies for earlier. I had to react, they were staring at you.”
Elsanne scrunched her face. “You think they recognized me?”
Jasi stared at her incredulously. “Ahm… Anne, no one knows who you are, but for the Prince. It just these men haven’t seen a prettier Issir than you.”
“Oh, well…” Elsanne murmured not expecting the compliment. It had been weeks since she’d heard praise from anyone.
Then again… “You’re getting slapped the moment we are safe,” she informed him. “And kicked, yelled at…” she counted with her fingers. “At least a hundred times.”
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Jasi drove their wagon towards Garth District via the South Gate. Elsanne saw soldiers patrolling the fast rebuilding neighborhood dominated by the Ancient Amphitheater and the black massive Mastaba.
“These aren’t Cofols, nor do they seem like the City Guard,” Elsanne noticed keeping her voice low.
“Lorians mostly and that one over there is a dwarf,” Jasi said staring at the small bearded person listening to an one-eyed sketchy character and not buying whatever it was he was selling. “Don’t stare too intensely.”
The man wearing the leather patch over his eye paused and turned to look their way, his smile showing at least four gold teeth. Jasi clicked his tongue to get their horses going wanting to avoid the scrutiny, but the man stepped in front of their wagon and stopped them.
“There’s room to spend the night mate,” he rustled. “Yer woman seems tired and malnourished.”
Elsanne frowned and bit her tongue to avoid talking back.
She had been on a forced diet for almost a month.
“We’ll be heading for the Pirate District thank you,” Jasi replied and signed for him to get out of their way.
The dwarf snorted.
“Might I be so bold as to inquire,” the shifty-looking man said, the gold earring on his right ear making him appear rather roguish. “Why not pickin’ the oth’r one?”
The Cofol District was his meaning.
“We have our reasons mister…?” Jasi retorted visibly annoyed and the man stood back with another lecherous glance towards Elsanne that tried hard not to blush, but failed.
“That’ll be Stiles,” the man said. “I’m runnin’ this… business.”
“Are you in construction mister Stiles?” Jasi mocked him.
“Little bit o’ dis, little bit o’ that,” Stiles replied. “Whole lotta of ‘em oth’r thing.”
Elsanne blinked in confusion.
“The lass is not much used to the docks tongue,” Stiles noticed with a cunning smirk. “And neither are ye, for a dude that wants to visit the gentlemen’s district.”
“Can we pass?” Jasi grunted already disliking him.
Elsanne on the other hand was intrigued.
Stiles stepped aside with a curtsy. “Avoid the races,” he said as they moved past them. “Or any tavern.”
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“Didn’t you hear what the man said?” Jasi protested an hour later.
“Where are we going to stay?” Elsanne insisted. “Either an inn, or a hostel, because we can’t stay in the street and I’m not sleeping another night in this wagon… what is this place?”
“A market?” Jasi replied looking at the colorful crowd.
“Is that…?” Elsanne blurted reading the label over an eating place. “Roasted Hog spelled wrong? It spells it dog hehe!”
“No that’s really a dog they are serving Anne,” Jasi grimaced and pointed at an inn across the busy street. “We’ll park there and hope they don’t steal everything we have.”
“Steal?” Elsanne said absentmindedly, looking at the customers filling their plates with big cuts of burned meat. Surely there’s some mistake here, she thought.
“I don’t believe this is a normal market,” Jasi replied. “That man selling jewelry next to the ‘restaurant’? On the second large glass jug, a couple of those fancy rings are still onto their previous owners fingers.”
Ah.
Goodness gracious!
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“Fancy a belt for yer pants lassie?” A woman asked her just as they stopped afore the busy tavern and inn apparently.
“Why, thank you, can I—?” Elsanne told her and turned to look at the different belts the redhead carried over her shoulder.
“She has no coin for it,” Jasi interrupted their discussion.
What? I have my purse on me!
“She can give me a buss,” the older woman replied. “Or a lick if she’s into to it.”
Elsanne blinked and Jasi stepped in again a little more forcefully.
“She’s not, move along now.”
“Pfft, I’ve seen harlots less painted than ye,” the woman retorted and walked away.
“Ahm,” Elsanne started, but Jasi shoved her into the tavern quickly. The relatively full place, stinking of stale beer, grog and sweat. The two bards providing music -to this more tavern than an inn- playing the same three notes repeatedly.
PLING
TOING
PLONG
They stopped to stab their foot down and then went at it again taking turns. It was weird for about a minute and after that completely tedious and annoying. The crowd though loved it.
“Ahm,” Elsanne said again and felt someone feeling her arse. She turned around, took one look at the three unsavory, all bad teeth and earrings, characters and immediately faced forward again. A moment later a heavy hand gave her behind a good slap that made her yelp mortified.
“No dear,” Jasi said taking it the wrong way. “I’ll do the talking,” he added and headed for the bar, a panicked Elsanne running after him.
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The tavern-keeper had oily long hair caught at the nape, a large bald patch just over his forehead, a pair of red rubies hanging from his drooping earlobes and an assortment of gold teeth, with the occasional silver thrown in. He eyed Elsanne first and then Jasi, afore slouching behind his counter and spitting a fat blob of phlegm down.
Ugh.
“What’ll be?” he asked and found the dirtiest cloth the Princess had ever seen on a table and gave the filthy surface a good wipe, smacking his lips at the end of it very satisfied. “Eh, ye can speak now eccentric bald dude,” The bartender said and cleared his throat as if ready to spit down again.
“We would like a room,” Jasi muttered, probably as freaked out at the rowdiness of the tavern. “For… with two beds.”
The bartender scratched his pale shaven face with a dirty nail, while listening to the annoying tune and took his time to answer.
“I only have one beders,” he finally said. “Three of them, so make wit that what ye like mister…?”
“Jasi.”
“Jasmin ye say?”
“Ja-si,” the eunuch repeated with a croak.
“Arr ye alright there honey?” The tavern keeper asked with an expensive smile, looking at a frustrated and blushing Jasi.
“Let’s go to another place,” Jasi hissed turning to her.
“I can fix ye wit an’ther bed,” The tavern keeper cut in. “Are ye from the Peninsula perchance?” he asked next. “Caught a whiff of an accent there, under all the mascara.”
Jasi turned to glare at him. “You’ve traveled then, outside this establishment?”
“Me broth’r has aye,” the sly tavern keeper replied. “Moved his business in Greenwhale.”
“Is he a merchant?” Jasi queried and placed his hands on the counter unwittingly afore flinching and retrieving them both.
“In a sense,” the man sort of elucidated, without batting an eyelash. “Is the pretty girl a mute?”
Elsanne showed him her perfect teeth in a snarl, barely holding her tongue and he raised a dark eyebrow impressed.
“We will take the room,” Jasi intervened quickly.
“Yeah, about that,” the tavern keeper replied. “I need to see yer coin first.”
Jasi made to get the purse he kept under his robes, but Elsanne stepped forward, reached inside her shirt first popping a couple of buttons, the lecherous man pursing his lips at the exposed skin and got the ugly skull coin out. The tavern keeper narrowed his eyes when she slapped it on the counter and then moved it about with a finger as if not believing it was really there.
“Sister,” he finally said after a long contemplating moment of them listening to the repeated loud cords blasting inside the walls of the low-ceiling building and the overwhelmingly drunken customers singing to the cadence of the annoying tune at least a dozen different songs. There wasn’t a single talented voice in the relatively full room. “What is it ye be lookin’ for?”
“Captain Dawson,” Elsanne replied and felt the hand parked on her arse over her leather pants going away, the wild drunken head of a shifty man wearing a hat and sitting with his back on the counter turning to stare at them, afore belching once loudly.
The tavern keeper gulped down nervously. “Ye be family perchance of Yellow Dawson’s?”
“An old friend,” Elsanne replied icily. “Is he around?”
“Dawson be in Lord’s Burrow,” the man listening in to their conversation rustled. “Honest Van Fleet is here though and Foxy Vale, if yer angling for a ship.”
Elsanne frowned. “I assume ‘Honest’ Fleet is the better option?” she asked and the man laughed, but it turned into a bad coughing fit that almost floored him.
“Have no lungs,” he said apologetically. “Burned ‘em out divin’ for treasure outside Turtle Isles.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” Elsanne replied and the hard man stood back not expecting the kind words.
“Whichever ye value most is the difference between Fleet and Vale,” he finally said. “Fleet is a right mean motherfuck’r, but Vale will eat ye up lassie, both literally and the oth’r manner.”
Right. There goes the plan. Bravo girl, Elsanne thought and stared at the yellow liquid the tavern keeper had poured in two dirty bronze goblets.
“A pint of grog for our pretty sister,” he answered her voiceless query. “On the house.”
Ehm.
Elsanne was wholeheartedly against drinking spirits and this place looked like the last one she should start experimenting.
“Ah, I’m very thirsty darn it,” Jasi admitted and reached for the goblet. “Is it any good my friend?” he asked and the man behind the counter frowned, deep wrinkles appearing on his pale bald and much enlarged forehead.
“We serve only the one quality here,” he replied sounding affronted and waited for a chastised Jasi to gulp down his drink. The eunuch started with enthusiasm, but quickly his eyes watered and the gulps got smaller. Makeup started running down his face and he turned an unhealthy fierce red.
Elsanne cleared her throat, but the tavern keeper turned towards her next and moved the goblet her way.
“Bottoms up sister. Yer supposed to finish up a free drink,” he urged her with a lecherous grin. “It’s the custom for our family, be it old friends, or oth’rwise.”
Elsanne felt her mouth drying up, but then under the intense scrutiny of more and more customers that had approached the counter, she reached for the oily goblet, brought it to her mouth, the toxic smell nauseating and tipped it all down without stopping to think about it.
It was like drinking boiling lead and lemon-flavored arsenic, but a tearing up Elsanne smiled at the end of it bravely, her poor stomach and esophagus on fire. The man behind the counter slapped his hand down as much pleased as stunned and turned to his still having coughing fits friend.
“Bronchitis Sam be takin’ ye to captain Van Fleet,” he said and Sam nodded tipping his weathered leather hat once. “But let me get ye a glass of water good lass. Yer the first one that one-shotted this foul shite in decades.”