Fugitive: A Prequel to Spirit of Magik

by Richard Cluff

  She walked up the steps. There was a big porch, with chairs and a bench sitting in the shelter provided here. The wood and brickwork were well-kept. There was another sign on the door, but she just ignored it and walked inside. She knew it didn't say stop, so it shouldn't be an issue.

  The room that was here had a beautiful hardwood floor with many chairs lining the walls. There was a tapestry on one wall with a painted depiction of hunters chasing a deer over a hill. There was a desk facing the door with a woman behind it. Sherie saw three other people sitting and waiting in the chairs. A large man with leather armor and a cudgel (obviously the guard) stood in the doorway between this room and the inner areas.

  "May I help you?" The woman behind the desk asked. She was a brunette, and she just blinked her eyes while waiting for an answer.

  "Isn't it obvious, you dumb bitch?" Was the first thing that crossed her mind, but she said, "I need the Doctor to look at my eye."

  The woman pulled out a paper and wrote on it. "And what is wrong with it?" She asked.

  "Um... it's fucking missing. I had too many ales one night and it decided to run off with another woman." Sherie snorted dryly.

  She heard the big man with the cudgel chuckle at that. The woman looked purely nonplussed and pursed her lips. "There's no need to be sarcastic, ma'am. What is your name?"

  "Jirai Sonom," she told her. The alias rolled off of her lips more easily this time.

  "Well then, Miss Sonom, this visit could cost a bit. Please show me your coin," she demanded.

  She pulled her purses out; she had two now because when she'd looted the three men, it was more than one could hold. She opened the one with the gold coin in it, and let her look.

  The woman was obviously surprised she had this much money and nodded with approval. "Well, the Doctor will be with you as soon as possible," she told her with an amicable smile.

  "Right," she replied and found a wall near the desk to lean against. She adjusted Jona's ax on the back of her belt so it wouldn't poke her. She could watch the door, the hall the guard was at and everyone else in the room from here. She was surprised as a woman took her young son and moved their seats as far away from her as they could. "What, do I smell?" She wondered, and sniffed her armpits. "I am due for a bath, I suppose." She sat there watching the room, absently flipping a dagger in one hand.

  Enough time passed that she decided to see if she could do one in each hand. She was doing pretty well, too. She missed a couple of times, and they bounced off her hand wrong, but she still caught them before they hit the floor.

  She heard a boy say; "Wow mom, look at that!" Just after they had entered, the woman said quietly, (but not quietly enough) "Don't look at her, she's a pauper. She might have some kind of disease."

  Sherie was shocked. She hadn't even considered the fact that she really was a pauper now because she had no home, but for this dumb bitch to just say that in front of her... she had no words. It was one thing to remark about the pathetic alcoholic on the corner begging for coin, it was another thing to remark about someone who was wearing eight visible blades.

  She sheathed her daggers, and walked to the desk, shouldering right past the dumb housewife. "How soon am I going to be called?" She asked the woman at the desk.

  "There are still two ahead of you, ma'am," she told her without quibbling.

  Sherie fished a silver coin out of her purse, and asked, "Any way to make that faster?"

  The woman looked at the coin and held out two fingers low where it wouldn't be seen by others. She said, "I could see if the Doctor can see you sooner; your eye is more serious than anything else waiting."

  Sherie understood. She just fished a second silver coin out of her purse and set them on the desk. The woman behind the desk nodded, pocketed one, and slid the other to the corner of the desk. Sherie saw the guard pick his up, too. "We'll be calling you in a few minutes, Miss Sonom."

  Sherie went back to the wall where she was sitting crouched. The woman she'd shouldered past was still standing there, looking equal parts afraid and outraged. Sherie just waited patiently, watching while the insulting woman told the woman at the desk what her son's problem was.

  Sherie figured it out right away, he was coughing a lot. But knowing how to fix it... well, she could knock him out, but his mother would probably get mad about that. She'd be happy to, but the boy hadn't done anything to her, so she left them be.

  Her revenge was being called in next by the secretary. The guard stepped aside for her, and she entered the hallway. There was a man on the other side of the sentry that said, "Miss Sonom? Come this way, please." His clothing was nicely cut, and he had a pleasant face.

  "Are you the Doctor?" She asked the man while she followed him.

  "Oh no, ma'am, I am her nurse and assistant. I will take a look at you, and get some basic information for her while you wait." He turned to the room on the right and said, "Have a seat in there, Miss Sonom, and please take you weapons belts off. I'll be right back."

  The room had a chair, a small desk and a low cot on it. It also had a basin, with a steel spigot above it. "Why do I have to take my weapons belt off?" She asked.

  He looked somewhat distracted, but replied, "They will get in the way during the examination ma'am. One moment." The man jogged off down the hall after that.

  There was a door on the room that was open. The room was about twelve by fifteen feet. Sherie undid her weapon belts but held them in her left hand. She did set the saddle-bags on the floor by the chair she sat in, though.

  As promised the nurse came right back. "Ma'am, could you sit on the cot please?" He asked.

  She just got up and sat on the cot taking her belts with her. Then he took her temperature with his hand, took her pulse, and listened to her lungs with a metal cone. He wrote information down on a sheet that was clipped to a board. Then he spoke, "Ma'am, it says you are here for your eye, and that you lost it. What happened?"

  "I was in a fight. I tried to block a blow from a long sword. The guy was really strong, and he broke my blade. A shard of it landed in my eye. Then a Legion medic took my eye out to keep it from going bad. He told me not to get anything in it. He put this bandage on for me." She conveniently left out the fact that the man with the long sword had been a Legionnaire that had been changed into a Kryss.

  He nodded as he jotted down notes with a quill on the paper. His demeanor seemed a bit more solemn than it was before she told him that.

  "Ma'am, I need to take your bandage off and take a look at it."

  "Okay," she said, and just sat and waited for him to do it.

  "My name is Guntar, ma'am. I'm sorry I forgot to introduce myself," he said with a smile as he went to the basin and turned on the spigot. He seemed to be washing his hands with soap.

  "That's fine. I don't really care what your name is," the thought just escaped her mouth. While it might have been completely true, Sherie wasn't the kind of person to be rude for no reason. Although, she'd always been happy to be mean to people that irritated her.

  "Well... alright, ma'am," he said somewhat taken aback. Sherie guessed the pretty young man wasn't used to being told something like this by a woman. She guessed it likely that women tended to flutter over him.

  Regardless whether he was used to that or not, he proceeded about his job, removing the bandage, and cleaning the dirty area she'd been afraid to touch herself with a foul smelling liquid. She told him to be sure not to get any in her eye, but he said, "It's alright, ma'am, this is alcohol. Nothing bad will happen if this gets in there."

  She chuckled. "That has to be the most foul-smelling brew ever. I can see why you use it to clean instead of drinking."

  He stopped for a minute and looked at her like she was stupid. "Of course, ma'am," was all he said before continuing.

  Sherie didn't care much for that look, but she decided it wasn't worth stabbing him over.

  When he finished cleaning around it, he looked inside her eye socket, using a candle to help lig
ht it up. Then he told her, "I am going to speak to the Doctor. One of us will be back soon. Please don't touch your eye socket, ma'am."

  "Right," she told him with a nod.

  Sherie wasn't sure how long she waited, but it wasn't that long.

  An older woman walked into the room with a board in her hand like the pretty nurse had done. Sherie wasn't sure how old the woman was, but she was old enough to have gray streaked in her hair. The woman closed the door behind her, and without preamble, she just walked right to her and opened her eye with her thumb and fore-finger.

  Without even thinking about it, Sherie had a dagger at the woman's throat as fast as a breath.

  The woman stopped cold. She looked into Sherie's remaining eye, and down at the cold steel on her neck. She was properly respectful of that steel, but not panicking the way most people would. She just asked her, "Are you going to kill me, or can I finish looking at you first?"

  Sherie just chuckled and slid the dagger back into its sheath. "Sorry, I'm just jumpy."

  The older woman snorted. "I'm Doctor Zanna. And you're going to have to come up with something a lot better than that if you're going to convince me."

  "What do you mean by that?" Sherie asked, suddenly wary of this woman. The woman just looked into her eye socket without comment. She pulled a light rod out of her pocket and used it to illuminate the cavity. A light rod was an enchanted item. Legion officers would have one, and night patrols would have them issued, but she knew not just anyone could afford such a thing.

  "What happened to you?" The Doctor asked.

  "I was in a fight, my sword broke and a piece of it landed in my eye," Sherie said, irritably.

  "No, I mean what happened to traumatize you," she clarified, as she put the light rod in her pocket. She walked over to the chair and sat down. The doctor pulled one of those fancy self-inking pens out. Sherie had only seen those a few times, and always in the hands of a higher Officer in the Legion.

  "Umm... I was fighting," she told her.

  "Were you raped?" The Doctor asked as she was writing.

  "What? No!" Sherie exclaimed in shock.

  The Doctor just nodded. "Well, there is something more wrong with you than just your eye, young lady."

  "What do you mean by that?" She asked indignantly. "And where do you get off calling me a young lady? I'm a woman grown! I've done my time in the Legion, too."

  "You are nineteen years old at most. You may be a woman grown, but I'm certain you haven't finished a term in the Legion, you're too young," she told Sherie with an unflappable certainty that shook her.

  Sherie's hand tightened around her dagger. "If she goes to a House guard and reports me, I'll be taken, then executed when they figure out who I am. If they don't figure out who I am, I'll be enslaved for trying to avoid my term of service."

  "Miss Sonom, I assure you I have no interest in reporting you to the Guards. I find slavery distasteful and I won't support it in any way," the doctor told her.

  "What? Are you some kind of anarchist?" Sherie asked. It was the law, after all. When a person was eighteen summers old, they must serve the Crown Legion for two years, or enroll in an Academy, unless they were a slave or a married woman. Otherwise, they would be enslaved for their crime.

  The Doctor leaned forward, looking at her in fascination. "So you really were in the Legion, weren't you?"

  "Yes, I told you. I'm twenty-one years old." She lied to the woman.

  "Oh no, you're not. But that's alright. I just wanted to try to help you more if I could. I don't know what it is that you've seen, or what happened to you, I just wanted to understand, that's all. Anyway, your eye socket looks good. I'd like to give it an alcohol treatment just to be safe, and re-bandage it for you." She said in a detached tone as she pulled the tall bottle of alcohol out from the cupboard.

  "I was there at Vox," Sherie confessed to her.

  "Really? What was it like? I've been hearing some impossible stories..." Doctor Zanna said.

  "What have you heard?" Sherie asked.

  "I heard that nearly half the people were changed into Kryss and that only about ten-thousand soldiers survived. I also heard they torched the city," she said in a disturbingly detached manner.

  "I don't know how many soldiers survived, but the rest of it is true," Sherie told her.

  "Truly? I can't imagine so many Kryss being together like that without tearing each other apart. They're completely insane you know," the doctor told her. "Come over to the basin, please."

  Sherie walked over to the side of the room where the basin was. "It started on the morning of the fourth, there were hundreds of them, and they were using cloaks to hide what they were. There was a full alert, and they sealed off the city by quarters. The entire Legion and Great House’s Guards were hunting them."

  "How do you know this?" The doctor asked.

  "Because I helped them. The girl I was died there."

  * * *

  Sherie hadn't expected the Doctor to be so understanding. The woman knew she was a deserter, she was certain, but Doctor Zanna didn't seem to have any issue with it. She recommended a tailor to Sherie, and an inn to stay in tonight.

  The Doctor asked her if she was interested in work. Sherie said she was. She told her to go to the Inn of the Last Spirit and ask for Johann. She also told her that she would be happy to speak with her again if she ever felt the need to discuss what happened.

  She walked down the street using the doctor's directions as a guide. Her wardrobe was brand new, and she even had a second set of small clothes now. She shifted her new cloak over her shoulder and made sure it wasn't in the way of her weapons.

  The tailor had made a leather eye-patch for her, too. She had made the strap a bit longer than it needed to be so it would work with the bandage until she didn’t need it anymore. The Doctor had told her that she could discard the bandage in about a week. But if she felt a sudden fever or pain in her eye socket, she should douse it with alcohol and find a doctor immediately. She had charged Sherie five silver for her services. That was a lot of money, but she felt the woman was worth it. She didn’t quibble about the cost.

  Sherie walked along and noticed a few things that were different here than they were in Vox. One thing was that the streets were cleaner here. People were more polite in this Hold than they were in Vox, too. It seemed like every time she was bumped someone said, "Excuse me."

  Something else really struck her about the House Fenel Guard. They seemed to be extremely professional. When she saw a pair of them on a corner, watching the street, there was no banter between them, and no joking. They just watched and replied courteously to passerby that spoke to them.She could easily tell the difference between anyone that was a Holder and people who were not. Every Holder had a black band tied around their left arm. It seemed the Master of House Fenel had been loved by his people.

  She walked into the inn. It should be the right one, but she would have to ask for this "Johann" to be sure. At least she could get a drink here. She walked to the bar with her saddlebags over her left shoulder, while keeping her right hand on one of her blades. She drew some looks from the crowd.

  Sherie had a hard time believing Doctor Zanna would ever come into a place like this. It was nearly all men here, except for the waitresses, and these men didn't look even slightly honest. This place had to be Fenel Hold's version of the Drunken Rat. The kind of place where selfrespecting murderers would keep their backs to the wall, do their business and leave quickly. Then you'd need to watch for a tail when you walked away, too.

  Ironically Sherie realized she fell into the category of "selfrespecting murderer" now.

  When she approached the bar, she put her right side against it and set her saddlebags down. She tried to look everywhere at once because the way she wasn't looking is where the blade would come from, she was certain.

  The bartender took a leering look at her and asked, "What do you need, sweetie?"

  Sherie reflexively backed away from
the man. He was a huge bear of a person with dark red hair that curled. His arms were bigger around than her thighs were. He had a bit of a belly, but he couldn't really be called fat. He was missing a few teeth, and he'd obviously had his nose broken a few times.

  He smiled lecherously and asked, "What can I get for ya?"

  Sherie had to relax from her startlement; she'd nearly drawn steel on the man. "I could use an ale, and I was looking for a man named Johann."

  "I'll get you that ale right now, girly, then we'll see about the second thing," he said. He went to the other end of the bar and filled orders for his waitresses before he took care of hers.

  On her backside a man came up and put his hand on her shoulder; Sherie then put her sharp blade on his neck. All noise in the bar stopped in an instant.

  "What do you want?" Sherie asked harshly.

  "I was just going to ask if I could buy you a drink, hun!" The man said quickly.

  Sherie just blinked. "You're hitting on me?" Sure it had happened to her before, but it hadn't happened like this in quite a while.

  "Um... well, I... yes," the clueless thug managed.

  Sherie looked him up and down and sheathed her steel. "I drink alone."

  "Ok, thanks for not cutting me, ma'am," he said as he scurried away.

  Then the common room erupted in cheers and laughter. She hadn't expected that. The thugs were pointing at her, and chatting with their neighbors. She saw several of them raising their mugs to her. Sherie didn't really know what to make of it.

  The barkeep came back with her ale and said, "Well, you made yourself popular in a hurry." He smiled at her.

  "I wasn't trying to. Someone put their hand on me, and I reacted. That's all," she said then took a welcome drink of her ale. "So is that Johann guy here, or not?"

  "Oh yeah, he is. I have to ask you, though, why are you looking for

  him?" He asked with a quizzical look.

  "I guess he's a friend of yours then?" She asked.

  "You could say that." The barkeep smiled.