Dust and Water: A Song For The Stained Novella (A MAGICAL SAGA) (6 page)

My hand moves, slowly and silently, away from the branches and towards my hip where the easiest of my knives is hidden. There’s four slave traders on horseback still coming down the road and the cart behind them. The fact that they’ve ridden off ahead of the cart says that there is something of greater value than slaves on their minds – like the traders lives.

The cart has my attention if those girls weren’t screaming I’d be running for my own life right now. Girls always ruddy scream and it makes it hard to think.

All right, if I wait until these mounted traders are out of sight and get in front of the cart, I might be able to stop the thing, or I might become a road pancake.

A hairy arm grabs me from behind and I almost scream.

“Gotcha, boy,” someone says, and by the stench of him it’s a bandit.

I ram my knife into his foot and in the second where he screams and falls backwards I jump to my feet, facing him with another blade in my hand.

There’s three of them. Not a band of bandits – just scouts.

The guy in front of me has his foot pinned to the ground by my weapon. Lucky these things come free from my knife-thief friend Ero. I don’t need to try and get that one back.

The other two bandits ignore their fallen comrade, useless lot they’d be even if they were on my side.

I look at their still sheathed swords and down at my little blade. It’s little, small enough to conceal against my wrist. Too small.

Running like a jack rabbit smelling hounds; down the bank, through the sunken drain, and out into the middle of the road, right in front of two galloping slave traders.

“Zakkai’s dead… no coin. Ruddy waste of time,” one of the traders shouts and draws his sword. “I’m going home.”

The horse’s rear, men shout, swords swing and in the commotion, I find myself scaling the same bank I just ran down. The bandits and the slave traders set to work on each other. I don’t wait to watch the show.

I do decide that my blade is worth retrieving and snatch it out of the bandit’s foot on my way past.

“Thank you,” I shout over my shoulder.

Finding Ash’s horse still tied to a tree I struggle onto his back.

My heart pounding, and the horse not wanting to stand still, I search up and down the road for the cart.

“Stinkin’ traders and bandit scum,” I mutter, but there are still some girls in danger – and I’m not sure when or why I started caring, but now that I do care I want to find out what’s going on and how I can help.

The fact that bandits and slave traders are standing in my way boils my blood.

“Ha!” I shout at the horse like I’ve seen Ash and Dom do.

But I can’t ride down the road, that’s far too crazy even for me, so I hug tight to the horse’s neck and let him run like a wild thing through the trees.

There, the cart… but it’s not moving.

“Help!” a trader shouts from the driver’s seat.

I pull Ash’s horse to a stop and whip my head around to watch. Ash’s horse fails to actually stop, but kinda slows and begins turning in circles. Sweat is beading like foam off his neck.

“Help,” the driver shouts again.

No help comes, and no help is going to come because they’re busy either fighting with or running from bandits.

We move closer to the road. It’s the younger kid from the Meadowsblades, I saw him at the battle fire but didn’t actually meet him, and he’s on the traders back hitting the guy around the chest and shoulders with one hand and holding on with the other. I can see three cheering female faces in the back, but they’re tied up – and this kid isn’t making any progress.

The trader reaches up and grips the kid’s shirt, ready to throw him off his back.

The blade’s in my hand.

I aim and let it fly.

Silver metal whacks into the trader’s angry creased forehead. His eyes roll back before he topples from the cart – almost taking the kid with him.

More girl’s cheers sound out, and the kid is beaming like he just won his first battle.

I frown at the silver blade in the dirt. It hit the man on the hilt side – when did I become such a poor shot?

“Remy, turn the cart around,” one of the girls says.

They’re soon safe and out of sight, and I hurry to grab my now red and dusty weapon.

By the time I’ve mounted up and begun moving towards the house, there’s no one on the road.

“Ha, ha,” I shout at the horse, racing into the empty Rathernfen yard.

“Oh, look. He’s back,” Dom says, emerging from the house.

“What took you so long?” Ash asks.

I toss him his horse’s reins.

Ash just laughs. “A lot of sweat for a horse who was only supposed to go down the road. Loose control did you?”

I would tell them all about it – but they’d never believe me.

“Looks like you’ve been to Fairlarn and back,” Dom says. “And you forgot the berries.”

I search myself, feeling for the bag. I have black fingers and little cuts to prove I picked the rotten things – but I’ve lost the bag.

There’s nothing I can say, except, “rematch?”

“I’ve an offer for you boy,” Roland says.

I sit up a little straighter though I am the only one left in the kitchen. Me and Roland. There’s still food here. Until I’m shouted at to get out, this is the best place in the house to be.

“You want a place to belong?” Roland asks, which sounds nothing like an offer. I have a place, a cold, dark, wet and damp place, and I’d be there now if I didn’t stop to warn these people… I let go of that train of thought. My hoards gone, and now I’ve been more than a week delayed. Going back to Pa is not going to be pleasant.

“Well, do you, lad?”

I nod instinctively.

“If you keep doing the work well enough there’s a bed in the house for you.”

My jaw drops. A bed?

I begin to laugh; this guy is crazy.

“I’m not joking. Best you sort out any bonds tying you down and let Sareen know if you’ll be here for dinner.”

I’ve practically run the distance into the city and my legs are shaking from the effort. But inside, somewhere right about where a horse might kick a man’s chest, I feel like finding gold in the middle of the road isn’t the best find I could make anymore.

I waltz through the streets of Argeish. Nothing could faze me here anyway; this is where I’ve grownup. This is practically everything I know.

At the end of Justice Street is the Justice of Authorities offices. Their job is simply to keep the peace. If the peace isn’t kept their job is to restore order first, seek justice second and mostly all you will ever see them doing is lots of nothing.

So it is, but then it isn’t, like sticking rotten vegetables beside crown jewels, that my Pa’s tavern and all its underhanded night life is a stones throw from the one institution meant to keep the city clean.

I barge through the tavern doors, it’s early and clients usually arrive after lunch, so there’s no one in sight. The big wooden bar is on my left, benches and tables designed mostly for cards, dice and stones to be played cover the rest of the space and in the far left corner is a door with the words ‘No Entry’ carved into it by a blunt blade.

This door is heavier to swing, so heavy that when I was a kid if I was shut in here, I couldn’t get myself out – no lock needed.

The little hallway has a handful of bedrooms on the left and a living and kitchen space on the right before it descends sharply into the cellar.

“Pa,” I call out.

“You!” comes a shout and my pa, a fit but wiry old man, bursts from the first bedroom.

He’s only wearing his pants; he was sleeping.

He swings his scrunched up shirt, and I just manage to duck.

“You been gone three weeks, boy,” he says, swinging it again. “And not a single picking on you. What are we supposed to feed you with if you’re off dancing and singing in the sunshine instead of working?”

His eyes are narrowed in the kind of intensity that means he’s not going to listen. I duck another swing and dart for the stairs.

“You’d better run boy, but there’s not nothing for you down there.”

What does he mean by that? Down here has been my whole life. It’s a cellar full of wine and ale barrels, stores for the kitchen and all manner of other stuff – like broken tables, so it’s kind of the whole life for the tavern too.

In the far corner, where the damp is the least and I get fair warning of my Pa entering in a temper, is my pile of sacks bed. Was. It’s gone.

My jaw drops, everything I have ever valued was slipped between the layers of those sacks.

Well, almost everything. I dash across the room. Some of my drawings are still here. Most of them have been torn from the wall and litter the floor. In the spots where the stones were chipped or the mortar had come free, there are little shelves and there used to be bobs – things I’d found and secretly kept. A pin, a nice belt buckle, an arrowhead. All gone.

“Dregs!” I shout.

“Watch your ruddy language,” Pa shouts out.

I turn and glare at my fiery haired cousin. She looks like she’s been rolling around with a cartwheel and she thinks she owns the place. Well, her da, me uncle, does own the place so she kinda does. That doesn’t quench the sensation of midday-cobblestones burning inside my chest.

“Or you’ll be gone too,” Pa finishes.

I ignore her; all that’s on my mind is my last treasure and then getting out of here.

“Where’ve you been, anyway?”

I run my fingers over the stones around my trashed bed.

“Nowhere. Why’d Pa do it?” I ask, waving at the ruins around me.

My fingers feel the slight shift of a loose stone, and I pause because Mercy hates Pa too and she’s usually the first to talk dung about him, but she’s quiet.

That’s when I see the plump white thing in her hands. White like only something new ever is.

“What’s that?” I ask.

She hugs it close to her chest. “Well, you weren’t here and me, I was, and I thought you were gone for good. Them things were just junk. Plus, when Pa, saw he gave me a few coppers for the job. Like, clearing it out and all.” I advance towards her. “I never knew you was planning to come back and now you’re back, and I am sorry.”

I snatch the white thing out of her arms. For all she’s bigger than I am, she has spent her life serving drinks and not hauling loads of lost things.

“A pillow!” I shout. “You traded all my stuff for a pillow!”

I whack her over the head with it and in the shower of feathers, I hear her hit the ground. Everything feels like a dream, and the feathers don’t help. My fingers find the loose stone again and I pull the object from behind it.

Leaving her, and all those memories behind I take the steps three at a time and barge through the door into the tavern.

Chairs whack, smash and topple in my wake; I even grab one and throw it across the room.

“Wow,” some lad says.

Freezing in my tracks, I eye him. He looks about my age, maybe older, but, of course, he is taller.

“Bad day?” he asks.

I grunt at him.

“Do you know where the proprietor is?” He asks, saying proprietor as if he’s not sure the word even exists.

“Who sent you,” I ask.

“Hi, I’m Larkin. A friend, he’s helping me get a job. I kinda, well, see –”

I wave at him impatiently and keep walking towards the front door, toppling every second chair just for good measure.

“You don’t want no job here.”

“Can’t be any worse than my last job, or my da.”

Turning I look him in the eye. “Don’t aim for no worse, go look for something better.”

I push the tavern doors open at the same moment some guy tries to walk in. He’s not a local drunkard – and I’d know – and his gaze lands straight on the lad behind me.

“Get him out of here,” I say. “No one worth employing with here.”

The man nods, and he has those dark knowing kind of eyes that instantly make me think of magic. Goosebumps rise on my arms. I get moving. It’s almost lunchtime. I can be somewhere with good food by afternoon tea. Fancy that, me thinking about afternoon tea – and I just might get to eat some, too.

“Hunter,” Mercy shouts.

I turn.

She’s standing on the dirt between the cobbled road and the tavern stairs. Her mess of red tangled hair is decorated with feathers.

“Don’t go.”

I shake my head. A new feeling is unsettling my stomach. “Run, Mercy. While you still can,” I shout back at her.

The other guy and the lad are nowhere to be seen. Good.

Pa pushes the door open, his dust coloured eyes full of anger and the stiffness in his shoulders is made up of aggression.

“Mercy, get back to work or you can find somewhere else to sleep tonight. And get those feathers out of your hair.” The door slams shut behind him.

She looks at me, long and sorrowful.

“Take this,” I say, slipping the flask of foul Baren liquor from my shirt. It’s still full – or as full as it was when I found it.

But I don’t need it anymore.

“Why?” she says.

“Buy a new pillow or something.”

She hugs it to her chest, then she does as Pa says.

She’s gone.

A part of me wants to go and get her. Tell her to come with me. But I know she won’t. She has a bed, a bedroom, and a wage – even if they do still treat her like a servant.

She’s safe, in a dismal kind of way, and she has to make up her own mind.