Notes: I got sick while writing this. You'll be able to tell, I'm not subtle about real life influencing my work. Speaking of, HAPPY THANKSGIVING to those who celebrate, I'm very thankful to have you in my life :)
Title: Quaint Escapes for Traitorous Bastards Ch. 12 Pt. 2
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Chapter Twelve Part Two
Photo by Frederike
A Rough Night
Hiram woke with a sneeze. “Ugh,” he muttered as he rolled over on the straw tick mattress, grimacing as several sharp ends poked up through the loose weave of the sheet and scratched his skin. Straw was a common filler for mattresses, and it did all right for a season, but if it wasn’t replaced regularly it turned into a moldering mess. He wasn’t sure if it was the dankness of the mattress or a result of his thorough drenching from the rain last night, but his nose was thoroughly stuffed up.
“You sound sick.”
“I’m not sick,” Hiram said, wearily pressing up into a sitting position. He’d made it to Garrison last night after leaving the gnolls bound together with their own wires in the middle of the road. Mule had refrained from removing any of their limbs, the dear thing, but she had run each of them through in several places. It was a toss-up as to whether or not they’d survive the blood loss. Hiram didn’t feel much remorse about that. If they’d happened upon someone less prepared than him, perhaps someone with a family or a young apprentice in tow…
No. They got whatever they got at this point.
“You sound rather sick for a healthy person.”
“What would you know about it? You never get sick.”
“Neither do you.”
“There you have it, then.” Hiram got to his feet and went over to his rucksack. Several cockroaches scuttled out from beneath it, and he took a moment to be grateful for the sigils worked into the cloth that rendered it inviolate to any hands—or legs—but his. “I never get sick, therefore I’m not.”
“There’s a first time for everything.”
“It’s just the mattress. It’s full of mildew. I’ll clear out my sinuses and be right as rain in a moment.”
Phlox snorted. “It’s the rain that got you into this position in the first place.”
Hiram tuned out his companion’s unhelpful observations and pulled off his sleep shirt, shivering in the cold. He’d taken refuge in the first inn that still had a torch lit, which turned out to be a threadbare place on the edge of town run by a rather slovenly man who’d directed him to the room in the peak of the building, with sloping walls and more than one leak. It was more important to Hiram that Mule have a decent spot in the stable, which she did, but right now, cold and undoubtedly too late rising to get the “complimentary” breakfast that came with staying here, he felt more than a little run down.
Eh, the breakfast was probably inedible anyhow. He’d pack his things and find better lodging today, then go about the business that had brought him here in the first place. Hiram dressed in one of his finer outfits, topping it off with the lovely but sedate cloak that Master Spindelstep had made him rather than his single-armed Galenish one, then brushed out his hair and cleaned his teeth.
“Master Surrus isn’t here for you to impress, you know.”
Hiram felt his cheeks heat. “I don’t dress up for him.”
“You would if you had the chance.”
Phlox had unfortunately been around long enough to see how Hiram had gone about seducing Andy on a regular basis, and it had always included dressing his best. “Well, I don’t.” With that pathetic retort, Hiram hoisted his rucksack over his shoulder and headed downstairs. There was rather a clamor going on outside, the interior of the inn almost abandoned except by the same slovenly man at the front. Even he looked more alert now.
“What’s all that?” Hiram ask as he handed the man his room key.
“Someone brought down Cletus and Clarus last night,” he grunted, small eyes bright as he stared at the door. “Patrol found ‘em on the road this morning, loaded them into a cart to face justice here. Hanging for sure,” he added, wrapping a demonstrative hand around his own throat in case Hiram was somehow confused. “They’re wanted for a bakers’ dozen of robberies and three murders. Were starting to become a real problem this last month, and no one could find ‘em.”
“Well.” Hiram felt the warm glow of a job well done. “I’m glad someone handled the problem.”
“Yeah, but no one knows who!” The innkeeper was becoming animated, his jowls swinging as he hurried to explain. “There’s a big reward on offer for whoever could finish ‘em, but they was tied up and abandoned. No note, nothing. Had to be a warrior of some kind; they got stabbed by a spear.”
Hiram nodded along. “Lovely. Now, if you could tell me—”
“The Lord Mayor’s probably going to do a seeking to find whoever it was that took ‘em out. Only way to be fair with the money, you know.” The innkeeper deflated a bit. “It’s not right, if you ask me. Using magic to figure out who did what…what if I’d come across them this morning, huh? Went to all the trouble of loading them up and bringing them in. Wouldn’t it be better to at least share the reward with me?”
Hiram groaned inwardly. A seeking, wonderful. Even when he wasn’t touching his own magic, magic still had a way of trying to find him. Of all the damn… “For the extra feed for my horse,” he said, laying down a few copper bits. The innkeeper snatched them up immediately. “I’ll be off, then.” He’d been going to ask about the layout of Garrison, but decided it was better to be gone as soon as possible.
He found Mule in perfect solitude in the stable, chewing on hay and seeming pretty damn pleased with herself after her adventure yesterday. “You had to run them through, hmm?” Hiram muttered to her as he put on her saddle. She blinked at him, then tossed her head. “What will we do if someone recognized the wounds come from a horn, not a spear?”
Not my problem, she seemed to say with a saucy whicker.
“It will become your problem if imperial soldiers try to drag us out of Lollop and back to Andy by our tails,” Hiram said.
“We’ll have to screw up rather more significantly for things to get that far.”
“One would hope,” Hiram agreed. “But for all his faults, Andy is shrewd. He’s very good at collecting vast amounts of information and sifting through it to discover the gems. That’s how he got ahead in so many battles, not to mention stayed ahead of so many assassination attempts.”
“That and the fact that you were helping him.”
True. Which Hiram wasn’t now. Still... “Can you handle an obscuration?”
He felt Phlox pulse with surprise. “Do you really think it necessary?”
“I don’t know that I want to bet on Garrison having a sloppy mage if they work some sort of seeking on those damn gnolls,” he said. He hadn’t thought they’d be that big a deal, in all honesty. No one in Lollop even mentioned them to him. Admittedly, Lollop wasn’t a cosmopolitan place, but still—
“It’s not impossible that Andurion could be checking for my magical signature as well, you know.”
Hiram sighed. “Well, it’s that or we visit a hedge witch and hope they’re trustworthy.” Which was never a given, unfortunately. And then he’d have to ensure silence with a spell of his own, which would put his magical signature on the map again, bouncing across dozens of leylines and lodestones and giving all those imperial mages something to focus on. Damn, who’d have thought hiding would be so bloody hard?
“This might be completely unnecessary,” Hiram added. “Perhaps the Lord Mayor won’t bother with a seeking at all. Why give up a reward when you don’t have to?”
“Perhaps they’re a person of integrity, unlike that fool in Lollop.”
“We’ll hope otherwise,” which was something he hadn’t anticipated saying today, “but in the meantime, just keep your obscuration ready, all right?”
“As you say, Hiram.”
Hiram chuckled at the uncharacteristic agreement, then raised his elbow to his face to stifle another sneeze. “Ugh.” His nose itched uncomfortably, his throat was sore, and he felt like he’d barely put a dent in the fatigue from yesterday’s ride.
He smiled as he remembered what he used to say to Misha when they were adventuring and she started to lose her sense of levity. Eat something. Everything looks a little better once you’ve got food in your belly. “Come on,” he said as he led Mule out of the stable and mounted up. “Let’s go see what we can find in the way of breakfast, and then we’ll see what Garrison has to offer.”
Hopefully the rest of the day would continue better than it had begun.
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