Notes: Let's have some memories, shall we? Damn, am I bad at keeping things fluffy. I swear this is going to stay a cozy and low-angst fantasy!
Title: Quaint Escapes for Traitorous Bastards, Ch. 9 Part 1
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Chapter Nine, Part One
Take Me To Church
To be honest, Hiram almost forgot about the issue of showing up at the Temple of Melemor on Lares. He had a lot of work to do before the next market day, after all; his entire stock was gone, and in the days since then he’d had numerous clients come to his home in hopes of getting more of whatever curative he’d sold them before market day.
“Worked a charm,” the woman who’d come to him all bound up said as he sat with her at his table, dicing prunes. Her name, he learned, was Mistress Erine, and she owned one of the largest flocks of sheep in town. Her world was focused on caring for her family, her sheep, and her herding dogs to the detriment of caring for herself, hence lots of easy-to-carry food to last her the day that led to, well…issues. “Had to spend a whole evening on the latrine, but it was worth it. Now I want to be prepared for next time.”
“You should take dried plums with you when you go to work,” Hiram suggested. “They’ll get you ahead of the problem.”
“They’d be eaten right out of my satchel before I made it ten feet by one of the little ones or their pa,” she said with a shrug. “Medicinal tea, on the other hand, is avoided like the plague.”
“It’ll have the same effect, as long as you’re regular with it,” Hiram said. “Just one cup a night, brewed fairly weak. You can make one sachet last three or four days that way. Or, give me a few more weeks and I’ll have a tincture of this made up that you can add a bit of to water. That might be easier for you in the long run.”
“Very kind of you, Master Emblic.”
He smiled as he handed over a new sachet of tea. “It’s my pleasure.”
It was, too. This was good, simple work that was satisfying to complete and helped build a solid reputation for him in Lollop. It also gave Letty and her brother something to do once the garden was built—he sent them out to forage for rarer ingredients, confident that Esme would watch from a distance to ensure they didn’t get into any tangles they couldn’t handle. They returned with chokecherries, kingslip and queen’s lace, five different kinds of bark, and mistletoe (he discarded the mistletoe immediately), and smiles on their faces after spending hours traipsing through the woods, eating the lunch he packed them and spending time away from their demanding father.
Hiram forgot all about Lares, in fact, until Letty reminded him of it. “We won’t be in tomorrow,” she said as she wrapped her shawl around her shoulders. The evening air was beginning to get a bit nippier, and the leaves were beginning to change color. Soon the apples would be ripe for harvesting, and then the squash, and then… “Because of Temple.”
“Oh yes, of course.” Hiram smiled a bit absently at her. “Enjoy it.”
Letty frowned. “I’ll see you there, won’t I? High Priest Velagros has been telling everyone that you’ll be there.”
Shit, right. “Ah.”
“You forgot, didn’t you?”
He sighed. “I did. But I’ll be there.”
Letty paused, fidgeting with the hem of her scarf. “Mistress Tate isn’t happy about it.”
Oh, she must be raising hell in town. Hiram was a bit surprised she hadn’t come to him with her concerns, but odds were she was hoping to handle it without him knowing. Kind of her, as ever, but unnecessary. “If you would do me the kindness of finding Mistress Tate and letting her know not to fret, that I’m perfectly fine with a ritual cleansing, I would appreciate it.”
“I’ll do that,” Letty said. “See you tomorrow morning, then.” She grabbed Rickie by the hand before he managed to dart away, then closed the door behind her.
“Perfectly fine, hmm?”
Hiram rolled his eyes. “Oh, stop.”
“No, I don’t think I will. Melemor isn’t some local pushover you can dodge with cleverness; he’s a major member of the pantheon.”
“I’m not going to dodge him!” Hiram insisted. “I’m just going to show him what I prefer him to focus on.” He scraped up the last of the herbs from his cutting board and poured them into the compost bucket, then put the kettle on. It was time for a cup of tea himself—a very specific one.
“For all that his high priest is a loathsome bottom crawler, Melemor is a god of truthfulness,” Phlox snapped. “He prizes honesty from his worshippers, and a cleansing implies being forced to speak the truth whether you want to or not. If you give yourself away—”
“I won’t,” Hiram insisted. “Look, Melemor is a balancing act—truth, yes, but he’s also a god of healing, whether physical, mental, or spiritual. All I’ve got to do is give him the proper bit to focus on and I’ll be right as rain.” A quick glance at his store of spices showed he’d need to make a special trip upstairs to find what he wanted.
It felt odd to go up to his bedroom while it was still light out. It was a comforting place, but one that had more memories associated with it than the rest of the house. Here was where his former life still shone through, and nowhere was that more obvious than in the special satchel he’d warded to all the hells and back that contained his most magical potion ingredients.
“Psybane, psybane, psybane…ah.” There it was, a thorny, prickly ball of herbs that sported a most arresting shade of blood red. He tried not to be disappointed by finding it.
“Psybane? Are you mad? Do you want to be able to walk tomorrow?”
Phlox was too loud in his ear, and Hiram flicked him irritably as he wrapped some of the thorns in a scrap of cloth and carried it back downstairs. The kettle was bubbling by then, so he took it off the heat, put the psybane in a bowl, and poured the water over it. A minute to steep, no more, or he really wouldn’t be able to walk tomorrow. He timed it to the cadence of his own pulse, and then decanted about half the water into a small cup.
“This isn’t smart, Hiram. Just find a spell that can do it.”
“Spells are a bad idea for me, you know that. And so is fighting the tide of the town,” Hiram said, turning with the cup and carrying it back up the stairs. He toed off his house shoes—boots were firmly left by the door—and sat down in the middle of the bed, making sure his pillow was ready behind him. Psybane hit differently every single time, but Hiram hadn’t taken it since he’d left Galenish. He wasn’t sure what it would do to him this time around.
“Hiram…”
He smiled a little. “Are you worried for me, Phlox?”
Phlox sniffed. “Only worried who would find your rotting corpse and take control of me afterward.”
“It’s all right, my dear. I’ll be fine.” He drank the tea down in one long swallow, then—
The psybane grabbed him like a hand to the throat and threw him down into memories. His vision went hazy, then dark, and Hiram’s mental landscape flickered and reformed over and over again. A cave, a dungeon, a barren mountaintop, a fiery plain, a sumptuous bedroom—
“—think you can get away with this?” Andy raged at him. “We need an alliance with the Sharivath, Xerome, and Misha is how we get it! You can’t hide her from me, I’m her father. Where is Misha? Where is my daughter?”
“A marriage alliance to the Sharivath isn’t worth it,” Xerome insisted, unwilling to back down from his enraged lover. He’d done that too much lately, given in to Andy when he should have pushed, should have fought back. He loved the man, but he was getting harder and harder to deal with. “Not for your only child. She doesn’t want that kind of marriage anyway, you know that.”
Andy sneered at him, his handsome features contorted by disdain. “Her wants are secondary to the needs of the kingdom.”
“She is your only heir! Don’t set her up to play second best when anyone she marries ought to be begging for her hand. ”
The blow came out of nowhere, so hard that Xerome fell to the floor from the force of it. He stared up at Andy, incredulous and feeling far more hurt than the strike warranted. There was nothing in Andy’s eyes to show he regretted it, nothing of repentance or shock at his own actions, at hitting the man he professed to love—just anger, anger, anger. “Bring her back before the week is out, or I’ll—”
The scene shifted, dragging him into a new vision. This one was Misha, garbed in a loose black robe and holding perfectly still as Xerome poured a dark, shimmery oil over her head as he spoke an incantation that would hide her from her father, and any other magic user who Andy could hire to do his dirty work. When it was done and he’d wiped her face clean, she opened her eyes and looked at him. “Come with me.”
Xerome shook his head, feeling his limbs tremble. The spell had taken a lot out of him. “I can’t hide myself this way, sweetheart.”
“So choose another spell for yourself.”
“Spells are the whole problem,” he said tiredly, handing over a towel. “I need to turn my magic off for a while, Misha. Your father will try and track me by it, so it’s best I don’t use it for the foreseeable future, other than laying some false trails.” He sighed. “No, we need to go our separate ways, for your own safety.”
Misha grabbed his hand, oil be damned. Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled over her cheeks. “What about your safety?”
Oh, baby. “I’ll be fine.”
“I’m afraid for you.” She bit her lip. “And I’m afraid to be without you. Please, just—isn’t there some way we can stay together?”
And risk her father’s anger turning physical on her? Misha was a fine warrior, but she didn’t have her father’s skill or guile. “No, my love,” he said, squeezing her fingers in his. “I’m so sorry, but this is for the best.”
“It’s just for now, though.” There was still a hint of hope in her voice, and it made his heart clench with self-loathing. “Right? Just for now. You’ll find me later.”
Your father would have to be dead, and he might never die after what I’ve done for him. To him. “I’ll try,” he promised, and it rang false in his mind like a bell, tight like a noose, clawing out of his gut like a—
Hiram rolled onto his side and threw up the remnants of the psybane tea, gasping for breath. He shivered in the wake of his violent visions, and every part of him ached with longing for a life he’d never have again, and people who were lost to him forever. His family, his dearest ones…
“Are you all right?” Phlox asked quietly. “That took a long time, it’s almost dawn.”
It felt like no more than a few minutes…and an eternity. “I’m all right,” Hiram said, his voice rough from dryness. “I just need to settle a bit. Then I’ll clean things up and we can go to the Temple.”
And if this doesn’t work, then I’ll figure something else out on the fly.
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