4. An Unexpected Welcome

Only in retrospect did Val appreciate what Terressa Lavoie had done for her. Five crowns was a tidy sum of money - if Val had to guess, that was about what the orphanage brought in two months. The headmistress could have easily turned Val in, pocketed the money, and hoped that the church had Val's best interests in mind. And, knowing that they probably didn't, she had misdirected them and warned Val instead.

Val wasn't even any good at laying low. Not knowing what else to do, she made her way to the Green Procession, reasoning that she could still do jobs and build up a cache of chits while she was sleeping rough. It would be nice to be able to take a few days off when winter's chill finally came around. She was just about to hit up the cloth-seller's when Pudge found her, tugging her to the side and into a little gap between stalls.

Val was so surprised, the slugged Pudge right in the chest. Fortunately, he was a big lad. He stumbled back, winced, and clutched at his chest, and that was that.

"What in hell's bells, Val?" Pudge said.

"What? Can't I still do jobs?"

"You can't," he said, and he handed her a folded-up flier.

"Wanted: missing girl. Cash reward for the safe return of Miss Valerie Jade…" Val frowned. "That's not my name."

Pudge took the flier back and ripped it to pieces, letting them flutter down to join the other half-dozen fliers he'd already ripped up. "They don't know your name, Val, but they got to put a name on it so it sounds official, like they lost you and not somebody else. They know you're an orphan and they've got people stalking all around the procession looking for you. Have you got any friends outside the orphanage who'll take you in?"

Val thought for a minute. "Yeah. I think I'll manage. Sorry about punching you, Pudge. I bet this'll all blow over in a few days."

"Yeah," he said.

Pudge reached into his pocket and handed her something round and cool. It took Val a moment to realize it was his shilling from their job the other day. She pulled him into a hug so he wouldn't see that she was starting to tear up. "Thanks. I'll be okay," she said.

Val needed to get out of the Green Procession, but where would she go? She knew a handful of places around the city that were friendly to displaced orphans - or at least they had been two years ago. Those were things to worry about come evencall, though. That was still six or seven hours off. Val figured she might as well try Beatriz's Herbarium again.

That afternoon, it was Beatriz tending to the front of the shop while Penny was off on errands, picking up new supply or dropping off packets for recurring orders. You could get a courier to do it, but it was cheaper to just do it yourself - or to hire an orphan, though Beatriz didn't quite trust them enough to deliver everything correctly. Val could have done it, though.

"I know the streets like the bottom of my shoes," she told Beatriz.

The shopkeeper's eyebrows went up. "Not like the back of your hand?"

"No, ma'am," Val said. "If you walk around as much as me, you can tell where you are just by the feel of the cobblestones, the scuff of the dirt, anything underfoot. I'm not sure I'd recognize the back of my hand if it flew up and smacked me."

"Point taken," Beatriz said. When it was clear that Val wasn't going away, she sighed. "Look… you're the girl with all the bad luck, right? The one who broke Reina Glazer's kiln?"

Val shrugged. "It split open when I was helping, but I don't figure I had anything to do with that. Maybe it was just old?"

Beatriz said nothing, but her expression said she wasn't buying it. She sighed again. "Look, I haven't got any chits. I'll give you tuppence and some rose-bread if you give a good dusting to all the front displays." She handed Val a rag but kept a firm grip on it to get off an extra sentence: "but if you break anything, you're out. Do you understand?"

"I understand, ma'am."

Perhaps Beatriz thought Val would dust as quickly as possible to get her bread and tuppence and then make herself scarce. But the herbalist didn't know that Val was a wanted… a wanted whatever the Penitent Order thought she was. Criminal? Blood donor? Val didn't care for the sound of either, so she did an exceptionally good and thorough job of dusting the front of the store and didn't break a single thing.

She was there for long enough that Penny was back from her errands with a big pack of assorted herbs jostling on her back before Val was done. Penny's eyes went wide, but she pretended that nothing was amiss until Beatriz retreated to the back and left her apprentice to tend to the store.

"Val!" Penny hissed. "There are people looking for you! I think it's the Resplendent Order!"

It wasn't the Resplendent Order, obviously. Anybody with any familiarity with the uniforms and insignias of the different orders could have told you that. But, despite seeing the different symbols and devouts every day, most people never bothered to learn them. That number included Penny, apparently.

"There's a really big reward," Penny added. "What did you do?"

"Nothing!" Val insisted. This wasn't strictly true… but she hadn't done anything criminal and, in any case, the Penitent Order weren't law enforcement, unless you included ecclesiastical crimes. Val was pretty sure she wasn't a heretic because she didn't believe in any of that nonsense.

"You should make yourself scarce until evencall," Penny said.

"What do you think I'm doing?"

This earned a look of something close to respect from Penny. Val supposed Penny liked you if you were clever and daring and, while she wasn't sure about the daring bit, she could be just as clever as Pudge when she had the mind to be. Eventually, Val gave up the dusting act and got to chatting with Penny as she minded the store, acting as the older girl's assistant whenever she knew what to do and staying out of the way when she didn't.

"What does this one do?" Val asked. She'd worked her way through about a third of the herbs and remedies in the stock bins, carefully tracing over the faded labels with an oil stick.

"Which one is that? Eventide valerian… or Valerian eventus if you're going by proper names. It's a root that has to be harvested at night or else it's not good for much. But it's used as a sedative or for nerves. It does a bit on its own, but it works best when mixed with another sedative since the effects compound."

Val whistled - she was suitably impressed. "You know a lot," she said. "Why don't they teach any of this at Mrs. Lavoie's?"

"Because most people never become herbalists," Penny said. "Does herbalism interest you?"

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

"Lots of things interest me," Val said. "Herbalism more than most, I suppose."

Penny nodded. "When I was your age, I wanted to be a courtesan like my mother. It sounds like an easy and glamorous life…"

"And you don't any more?"

Penny shook her head. "They seem to order an awful lot of remedies. I figure that means something."

Val nodded as if this made perfect sense. She wasn't entirely sure what it was that courtesans… which was just another way of saying fancy whores… did. She knew it had something to do with sex, but Val had a whole lot of questions about sex and adults seemed to be reluctant once you got past the how-babies-are-made bit. Like: why pay for it if everybody liked it and it was free? Or: why didn't the church like it when men kissed men or women kissed women… but it was perfectly fine for women to kiss men or for parents of either gender to kiss their children of either gender? Something about sexual mores seemed deeply counter-intuitive to Val.

"Thinking about that price on your head?" Penny asked.

Val blushed. "Yeah," she said. Well… now she was. It wouldn't do to have Penny know what she'd actually been thinking about.

The door to the shop swung open and somebody familiar entered.

"Thought I might find you here," he said. "You've a pretty price on your head, girl."

+++++

Ettebonno Vinzenno set the flier on the counting table, but Val didn't have to look at it. She'd seen it before - Wanted: missing girl. Cash reward for the safe return of Miss Valerie Jade…, and they meant her even though her name wasn't Valerie. Five crowns! It was practically a fortune.

"Ginn and I could live easy for a while off of five crowns," Ette said. "Any idea why the brothers want you so bad?"

Val shrugged. She wondered whether she should tell him. And when Penny, who knew she hadn't heard the whole story yet, cajoled her on, Val spilled the beans. She told them about the fight (such as it was) with the brother-knights, about Pudge getting badly hurt, and about going to the Faithful Order of Convalescents for a potion. And, of course, about Val giving her blood.

"Do you think that's what they're after? Your blood?" Ette asked. Penny didn't say anything.

"I think so," Val said.

Ette crumpled up the flier and aced it in the waste bin from across the room. "You're not safe out here with five crowns on your head. Come on, you'll stay with Ginn and me."

Penny grabbed his rugged sleeve - though it wasn't clear to Val how somebody like Penny could stop somebody like Ette if he didn't want to be stopped. He stopped anyway, waiting with one pointed eyebrow up, his barely-too-sharp teeth bared in something between a sneer and a smile.

"You're just going to turn her in!" Penny said.

"I'm not," Ette said, "and say it again and I'll take a personal offense. Besides, if I crossed you, where would I get Ginn's knee treatment?"

"Mrs. Vinzenno has a bad knee?"

Ette chuckled. "Girl, most women of a certain age have a 'bad knee'."

It didn't take a girl as sharp as Val to deduce that they weren't talking about knees, though she wasn't sure what they were talking about. Probably something about sex. As delicate as the situation was, Val wasn't about to broach the topic.

"Can I really come with you?"

"I think you'd better. Come on, then… stay half a step behind me and keep your face hidden. But don't make it look like you're keeping hidden. Can you do that?"

"Yeah," Val said. "See you around, Penny."

+++++

"You found her?" Ginn asked. She stood from her seat at the business desk, wringing her work-worn hands.

Ette nodded. "She was at Ms. Hornswall's across the street if you'd believe it. I walked all around Green Procession for a whole lot of nothing…"

"Did you hand out our fliers?"

"Course I did. I wouldn't want to suffer the wrath of the missus." Ette leaned in and kissed Ginn on the lips.

Afterward, both of them backed a few steps away from Val and gave her a long, concerned looking-over, as if she was a problem to be solved. Which, Val supposed, she was. She really hoped they didn't want those five crowns.

"The brothers want her blood, and I'll be godsdamned if we let them have it," Ette said eventually.

Ginn reached out and grasped his hand, her scar-nicked knuckles going white. "And I'll be godsdamned twice." Then, like a grizzled sailor, she turned her head to the side and spat on the floor. Something about the gesture came across as vaguely contractual.

Ette nodded. "Come on then, girl…"

"My name is Val."

"So it is," he said. "Come on then, Val. I've got some things to show you."

The 'things' that Ettebono Vinzenno wanted to show Val were tricks on how to hide in plain sight. If the brothers were looking for a ten-year-old girl - and Val was not as small as a ten-year-old… not quite - with half-Sudren ancestry and purple eyes, then she'd have to look like somebody else.

Val liked her hair and didn't want to cut it, but it could be done up and hidden under a courier's cap (like the one Pudge wore) pretty easily. Likewise, there was nothing about Val's figure that would prevent her from wearing boys' clothes. She had the very beginnings of breasts, but Ginn showed her how to wrap them without much discomfort.

Ginn hefted her own quite-impressive bosom. "Not much can be done about girls like these, but there's plenty of grown women less endowed who manage to pass as young men. I don't imagine you'll grow too big, though there's no way to guess for sure.

Val didn't know how she felt about that. Sure, she wanted to mature so people would treat her like a grown-up and not a kid. She wanted to be mature enough to learn a whole lot about sex… which, quite frankly, seemed to be on her mind a lot more than when she was younger. But she couldn't see herself as a matronly woman like Ginn, not with how she was built. On the bright side, she had to admit she made a pretty decent boy. Ette even had alchemical eyedrops that could change her eye color, though only for a few hours at a time. Her eyes went from an intense violet bordering on indigo to a hazy gray color that nobody could mistake for violet… though they made her eyes dry, which made her squint a lot.

"That's good," Ginn said. She pinched Val's chin between her fingers and then made her turn around in her new outfit. "You're far too pretty, even with a dapper vest and your hair done up in a cap. Best you frown like some broody lordling and forget whatever manners you know. Everybody'll think you're a boy."

"Whose clothes are these?" she asked.

"Our son Galvan," Ette said. Noting Val's surprised reaction, he added: "The boy's fine, but not particularly interested in the family business. He apprentices under his uncle in the north of town and we don't see him but once or twice a week. His old room is up for grabs if you fancy a mattress…"

"What am I supposed to do with a mattress?" Val asked. It was probably far too heavy to drag around with her.

"Sleep on it, girl… sorry, Val," Ginn said. "We're asking if you want to stay with us? You know… until this whole five-crown business dies down…"

Val's heart leapt in her chest. She wanted to cry. Sleeping inside, in her own room, in her own bed? Yes, please! She'd taken Ette to be a hard man and Ginn a touch too pragmatic, but if they were going to turn her in for the crowns, they had no need to stow her at their house, nor in giving her instructions on playing make-believe. Maybe, if she made a good impression, Ette would take her on as his apprentice… or Ginn, if whatever she did took apprentices… only…

"I… I'm not sure I should…" she wiped at her eyes, even though there were no tears coming. The eye drops made it a lot harder to cry. Thank goodness… she must look like a bawling kid to them…

"Oh, girl, what's the matter?"

Ginn wrapped Val up in a big, bosomy hug, and suddenly even the eyedrops couldn't hold the waterworks back. Tears rolled down her cheeks, her throat seized up, and it was a full two minutes of sucking in air and blinking tears back before she was capable of coherent speech.

"You washed the eyedrops right out," Ette stated.

"Hush, man. Val? What is it? What's wrong?"

"I… bad things happen whenever people try to help me. I think I'm cursed… I don't think I should stay…"

"There's no such thing as a curse, Val. I've cursed a thousand people in my lifetime and delivered not a single hangnail, and a child like you certainly doesn't warrant one. You've had a string of bad luck is all, and you're afraid that if it turns around, it'll turn right back again. I'm not a soft woman, girl… I don't let just anybody in, but when I do, by the gods, I'm going to keep them there. I offered you safe harbor from the brother-knights and no scary curse is going to frighten me into rescinding it. Have you got any other dark and terrible secrets that I ought to know about?"

Val shook her head and wiped her cheeks against her sleeve… well, Galvan's sleeve, she guessed. "No. I don't think so."

She wasn't baptized. She wondered whether she should tell them that… she opted not to, since they didn't seem the religious type. When the Sisters of Resonant Grace had asked her if she was baptized, she'd lied and said she had been, and so she'd gotten to stay dry when all of the other heathen orphans got the dunk. Val hardly ever lied, even back when she was a little kid, but some insistent voice in the back of her head had told her it was okay to lie about that.

That night, Val slept in Galvan's bed, snuggling in the finest sheets she'd ever slept under and upon an actual mattress, and not the lumpy roughspun sacks they had at Mrs. Lavoie's filled with milled-up rags. Even so, she had trouble getting to sleep… it was too quiet. It was only when she cracked the window open and felt the gust of wind and smelled the mixed aromas of the city (horse manure, leaves, and woodfire mostly), heard the distant clop of hooves and the faint sound of drunken merriment, was she able to drift off, a great big smile on her face.