Notes: Let's get back to Hiram's hijinks!
Title: Quaint Escapes for Traitorous Bastards, Ch. 5 Pt. 1
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Chapter Five, Part One
Go To Sleep, The Sun Is Risen
The sky was already lightening from black to blue by the time Hiram collapsed in his bed. The work of repositioning the messenger’s horse had taken longer than he liked—he’d run into two more along the main road once he got there, which was downright ominous and required careful use of obfuscation and a little bit of Phlox’s sparklier powers to get around. Hiram was fairly sure his solution had worked, but he was equally sure it wouldn’t work forever. Maybe not even for long. A messenger would get through to Lollop eventually, and then…
That was a concern for another day, though. Right now, all he wanted to do was sleep. He didn’t even take the time to change, just stripped his jacket and boots off, threw them into the chair beside the bed, and crashed onto the decadently comfortable mattress face-first. He was asleep before the birds really got going, which was the best he felt he could hope for as he drifted off to sleep.
He awoke to a bang and a shout. “Wha th’ hells?” Hiram muttered to himself as he reluctantly opened his eyes. That came from downstairs—it had to be the front door, given that he still didn’t have a back one. But who would be calling on him so early in the morning?
He was tempted to ignore it. He didn’t have any deliveries scheduled for today, he didn’t anticipate any social visits, and if it was Tilda, well. She knew he didn’t have a back door, didn’t she? No need for her to knock. Yeah, that…that sounded just fine. Hiram closed his eyes again, then—
“No, Da!”
That…didn’t sound good. That was the sound of someone frantic. Hiram pushed up onto his feet, wincing at the pain in his legs and back from his riding spree—thirty miles in the course of a single night was far too much at his age. He clambered down the stairs, rubbing his eyes, and opened the door just as a man yelled out, “Give it bloody here, I said!”
“Give what where?” Hiram croaked as he looked at the pair on his porch. Once he realized who it was, he straightened up a bit and leveled a glare at the larger of the visitors—the rabbit man who left his children to sell his wares while he drank the day away. “What are you doing here?” he asked coldly.
“Hello, Master Emblic!” the girl to the left put in before her father could speak. She was going very quickly, and had a tremendous smile on her face that seemed out-of-place with the franticness of her greeting. “I’ve got that rabbit you ordered yesterday!”
Hiram blinked. “Um…ah.”
“Our Knight, you remember him, sir?”
Knight…ah right, the fire and ash rabbit. “I do remember him,” Hiram said slowly. “But…ah…”
“And I’m very sorry to say,” Letty—yes, that was her name, Letty—powered on before he could continue. “Sorry to say that there was a fox attack last night, and he took a bit of damage, but—”
“Stop running yer useless mouth,” her father roared. “This is a load of tripe, this bastard didn’t hand over money for a rabbit, and if you’re tryin’ to tell me that you sold him one on credit then you’ll be wearing stripes so fierce you can’t sit down for a month, girl.” He reached down for the cage at their feet, but Letty was quicker and had it open before he could pick it up.
“A, a fox got into the hutch, but Knight kicked him out,” she went on breathlessly. “He took a few bites and his ear is a bit messy now, but I’ve patched him up real good and—”
“Ain’t fit for nothin’ but stew and you know it, you bint of a—”
That’s quite enough of that. “Ah, Letty!” Hiram clapped his hands together. “Delightful, thank you for bringing him by so early.”
“Early?” Letty looked confused. “It’s almost noon, sir.”
“Early in the afternoon,” Hiram said with an effortless pivot. “Forgive me, I spent a long time working on my house yesterday, it left me worn through. Yes, of course I’ll take Knight today.”
The man’s face went from red to puce. “You did sell a rabbit on credit,” he growled, his rage with his daughter seeming to climb even higher. “You…you…”
“My good sir,” Hiram said with a sniff, “you can hardly expect me to carry the sort of gold this rabbit is worth on my person at a busy market like that.”
The puce receded a little as the magic word infiltrated the big man’s blocky head. “Gold?”
“That’s right, gold,” Hiram said. The girl was looking somewhere between gratified and panicked, and Hiram thought very carefully about what he was going to say next. He needed to ensure he didn’t make things worse for Letty while also not giving her brutish father an excuse to lean on him, or her, for more money.
“It’s only because this particular morph carries such a symbolic importance in herbology,” Hiram went on. “Specifically the herbal knowledge of the north, where I come from. The fragmented pattern, the hot and cold colors interweaving as they do, and all on a rabbit big enough for a small child to ride? That’s more than a pet, that’s an omen. As soon as I saw Knight, I knew I had to have him.”
“Do ye now?” Letty’s father squinted. “Then I reckon you’re happy to pay ten gold slips for ‘im.”
The girl went pale, and Hiram didn’t have to be a wizard to know that he’d just been quoted a price that could pay for a princely number of rabbits. Misha’s rabbit probably hadn’t even cost ten gold slips, and she was the princess of the entire damn empire. “I wasn’t, in fact,” Hiram said coldly, since he wasn’t about to be played by this bastard.
“But—” Letty began.
“But I’m willing to accept that total for Knight as well as the work your daughter will be doing around my house for the next…” He did some mental math. “Six weeks.” That seemed like a safe amount of time to get her out of her unhealthy home and see if he could help her find a new path. That he had to at this point was a given—what kind of young woman would argue with her abusive father over the fate of a rabbit and hang her hopes on a man she’d just met yesterday to do it? She had to be crazy…or perhaps, she was simply very, very lucky.
Hiram intended to find out. “If, that is, we have a deal.”
The big man stared at him, then snorted and spat a huge loogie onto the far side of the front porch. “Done,” he grunted. “Get the money.”
“Of course.” Hiram closed the door expecting to hear an argument start up immediately, but there wasn’t even a whisper of sound. He headed upstairs for his purse of unending wealth, took out ten slips, then headed back downstairs to make what might very well be the strangest purchase of his life so far.
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