Chapter 31
Taren couldn’t help but note the parallels to the time he had drenched his room in Nexus with water and Mira had offered to let him sleep in her chamber. But this time, the circumstances were reversed: Mira was soaking wet and freezing, while he was the one to help her to her room. He stoked her hearth while she changed out of her wet nightgown and wrapped herself in a blanket.
“Here, sit. I’ll make you some tea.” While Mira complied, sitting on the floor before the hearth, he poured some water into her kettle and stuck it on the rack in the hearth.
The carriage had picked them up about halfway to the castle, at which point Mira was shivering, her teeth chattering as she leaned heavily against him. She made it into the carriage with his help and slumped onto the seat, huddling against him for warmth and even dozing off for a few minutes. Ferret had offered to carry her to her room, but she declined. Taking their time, they made it under her own power.
“Will you stay a few minutes and have some tea?” Mira asked.
“Sure. Are you warm yet?”
“Yes, thank you.” She smiled at him, but he could see she was still shivering.
He pulled another blanket from the bed and wrapped it over her shoulders. They sat together in front of the hearth quietly, waiting while the water boiled. Mira added some tea leaves once the water was hot. They waited for the tea to steep a few minutes, then Taren poured each of them a mug.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” Taren said. “I wasn’t good company at the banquet, and I can tell my mood rubbed off on you.” He held up a hand to stave off her objection. “No, it’s all right, I know it was my fault. I was unnerved but also chastened by what happened… when you stopped me during the battle. You were right to do so… The power was so seductive. I can see how one could be tempted to evil by using too much and become a tyrant in the process. Perhaps many once-good men were lured to evil in such a manner. Anyway, you have my thanks—for that and for rescuing me.” He sipped the tea, relieved at the warmth it filled him with, for the night was cold.
“You are welcome, Taren, but no thanks are necessary.” Mira’s gentle smile made him feel at ease, as did the contentment passing through their bond. She took a long drink of tea. “Ah, that’s just what I needed.”
Taren agreed. He preferred it with some honey, if available, to take the slightly bitter edge off, but didn’t complain.
“Do you ever wonder what you will do next?” he asked. “After all of this is over. How will you know your Balance Quest is complete? Or do you think you will have to follow me around until we are both old and gray?” He meant it lightly, but Mira seemed to seriously ponder her answer.
“I haven’t given it much thought, but I suppose I will return to the monastery once my work is done. I will have much to contemplate following these adventures, and I can instruct the initiates as others have done, such as my friend Afna and Brother Cerador. As to how I’ll know… I can’t say for certain. My guess would be a perceptible change in the Weave.”
Taren was quiet a long moment, sipping at his tea. He honestly didn’t know what he would do afterward, for his plans had never gone beyond seeking out his mother then saving his friends and defeating Nesnys. What will I do after all of this? He saw Mira watching him and smiled when their eyes met.
“Hopefully, that day won’t come for some time yet. I’ll probably miss having you around.” He finished his tea in one gulp then squeezed her shoulder briefly and got to his feet. “I think I’ll turn in. Thanks again for coming after me. Sleep well, Mira.”
“You as well,” she replied.
He eased the door shut behind him and started when he turned to find someone standing against the wall a few feet away. “Ferret! Gods, you startled me.”
“Is she all right?” Ferret stood motionless, only her head swiveling toward him.
“I think she’ll be fine after a good night’s sleep.” He started toward his own room across the hall and a couple doors down as Ferret fell in step beside him. “What are you doing out here?”
“Keeping watch, I reckon.” She shrugged, seeming somehow embarrassed at the admission.
“Keeping watch?” He was about to laugh but realized she was serious. “Whatever for?”
“Someone needs to, and Mira’s in no shape right now.” Her tone was flat, but he sensed a spark of irritation. “I don’t sleep, so might as well stand here like a statue. In case any more hussies try to have their way with you and snatch you away again.”
Taren laughed. “Why, Ferret, I didn’t know you cared.” He unlatched his door and pulled it open, watching her with amusement.
“I need you in one piece till we get to that Shirak Station and you help me get cured. After that you’re on your own, man. Bed all the crazed hag-spawns you want.” Annoyance was clearly bleeding through, and she took up position a couple paces from his door, arms crossed.
“What would I do without you and Mira looking out for me?”
“You’d probably be in chains in Nesnys’s clutches right now, if not already dead in a ditch somewhere long before that. Best scenario, I’m guessing you might get away with a case of the cock rot.”
“You could be right about that.” He hid his smile and stepped into his room but then paused before closing the door. Leaving her just standing out there the rest of the night seemed discourteous somehow. “Well, you might as well come inside. You can have the chair in front of the fire if you want.” He’d seen how she often stared into the campfire for hours on end when they were on the road and thought it calmed her.
Ferret stared at him silently a moment before relenting. She closed the door behind herself then walked over to the window to take in the view of the lake below.
As Taren sat on the bed to remove his boots, Ferret asked, “About earlier… what happened between you and Mira? Did you make up?”
“We did. I apologized… She was right to stop me. I got too caught up in the magic. You wouldn’t believe how it feels, having so much power at your fingertips.”
“I might. Sort of like how I can throw people around in a fight.”
He smiled. “Something like that, I imagine. But it becomes addictive… I could have kept going, destroying every last Nebaran soldier, even after they broke and ran, though I would’ve paid a physical price afterward. Mira was right. I was a danger to the Balance, and I don’t think I would’ve ceased, so she stopped me.” He shrugged. “It’s hard to describe it.”
“Like when you’re running downhill and get going so fast that it’s hard to stop?”
He laughed. “That’s a pretty good analogy, my bardling friend. You know, it’s a pity you don’t have that lute anymore.”
“That old broken thing? Why?” Ferret poked at the fire in the hearth with her fingers and stirred up the embers then stuck a couple of fresh logs on top. She absently wiped the soot from her hands on her breeches.
Taren took off his robes and slipped under the covers while she fiddled with the fire. “I rather enjoyed your playing that night we stayed at the cottage. You’ve got some talent, likely a fine voice as well. It’s nice that Yosrick was able to help you with your letters and sums.”
“You truly think so?” Her glowing violet eyes regarded him.
“I do. You’ll have to promise to play for me once we get you cured and find you a decent instrument.”
“Huh. If you get me cured, I’ll be your personal bard until you’re sick of me if that’s your price. I can craft ballads of your adventures as you travel the land, ridding it of Nebarans, monsters, and the like.”
He chuckled. “That sounds good. Would you care to sing something?”
“If you like.” Despite her offhand remark, she sounded pleased at the request.
Ferret sang softly, her voice low and hollow compared to how he remembered it prior to her transformation, but it was pleasant enough, if a bit mournful sounding. After a few minutes, he drifted off to sleep, listening to her singing a familiar tale of a kn
ight who set off on a quest, where he had to complete seven separate trials in order to win the hand of his love.
Chapter 32
Ferret was back in Ammon Nor, ten summers old again, and standing over her mother’s deathbed in The Sweet Berry, the whorehouse where she had grown up. Her mother hadn’t worked for weeks, slowly wasting away with the pox, until one day Violetta, a kindly whore who was more a mother to Ferret than her own flesh and blood, had summoned her, saying her mother wanted to see her. Violetta was a plump, pretty woman whose enormous bosom made her one of Madame Rosalda’s, known by everyone as Rosie, most popular girls.
“Keep your face covered, luv,” Violetta said. “Aye, like so. And don’t get too close or touch her. Bad humors’ll get ya sick too if ya ain’t careful.” She hovered nervously outside the closed door to the tiny room Ferret’s mother called both home and workplace, obviously fearful of approaching. “She’s not got much longer and wants to talk with ya afore she passes. It’s all right, luv—go on in there.”
Even with Ferret’s face covered with a scarf, the thick scents of perfumes and incense couldn’t quite drown out the sickbed stink once Violetta closed the door quietly behind her. After struggling to swallow with her throat suddenly gone dry, Ferret found the courage to move closer. After a few steps, she stood over her mother’s bed and looked down at the ruin of a woman who had once seemed quite pretty to a young girl who looked up to her, desperate for affection, although her mother’s looks were oft buried beneath fatigue and unhappiness, even surliness at times. Her mother, who was only fourteen summers Ferret’s elder, had never shown her much affection, though Ferret doubted she had ever really deserved any. A child was just another expense, a mouth to feed for a woman who barely made enough coin to get by—even costing her coin when she was unable to work during the late stages of pregnancy.
She couldn’t hold back a gasp at seeing her mother’s once-pretty features obliterated by a wasteland of boils. Her fair skin was mottled with black-blue patches and red pustules. A chamberpot beside the bed contained bloody chunks amid the vomit, and Ferret’s stomach went queasy even from a quick glance.
Her mother’s brown eyes cracked open at her gasp. The whites of her eyes were yellowish and bloodshot but much better to look at than the rest of her, so Ferret focused on her eyes.
“There ya are.” Her mother’s voice was a rasp. “Aye, I look like shite, I know. I’m not much longer for this world, but I wanted to see ya one last time, Maribelle. And to tell ya to keep away from me since this’ll only get worse. Ya ain’t gonna want to see me after this.”
Ferret didn’t know what to say, so she simply nodded. Her mother was the only one who called her by her real name, which she hated. Her silly given name was one more suited to some fair princess who lived in a high tower somewhere in a faraway land—a land where men were brave and noble instead of violent drunks with animal urges, a place where mothers weren’t whores dying of the pox, and girls had loving fathers to dote on them.
“I haven’t been much of a mother to ya, and I’m sorry ’bout that. Violetta says she’ll look after ya when I’m gone. She’s a good friend to me, so do what she tells ya.” She gave a wet cough and rolled over and spat into the chamberpot. Patches of her matted brown hair had fallen out, leaving bald spots at the back of her head. “I don’t have nothin’ left to give ya except for that. I want ya to take that knife there.”
Ferret picked up the small knife from the dresser beside the door. She knew it well, of course. Her mother usually kept it handy in case any of the men became overly abusive. All the girls had one just in case. It was a plain, unornamented blade, slim and compact with a nice balance and fashioned of good steel. Much better than the rusty, notched knife Ferret had once scavenged from a rubbish pile. She figured this knife would be small enough to conceal in her clothes where none of the other urchins could spot it and get any ideas of beating her up and stealing it from her. Perhaps she’d even learn how to throw it effectively, like a few of the older kids she’d seen doing so for fun.
“Ya prob’ly won’t amount to much—a whore just like your mama, eh? But at least that might keep ya safe off the streets. My coin ran out, but Rosie was kind enough to let me stay till the end, and she said she’ll even pick up the tab to put me in the ground. Ya talk to Rosie in a few years, and she’ll set ya up—might even give ya my old room, I reckon.” She gave a bitter laugh that sounded like the noise a frog would make. “Ya can be layin’ here spreadin’ your legs just like your old mama.”
“I’m not gonna be no whore,” Ferret said quietly.
“What’s that?” Her mother squinted at her. “Speak up, girl.”
“I said I’m not gonna be no whore.”
Her mother croaked another laugh. “Well, that’s good if ya think so. Don’t know what you’d be much good at, but ya go and find something. You’ve enough of my looks ya might end up being pretty in a few years. What ya want is to find yourself a man who’s got coin. Ya give him what he wants, get a baby in your belly—well, if he’s the type that sticks around, then that’s the best life ya can hope for, I reckon.”
She broke into a prolonged coughing fit that eventually ended with her spitting bloody chunks into the chamberpot.
“Oh gods… can’t take much more o’ this. Run along now, Maribelle. Keep that knife. Talk to Rosie when Violetta says you’re old enough. Or find yourself a rich man if the gods bless ya with better luck than me. Go on, then. Send Vi in here when ya leave.”
Ferret ran along as instructed, for that was all the love and wisdom her mother had to impart to her. She found Violetta and conveyed her mother’s wish, then made it all the way down to her favorite spot on the riverbank before she burst into tears. She wasn’t crying because she would really miss her mother that much but more due to the fact she was the only family Ferret had ever known and ever would. All she was left with from her parents, besides having been brought into the world, was a vision of a wretched, suffering woman on her deathbed and a cheap knife given her as an heirloom.
She was tempted to throw the damn knife into the Black Channel, but her practicality overrode her flash of emotion. The knife was good steel, and if she got truly desperate, she could always sell it for a few coppers, she supposed.
Nobody will call me Maribelle anymore, at least. That thought made her bawl even harder. She wondered if she’d end up a whore after all. More likely a thief, as she had nimble fingers and already some experience at picking pockets. The best living I can hope for is to find a rich man. And then be his whore. Her mother hadn’t said that last part, but Ferret had seen enough of the world and heard enough wagging tongues from the women at Rosie’s to understand what she had implied.
She didn’t know whether the thought of actually doing that saddened her more or the fact that it was all her mother could imagine her doing with her life.
Taren muttered something in his sleep, and Ferret surfaced from her reverie. She sat motionless in the chair before the hearth, its embers dying out. The sun was already rising over the lake outside the window. She tossed a log onto the embers, prodded them until they flared anew, then walked over to watch the sunrise, the brilliant rays reflecting on the glassy water. Fishermen were already out on the lake, eager to make an early catch. Her gaze shifted to the docks after a time, where just a few hours earlier all the excitement had occurred.
I wish you could see me now, Mother. Well, not now as a bloody construct, but as a hero. I’ve fought in battle and helped rescue a queen—twice. I’ve been to Nexus and met the Lady of Twilight. I rang the bell at Ammon Nor. And I’ll be going with my friends on a quest to win this war and save the multiverse.
She wondered what her mother would have thought of her, had she still been alive. Probably think I’d make a good high-class whore now that there’s a bunch of lordlings in my orbit around the court. Either that or she’d be hitting me up for coin. She snorted a bitter laugh.
Thoughts of her mother made her re
alize she’d lost her dagger—the only thing other than life her mother had given her. Rabbit-sticker, Creel had named it.
Mayhap Creel’s still got it. She thought it likely he did.
Taren yawned loudly and lay there blinking owlishly at her when she looked over from the window. “Morning,” he said.
“Aye, so it is. Up and at ’em. Today’s the day we leave, right? Go back to that awful Hall of the Artificers, then through the portal to find this Lenantos character and get the rod, then go to Shirak and get me restored.”
He sighed. “I hope it’s as easy as all that, but yes, assuming Sianna grants us leave to go. Hopefully, everyone is recovered from their hangovers and such. Tomorrow at the latest. Thanks to your vigilance, I survived the night unmolested by any more hag-spawns.”
Ferret laughed.
“Say, would you mind…” Taren nodded at his robes, thrown over the back of a chair.
Ferret tossed them to him. “You’re also welcome for the warm hearth to wake up to so your tender feet won’t be cold getting out of bed.”
He grinned at her. “You’d make a good chambermaid if the bard thing doesn’t work out, you know?”
Better than a whore or thief, I reckon. “I’m afraid you’ll have to fetch your own bathwater and wash your own noble arse, your lordship.” She gave him a curtsey and smiled to herself as she closed the door to the sound of Taren’s laughter.
So, what next? She stood in the hallway undecided a moment before deciding to go find Creel. She hoped he still had Rabbit-sticker, though she knew not why it suddenly seemed important to her—possibly because it was something to hold on to from her past, though she didn’t care to remember much from that time in her life.
Locating Creel proved more difficult than she’d first imagined. The monster hunter’s room was unoccupied, though his bed had been slept in. In the hallway, she ran into Rafe, who said he’d seen him headed into town a short time before, although he hadn’t said where. She slipped on her cloak and went outside to the bailey. Upon inquiry at the gates, one of the guards indicated Creel had headed down the main street through the city.
Trial of the Thaumaturge (Scions of Nexus Book 3) Page 28