As night turned to day, and the crew bedded down aboard the ship, the story of Lucius’ past progressed forward nearly half a year. The morning began benign enough, sailing at first dawn while Sammy at last extracted from me a portion of my medical knowledge. At the prow of the ship, Lucius was the main entertainment for us passengers. Not because he put on some play or act, but because he and the captain were fencing.
Captain Bodin had a pair of blunted sabers he doted on, and handed one with a greedy grin to the boy as an invite to light exercise. Obviously, he thought Lucius had never fought upon a moving surface before. I had trained him in such eventualities, and he knew how to waver and dance upon the swaying deck, much to the ire of Bodin.
Aisha sat to the side, chewing on dried fruit and watching the exchange of blows, and eventually asked, “How did you get your arm back?”
Lucius, sweating and gulping down water, responded, “I healed.” A furtive glance was sent in Bodin’s direction, but the captain had stalked off to get himself a bottle of liquor and could not hear them. “I mentioned it itched, didn’t I? It was healing the whole time.”
“And yet your family sold you as a useless mouth? To a minstrel troupe?”
The memory yet pained young Lucius. The darkening of his expression forced Aisha out of her curiosity, but before she could apologize, he answered, “The surgeon told them a limb lost would be lost forever. My parents were poor. Given the opportunity for me to be fed and employed, they handed me over for my own sake, as they saw it. I think my aunt pressed the matter.”
“Your aunt?”
“Mother’s sister.”
“Why would she have a say?”
“That’s how marriages work in Vassermark. Don’t you know?”
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Winter came and went in Jarnmark. Given the southern climate, the passing of the season was primarily marked by a change in produce and in ship arrivals. Claire Riverfall had been accepted in as a sworn knight of the Ashe family, serving the youngest lady, and in so doing she also guarded Jacque. As spring loomed, preparations had to be made for the equinox.
Though that was originally a holiday hailing from distant and vengeful Aillesterra, the people of Jarnmark had co-opted the fertility rites as a joyous celebration. An excuse to drink and for young adults to pledge themselves to one another.
Naturally, Master Wilhelm was called upon at this time for a performance more befitting his trade; a theater. To everyone’s surprise, except perhaps Jacque, the young lady Ashe demanded that Lucius be her cupboy as she watched their rendition of Giganticide(1).
Ruby Ashe, contrary to all written sources on the matter, a blonde. Named for the color of her cheeks upon birth, not some recessive trait that she and she alone had in all her family as certain painters would have you believe. What those charlatans had right however, was the raw beauty she possessed, like a blessing from the goddesses incarnate.(2)
Jacque was absent at the time. The true cause can’t be ascertained but I suspect he was hungover or perhaps sleeping with one of Ruby’s sisters. As such, her attention fixated entirely on Lucius, the object of her nephew’s ire. “Tell me about how you lost your arm,” she demanded.
Her older sister Faith rolled her eyes. Perhaps it was a habitual thing, for the amount of rolls of fat she had on her. “Why would you ask such an ugly, vulgar thing?” the older woman demanded.
“Because I should hardly think that such a misfortune could befall one of us, so how am I to know of it, if I do not humble myself to ask?” Ruby said.
Lucius, newly tipped over to the age of nine, couldn’t see how she was showing humbleness in the least. Master Wilhelm had been very clear that his duty was to serve, and that meant doing whatever the people with money asked of him, especially talking. Had he been older, he might have talked his way around the crudeness, but he had not even felt the tingles of puberty. That kept him from being wiled by the cut of Ruby’s dress, but let him state, “A rock fell on me. In the mines. My father worked in the iron mines. I was down there when the cave collapsed.”
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Ruby gasped and she drank more of her wine as though enraptured by a play. The theater performance below held no sway over her at the moment however. “That’s terrible! Such a young child, forced to work in the dirt like a worm. How can we say we have prosperity when something so ugly as this occurs beneath our very feet?”
“It wasn’t under your feet. The mine is up in the mountains,” Lucius said.
His childish confusion simply made Ruby swoon harder for him, as though she were looking at a stray dog in the rain. “There should be laws against this sort of thing. I don’t want it happening in Jarnmark.”
“Cave-ins?” Lucius asked.
“You can’t just do that, sis,” Faith said, talking over the boy. “That’s how these poor families function. By Saphira, it’s how we function too! How would Fredricka–” her daughter, “ever learn etiquette without accompanying us to events? It’s the same with the peasants. They learn by doing, by making themselves useful once they can. You make that illegal and crime is what you’ll get. Just think, the swarms of urchins you’d have running down the streets.”
“The children should be with their mothers,” Ruby declared.
Faith rolled once more, slumping her weight against the viewing box railing. “Spoken like someone who’s never had a child pass between their legs. I will have you know, that after three you really get quite tired of the crying. And finding good wetnurses? It’s a nightmare.”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind in the least learning first hand, you know that.”
“You just want that writer’s seed inside you.”
“I value a man with brains more than some soldier like you married.”
“Brains don’t help in the bedroom, sister.”
Ruby grinned and shrugged. “So your man has taught us both… you there, boy, tell us, how many fathers do you have?”
He nearly answered in the negative, but from where he stood, he could see Master Wilhelm watching the actors play and Wilhelm could see him. “Just the one.”
“Your aunt did not take a husband?” Faith asked.
“She did, but I’ve never met him. He’s in the army somewhere.”
Ruby sighed and helped herself to more wine. “He must have had it very hard, caring for the whole family like that. Nieces and nephews too, I assume?” Lucius nodded, for he had three cousins. “No wonder you were thrust into the mines so young. As Jacque would say, the bounty of nature is no longer enough for so many kin.”
Lucius didn’t understand the two of them at all. Regardless, they continued to talk over him and about him, and demand answers of him to keep themselves entertained while the actors below swung their swords and cast out red ribbons of stage blood. In his own way, he understood what was happening, for he had many times seen his father haggle for the butchering of a hog. How his father and the swineherd would go round and round about politics and the city and upcoming events and who knew whom, all as a means of probing one another on the cost of the beast. Lucius did not understand the ritual, for the cost always seemed to be the same, but he did understand that for the women before him, he was the hog.
“I shall speak to Master Wilhelm,” Ruby said after the play wrapped up to much applause. “I shall take you as my own servant. You’re nearly of an age with the girls and can be their servant.”
“Sister! Are you trying to cause problems with Edvin?”
“Edvin needs to grow up,” Ruby snapped back. Of course, it seemed to only occur to Lucius that such growing up would still take plenty of time.
Sadly for the boy, in due course, Ruby Ashe dragged him before the troupe manager and expressed her desire, to which Lucius declared, “I don’t want to work for her! I want to stay with you, Master Wilhelm.” Lucius had imagined some familiarity with the man who employed him, took care of him, saw to his basic needs and gave him something to do and something to learn. Perhaps he was right, but only to an extent.
Master Wilhelm stood in no position to offend his benefactor, and Lucius only realized when he saw the scowl across the man’s face. “How dare you turn down such hospitality from your better? Why, I say that my company has no place for a scoundrel such as you, if you would deny the lady’s grace. Here’s your choice, boy; take her offer or be on the street. I employ only honorable people.”
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“They treated you like a slave,” Aisha said.
“In their eyes, I may as well have been one.”
“No wonder you freed those slaves at the mine. I thought you did it just to get more fighting men.”
“Well, it was for that too. Say, you performed in taverns, didn’t you?” he asked, snapping the sparring blade back into its sheathe as he tried to breathe new life into their conversation. When she gave a nod, he continued, “Why don’t you teach me some more Giordanan games? I feel like all I know is Trireme.”
The bardic girl breathed out and cleared her head, thinking over her repertoire. “Do you know backgammon?”
I had taught him everything there was to know about backgammon. “Never heard of it,” he said. He threw the game.
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1. Giganticide generally refers to the class of poems and plays regarding the semi-mythical slaying of the North Sea Titan, a tale which has kept a grip on the hearts of the locals because the skeleton can still be seen, centuries after all involved perished. Delightful heroism and battle.
2. The goddesses do not understand human beauty standards enough to give such a blessing.