The Elemental Jewels (Book 1) (4 page)

And so they played on.  The upper class girls disappeared between sets, while Brevon and Garrel danced with girls he didn’t recognize, and Lurinda danced a slow dance with the blacksmith’s apprentice, a dance that Grange watched through narrowed eyes.

When the gong in the temple signaled midnight, the band leader announced the next song would be the last.  The food vendors had left and the crowd at the fest had dwindled, but many of those left rose from their tables, and came to the dance floor.  The moon rose in the eastern sky, gaining enough elevation to peek over the roofs of the buildings around the plaza, and lighting the cobblestones as the lanterns began to come down.

When the song was done, the band leader dropped a few small coins in Grange’s hand.  “Thanks for helping us.  If our flute player misses one more job, I may want you to join full time,” he smiled encouragingly as he said it, then went on to help the other players pack up their instruments.

None of his friends were left.  Grange began walking through the moonlit streets, thankful that it was a warm evening for harvest season.  He was back in the orphanage, in his room, several minutes later, the last of the oldest residents in the building to go to bed.

His mind refused to give in to the exhaustion he felt.  The encounter with the patrol; the confrontation with the tourist witch; the girls at the fest; the strange black creatures he had seen – all had a place in his thoughts, and he turned them all over, finding pleasure and confusion for untold minutes, until he finally fell asleep.

Chapter 3

Grange woke up the next morning when the other boys in his room started to rise.  He was the oldest of the children who lived in the orphanage, a bittersweet title to hold.  It meant that he had entitlements, but it also meant that he was close to ending his residence there.  He’d seen dozens of other boys have the title during his life in the orphanage, for he had spent his entire life there, deposited as an infant, unlike some who had come when they were toddlers or youngsters, victims of family tragedies, or abandonment.

He remembered one boy whose reign as the oldest boy had only lasted for eight days, barely more than a week.  The boy hadn’t even gotten to enjoy all his perks before he was forced to leave, and, even worse, he had suffered from an attitude that was mostly self-pity during the eight days he was the oldest.  Grange and the others had all talked about how they would have done as much as possible to maximize their celebrity status, instead of bemoaning their brief reign.

He dressed and made his bed, then went down to where he was entitled to the seat closest to the window, and found a glass of juice waiting for him.  A young boy brought him his bowl of oatmeal, as his friends came to his table, and the day started anew.

That day and the next were ordinary days for Grange.  He made sure that he didn’t go down the street where Lurinda’s dressmaker shop was located on the first day, so that he didn’t appear too eager to follow the girl.  On the following day though, he went down the street at noon, and saw Lurinda, working on a dress that was being worn by a live customer, a stout female who stood back in the shadows of the shop interior, preventing Grange from seeing many details of Lurinda’s appearance.  He’d have to wait until she finished with the customer, but he had time to kill, so he stood near an alley and waited, until he heard his name unexpectedly called.

“Grange!  Grange, what a coincidence,” the voice of the band leader from the fest called out to him.

“Our flute player is leaving town – are you ready to be the regular?” he asked as he reached Grange and shook his hand with a warm welcome.

“I’d love to,” Grange replied immediately and sincerely.  He enjoyed the music, he enjoyed the attention he received, and he suddenly envisioned a future of leaving the orphanage and making a living as a professional musician, playing at festivals and events throughout the city, night after night – he could end his career as a pickpocket.  It seemed like a glamorous dream that might be within his reach.  And it would make him that much more desirable to Lurinda, he hoped.

“We have to play at the plaza on the north bank of the river tomorrow, from sunset to midnight.  Can you be there?” the bandleader asked.

“Certainly,” Grange said.  “Will you have a flute there, or should I bring my own?” he asked.

“Which will sound better?” his new coworker wanted to know.

“Yours,” Grange answered candidly.  His flute was old and slightly flat.

“I’ll have it there for you; you can have it or buy a good one for yourself,” the band leader told him.  “See you tomorrow.  What a lucky chance; I don’t usually walk down this street,” he said, then gave Grange a pat on the shoulder, and continued on his way.

Grange smiled broadly as he turned back to look at the shop.  The customer had disappeared from view, and then she reappeared, wearing a different dress.  Lurinda smiled at her, they exchanged a few words, and the lady left the shop, giving Grange the chance he sought to finally enter and speak to the girl alone.  He crossed the street, put his hand on the door to push it open, then stopped at the sound of a loud outburst not far down the road.  He turned his head to look, and saw a pair of brawny men, wearing the leather aprons of a blacksmith shop, push another man out of the wide open door of their shop, carrying him out and throwing him to the ground in the middle of the street as he shouted obscenities at them.  They looked down at him for a half second, one of them pointed a finger and spoke something, then they turned and re-entered their shop, while the man continued to scream.

He was a drunkard, or one of the crazy street people, Grange might have thought.  Such men managed to live on the fringes of the city’s society for a few weeks or months whenever they appeared, but then they inevitably disappeared, either having moved on to some other city, or more commonly turning up dead – disease, starvation, and violence all equally common.

Grange stared at this man though, as the drunkard rose to his feet, dusting himself off while still shouting irrational obscenities.  The drunken tirade was not what made Grange stare in dropped jaw astonishment though.  It was the appearance of a shadowy small dark lump on the back of the man’s neck, a shape that moved about in the vicinity of the man’s shoulders and head and neck, growing and shrinking unpredictably.

The man started to stagger away from the blacksmith shop, going up the street away from Grange.  He removed his hand from the door, and started to follow the strange, hallucinatory sight.  There were no reactions from the other people on the street, other than they seemed to step away from him as though he were simply an ordinary drunkard.

“Grange, you found the shop!” Lurinda opened the door and smiled at him.

He turned to look at her, then turned to look at the departing drunkard.  He looked back down the street, then back at her.

“What is it?” she asked.  The girl stepped out into the street, and Grange smelled a faint flowery fragrance as she brushed by him to look at his distraction.

“Oh,” she said flatly.  “He’s been around for a couple of weeks, maybe a fortnight.  He’ll go away soon.

“Come in, won’t you?  Madame won’t be here until after lunch, so I’m all alone in the shop right now,” she told him, and he turned to look at her.  Was the information meant to tell him something, he wondered.

She stepped back into the shop, and he followed her in, the mystery of the shadow on the man’s back forgotten.  He passed by a swath of white cloth, and was suddenly reminded of the Southgar girl, who was as pale and light-haired as he was.

“How long have you played in the band at the festival?” Lurinda asked.  “I didn’t know you played.  When I saw you up there I turned to Emande and asked who it was.  You stand out so well, you know,” she explained.  “I’ve seen you before, of course,” she quickly added.

“That was my first time to play with the band,” he replied then saw a spark of doubt in Lurinda’s eye, as she seemed to question whether he was really a musician or not.

“But I’ll play with them again tomorrow night,” he told her.  “We’ll be at the plaza on the north bank of the river,” he added the details, to make the job seem more real.

“Would you like to come see us play?” he asked.

“Perhaps,” she coyly replied.  “Will you have time to do anything besides play music?”

“Not until we’re done,” he answered thoughtfully.  “But I could play a couple of dance songs at your request,” he tried to improve his offer.

“Would they let you skip a song or two to dance?” Lurinda was standing slightly closer to him now, making him nervous.

“If I asked, I’ll bet they would,” he tried to sound sage and convincing as he answered.  He reached for a pin cushion on the counter next to where they stood, something to keep his hands occupied, as Lurinda stood so close they were practically touching one another, while she looked at him with eyes that were warm and inviting.

He started to lean down, and she closed her eyes.  It was incredible, his mind was telling him.  He was about to kiss Lurinda.  Everything seemed to slow down as his body bent and his lips puckered.

Then there was a noise in the back of the shop.  “Lurinda?” a woman’s voice called.

The girl’s eyes popped open, and her hands flew up in a startled reaction.  She struck his hands that were still holding the pin cushion, and popped it from his grip, making it fly upward, then descend.

The world was no longer in slow motion.  Instead it was moving faster than his brain and his hands could fathom.  He groped in the air, trying to catch the prickly ball of material, and his hands plunged after the target instinctively, as it managed to drop with perfect precision down into the small opening between flesh and cloth where Lurinda’s cleavage was evident.

Grange grasped the pin cushion, then squealed as one of the pins poked him palm.

He realized where his hand was, and Lurinda’s eyes were huge, while her mouth began to open in a perfect circle.

He jerked his hand free from its soft confinement, still holding the pin cushion.

“I am sorry, so sorry,” he instantly said.  “I didn’t mean, I didn’t even think.”

His face had to be bright red, he could tell by the warmth he felt on his cheeks.

The girl was still staring at him.

“Lurinda?” the woman’s voice called again, from a closer part of the back of the shop.

“It’s Madame; she’s early,” Lurinda said.  She straightened her mussed clothing, then grabbed the pin cushion.

“I’m right here,” she called.

“Go, I’ll see you tomorrow.  Stop by and pick me up,” she told him.  One hand pushed him towards the door, while she placed the pin cushion back down and simultaneously twirled to face the back door.

“I’m coming,” she told her proprietress, as Grange scrambled out the front of the shop and out into the street.

Grange scrambled down the street, out of sight of the shop windows, then stopped and leaned against an alley corner.  He was grinning from ear to ear, basking with satisfaction that despite his incredibly stupid action, Lurinda still was willing to go to see him play in the band.  He felt his cheeks grow warm once again as he recollected the instantaneous reaction that had led his nimble fingers down into the front of the girl’s blouse, truly only thinking of trying to be helpful.

He gathered his thoughts, then decided to return to the orphanage, to see if he was needed there for any reason.  He cheerfully walked back to his home, only to stop in surprise a half a block away when he spotted Garrel.  He veered across the street and turned down an alley, then stopped by a battered wooden door and waited for his friend to arrive.

“You were quite the surprise the other night, playing with the band,” his friend told him as he joined him.

“They’ve asked me to play with them again,” Grange happily told his friend.  He had more good news to share as well, of course, but he wanted to space the reports out slightly.

“That’s good,” Garrel told him.  “Hockis has a job for us.  Tomorrow night, at the plaza again,” he gave the basic details.

“Already? So soon? Just three days after the last one, in the same place?  That goes against all the rules Hockis has been preaching at us for the past year or more,” Grange protested.

“I know,” Garrel nodded his head in agreement, and seemed to share the doubts momentarily.  “But he knows best,” the boy overcame his concerns immediately.

“I’ve got an engagement.  I’m supposed to play with the band on the north bank, starting at sunset,” Grange said slowly.  With the prospect of a semi-regular job playing in the band, the allure of thievery was suddenly diminished.  “I didn’t expect him to want to go back to the plaza so quickly.”

“We’ll be done before sunset,” Garrel waved the objection away breezily.  “You work with us, then you go make music – nothing simpler.”

“I promised Lurinda I’d walk her over to the plaza to hear us play,” Grange threw another wrench into the plan.  “That’ll take a while more.”

“Lurinda?” Garrel asked incredulously.

“We talked at the fest the other night.  I’ve just come from her shop, as a matter of fact,” Grange said.

“You and Lurinda?  That doesn’t make any sense,” Garrel stared at him.

“Okay,” his friend puffed his cheeks as he concentrated.  “I’ll find Hockis and tell him we have to be done an hour before sunset.  Will that give you enough time?”

“Not really,” Grange tried to estimate the time needed for him to walk the necessary route.  “But I’ll make it work,” he added, as he saw the frustration growing on Garrel’s face.

“You and Lurinda?” his friend asked again.

“I’m going to find out,” Grange said.  “But it looks promising for now,” he grinned.

“Good for you,” Garrel slapped him on the shoulder.  “Alright, meet at the plaza in midafternoon tomorrow, and we’ll get things taken care of in time for you to go have happy times, lucky guy!”

He walked away and left the alley.  Grange waited a minute to allow separation, then followed him out, and continued to the orphanage.  He felt uneasy at the thought of another round of picking pockets – so many things in the past two days had piled up on this mind that he found that he didn’t want to add the complication of another effort to steal.  He remembered the feel of the patrolman’s hand on his shoulder, and he remembered the terror of the old woman staring into his eyes.  He thought about the joy of having a job and a girlfriend, and he felt tempted to chase Garrel down and cancel his involvement.

Except he knew that his fingers were important.  He was the key to the scam, and he didn’t want to just abandon his companions.  Without him, they’d have no one to picket the pockets, to collect the money that was the sole purpose for carrying out the job.