The Sorcerer's Ascension (8 page)

Azerick embraced his friend and former tutor. “I understand, Ewen, really I do. It would not do any good to take those kinds of risks, especially for your family.”

“Here, son, take this,” Ewen said, handing him a small pouch of coins. “It isn’t much, but it will buy a couple meals at least. My loyalty to your father cost me several of my clients but I’m still getting by. I’m better off without their kind anyway. I wouldn’t work for em for all the gold in the kingdom,” Ewen said as he spat on the ground. “You take care of yourself, boy, and take care of your mother. If there is ever anything I can do for you, you know I’ll do it. I just can’t risk my family.”

“I understand. You take care of yourself and yours too. We’ll make it, I know it.”

With those words, Azerick left the alley and wandered the city for hours thinking about the injustice of it all. He thought about who might have been responsible and the revenge he would exact for the loss of his father, home, and friends. He thought about what Ewen had said about the Duke’s actions. They certainly seemed strange. Even if the Duke was involved in some nefarious scheme or conspiracy that made it necessary to sacrifice his father, what could he do about it? He would have to be able to prove it.

Azerick knew he would kill any man, even the Duke, if he were responsible for murdering his father. However, he could only act on proof, not suspicion alone. Even if he did find that the Duke had his father murdered, how would he get to him? Azerick was just a street urchin now. How would a common sneak thief ever be able to take on a man of power like the Duke? Azerick decided it did not matter. Somehow, someway, and some day he would get his vengeance even if it took the rest of his life. He would take down the King himself if he had to.

*****

 
Celeste was making her usual rounds, serving mutton stew, ale, wine, and spirits to the evening crowd at the less than reputable inn where she worked and lived. It was a boisterous night bordering on rowdy. Several ships had called in to port today and unloaded a large amount of cargo, and the ship crews were blowing off steam as well as the coin they had been paid.

One table in particular had been giving all of the serving women a hard time, groping, pinching, and making lewd comments. Celeste was at this moment fending off the advances of a large, besotted sailor.

"C'mon, love, show old Harlow what you got under them skirts," the heavily built but drunken sailor urged as he pulled her down onto his lap, his breath reeking of powerful spirits.

"The only thing I have for you, sir, is what you see on my serving tray or behind the bar," Celeste said firmly but politely as she tried to extract herself from Harlow’s groping hands.

"Oh listen to the
perty
tongue on this one, lads. She sounds like a right Lady don't she," Harlow brayed, his breath making Celeste's eyes water. "I bet she knows how to use it for more than just talking too!"

His loud guffaws were accompanied by the laughter of his friends as one of them joined in on his harassment.

"You got it right, Harlow; you got you a real Lady there. I heard she was the wife of a noble or some such before her man got
hisself
killed for treason," a skinny, filthy sailor informed the drunken sailor.

Harlow's eyes lit up with renewed interest at the new information. "Is that right? Well I never had me a real Lady before. What say you and I go upstairs and have us a bit of fun?"

"I will do no such thing, sir, now unhand me!" demanded the accosted Celeste.

"Oh come now, I just got paid and I know all you serving gals are just whores with a side job, now let's go," he insisted, standing up and pulling her towards the stairs.

"I said no!" Celeste shouted and upended a large flagon of ale over the belligerent sailor's head.

Harlow's face turned red at the rebuke as well as the embarrassment he felt by the other patrons' laughter.

"Teasing whore!" he shouted in rage and threw her to the floor upending her tray of stew and beverages.

The food and drinks came crashing down, much of it landing on her, soaking and staining her clothes. Harlow was reaching into his vest with a look of pure wrath in eyes when Delbert, the fat innkeeper, intercepted him.

"Here now, sir, leave her to me and I'll take care of you and your friends," the innkeeper said, gently laying a restraining hand on the furious sailor. "The next round of drinks is on the house. Celeste! Get upstairs and clean yourself up, and when you come back you had better treat my guests with a hell of a lot more courtesy! And the contents of that tray is coming out of your pay, you can be assured," he barked at her back as she fled up the stairs to her room.

Another serving girl brought fresh drinks to the sailors who settled back down, mollified somewhat by the free alcohol. Delbert went back behind the bar once he saw that everyone had calmed down and had gone back to their drinking.

Celeste was in tears as she stripped off her soaked and soiled dress, cursing Harlow, Delbert, Duke Ulric, the King, and the gods themselves for the plight in which she and her son had found themselves. She knew that Delbert would make good on his threat of making her pay for all the drinks and the stew that had been spilled as well as those that were "on the house." She was barely able to make ends meet by taking in laundry and this would put her in debt to that fat pig Delbert, and she liked that not at all.

She had been able to fend off most of his lecherous advances for nearly a year already and did not like the idea of actually being in debt to the man, and knew what he would demand to pay it.

She felt a hard, calloused hand suddenly clamp over her mouth and pull her back towards the bed. No one heard her muffled struggles just as no one but Harlow's friends ever noticed the big man leave his table and stalk up the stairs.

*****

With the purpose and direction of revenge now in his life, Azerick headed back to the shabby inn and up to his and his mother’s room. At the top of the stairs was a group of people. Three city watchmen, the innkeeper, and one of the other women that worked at the inn gathered outside his room. The woman spied Azerick as he crested the top of the stairs. She broke ranks from the group standing outside his room’s open door, gently grabbed him by the arm, and turned him back towards the stairs.

“What’s going on?” asked Azerick as he was hustled back down the stairs.

“Just wait down here, boy, and someone will explain it all in a bit,” the woman replied.

Azerick did not know what was happening, but he thought he glimpsed something through the open doorway that looked like blood. The sight made his mind run wild with thoughts that made his blood run cold.

He waited for nearly an hour before he heard the group tromping down the stairs. The same woman who had brought him downstairs approached him with a look of sorrow on her face.

“I’m sorry, kid, but there has been a terrible accident and your mother was hurt very bad. I’m afraid she’s gone.”

“Gone? I don’t understand,” he said weakly, blinking away tears that threatened to escape and run down his dirty face.

However, inside he did understand. He just refused to accept it. His brain blocked out the possibility of him losing the only person in the world that he had left. It was simply too much of a shock for him. It had been less than a year since he lost his father and now his mother was gone too.

“I’m sorry, boy, but done is done and there isn’t anything that can be done about it now,” The fat innkeeper said without a hint of compassion as he dropped Azerick’s bag at his feet.

The bag carried what appeared to be all of Azerick’s clothes but little else.

“What about my books?” Azerick asked quietly in a toneless voice.

“Um, the constable said that everything else had to be left untouched so they can investigate and see if anything is in there that can help them find out who cut up your mother. Now you just move on and go wherever it is you gotta go. I’m not running an orphanage here,” he said cruelly.

“Delbert, have some compassion, ain’t you got no heart under all that blubber?” the woman asked accusingly.

“I’m just an innkeeper, there’s nothing I can do for the boy. Are you going to take him in? Are you gonna feed him and clothe him outta your pay?”

The woman’s silence answered the question for all that heard. Azerick picked up his bag, left the inn, and walked out onto the street. He did not know where he was going, just that he had to keep moving and thinking. Sometime after midnight, he found himself in an alley in a part of the city that made the common quarter look as grand as the park within the palace grounds.

Azerick thought living penniless in a shabby room in a rundown inn was as bad as it could get, but now he was truly homeless, homeless with no one to care for him. He was completely on his own at the age of thirteen, or was he fourteen now? He was not sure and he really did not care.

He thought about Ewen and his promise. He wondered if he could go to him now. Surely, the Duke would not send his men after him for taking in a homeless boy just because of his father, would he? What if he refused to take him, could he handle the rejection after all else he had lost? No, Ewen would likely take him in regardless of the danger to himself or his family. Azerick was sure of that. But did he have the right to put that kind of burden on his friend? Was Azerick’s life worth jeopardizing the lives of his only friend in the world and his family? He did not know, so he decided to sleep on it. He was exhausted from walking, weeping, and the sorrow that threatened to destroy him.

Fortunately, it was summer and it was not raining. He curled up in a ball against one filth-littered wall of the alley, surrounded by trash; he used his bag of clothes as a pillow, and quickly fell into a restless sleep. He did not know how long he had slept; he figured it could not have been long, before the sound of footsteps alerted him to the fact that he was no longer alone in the alley.

He came fully awake to hands grabbing him roughly around the waist as strong arms lifted him from the ground.

“Well, what have we here?” a voice asked, carried by the foulest of breath. “A wee little cully all by his lonesome left out like a present just for me.”

With the exception of being caught by the guard for stealing and freezing to death in winter, predation was the greatest danger facing the city’s street children. At first, he thought slavers had grabbed him, usually to be sold in Sumara, far to the south. But a completely new kind of terror coursed through Azerick’s body as he tried to fight the hands that were now grabbing roughly at the laces of his breaches. Azerick fought his rising panic and forced himself to think quickly but calmly.

He caught a brief reflection of light from the belt of the man attacking him. He reached back, grasped the hilt of a knife or dagger, and pulled it out. Reversing his grip on the handle of the blade, he thrust it behind him into the soft flesh of his attacker. The man let out a bellow of pain and surprise and released his grip.

“You done stuck me, ya little bastard!” the man bellowed as he pressed his filthy hands against the profusely bleeding wound.

Azerick did not hesitate. Using the training Master Ewen had instilled, he ducked low and spun around the man, pivoting on his right heel and swinging behind his assailant. As the man staggered and held his hands over the fresh wound in his belly, Azerick drove his newly acquired blade into the man’s right kidney. Azerick knew from his studies that the kidney was especially vulnerable and caused an enormous amount of pain when struck or pierced. He was quite familiar with anatomy and knew the location of most of the body’s tender parts.

The man seemed to choke on the scream that tried to escape his lips as the incredible pain lanced up his back, completely overriding the pain of his original wound. He dropped to his knees in front of Azerick while trying to reach behind him and put his hand over this newest source of agony.

Azerick thrust forward once more, stabbing the man high in the back. The knife skipped off the bottom of the man’s shoulder bone, the blade slipping between the upper ribs just below it, piercing his heart.