Quaint Escapes for Traitorous Bastards: Chapter Three, Part One

 Notes: On we go! Let's get ready to meet some more of our merry (and not so merry) villagers :)

Title: Quaint Escapes for Traitorous Bastards: Chapter Three, Part One

***

Chapter Three, Part One

 

Meddling in the Marketplace

 

Hiram woke up to the uncomfortable sensation of his stomach trying to eat itself. He sighed and rubbed his cheek against the smooth, warm bedding, weighing whether or not it was worth getting up before the sun had even bothered to rise just to find food. He tried rolling over, a tactical mistake, because then his bladder was able to pass on its complaints as well and…

“Fine.” He might as well get up, then. Hiram slid out of bed, took in the wrinkled state of his clothes, and almost banished them altogether before he remembered he didn’t do that anymore. Instead he took the time to open his carefully packed bags of clothes and store them in the wardrobe, and by the time that was done he practically had to run to get to the corner of the backyard for a proper piss.

Too bad I don’t have a compost pile yet. Or a bathroom—suspiciously missing from the little tour Mistress Tate had given him. There was no standing outhouse, but a little wander showed him a particularly verdant patch of yard in a suspiciously square shape. So—no outhouse any more.

At least they filled the hole in. Well, if there had ever been a more practical use for his traveling portal, he couldn’t think of it. Hiram usually used it for getting rid of trash, and occasionally assassins, but a little creative carpentry and he’d have a very nice toilet that let out a very high distance over a very hot volcano. It was perfect.

Not for the first time, he wondered whether he should have brought so many of his most magical belongings with him. It was one thing to have a fantastic treasure trove when you were a wizard, quite another when you were trying to keep a low profile as an herbalist.

But, Hiram reasoned, that was what the bag of holding was for. No one else could get into it without losing a limb, and that way he didn’t leave Andurion a windfall that would make him even more powerful. He’d already given Misha his cloak of invisibility, which would serve her well, and left the other pieces of Phlox’s reliquary to his former students. He’d taken care of the people who needed it, and left those who didn’t deserve care no worse off than they already were.

That, Hiram thought, was pretty fucking generous of him all things considered.

The well was another overlooked piece of the property. The stone wall at the top of it was partially tumbled down, and the crank, rope, and bucket were all missing, but a little investigation—aka, accidentally knocking a rock into it—proved there was still water in it. He just needed to get it.

Luckily, Hiram traveled with a bucket. Several buckets, in fact, but this one had a sturdy metal handle, and before long he was dipping it down into the well and, eventually hauling up perhaps a gallon of water. The water was clear, and at first taste clean, but he’d boil it anyhow just to be safe.

While the kettle was warming on the top of the iron monstrosity in the kitchen, Hiram began to plot out his garden. He walked the length of it, measuring carefully, then began to map it out in his mind. Cooking herbs here…medicinal herbs here…magical herbs here…plants purely for aesthetics over here…

Chickens would be nice, he decided as he considered the yard. He’d have to put up some anti-fox and hawk sigils, but that was…

“Not how they do things in Lollop,” he reminded himself. He could make them invisible, of course, but that would be cheating. “I’ll ask Mistress Tate,” he decided, then headed inside as the kettle began to scream to make himself a cup of tea.

He checked his travel stores and found some of the dark brown bread he’d bought two days ago, still decently fresh, as well as some herbed butter and ham that was so salty it almost brought tears to his eyes, but Hiram was weak for food that made him work for it.

The sun was still filtering through the trees as he set off, turning the road into a patchwork quilt of dappled light that met the rising mist in an enchanting way. Even if Hiram had been inclined toward conversation, Phlox was quiescent in his opal, rare enough that he would leave him that way. He had a bag over his shoulder for essentials, money in the pouch beneath his belt for commissions, and a day of exploration ahead. Hiram was in a good mood…one that gradually faded in the wake of the shouting he heard coming from up ahead.

The next house down the little lane—almost a mile distant, so not exactly a neighbor but the closest thing he had to it—was half again larger than his, and the heavy cart in front of it was half-full of caged rabbits of all shades and morphs. In and of itself, it wasn’t anything remarkable, but the man standing beside it shouting abuse at the children who were rushing to fill it was. A silent woman with gray-streaked hair stood on the porch, a child no older than five clutching her legs with his face tucked against her skirts. She looked at the scene blankly, like her body was there but her mind had gone elsewhere.

Her children weren’t so fortunate.

“You can’t stack them on top of each other like that, dunce!” The man swung a heavy hand into the back of one of the older boy’s heads. “You want ‘em to get to market covered in piss? How do we sell a rabbit like that, eh? Fix it!”

“We can’t load as many as you want to sell if we don’t stack, Da,” the next-oldest person present, a girl—no, young woman—snapped.

The man stared at her grimly. “You giving me lip, Letty?”

She did, in fact, push out her lip pugnaciously before replying, “No, Da, but—”

“You think you’re pretty big now you’ve turned sixteen, hmm?”

“No, Da, but—”

He was beside her in a second, shoving her so hard that she almost fell down. “If we’re late to market and I can’t get enough coneys sold to put food on the table this week, you’re the one whose going without, you hear me, girl? Now help your brothers pack the damn cart!”

Hiram had slowed down as he got close, and came to a complete halt when he saw the man push his daughter. It was the sort of casual, everyday cruelty he had witnessed frequently growing up, but for some reason he hadn’t expected to see it in Lollop—at least, not so quickly.

The man noticed him and turned with a glare. “What’re you looking at, eh?”

“Nothing of note,” Hiram replied airily. “I simply couldn’t help overhearing and was a bit concerned that everything was well, that’s all.”

The man spit to the side, his hands clenching. “Well now you’ve seen that all is indeed well, sir,” he said with false obsequiousness, going so far as to take a mocking bow. “You can get your fine self on your way and leave us poor folk be. Letty!”

The girl, who’d been staring wide-eyed at Hiram, jumped. “Yes, Da?”

“Get on with it!” She got back to work, not without another glance at Hiram, but he already knew there was no step he could take here. Not yet. He smiled at her and tipped his wide-brimmed leather hat, then continued on down the road.

Another few miles and he was back in Lollop proper. There was Fuzzle Pinkie’s Drinkies, now wearing a sign that said The Yew Brew with what almost seemed like an air of relief. There was the smithy, there the tannery, there the court of law—interesting, one wondered what sort of cases came before such a rural judge—and just beyond it all, in a wide cobblestone circle, were dozens of stalls that hadn’t been there yesterday. Lollop’s market.

Hiram rubbed his hands together in anticipation. Unpacking yesterday had ignited something inside of him that he hadn’t felt in a long time—an urge to feather his nest. He had a home now, but living there surrounded by nothing but the remnants of his former life felt like living in a memory. He needed new things, things that could belong solely to Hiram Emblic, not his former self. Now, to find his guide…

She found him first, actually, at a stall on the outskirts of the market that was handing out cups of something hot and milky. “Mr. Emblic,” Mistress Tate called out before he could get lost in the crowd. She looked him up and down as he came to join her. “Heavens, it’s just a market,” she said mildly as she handed over one of the ceramic cups. “There’s no need to dress so finely for it.”

Hiram looked down at himself. He was wearing dark brown leather breeches, a white shirt, a leather vest that laced in the front, and a single-sleeve linen cape that was the lightest covering he owned. “What about this is so fine?”

“Not many can afford to use leather for clothes beyond aprons and shoes,” she said as she sipped at her drink. “But I suppose things are different where you’re from.”

“Rather,” Hiram said. Clothes. I need new clothes.

“It will make you even more an object of interest than you already are,” she continued, then smiled. “But you’ll give everyone a good story out of it, and they’ll get used to you soon enough. Do try your tea,” she added.

Hiram took a sip, and almost startled at the sweet, spicy taste of it. It was thick on the tongue, honey and black pepper and cardamom, and a hint of… “Vanilla?”

“Just a touch,” Mistress Tate said. “It’s hard to get, but it adds so nicely to the flavor, doesn’t it?”

“It does.” He drank more deeply, making sure not to get the milky concoction in his moustache, before handing the empty cup back. “It’s quite good, thank you,” he said to the gnome manning the cart. “What do I owe you?”

“I’ve already paid,” Mistress Tate said, setting her own cup back down. “Thank you, Gerry.”

“Aye, Mistress!” the young gnome piped.

Mistress Tate waited expectantly, and Hiram held out his arm for her to take. “Shall we, milady?”

“Let’s.”

 

 

Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Twenty-One, Part Two

Notes: OH NO PLOT! WHAT? IS THAT A CLIMACTIC CONFRONTATION I SEE COMING? I think it is ;)

Title: Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Twenty-One, Part Two

***

Chapter Twenty-One, Part Two

 

Photo by Cem Salini 

The moment seemed frozen, a chill spreading through the air and restricting everything, even the breath in their lungs.

Trapper. The man who’d been ready to shoot Carlisle out of the sky when they escaped from the compound. The man who Kieron had rammed with the skimmer, sending him flying and inevitably breaking bones. He sounded a bit wheezy even now, but there was a fierce satisfaction in his voice as well. And why not? They’d been careless, and now they were caught.

“Engage concealment protocols,” Elanus said, the first one to break the ice—of course. “Girls, hide those signals.” It was too late to deny their existence, but he seemed confident that at least they could keep things from getting worse. There was a deep hum, a flicker of Catie’s lights, and then…

“You think you can hide?”

“Comm power, please,” Elanus said smoothly. Catie’s walls rippled anxiously with changing colors, but she complied. “I actually feel quite confident in our ability to hide,” Elanus said into the void.

“And yet here you are, talking to me right now.”

“Isn’t that what you want?” Elanus asked lightly. “To talk? Hopefully to use whatever little piddling satellite capacity your people have to hone in on our position? Mm, sorry, I’m afraid we’ve already blocked that capability. We’re completely invisible to all your sensors right now.”

Was that true? Elanus was speaking like it was, but then he was the master of projecting confidence.

“I think the ability to talk is all you’ve got, in fact,” he continued. “Because if you actually saw us in any meaningful capacity, you’d be attacking us right now.”

“We don’t—”

“You do. Don’t even pretend you don’t, because you do. You’re opportunistic scavengers who would rather attack from the shadows in an effort to take out your prey than even attempt something like that head-on, and I don’t want to hear your justifications because, quite frankly, there are none.”

“You landed on our sovereign territory without permission, and you expect a parley?”

Elanus laughed, sounding as carefree as ever, but Kieron heard the coldness beneath the merry sound. “Sovereign territory? Any official charter for settling this planet was nullified the moment over ninety percent of the population died, and even then, the original charter was for thirty years, I believe, and without engaging the continuation clauses and paying the necessary fees, that original term ended almost twenty years ago.”

There was a long pause, and then—“You think you’re pretty fucking smart, don’t you? But we’re the ones who saw your ship arrive, we’re the ones who were just waiting for you to slip up and broadcast to them, and we’re the ones who have enough mobile weaponry to atomize any attempt you make to get supplies from up there down here. Our satellites might not be perfect, but they’re more than enough to track any drops. Judging from the ship we shot up earlier—” Elanus’s hands tightened into fists “—you don’t have the offensive capabilities to survive a fight for them, either.”

“Do you have the speed for it, though?” Elanus shot back the second Trapper stopped speaking. “Your ships rely on conventional fuels that are undoubtedly in limited quantity, unless you’ve set up some sort of hidden refinery or specialized algeic growth tanks, which I sincerely doubt as that would require the capacity to be a decent resources manager. Even if you do track a drop, you’d have to beat us there, and you don’t even know where we are.”

“We know where—”

“Knowing we’re on the same continent as you doesn’t count,” Elanus interrupted briskly. “That’s a given, but I repeat, if you had the slightest idea where we were right now, you’d already be attacking us because you feel confident in your ability to take out our ship. You’re not, so you don’t. Frankly, I doubt you’d get within a hundred miles of a drop point before we were able to swoop in and vanish again.”

That was a blatant fabrication—once they got to the drop, which was going to be heavier than Catie’s entire frame, the retrofit would have to happen on site. Kieron marveled at his fiancé’s ability to bullshit through the most fraught situations. Had he done this before?

Something niggled at the back of Kieron’s mind…Elanus in an argument with another man, drawing him out, killing him through his own hubris…then it was gone.

Fucking memory loss.

“So, nice try, but I think we’re going to have to pass on your attempts at intimidation for now, thanks so much. Don’t worry, we’ll see ourselves out.” Elanus waited for Catie to shut down the com, then said, “Okay, we’ll have to change the drop plans, break up the pieces into smaller packages that can be retrieved the way I indicated, but it shouldn’t extend our stay by more than a week or so, and—”

“Now, hang on.” Trapper was back. “It’s clear you’re not a man to take lightly, so let’s be reasonable about this.”

Oh, now they want to be reasonable.

“There’s no need for us to get violent with each other,” he went on. “You made a mistake in coming here, but we made a mistake in attacking without due cause. Let’s call that even. What about a trade, instead? You share your ship’s cloaking technology with us, and we’ll give you something precious in return.”

“You don’t have anything we want,” Elanus scoffed, but that cold feeling was starting to creep over Kieron again.

He held up a hand even as Trapper said, “Are you sure about that? Because the man of yours we captured, he sure bled a lot while he was running around over here. We did a few tests on what he left behind, and would you believe, he’s got a relative living among us?” Trapper’s voice deepened. “A mother, nonetheless. One of our little lost boys found his way home after all these years.”

Kieron shook his head at Elanus, who was looking at him wide concern in his eyes. “She’s dead,” he muttered. “She…” She has to be dead.

“Say hello, Carlisle.” There was a moment of silence, then a short scream and a curse. “She’s missing an eye,” Trapper went on, “and half the bones in her right arm are broken, but it’s her. Check your visual feed if you don’t believe me.”

Elanus pulled it up, and a projection appeared in the middle of the hold. It was Trapper in an old-fashioned chest stabilizer standing beside a bloodied woman who looked absolutely filthy from mud and gravel. She glared ahead with her one good eye. “Don’t you dare,” she snarled. “Don’t you dare come for me.”

“You can listen to her if you want,” Trapper added, “but if you don’t come for her, boy, I’ll make sure her last days of life are an agony you can’t even imagine.” He grinned sharply. “I’ll give you an hour to think it over.”

The image vanished, and a suffocating silence fell over them all once more.

She’s alive. My mother is alive.

For now.

 

Quaint Escapes for Traitorous Bastards: Chapter Two, Part Two

 Notes: All right, friends, let's clean a house! And by clean, I mean lean on an unfair advantage...but is it magic if you don't do it yourself?

Title: Quaint Escapes for Traitorous Bastards: Chapter Two, Part Two

***

Chapter Two, Part Two

 Photo by Robert Clark

A Whirlwind Job

 

“You can’t be serious.”

 “It’s cleaning a house,” Hiram said, turning in a full circle as he looked around the sitting room. “How hard can it be?”

“You haven’t scrubbed a floor in your entire life,” Phlox replied, their voice full of disdain. “And we can’t even see this floor to scrub it underneath so much grime. Scavengers, indeed. It looks like they tracked half a forest through this place.”

“It’s a little worse for wear,” Hiram acknowledged, “but I think it’ll shape up very nicely. We just have to get through the initial bumpy phase, and then living here will be as sweet and simple a life as we could ever have asked for.”

“I never asked for a sweet or simple life,” Phlox pointed out huffily. “You never asked for a sweet and simple life either, I’d like to note. You’re only doing this because—”

Hiram snapped his fingers twice. “Don’t go there. I don’t want to hear it.”

“You never do,” Phlox grumbled.

Hiram wasn’t listening anymore. He headed back over to the front door where he’d left several of the bags and boxes he’d unpacked from the wagon. One piece of luggage was a nondescript burlap satchel, the sort of thing you might expect to see full of dried beans at a farmer’s market. Hiram opened the drawstring on the top of it and plunged his hand inside.

“You’re going to lose a finger one day if you keep reaching into that bag like that,” Phlox said.

“I beg to differ,” Hiram replied. “Everything in here is very well trained and—ow!” He pulled his hand back out and sucked on a scrape that had appeared on his index finger. “Cheeky bastard,” he muttered.

“I did tell you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hiram reentered the bag with a bit more caution and moments later found the thing he was looking for. “Aha!” He pulled out a small, round silver box. It had a hinge on one side of its lid and a clasp on the other that was held shut with a slender silver needle. “There we are.”

Phlox’s voice quivered as they asked, “Is that the…?”

“It is,” Hiram replied, his voice full of satisfaction at having found it.

“You don’t mean to…”

“I do.”

“It could blow this whole house over!” Phlox said frantically.

Hiram chuckled. “Don’t be so dramatic. We’re just going to open it...” he eased the silver needle out of the latch. “…a tiny little pinch. Hiram cupped the box between his hands, then cracked open the lid.

Whoosh!

Out came a surge of wind so fierce that it blew him back against the front door, which almost gave under the impact. Every window in the house shattered.

“Close it! Close it!” Phlox shouted.

Hiram, using all his strength, managed to snap the lid down after a few more seconds. The pair of them stared around the sitting room at what his little trick had just wrought. Shards of glass glittered along the edges of the floor, and several of the shutters were broken, but the thick layer of grime that had crunched beneath his soles with every step he took had all been pushed back to the far side of the house. He could see the actual floor now, make out the grain of the wood beneath his feet. It was rather nice once you got a look at it.

“I told you so,” said Phlox.

Hiram laughed a bit breathlessly. “So you did,” he agreed. “So you did. But, you know, the walls are still standing at least, and now I know just how careful I need to be.”

“You’re going to do it again?” Phlox sounded aghast.

“With caution,” Hiram said, ever so gently closing his fingers around the latch once more. “With a great deal of caution.”

Say what you would about Hiram, but even when he’d been one of the most powerful men in the Empire, he had been capable of exercising a great deal of caution. He didn’t always, but he was very capable of it.

Now that his mind and hands had regained their equilibrium with his box of winds, Hiram was very quickly able to direct the flow of air where he wanted it to go. From the upstairs to the downstairs, he gathered all the refuse, all the dust, the grime, the pieces of rotten or stolen furniture, and an enormous number of spiders downstairs into a heap right in front of the gaping back door.

When he finally put the box of wind away, he was tired but satisfied with the work. “There now,” he said to Phlox, “wasn’t that faster than sweeping and mopping for half the day?”

“Considering you still have a home, I suppose I must concede the point,” Phlox said sourly. “But what are you going to do with it now, blow it all out onto the garden? That’ll be filthy.”

“I was actually going to ask you about that.” Hiram felt a bit sheepish. “Perhaps the best way to deal with this, before I set up a good place for a refuse pile, of course, would be a little bit of…targeted incineration.”

“You want me to handle it, in other words.”

“If you would be so kind.”

“With my magic.”

“If,” Hiram said through gritted teeth, “you would be so kind.”

“Magic coming to your rescue yet again,” Phlox said haughtily. “When are you just going to admit that I’m right?”

“On the fifth day of never,” Hiram replied genially. “Now, if you don’t want to use your magic—and I completely understand why you might not, being as out of practice as you are—I’ll just fetch a broom and—”

“Shut up.” The pile flared brightly, the heat of it washing over Hiram’s chilled hands. It felt like being eased into a warm bath, and a second later there was nothing to be seen on the floor, not even a scorch mark.

“Beautifully done,” he said. Hiram was capable of admitting when other people did good work, even when those people were bloodthirsty fire elementals.

“Naturally,” Phlox replied. “Now that you’ve thoroughly aerated this charming little cottage of yours, what do you plan to do next?”

“Well.” Hiram looked around the room and his eyes caught on his bags once more. “I suppose I should set the place up to be livable, or as livable as it can be before we add to our belongings.” He reached into the burlap sack again and brought out a smaller leather bag.

“Oh, you’re not planning on using the furnishings from the travel tent,” Phlox objected. “Nothing in there matches, you know. You won’t be able to have a soul over because they’ll spend so much time laughing at your abysmal taste, they won’t have the breath to talk.”

“My taste isn’t abysmal,” Hiram protested as he opened up the bag. “It’s eclectic.”

“It’s absurd.”

“It’s interesting.” He pulled a rug that he’d been gifted in the Elasgus Mountains by the chief of a Deyrian tribe and laid it out on the floor. It was made from thick wool, hand-knotted, and was wonderfully comfortable under the feet. That the pattern they’d chosen for it was an up-close portrait of their three-headed skeletal crone goddess depicted in lurid shades of red, green, and yellow was perhaps a bit unfortunate. But who looked that closely at the things they stepped on, huh?

“Absurd,” Phlox repeated.

Hiram ignored them as he went on decorating the sitting room. To the side of the rug, he put an ornate, three-legged table that was topped with an actual toenail from one of the stone giants that had been bedeviling the Deyrians. No one would never know it was a toenail just to look at it, of course. It was beautifully flat, perfectly oblong, and rather a nice mauve color.

Beside it Hiram set out two chairs. The first was a squashy, comfortable red armchair where he’d whiled away many delightful hours reading spellbooks and musing about potions. The constant contact with magic had, in fact, imbued the chair with a bit of a snarky personality over the years, but it hadn’t kicked anyone out of it in months now. It would be fine.

On the other side of the table went a low stool with a  crescent moon-shaped seat and a broad wooden X for legs that, upon reflection, Hiram decided would do better upstairs. Up went the stool, plus the desk he’d brought from his own workshop back at Vordure Palace, all of his potion-making equipment, another rug—this one a delightful shade of blue that only occasionally transfigured into clouds and began to rain—and his bed. There was actually room for the entire bed up in this loft instead of the shrunken-down version he’d been using for weeks now.

Hiram sat on the edge of the bed and bounced a little bit. Softly sprung, it still carried the scent of ambergris at the edges of it. Hiram inhaled deeply, letting the earthy sweetness of the scent fill his senses. It was a smell he would always associate with Andy. Shows of affection between them had been rare by the end, and yet there had been a time when they’d spent so many nights together that his smell had permanently worn into the furnishings.

Hiram laid back on the comforter, closed his eyes, and let his heart hurt for a moment. That moment stretched into two, then three, and before he was fully aware of it, Hiram had almost fallen asleep.

“You didn’t do the cellar,” Phlox reminded him.

“‘Mm,’” he mumbled, not bothering to open his eyes.

“The cellar, Hiram.”

“Mmm.” Hiram crawled further up into the bed. “I’ll get it tomorrow.” For now, he would take what comfort he could in sleep.