Urberer’s expression was a mixture of confusion and surprise. He wasn’t sure what Shelly had thought up, or why they were arguing. He was sure that outside of, perhaps teasing her about her reading collection, he simply wanted to return to low-town, inform his friends on what was going on and get back to the bottom of these abductions.
“We are going to do what now exactly?”
“You and I are going to out on the town today. I’ve informed Shelly to remove the items from my agenda and inform my personal guard, that way they’re not trying to attack you on sight and such” she smiles.
“Why exactly would I want to do that? And why do you have such a full schedule? I usually only have a few things on mine.”
Shelly folds her hands on her lap. Urberer had not noticed the intricate laced gloves she had on. Their was an embroiled emblem of her family’s crest at the wrist. She sat there for a moment, as if considering her response. “Many would imagine I would have tea gatherings to go to. That is what many noble would do. And that is what a number of mid-town merchant women would do, attempting to look like royals. Bonding over gossip serves its purposes, I suppose. However, as a member of the Hali family, more is expected of me.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. We may be wealthy, but we are a working family. That’s why we are wealthy. We are low-towners through-and-through. It takes all hands to get this successful and maintain this level of success. And my father, being the man he is, is under no illusion about my abilities. While our world says that the woman, no matter how competent should bow to her husband, my father believed in what he saw, woman can and should work, as equals. So I am as trained as any man, if not more, in how to run any business, especially my family’s businesses and manage my father’s estate.”
I like how her father thinks… however …
“You’re father may have an interesting way of thinking. But,” he gestures to the wide array of books behind him, “how come your library is filled with texts on living a subservient life. It seems a bit hypocritical to me.”
Shelly’s eyes’ narrowed, and in them a hint of rage about to ignite, like embers burning in the heart of a forest that hasn’t seen water for weeks, about to engulf everything in fiery ruin. She took in a deep breath, loud enough to be heard as her chest expanded. In that moment she seemed to suppress the fire in her eyes. The only remand being the measured cadence in which she gave her response.
“My father might be considered to be a hypocrite by those who chose not to dive deeper into the situation. However,” she lets out a strong exhale, seeming to actually calm down, “you have to realize, he is a merchant and part of being a merchant is recognizing the situation you’re in. Some times you can negotiate, you can haggle, other times you cannot. My father could not help that I was born into a world where such everyone would think my younger brother, whom I love, would be responsible for the family’s name. He could not help that I was born into a place where those of wealth would not want to hear my view points. He could not help that just because I was born with breast I would only be sought out as a trophy.”
Fair.
“He couldn’t change cultural of the world he lived in.”
***
The words hit Urberer strangely. Shelly was talking, but he could not help remember being in his father’s personal study. The man, hair white from years and stress, expression pertUrberered, telling him the same. “Boy. You can’t change this world. Not that part of it at least. I know she’s a great woman. I know you want a different life. But that’s not our lot. That’s not your lot. If you do not leave her, I cannot stop the consequences. You will be stripped of everything. Everything I wished to pass onto you. Gone.
Urberer remembers his younger self’s voice, both begging and angry, “Father. It’s not right. You know how we’re all treated. Differently. We can live differently. Act differently. You taught me that. There is more to a person then to which family they were born. That is not what makes a man, or a woman, or a person by any name. It is who they are and what they do. You taught me this father! You! And you’re the only one I know who has the leverage and strength to do this. You father! You!” Urberer remembers, his finger pointing accusingly at his father.
He members the thoughtful pause his father gave. The deep, tired breath, one he would later recognize from old military leaders when considering a fight against impossible odds. He remebered the words next “I’m sorry. I cannot my son. I have my responsibilities. To the realm. To the family name.”
He remembers, what he couldn’t see then, as saddness in his father’s demeanor. But what he could not control then was the bitter rage that came from himself, as he spit rhetorical acid at his father. “What about your responsibility to me father? Your son!? What were all those lectures for? Honor, duty, and integrity? On fighting for what you believed to be true no matter the odds? On making this a world that you, your children, and your children’s children can live happy and free in? What father were all those lectures for if when your son needs you, you leave them behind? A worse fate than you would give any of the soldiers who worked under you? Urberer could see the pain in his father’s eyes. He had wounded him.
But the zeal of righteous fury had over taken the Urberer of that time, as it was about to now. He saw his father wounded and liked the trained warrior he was, but not like the noble men his father raised, he stabbed at the heart of what he considered his foe when there was no fight left to give. “If your family names and responsibilities matter so much to you father. You keep them.” And his words followed up just as his sword had done to many an enemy, to be head in one stroke “And you can die with them. I’ll live my life free. Marry who I want. And piss on the banner of these noble titles.”
His father’s eyes were large. He had not just emotionally beheaded his father in that moment. He had drained him of his spirit. And he sealed it with a enthused “Fare. Thee. Well.” A verbal wiping off of his bladed. He stormed out that day. A day he never forgot. For he only told a half-truth...
***
The memory had flashed in a moment. He had refocused in time to catch Shelly’s saying.
“… but he could prepare me. He could give me the tools to survive, adapt, and even thrive. Ways to preserve my mind, my independence, my spirit.”
Urberer’s hands were digging into the chair at this moment. The emotions of the past had well back up to the surface. He sat on the edge of the chair and it was taking him everything not to respond.
“To do that. To have an edge and better choose my route in life, I needed to have a deep understanding of my responsibilities as a woman. It’s simple really. We all have our responsibilities to attend to in life.”
“It’s simply bullshit is what it is. How can you tell me that a woman, such as yourself, who most likely is out learned than many lower ranked nobles, must play the subordinate role and her father be fine with it? That’s cowardice bullshit from a man unwillingly to fight for what he believes.”
“Excuse you,” the fire in her eyes return.
Her tone was sharp, shaper than he expected a woman of her prestige to have. He nearly felt compelled to prepare for a literal fist fight. It also happened to snap him fully back to the current moment. “I’m so sorry. That wasn’t meant -“
“Silence.” She said, sitting up in her seat.
Urberer just shut up. He wasn’t sure exactly how h should prepare for this verbal trouncing he was about to receive.
“He’s no coward. But he knows he can’t fight the world. Not alone at least. What do you expect one man, from a simple merchant family to do?”
“I’m sorry it’s just that it was more about -
“Silence.”
Urberer returned to keep his mouth shut this time.
She looked off at the bird cage. The dove remained peaceful, however, its eyes were on her now. She looked pensive before she continued.
“You know, I’m not so mad at what you said.”
Well that’s shocking. Urberer thought and beliefed it was best to keep the comment to himself.
“Why am I not mad? It’s because I thought of the same thing growing up. And I would bug him to let me do things that little boys were allowed to do, that were ‘not appropriate for a little girl of means’, such as playing in the dirt, with swords, climbing trees, or even going out on occasional hunting trips on the mainland. I remembered being so angry too when he’d have me come along to his meetings, especially at the merchants guild or small negotiations with powerful men. They always gave a sideways glance at me. Like I shouldn’t be there. Some even said it. But my father kept taking me. I’d even whisper to my father when the men would get their calculations wrong. I whispered it because the few times I told these men they got angry and stopped the whole negotiation.
“And then one day I remebemer it. I had stayed up late. Snuck out of my room to the kitchen for a late night snack. I decided I was going to go sleep in my parents room. So I went there. But they weren’t there. I happened to go past his study and the door as cracked open. Do you know what I heard?”
“I’ve not the slightest idea.”
“I heard him crying to my mother,” she says the next line as if only addressing herself, father crying. “He was telling her how bright I was, how great I was with maths, writing, understanding contracts. He told her he didn’t want anyone else in the room besides me. Little me. And probably by the time I was of age, I’d be able to run the entire estate without help.” She’s lets out a sadden laugh.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.
“You know my mother, being the to the point woman that she is, asked him a simple question ‘do you wish she’d been born a boy?’ He said no. He said he wished I’d just have the right to live my life. My father? The man who always corrected me for my less than girl like behaviors was my biggest supporter in me, just being me.” She stops. Clears her throat and then begins again.
“So Monk Urberer, I do not think of my father as a hypocrite. I think of my father as a person doing the best he can with the tools he has in the world he lives in. Do I think his actions were perfect? No. I do not. Do I wish he fought the system. Yes I do. Am I selfish enough to hold it against him at this point of my life. No. No I’m not. Life isn’t always as simple as galavanting off into the sunrise. Sometimes, its foggy, and you can’t tell which direction the sun is rising in or setting. And you simply do the best that you can. And because of the man whom you’d call a hyorpcite, I’ve learned that sometimes the best you can do is flawed, and you’ve got to let it go. I choose not to hold my father’s choices against him. I just seem him as a man, as a person, who just wanted the best for his child.”
“Well, I feel quite terrible now.” Urberer said. The sudden distancing use of his title ‘Monk’ followed by the notion off ‘selfish’ were like twin daggers in his chest. The former word bothered him because he knew protective barriers when they came up. And for all intents and purposes he just attacked someone she loved, perhaps quite wrongfully, and thus attacked her, a person who so far has treated him with great care. The second word was even more concerning than the first. Was he ‘selfish’? Was it selfish to hold people to higher standards? No. That wasn’t the problem. He knew it. But there was a problem. Because what he saw from her was a woman who still knew how to love a flawed person, openly. And he … he just didn’t have that.
“Well good. You should.”
Ouch. She doesn’t hold back does she.
“Plus you really should because I am an excellent student on the usage of guilt. It’s taught in Mothering 101: Chapter 11: Guilt Theory and Tactcis,” she said matter-factly.”
“What?”
“I’m joking,” she cracks open a large smile.
“I’m glad.”
“There’s no chapter on guilt theory. And if anyone seemed good at it, it’s seems to be fathers, even mine. If anything, I think guilting is a innate ability of parents; that’s a personal theory.” She said.
Urberer felt the mood shift. Her joke had broken him out of his spiral of thought. Though, the thought did cross his mind, there might be no chapter on it, but she didn’t say she wasn’t an excellent student on it.
“Well if you’re not an excellent student on guilt. Then you’re definitely great student of conversations.”
She simply responded “I am an excellent student. You take what meaning you choose from it.”
“Well…”
She brings a finger to her lips, interrupting Urberer, and then says “And if you remember, as I showed you earlier, if some questions aren’t asked, no one has to lie.”
I have the feeling of being outclassed. Or like I simply walked into a beautiful gossamer web; a trap set long ago, that just ties you up the more you struggle against it.
“I apologize Miss Hali”
She rolls her shoulder. “You can call still me Shelly, Urberer.”
“Thank you. I have been a rude guess, how can I -“
A mischievous grin crosses the entirey of her face.
Yep. Like a fly in a spider web. The harder I try to move, the more stuck I become.
“There are just a few things I want to do. I do not think you and I are very different. I doubt people speak to you outside of just being a Monk and people treat me as the porcelain princess, unable to be touched.”
Urberer nods.
“As such, we are so of the most free individuals on this island. And yet resoundingly the most restrained people. We respond to the needs and wishes of others. We adapt to the social norms, well,” she looks him over, “some more than others.”
Urberer crosses his arms at the slight jab.
“We don’t get to just go out and about freely.”
“Shelly. I am a very free individual. I go where I want, when I want. I am not as tied, and say this respectfully, to the same responsibilities and expectations as you.”
Shelly crosses her arms and looks Urberer up and down. Then as if she discovered something she says “Hmm.”
“Yes?”
“Over drinking. Leading women on who you will never pursue. Sleeping wherever you want, including the streets, and fufiling some of your duties only.”
“Well yes, no need to point out my faults.”
“Oh no. That’s not my point at all. You see, all of those actions would make anyone imagine that you are one of the freest men around.”
“Well. I do, do what I want.”
“Yet…” she twirls her finger in the air, as she looks up at a corner in thought, “from what I hear, you take time to treat any truly sick person, you go to the beds of the dying immediately upon request, and you are notoriously confidential when it comes to your confessions.”
“Yes, and?”
“It just appears to me that your actions are approximations of freedom. You can’t truly shirk your duties. But like the sense of freedom you get by bending cultural norms.”
“I never said -“
She waves a finger and smiles “I didn’t ask. I just said it ‘appears’. You don’t have to answer one way or the other at all.”
“Hmph.”
She’s too good at this. Years of negotiating and I’m fall flat on my face here. Urberer thought.
Shelly looked to about to say something and then stopped in her tracks. She simply gave a smile and leaned back on her couch.
She chose to stop speaking suddenly. That’s strange.
“Urberer. There’s only a few things I want to do. I want to go out and walk around the city, not be hidden away by a carriage. For a day, I’d like to move like everyone else does. Experience this city without my guards or hand maiden. I want to watch things. I want to understand. It’s hard to do given,” she gestures around herself “everything. I think you can show me. Show me around the city. Walk with me into some of these different stores.”
“You just want me to escort you around the city?”
“Is that a lot to ask?”
“Shelly, it would be a pleasure, however there are things -“
Shelly interrupts “Weren’t you looking for a way to thank me? Or was it a way to make up for your rude outburst and critique of my family. After saying such harsh things about a man, my father to be precise, you think you could at least show his daughter a bit of kindness out of respect.”
“Shelly, its just that right now the city is”
She dramatically tosses her body back onto the couch, bringing the back of her hand to her head and utilizing a more rural accent, “Oh my good skies. Could it be, that my beauty has faded like the sun setting sky. Is mine the beauty that makes men cry when they open up their eyes? Oh woe.”
‘Fine!”
Shelly sits back up quickly. Her voice back to its normal tone “Good. I figured you’d come to my side of things eventually,” a grin caressing her face.
I can’t believe this woman.
“Just get me my kit,” clearing his throat, “please.”
“My pleasure.” She smiles, pushing herself off the couch. She pivots swiftly and and walks to the door opposite, and a bit offset from the entry door. She stops and turns back in Urberer’s direction. She looks on for a few moments, seemingly past him. Her eyes then drop down onto him.
“Yes Shelly?”
“I just wanted to say thank you for being willing, well, for agreeing to accompany me today,” her tone seemed authentic. She then performed a curtsey. This one was different than the the perfectly practiced one prior. It was still graceful in all its manners, but this one seemed to have actual heart behind it. “I’ll return shortly with your items. Please wait here.” She then turns, with less haste than before, and enters through the ornate, yet heavy interior door.
Hm. Something about that, seemed right. I mean, she’s as clever as a spider. There is no doubt in that. However, perhaps there was some truth to what she was saying. Maybe she just wants to be treated like a normal person. As much as you can treat a person from extravagant wealth as normal. And I? What do I want?
“Cooo. Coo-ooo—ooo,” came the sound from behind Urberer. The “cooing” had surprised him both because it broke the silence, and because the bird for the most part had been quiet. He looked over his shoulder to see the pigeon, sitting on top of the birdcage.
***
The white dove stared back at Urberer, giving its wings a a bit of a flap and stretching them out. The cage was not swinging and Urberer’s position of the cage made it hard for him to tell if the door was open.
Well that’s … strange. How did it get out? Did I knock it’s door open earlier? No. That doesn’t make sense. I thought it was locked. Maybe it was just closed tight. Well, I’d hate to lock him back in but … I don’t want her friend just flying off.
Urberer got up from his seat in a controlled matter, attempting not to startled the bird and then when walked towards the cage.
Alright little guy. Don’t get spooked and fly off. Birds flying indoors is very disconcerting. The only thing worst are bats. I can’t stand bats. They fly in such a horrible incongruent way. You never know which way they’re going, and that chittering sound. Urberer rolled his shoulders up as a cold chill went across his back and to each shoulder blade. Just creepy I tell you. Just creepy.
Urberer rounded the side of the cage.
Hm. That’s odd, he thought as he saw the door was closed. The bird
Adjusted its feet and tilted its head at Urberer. Urberer went to up the cage door and found it tightly shut. Noticing the swinging of the cage, concerned not to startled the bird, he took control of the bottom and held it still. He peeked back at the bird simply coo’ed softly a few times in his general direction. Noting the bird still in its place Urberer tried to open the cage door again. Noticing it did not give he looked for any mechanisms that were locked or impeding its swing.
How in the world is this stuck like this? Urberer thought and gave a few forceful tugs on the cage door; all the while the bird continued to watch him.
“Oh, I’m sure this looks very, very amusing to you,” Urberer said looking at the dove, and then turning back to fingering the door. The dove’s response was a simple coding sound. Urberer continued “Yup. Silly human can’t open the cage door, that he somehow opened up. I don’t really want to put you in here anyways little guy. I’m sure it’s not comfortable to be locked in here. Right?” Urberer waited for a response. “Oh, now you’ve got noting to say. Not even a little,” Urberer imitates the dove’s cooing “sound? Nothing.”
Urberer looked up at the bird, whose tail was now facing Urberer. The bird was in his focus, but he saw something in his periphery across the room.
Or more like someone. Urberer thought to himself.
“What are you doing over there?” Shelly asked, a laugh as she covered her mouth with a laced hand.
She now was decked in an ivory overlook with the image of her family crest neatly stitched into the left breast of it. In her other hand was his kit. It was a chest harness made of leather straps that could be sinched down tighter. From smaller straps were a multitude of small vials, a small knife, a few first aid items like bandages, chalk, paper, and a number of accessories for a person on an adventure. It was his trusted kit; an everyday carry for the those “just in case" situations.
“Well, um,” he stumbles over his words, looking at how to explain an unexplainable situation. “You’re bird, um..”
“Yes?”
“Your bird was locked up and um…”
She smiles and walks to Urberer. She places places one of the straps of the kit in his hand. When she lets it go Urberer’s hand drops a bit from the weight of the kit.
“Birds have a way of seeking freedom don’t they.” As she observes the dove. She then gestures to his kit “Please, go ahead and put that on. I’m sure its very important to you. It is a simple, but very well made piece of,” as she searchers for the words “equipment. The leather appears to be from the mainland. The buckles are made of mithril. Once again I must say, Mithril. And all of those vials are designed in such a modest way... I imagine it’d be hard to even see them with your cloak overtop of them.”
Urberer gave her an intense stair before taking off his cloak and starting the process of placing the kit back on. He padded himself a few times to make sure everything was in order.
“Yes. You never quite know … when someone may need a certain kind of medicine.”
“Oh, I’m sure.”
“Yes.”
“Is everything fine with your kit?”
Urberer had already started to place his cloak back on. He stopped with it midway over his head, took it off and rechecked his supplies and straps again.
“Yes. Everything is fine. Did you do something to one of my potions?”
“Of course not!”
“Good,” he puts his cloak overtop the kit. “Those are specific doses for specific problems.”
“Yes. I did nothing to your vials. My word.”
“I appreciate that.”
“I just completely reminded one of the straps and replaced a buckle. It was destroyed.”
“Wha-really? I didn’t even notice.”
Shelly gave a smug smile. “Good. Shall we?”
The more you try, the deeper in the web you fall.
***