A Fist Full of Sand
Page 4
“Come see the lunar eclipse!” he called. “One week away! Rent a spot at the telescope, three silver a look, and hot cider available! Very romantic, bring that special someone!”
He did not seem to have any hot cider available right now, so I followed my nose into a space miraculously clear of stone buildings and instead thick with improvised pavilions and waterproofed awnings.
A bazaar! The caravans and desert traders met with each other at seasonal bazaars on the edge of the mountains, and near the more permanent of the rare watering holes. The tent city of the Inkling Oasis is supposed to have a vendor for everything in the known world, for a price.
“Oasises?” I muttered under my breath. “Oasi?”
Next to me, a man selling bright cloth gave me a funny look, and moved some of his more expensive looking wares away.
Voice sounded pleased with itself.
I approached the best smelling stall, which contained a tall glass cabinet with mounds of sugar frosted breads inside. One bored looking boy waved a silk rag at some optimistically hovering flies, and one round woman took money from the line of customers, handing out paper wrapped pastries in turn. I got in line.
“Hello.” I opened when the line moved me to the front. “I don’t have any money, but I have this rope, or maybe a dagger, and I was wondering if--”
The woman gave me and my mud covered clothes an offended shriek, and immediately reached down and picked up a round stone, which she threw at me.
[Charisma check: Failed]
“Urchin!” she yelled. “Get away, you!”
I easily dodged the stone, thought of making a counter argument, and then thought better of it as she raised her hand again, rearmed. What, does she keep a stash of stones at hand, just in case she sees something she doesn’t like?
The stone whizzed past my head, better aimed this time, eliciting snarls from the people around me. Yep. I thought, she sure does.
Swallowing hard against the raw sense of rejection, I disappeared into the crowd, glad, for the first time, of how easily the tall humans and wide dwarves hid my slight figure.
[Stealth check: Success]
Several more attempts to approach food vendors ended with similar results, varying only in the level of noise produced. My stomach growled, as unhappy with me right now as everyone else, it seemed.
I was inclined to agree. What was the point of all these piles of people living together in a city if they weren’t going to be nice to each other? There must be some advantage.
I spotted a cheesemonger. He had chased me off earlier and spat at me as I ran, but his attention was currently taken up by a lavishly dressed man negotiating for one of the huge twenty pound cheese wheels.
I padded quietly over behind the cheese stall. A large dog was sprawled next to one of the pavilion supports, currently asleep. The tent behind me (selling cheap metal and glass jewelry, I recalled) concealed me from the wandering eyes of the market crowd. I stepped very carefully around the sleeping dog, keeping a huge, black waxed cheese wheel between myself and the cheesemonger. If I crouched, it was easily taller than I was.
[Stealth check: Success]
I pulled out one of my daggers and began to carve out a chuck of the wheel in front of me. I had just gotten one fragrant lump about the size of my hand squirreled away up my sleeve…
[Sleight of Hand check: Success]
…when a commotion erupted from the whey-faced cheesemonger.
“THIEF!” he bellowed. “Stop that halfling!”
I looked around me in a panic, wondering how he had seen me. Doesn’t matter. Run! I jumped to my feet, slipping my dagger back into its hiding place, and was promptly bowled into by a fast moving halfling trying to exit the stall out the back. We both went down in a tangle of flailing arms, and his own liberated package of soft brie sailed right on past us and landed on the sleeping dog. The dog came awake in a mad explosion of barking and snapping, blocking off our escape.
“Who are you?” I cried as I quickly summed up the number of steps it would take before the cheesemonger caught us. I somehow doubted that protesting my innocence would go over well. Don’t mind me, I’m not the thief you were looking for. Just a different one. Bonus sale on hungry halflings, today only!
“Who are you? I didn’t even see you! Never mind, save the introductions, let’s get out of here!” He grabbed my hand and took a few steps as if to run off into the crowd.
“No, wait.”
[Perception check: Success]
I didn’t like the look of three pair of black, authoritative boots coming towards us from that direction.
“Guards!” yelled the cheesemonger. “Over here!”
“This way!” I pulled the other halfling with me, back towards the dog. “Charge!”
The barking dog looked at us, then at the package of dirty brie that had landed in front of it a moment ago, then back at us, and came to entirely the wrong conclusion. It grabbed the package in its mouth and bolted, tail wagging joyfully behind it in a Can’t catch me! game I envisioned would last as long as the stolen cheese did.
My new friend and I didn’t waste our opening. We darted around the jewelry stall, then past the baker, and ran for a side street I hadn’t even seen when I first entered. Behind us, the two human guards gave chase while the dwarf stopped to take a statement from the outraged cheesemonger.
I let my friend lead. He seemed to know the area.
We ran along the narrow street, then up and over a rough stone wall. He led us through private yards and around covered wells and through what I thought was a boarded up window, but instead turned out to out to be a hole in a wall that divided us from another street. Our acrobatic antics put a little distance between us and our pursuers, but on every stretch of open road, the ground eating strides of the long human legs closed on us yet again. Must go faster!
As my friend led us on, the city around us grew older, the architecture more crowded and in worse repair, and the opportunities to climb, wriggle, jump and otherwise evade the hunt grew more and more plentiful, until we eventually emerged from a small crawl space into a dirty cul-de-sac. The only opening large enough for a human guard was blocked off by an ugly wooden shack, adorned by greasy cloth hanging in the gaps that passed for doors or windows. There was no sound of clopping black boots following us.
My new friend bent over, hands on his knees, panting and trying to catch his breath. I guess he wasn’t used to running much. I patiently waited for him to stand up again.
“Whew!” he said when he finally did. “That was fun! The city guard sure is getting more tenacious these days. All the burglaries, lately, I guess.” He looked me up and down, hiding his skepticism well, and finally stuck out his hand. “Hi. I’m Ramsey. Ramsey Havalia, if you must know, but don’t you dare call me ‘Halves’ or anything like that.”
Ramsey scowled at me for a moment in what he might have thought was a stern sort of way, but couldn’t keep it up. “Actually,” he continued hopefully, “my friends call me Pockets. On account of how I always have something in them. It’s like, you know, my nickname.”
Ramsey waited expectantly at me. I waited politely back.
He gave up. “So what’s your name then?” he asked, putting his hands away in one of his eponymous pockets. “We don’t get a lot of halflings here in Triport. I mean, some, yeah, but mostly they stay on the other side of the mountains.”
“My nam
e is Samiel.”
“Sam-yule?” He tried it out.
“Sam-ee-ehl.” The broken syllables sounded strange in my mouth, it was supposed to be smooth, like the wind. “Umm, like the Angel of Death.”
“Cor!” Ramsey looked genuinely impressed now. “That’s badass! You got a cool last name too?”
“Uh, I don’t think so.” Voice? Do I have a last name?
“Nice to make your acquaintance, Sam.”
Huh. So that’s how nicknames work. You get them by being unpronounceable. I liked the way Ramsey said it, though, casual and friendly. And also by being someone that someone else needs to know… I felt my spirits rise a little.
“So,” I finally asked. “Where are we, anyway?”
“Oh, I guess we’re somewhere in the back of the Market District, probably in one of the slummier ‘self protected’ areas.” At my look of confusion, he elaborated: “Some neighborhoods can’t or won’t pay the guard fees to the city. The city doesn’t send in patrols to these areas much, and the ones which chase you into them won’t look too hard for you if they do. The polite fiction is that neighborhood volunteers keep watch and guard themselves. Now, some places,” he went on thoughtfully, “really do have their own private security, and you don’t usually want to mess with them. The Arcane Quarter, for example, upslope of Temple Hill, should be approached with great care by innocent bystanders and mischief makers alike. I don’t do much business there.”
Ramsey and I turned at a sound from the raggedy shack behind us. It sounded like someone waking up, or maybe throwing up. Or both.
“Maybe let’s not test the security of this particular neighborhood, seeing as how I’m not so known around here either.” he suggested.
“Sounds good to me.” We made our way out of the cul-de-sac by the same entrance we came in. I had a hopeful thought. “Is there anywhere we can go get some food?”
Ramsey’s face, uplifted a moment before as he lectured on his reputation, fell. It was fascinating to watch, these ups and downs of expressions he had. It was like he never had a though that didn’t engender a feeling that didn’t parade across his face. I tried to think of something else to divert his attention with, just so I could watch him do it again. Inspired, I reached into my sleeve and pulled out the dense lump of cheese I had managed to carve off before we got caught. “Would you like a snack?”
His face did its magic buoyancy trick again. “You did get away with some! A prime, aged cheddar, too. Ha!” He jumped up and punched the air in mid stride. “Sam, you’re the best!”
I took out one of my daggers, which he eyed appraisingly, and split the cheese in two. He accepted half with a solemn grace lasting as long as it took to take a taste, and then smiled again, somewhat shyly.
“You know, not everyone would have shared a nice loot like that. That’s, uhh, that’s pretty cool of you.”
I shrugged, looked away, tried not to be embarrassed. “I’ve never had anyone to share food with, before.”
He reconsidered me.
“So, where the heck are you from?” he asked, munching down the last of his cheddar. “I mean, you’re as tanned as a sailor, but you don’t roll when you walk, and your clothes… aren’t exactly Southwind Trading Company regulation. Or any kind of regulation.”
“What’s wrong with my clothes?” I looked down at the linen shrouds I wore. They were getting a bit thin. I mostly used them to keep my breasts from bouncing when I ran and jumped, and occasionally to hide things like daggers or stolen cheese in.
“Nothing.” He kept his expression painfully neutral.
“I took them off a mummy.” I confessed. From my one and only excursion to the pyramids out on the western edge of the Great Sand Sea. I hadn’t meant to go anywhere near them, but in the blindness of the sandstorm I had literally fallen into one of the air shafts of a buried tunnel leading inside. Inside, but not out: the tunnels exit had long ago collapsed in an avalanche of sand, and the only other way led through a maze of stone tombs and jeweled mosaics. I had never even gotten a glimpse the shrieking thing that chased me out, nor looked back once I escaped.
This time it was Ramsey’s jaw that fell. “You’re joking.” he said flatly. And then, after a moment. “You’re not.”
I shrugged again.
“So, you’re from the Sand Sea, then?”
“From all over the Elkylar, for as long as I can remember. I wandered, following the water, and moved around a lot.” Especially after I had eaten all the lizards in a given location.
“But, weren’t you with anybody? You’re full-blooded halfling. Your parents must have been halflings too. Who took care of you?”
What a strange idea. “I took care of myself.”
Ramsey looked vastly awed by this. “No parents…” he mused to himself.
“I only remember the sky, and the wind. I mean,” I hastened on at his stricken expression, “it’s not like I was bored. There were dustdevils to play with. And sand foxes. And scorpions. I like scorpions.”
Ramsey stopped in the middle of the street as if this all might make more sense standing still. Then he shook his head, and muttered “What are we going to do with you?” And then he burst out laughing as an idea kindled, lit, and flared to life. “Wait, I know exactly what to do with you. Cummon Sam, I have someone you have to meet.”
“His name is Ishàmae.” Ramsey said as he led me uphill, out of the self-protected neighborhoods, and into some better kept areas. Several people, human, dwarven, and even the very occasional halfling, waved at him as we passed. Ramsey always waved back, calling people by name, and sometimes adding a quick personal comment or two.
“That lovely Brie I had my hands on earlier today,” Ramsey sighed at the memory of stolen cheese, “I was hoping to sell to Isha. I do errands for him, sometimes.”
“You seem to know a lot of people.” I wondered how he kept them all straight.
“Yep!” He beamed proudly. “You’ve got to know people, if you want to sell them stuff. You got to know what they want. Especially what they want well enough to buy at a steep discount, no questions asked.”
“So,” I contemplated, remembering the lumber hawker from this morning, “I suppose you’ve got a lot of money then.”
Ramsey laughed. “Ha, don’t I wish! I could be rich, if I could get a reliable supply of goods. But I don’t touch the hard stuff. I’m not selling anybody sparq, or rush, or fancy, or whatever they’re calling it now. And no cursed items. And I’m certainly not setting anybody up with anybody else who wants to kill anyone. Not my style.” He sighed. “No, mostly what I have is a lot of favors.”
We passed what seemed like some kind of business district -- “Lower Temple Hill.” he informed me. “Home of the great banks.” -- and then veered at an angle into an eclectic area scattered with small workshops, studios, and housing for the workers thereof.
“Anyway, Ishàmae’s all right. But he’s got this problem, you see, with some centipede in his basement. And not like a little, friendly centipede,” Ramsey shuddered at this thought, “but a great big huge one. We have no idea where it came from. I think it escaped from the College. The wizards up there churn out all kinds of crazy magic items all the time. Stands to reason if some little bug got into one of their machines, it just might come out not-so-little. And not so natural, either.”
We passed a large, recessed, semi-circular area with thin columns supporting a vaulted roof, but no walls. Ramsey identified it as an open-air theater.
“Isha has let me know he’d pay someone to clear the thing out of his cellar. But the last guy who tried got stung, and then his leg swelled up all huge and we thought he was going to die. Luckily, he had a great insurance policy with the Temple, so he’s ok, but now he’s gone around telling everyone crazy stories about how huge and deadly this bug is. I can’t get anyone to take the job. But you…” He grinned at me, all white teeth in a freckled face. “… dan
ce with dustdevils and play with scorpions. So I’m thinking maybe you and Isha need to talk.”
Eventually we came to a building that looked as if it had once been designed by the makers of the theater, though perhaps on a smaller scale. Actually, it looked suspiciously like half of a building, its odd asymmetry ending abruptly in a small, walled courtyard made of the leftover stone. I got the impression a much grander piece of architecture had collapsed, leaving only this nub, repurposed many years ago by the pragmatic citizens of Triport into something new. At least there were walls.
Ramsey led me around the back of the enclosed yard and let us in through a gate. Inside was a garden, full of spicy, sweet smelling herbs. Bleached white laundry, mostly tablecloths, swung on high clothes lines that ran between the aqueduct and the second story. The smell wafting out of the stone building made my stomach grumble with greed. The armed pastry seller from the market this morning has got nothing on this, I decided. Crescent shaped steps led to a recessed porch that blurred the boundary between inside and outside, and on a wicker chair under the overhang sat a tall, lanky elf, in a posture of abject failure.
“Hullo, Isha.” Ramsey greeted him. “I want you to meet my new friend Sam-yell.” And then, in a tone of pronounced approval, “She’s all right.”
The elf’s eyes flickered over to me from under some sweaty strands of ash blond hair. No other part of him bothered to move, and I had just about figured that all of his limbs had given up when he finally said, “Greetings, Samiel.”
He said my name properly, soft as shifting sands, and I grinned at him for it.
Ignoring the elf’s total lack of enthusiasm, Ramsey continued. “Sam has some experience with awful, huge, stinging bugs, and she can take care of herself. I was thinking you might want to interview her about your centipede problem.”