by Loki Renard
"Except your friend. Your sick friend who is now running her illness into her veins."
"I am not the one who frightened her out of her wits and then told her to run," Rog replied scornfully. "I am beginning to wonder what it is Granny saw in you. You must have been a very different woman all those years ago."
"I was then as I am now," Ayla said. "Come, let us go back inside. Reed is waiting for us."
"Reed just threw herself off the building," Rog pointed out, following Ayla back down off the roof. To his surprise, the witch negotiated the window as easily as any Ratling. To his even greater surprise, the room into which they climbed was not empty. Reed was sitting on the bed, a look of shock on her face.
"Ah," Ayla said. "There you are."
"Witch!" Reed spluttered the word and pointed at Ayla. "Witch!"
"Yes," Ayla agreed mildly. "I am a witch. And now it is time for you to take your medicine."
Reed screwed up her face and did her best to look scary. It did not work. "I'm not drinking anything you brew, witch."
Sighing, the witch took the vial of potion and approached the reluctant summoner. "Come along, Reed. Drink this and feel better."
"I feel fine."
"Not fine enough," Ayla said firmly. "Last chance to take it of your own free will."
"Free will would imply I have a choice not to take it."
Tiring of the argument, Ayla pinched Reed's nose, waited until the flailing stopped and the summoner's mouth opened, then tipped the potion down her throat.
Retaliation for the medicinal liberty was swift. Reed gurgled and coughed, then kicked Ayla in the shin. The witch responded by taking Reed by the arm, flipping her face down onto the bed, and smacking her bottom. It all happened so quickly and neatly it could have been choreographed, a dance of discipline which ended in a crescendo of bottom slapping.
"I can hit longer and harder than you can, brat,” Ayla said to the back of Reed's head. “Shall we see just how long and how hard?"
"You can hit me as long and as hard as you like. I will never listen to you, I will never do as you say, I will never take your brews, I will never...never will I never, that is how much never I will!"
Ayla stifled a laugh, whilst Rog looked on with a bemused expression. Even pinned to a bed, her rounded bottom jiggling under the witch's palm, Reed was thoroughly unrepentant and completely rebellious.
The witch did not spank all that long or all that hard. The bark was far worse than the bite, but even the light slaps raining on Reed's bottom were enough to make her thrash about and bare her teeth.
"Rog! Save me!"
"I'm here, Reed," Rog reassured her. "You're safe."
"I am not safe, can't you see what she's doing to me?"
"Tapping your backside?"
"Hitting me with her witchly hand!" Reed squirmed about and shot Rog a desperate look of annoyance. "This witch is striking me with magic!"
"It doesn't look like magic to me," Rog said.
"It's a kind of magic," Ayla interjected. "Instead of turning her into a toad, I will turn her into a semblance of a well behaved young woman."
"You've missed the boat on the young part," Reed muttered into the coverlet. "Now let me up!"
"I will let you up when it suits me."
"I will let you up when it suits me," Reed mimicked her voice, completed with Elven twang. "If you don't let me up soon, I'm going to wreak vengeance on you - and you too, Rog, by all the gods and goddesses and the bits in between, you are no help at all."
"That seems to be an opinion you both share," Rog observed. "A man could start feeling poorly about himself."
"Aw, poor Rog," Reed pouted at him. "Maybe you want to swap places and see how you feel about yourself?"
"No, thank you," Rog said, standing a little more erect, thrusting his manly chest out a little more, puffing himself up like an alley tomcat.
"Didn't think so," Reed said, setting to squirming all over again.
Ayla was no longer spanking, she was simply holding her charge in place. Her expression spoke to patience, and why not, she had hundreds of years to kill if she so desired.
Finally, Reed ran out of strength. The moment she relaxed, Ayla's hand moved away and she found herself free. It was a limited freedom though, hardly anything to celebrate. Ayla had more than proven that where Reed was concerned, her powers were almost limitless.
Sitting up and gathering the shreds of her dignity about her, Reed scowled daggers at the first and only person to ever best her. "Very well," she said. "We will do things your way. As long as they are also my way."
"Then your way must become my way."
"No way."
Ayla cast a look of mild censure at Reed, then proceeded to gather up her potions. "You will return here tomorrow morning for another dose."
Reed scowled reflexively, then her expression cleared as she realized what Ayla had said. "I can go?"
"I am not a jailer. You have managed to survive this long without my intervention, I don't imagine any great harm will come to you if you are left to roam as long as you are sensible."
"No," Reed agreed. "I don't imagine it will, as long as I am. Sensible."
"This is a compromise," Ayla warned. "I do not make many of them. Keep that in mind when you are loose on the streets."
"Yeah," Reed said. "Come on Rog, let's get out of here."
"Let's," Rog agreed. "Forthwith and with great haste."
Both Ratlings left via the window, more out of habit than necessity. There was a brief scuffling on the tiles outside and then silence.
"That may have been a mistake," Ayla mused to herself.
It was undoubtedly true that the only safe summoner was one chained to something solid, inside a cage of something tough, patrolled by things with fangs. As Ayla did not have any things with fangs to hand, she decided instead to extend trust. Perhaps it would be repaid. More likely it would be returned in tatters. Either way, it was for Reed to decide.
*****
"I cannot believe you allowed her to shame me so," Reed complained once they were safely on the street.
"I grew up hearing tales of the great Ayla," Rog said. "Now I see her as she truly is."
"And?"
"And she's a herbalist," Rog shrugged. "A bossy herbalist."
Reed snorted. "Yeah. That's a good description."
"Which means you had your ass handed to you by a bossy herbalist," Rog grinned.
"And you were afraid of her," Reed reminded him.
"Not afraid," Rog denied. "Granny would never forgive me if anything happened to her on my watch."
Reed stopped dead and stared at Rog with frank disbelief. "You were protecting her?"
Rog also stopped and pushed on the door of a safe house they happened to be next to. It wasn't locked. Ratling houses never were. "She was messing with you. I've seen a lot of bad things happen to people when they were messing with you."
Reed smirked, satisfied by the ego boost that came from having Rog more concerned about Ayla's safety than hers.
The house they found themselves in was cluttered and dusty, shelves filled with porcelain and glass sculptures and vases. Most of them had been scavenged by various Ratlings, all of whom had different tastes. The result was a house that looked lived in by several different families and cleaned by no-one.
"I think you should sleep above ground for a while," Rog suggested. "Those sewers get damp. It won't be good for your affliction."
"True," Reed agreed. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew she was being handled, but she couldn't quite manage to care. Rog was excellent at handling people. At his best he could talk to a guard and convince her to let even the most obvious of thieves go. At his worst, he could talk the jewels off a nobleman.
They made their way into a bedroom, which was likewise cluttered with bedding materials, all packed away in various nooks and corners. It took several minutes to clear the bed of enough bedding to sleep on it.
The pair
were engaged in the making of the bed when a slight sound in the shadows heralded the arrival of a friend.
"Crispin!"
A blonde haired ratling bounded into the room. Nobody knew if Crispin was male or female, and Crispin wasn't telling. With narrow, slightly slanted blue eyes and pale blonde hair that tended toward wispiness, there was a certain delicacy to the ratling. The face was slim, tapering to a sharp chin and the nose was sharp and sort of pointed. Crispin wore black leather armor shapeless across shoulder and waist. It was form fitting, but also entirely androgynous.
"I thought I saw you two come in here."
"What's going on, Crispy?"
"If you call me that I will stick you with something sharp," Crispin glowered. Slight of frame, but fleet of foot, Crispin sometimes had trouble being taken as seriously as Crispin would have liked, especially where Chief Rog was concerned.
"You might try," Rog said, speaking with good humor. "Has something happened?"
"Three arrests today," Crispin said. "Three. I remember when being a ratling meant never being caught unless you wanted to be."
Rog looked toward the heavens and sighed. "Which three?"
"You know which three." Crispin pulled on dark gloves over pale hands, and fastened a dark leather cap over the blonde hair that otherwise stood out like a beacon. "They think you will be coming for them. Shall we effect a rescue?"
"Oh," Reed said, glancing at Rog. "I'm a little out of commission at the moment."
Crispin's hands dropped from the cap's leather ties. "What do you mean?"
"The little tricks I usually play... I can't do them anymore."
Expressions of concern, horror and amusement chased over Crispin's face in equal measure. "So we cannot break them out."
"Not the usual way, no," Reed said. "We could pay the bounty, I guess."
"Pay the bounty?" Crispin snorted. "That's as laughable as being arrested in the first place. What say you, Chief?"
Rog shook out a blanket. "I say they can stay there overnight. I've talked to them all before about their sloppy habits. It won't kill them to have a taste of the consequences of failure."
"They won't be happy."
"That's the idea," Rog said firmly. "I tell them to keep their noses clean, and they go out and get arrested."
Reed and Crispin exchanged glances. It took a great deal to annoy Chief Rog, but once he was annoyed, well, then he was thoroughly annoyed. He continued making up the bed, but the hard set of his jaw and the slight flare of his nostrils spoke to his displeasure.
"You get some rest, Reed," he said, fluffing a pillow between brawny fingers. "I'll go and see about these brats. Crispin can keep watch here."
Reed sat on the bed and looked toward their old friend. "You don't mind, Crispin?"
"I'd rather watch you sleep than break that lot out of prison. I'd rather watch paint dry than break that lot out of prison," Crispin said. "They don't take the code seriously. They think everything's a joke. Let them see how funny a night in irons is."
"I'll go have a word with Hide now," Rog said. "See how much trouble they've got themselves in."
Reed perked up. "A word with Hide? I'll come."
"Just stay here, Reed," Rog said. "You always put her in a bad mood."
"Bad mood? She loves me."
It was Crispin and Rog's turn to exchange looks.
"Dream on, Reed," Crispin said. "She's as straight as an arrow, that one."
"Nonsense. Nobody is straight."
"Not many, to be sure, but Hide is. She has a husband, Reed."
"I figured she was with him for the onions."
"She's with him for more than the onions," Crispin guffawed. "And well you know it. Time you set your sights on someone you can actually have."
"I can have anyone I want."
Crispin grinned, a broad smile resulting in cute dimples in an otherwise thin face. "I don't reckon you've ever had anyone."
"Shut it, Crispy," Reed said, scowling her most serious scowl. "I've had plenty of people."
"She has," Rog agreed. "She's had all of Clitera City and some besides."
"Not that many!"
"So somewhere between none and several thousand," Crispin said. "My money's on the very, very low side of that range."
"Yeah, well, you know what you can do with your money? Stick it up whatever holes you might have to hand."
"Probably the closest you get to intimacy, doing that sort of thing," Crispin rejoined, beaming with glee. There was more than a touch of elf about the mysterious Crispin. Crispin was a rarity, a full blooded elf who did not hide away in the Glades to the far north, but instead slummed it in the wet southern regions. All lanky legs and long arms folded like awkward concertinas, the ratling settled in on a windowsill.
"You're lucky I'm sick,” Reed growled.
"Luck doesn't come into it," Crispin winked. "Now get into bed like a good girl and let Crispin watch over you."
Grumbling to herself, Reed shed all excess clothing and got into bed. She had planned a sharp rejoinder to Crispin's taunts, but she was asleep before her head hit the pillow.
Chapter Thirteen
"Jailer Hide."
Rog presented himself to the woman who held the most sway over the lower levels and echelons of Clitera's society. The woman with the quill who decided who saw the light of day and who forever languished behind bars. Most in Clitera feared the Empress. The ratlings feared Jailer Hide as a general rule, but being a mostly law abiding citizen, Rog had never had much need to be concerned in her presence.
The woman glanced up from her log book and gave Rog a dour look. "I should arrest you."
"You should?"
"My cells are half full of your people. If not arrest you, I should charge you rent."
Jailer Hide was not joking. She was not a woman given to levity. She was fond of law and order and onions.
"My apologies, Jailer," Rog said. "Please, take these as a token of my esteem." He held out a string of fine burnished orange onions, tied with blue ribbon.
The jailer stared at the gift with a rapturous expression. "Are they... Iskendari?"
"Yes, the best, " Rog said, laying the string upon Jailer Hide's desk.
"Thank you," Jailer Hide said, sweeping them off her desk and into a secured cupboard. "The gift is welcome, but these three I have locked up are not. I should send them before a magistrate."
"What have they done?"
"What have they not done?" Hide turned her attention to the parchment containing the arrest report. "Their evening began at the Silken Stoat, where they bought rounds for all the patrons several times over, but paid with gold painted iron coin. They then took themselves to Wenny Jenny's Emporium and helped themselves to fur stoles and fur hats and fur coats, leaving poor Wenny Jenny locked up in her own penny spenny. Attired in their stolen furs and tanked from the Stoat, they went to the palace and taunted the guards until chase was given, upon which two of them fled and the third entered the palace to steal the sconces. They were all three apprehended in the olive groves, where they had retreated to sleep off the effects of their inebriation. Total damages from their spree are in the thousands."