Notes: Let's move things right along, shall we? Gossip=plot in my world.
Title: Quaint Escapes for Traitorous Bastards Ch. 11 Pt. 1
***
Chapter Eleven, Part One
The Thread
Hiram had worried that his reputation in Lollop would be irretrievable after what happened in the Temple of Melemor. Making the head priest cry and sending the rest of town into a tizzy over a little old memory—the ideal way to ingratiate himself to his new home. He was sure he’d have Uriel the Pustulant banging on his door in no time, insisting that not only were his fees lacking, he was also a heretic in the eyes of the local gods and they were sending for an exorcist. Which—thank you, but no. He’d been exorcised a time or two in his childhood by people his well-meaning but ignorant parents found, and that had been painful enough.
Fortunately, none of his worse fears came to pass. In fact, he seemed caught in a state of more respectability than he’d had before, which…
“Why?” Hiram demanded of Tilda a few evenings down the line. He’d fielded plenty of visitors in the days since Lares, and while curiosity seemed to be peaking, they’d all had good reasons to visit an herbalist as well. He dispensed medicinal teas for indigestion, sleep aids, soothing ointments for skin issues, and several internal aids meant to either increase or decrease fertility depending on what the person wanted. He was questioned, very gently and mostly by older woman, about how he was settling in to town, and after being assured that he liked it very much, he was patted on the shoulder and… “Why aren’t I being run out of town for what I put everyone through?”
Tilda smiled over a cup of tea—rosehip and yarrow, with a hint of licorice because she liked the flavor as she said, “Honestly, Hiram, you’d think you wanted to get run out of town. Have you considered that sharing your private pain to the rest of us has made you more relatable rather than less? And I have to say, as bad as that was, it was far from a unique experience. Just stronger than we’re used to.” She tilted her head, silver strands amongst the brown catching the light from his fireplace. “And I think few of us minded seeing High Priest Melemor in a state of true understanding, for once. He’s always been a very…formidable man, but not a very compassionate one.”
Hiram stared at her. “So people like that I made him cry?”
“From what I’ve heard, they feel it’s only just, given that he insisted you undergo the ritual in the first place.” She shrugged. “Be wary of testing one’s spirit, it might just test you back.”
“Huh.” Well, that was a bit of a relief. “What about—”
A blunt head pressed against his shin, and Hiram smiled down at Knight, who was doing much better with his hopping these days. “There you are, my dear,” he said indulgently. “Did you have a nice nap?” The rabbit nosed at him again. “Feeling hungry? Or would you prefer a bit of a cuddle?” Hiram set his cup aside, reached down, and heaved the rabbit into his lap. “Oof,” he grunted. “You certainly haven’t gotten any lighter since you’ve been with me, have you? Let me have a look now, there’s a good lad…”
He inspected the wound on Knight’s leg. “Much better!” he praised. “And your fur is growing back in and everything. You’ll be healed up beautifully by midwinter, love.” He stroked over the rabbit’s back, and Knight stretched out to give him more room to work, eyes closing in bunny bliss.
“Goodness,” Tilda said archly. “Such politesse, and to a rabbit no less! No wonder Master Surrus thinks so highly of you.”
Hiram blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Master Surrus, the school teacher. Handsome gentleman, a bit retiring, and oh, yes—he swept you off your feet onto his horse and carried you away into the sunset the other day, from what I hear—”
“There was no sweeping,” Hiram insisted. “And no sunset, it was barely past ten in the morning.”
Her eyes twinkled as she said, “But you did go somewhere with him.”
“Well…yes.” Hiram felt oddly reluctant to talk about it. He wouldn’t have said anything prurient, even if there was something of that nature to say, and yet…something about Avery made him want to keep their time together private. It wasn’t so unusual—Avery was a private person and Hiram was lucky to have been invited into his home.
“Don’t worry,” Tilda said. “I won’t pry. It’s not my place and I get the sense you wouldn’t tell me anything anyhow. I just think it’s nice, that’s all.” Her smile dimmed a bit. “His social circle is even smaller than yours, and he’s been here for years. Before you, the only person I ever heard of visiting his cottage was Master Spindlestep.”
That correlated well to Hiram’s impressions of the younger man. Still. “He should have more friends. He’s young, well known to the people here, talented, a good conversationalist…”
“And I’m sure, with all these charms, that if he wanted more friends he would have them,” Tilda said. “That he doesn’t speaks to a quirk of his character, not a fault of the people of Lollop. Most would welcome him into their social circle, if only to gossip about their children, but Master Surrus defies that sort of convention. As is his right,” she added. “We’re all wildly curious about him, of course, but Lollop knows how to respect the privacy of the individual.”
“Most of the time,” Hiram agreed.
“Yes.” Tilda sounded a bit tired. “Most of the time. More lately, in fact—everyone is preparing for the Thread to come through in a few weeks.”
“The Thread…” Hiram had encountered the Thread numerous times in distant villages, but only in his former persona. They were a search party, in a way, a group of individuals who represented the interests of gods and temples who might benefit from fresh blood.
For children who tested positive in their local temples for magical ability but lacked the means to get to a capital and go into training on their own, the Thread was their last hope. If a member of a Thread party could vouch for your ability, they would take you along with them to the practice that you fit best with no cost to your family. It wasn’t a foolproof system, but it was a bit of hope for the gifted children of poor villages who had no other means of promoting their sparks and talents.
Every Thread party contained a wizard or sorcerer of some kind, a cleric or paladin of some god, and either a bard or a druid—both if you were lucky. Between those specialties, almost all the basic spark manifestations were covered.
Sparks were almost always inherited. Hiram was one of the very rare cases where neither of his parents showed any signs of magical ability, and neither did any family members going back three generations, which was as far as anyone he was related to could remember. His parents had thought he was cursed, hence the exorcisms gone awry, but here…
“Is there any spark to speak of in Letty’s family?” he asked.
Tilda sighed heavily. “Did Letty talk to you about having a spark?”
“No. Not directly,” he said. “Not quite. She said something about being tested and not showing enough of an aptitude for Lollop to invest in her education there.”
“It’s true. I don’t know much about Letty’s situation personally, but her mother…” Tilda shook her head. “That was a woman with a spark. For healing, believe it or not. Celiane was actually apprenticed as a Cleric of Melemor for several years before she met her husband Granth.”
Wait a second. “Clerics of Melemor are required to take vows of chastity.” The healing arts in particular could be a little finicky depending on the god, and Melemor didn’t like to come second to anyone else when it came to his priests and clerics.
“Exactly. They met at a harvest festival. Granth was very charming, and she got very drunk, and the next morning, well.” Tilda shook her head. “They were found naked together in the back of the Brew’s stables. Celiane tried to plead for forgiveness, but the head cleric at the time refused to take her back. Then she turned up pregnant, and it was a quick wedding to Granth at that point. It’s not been a happy marriage, we all know that,” she said. “I can’t speak to the state of her spark, but I daresay it’s atrophied at this point. None of their children have tested highly, so far—Letty is the only one who came close.”
Well. That was abhorrent. The blank-faced woman Hiram had seen on the porch, surrounded by children and shouted at by her awful husband—she might not have a spark anymore, but she surely remembered a time when she did. Remembered how it felt to be so close to a god that you could borrow their power and do good in the world. To be tied to such a man, gods, she must have felt so awful that morning.
All the more reason to get Letty out of there if he could. He only had three more weeks of her time. He needed to coach her spark up as bright as it would go and get her in reach of the Thread, and then hopefully she would escape the fate that seemed laid out for her.
“I think there’s more to Letty than meets the eye,” Hiram said, careful to keep his voice light. “I’m no spark myself—” more like a conflagration “—but I’ve seen enough of them over the years to have a good feeling about her. And everyone deserves a chance to change their situation, especially when it’s one like hers.”
“I don’t control the Thread’s choices,” Tilda said, “but I’m sure we could get her a meeting with them if you think it’s worthwhile.”
Hiram smiled brightly. “I think it just might be.”
No comments:
Post a Comment