Quickly, Jone hugged her side of the table, her arms forming a barrier around the outer edge to keep any of the little bits and pieces from rolling off and falling to their death on the floor. She managed a sheepish grin, blushing hard once more, hoping Lady Bellamy wouldn’t be too angry.
The lady in question just smiled, bemused, and started gathering the scattered pieces, setting each to their rightful place. “As I was saying,” she continued, “are you from here, Jone? This town, this area?”
The question caught her as off guard as the makeup explosion had. She hadn’t thought ahead on how to answer this particular query; she hadn’t expected to be conversing at length with anyone, and especially not anyone who would care. “N—no,” Jone stammered. “Well, not recently.” She bit her lip. “I mean, yes! Recently, but not originally.” I think? It wasn’t really lying if she was giving her best guess, was it?
She could almost feel the invisible presence appear, roll its nonexistent eyes, and fade away again. Or was that only her imagination? Assuming the voice’s entire existence wasn’t her imagination, that is.
“That’s probably for the best,” Esmeralda commented, digging into her chopped potatoes and barnacle roots. “Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen way, way worse towns. But this one doesn't really have anything notable going for it, save for the local legends.”
Jone blinked, eager to change the subject. Was the tomb she crawled from the very last night one of those legends? She cringed a little inside. “So, you’re an Ecuadorian?” She eyed the well-armed woman curiously. “I hope my asking doesn’t bother you. I’ve simply never met someone from the central islands before. Isn’t it so very hot there?”
Esmeralda burst out laughing, and Jone furrowed her brow in confusion. “Ecuadorian?” The woman grinned after a moment of explosive mirth. “I’m not. I just told her that to get her riled and make her stop asking questions.”
Jone blinked wide eyes as the woman went back to laughing. But she looks Ecuadorian, right? An unexpected tug at her blouse made her jump in her seat. Her eyes went even wider and her face heated up to dangerous levels as Lady Bellamy tugged a glass, chess piece-shaped bottle from where her ample bust had trapped it against the table. “Sorry, dear. Don’t mind me.” She smiled pleasantly, as if nothing was amiss, but her steel gray eyes were smoky with amusement. “There we go.” She tucked the bottle back into the makeup chest, then closed it away.
Jone was absolutely certain her face was going to burst into flames.
“As for myself,” Samantha said, crossing her long, pale thighs and taking a slow sip from her warm spiced cider, “as you can likely tell, my family were once nobility. Up to recently, in fact; ours was a family closely associated with the central Elizabethian power structure. My father was a decorated officer during the Three Centuries’ war, as was his uncle before him, and so on. But we ran afoul of the wrong sort of people, and afoul of the wrong sort of luck. Now I’m all that’s really left of the family name, having turned quite a while ago to mercenary work to upkeep my lifestyle.” She shrugged as if the details were ultimately unimportant. “It’s fair enough. Mercenary work is more fun than watching Elizabeth’s court backstab each other, anyway.”
“I still find that hard to believe,” Esmeralda grinned.
Jone couldn’t help but note Samantha’s omission of the “queen” part of Queen Elizabeth’s proper name. As far as Jone knew, it wasn’t legal to omit the title, and furthermore was considered highly disrespectful. There was no way the omission wasn’t purposeful. “Is that why the Mayor seemed to recognize your name? The nobility, the mercenary work?”
Samantha blinked, setting down her mug. “I suppose so. My name does get around after all.”
“Those slavers didn’t recognize you.” Esmeralda grinned.
Samantha shrugged delicately. “They were clearly undereducated.”
Jone looked between them. “Were…were you with the slavers long? I hope we put an end to them before they had much of a chance to mistreat you.” She frowned sympathetically. Would that I’d crossed paths with those villains before today.
Lady Bellamy frowned. “Not so much. Fortunately for them, they hardly laid a hand on me; they did not have us for long, and despite their ignorance, they were at least willing to listen to reason—”
“Oh, they laid a hand on me, all right,” the dark-skinned Esmeralda stretched languidly. “A whole lot of them, in fact.”
Jone flinched. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
“Don’t be,” the other woman cut across her with a crude, lascivious grin. “It was great. Do you know how hard it is to find really good bondage these days?” Esmeralda leaned her elbows on the table, watching Jone try not to burst into embarrassed flames again. “Or maybe you don't. You’re missing out.” She shook her head, amused. “Don’t worry girl, they didn’t take anything from me that I didn't let them.” She winked. “If you catch my drift.”
Samantha sighed. “Don’t listen to her, Jone.”
“You mean that didn’t really happen?” Flustered and a little aghast, she breathed a sigh of relief at the thought the dark-skinned girl was simply messing with her.
Lady Bellamy shook her head, sipping her cider idly. “No, it did; you just shouldn’t listen to her.”
Jone sat there, face blazing like a warning beacon, as Esmeralda burst into a throatful of rich, husky laughter.
“Still though,” Bellamy continued, “It’s good we stopped things here and now. Not everyone is like you, after all, with your strange disregard for such things.” She glanced at her companion, whose laughter cut off abruptly, her face darkening as she nodded viciously.
“Hear, hear.” Esmeralda leaned back, kicking her nail-heeled boots casually up onto the table. “And glad to be a part of it.” She nodded appreciation toward Jone. “You fought really, really well. And I know a thing or two about fighting.”
Jone struggled out a smile. “Yes, well… You fought well, yourself. I was happy to be of assistance. I could not stand meekly aside after all.”
The dark-haired girl grinned again. “Yeah. That was some pretty sexy work out there on the battlefield, though, so I was going to say,” her eyes caught Jone’s and wouldn’t let go. “Any time you want, let’s just say there's an open offer on the table from the two of us.” She slapped a hand down on the inside of Bellamy’s bare thigh.
Lady Bellamy glanced at her, nodded approvingly, and kept right on drinking her cider.
Jone sat there, face alight, and opened her mouth, but no words came out.
“Hey, don’t just keep on with her, enough’s enough!” Out of nowhere, Adrienne flounced over, her bright cheery face skewed by a scowl. Folding her serving tray under one arm, she pulled out the Mayor’s abandoned chair and sat down, right at Jone’s side. “An’ after she did you both such a good turn, you shouldn’t be embarrassing her to no end like that!”
Jone wasn’t sure if the barmaid’s ardent defense made the matter any better, especially as close as she was sitting. Esmeralda narrowed her eyes at the blond tavern girl, but Adrienne didn’t back down, narrowing her eyes in return and even sticking out her tongue.
After a brief moment of tension, Esmeralda’s glower broke apart into easy laughter. “You know, you’re alright, girl.”
Adrienne shrugged, as if she didn’t need the dark-skinned woman’s approval, and settled back into her own chair.
“So, as we were saying earlier,” Samantha’s cultured voice revived the conversation, “they didn’t have us for long, just a few days. Caught us after making landfall near Lisboa, after porting over on an unmarked ship from Arcadia.”
Arcadia.
Adrienne’s ears perked up excitedly. “Arcadia? That’s where I‘m from, back when I was way, way little. Still have family there, it’s just such a long trip, and the cost—”
Jone couldn’t follow the conversation any further; her world broke apart into white light, like she’d been struck by lightning
.
Arcadia.
The word resounded in her head like the voice of a Lost God. Her mental vision swam, lost in a sea of melted memories.
A sword in her hands, several long feet of straight, mirrored, blood-soaked steel.
Herself in the mirror, exactly like she’d just seen, but with a shining breastplate and helmet, her long locks of golden wheat flowing out from beneath.
A street strewn with the dead, sad and angry tears alike falling uselessly to the cobblestones.
A baker’s store, burning bright, the roof crushed in by a flaming stone the size of a wagon.
A massive airship, its bowsprit a bronze dragon in flight, dozens of guns blazing as it loomed over the city.
One man, standing on the bridge of that same ship, wreathed in flame.
A voice in her head, bellowing a warning she couldn’t heed.
Arms holding hers as she shouted defiance. A piercing pain in her chest.
Blackness.
Jone barely felt the impact as she tumbled to the floor, dizzy beyond reason, her senses gone, as she spilled cider and chair alike onto the wood.
She couldn’t hear Adrienne’s concerned shout for help, or the abrupt creak of three chairs skidding across the floor.
She couldn’t hear the barmaid worry over the injuries she might have sustained, or Bellamy reassuring her that likely, she was simply bone-weary and exhausted.
She couldn’t feel the hands that checked her for wounds, or carried her to safety.
All she felt was the pain: searingly, shockingly hot agony, as something ripped through her chest and out her back, playing over and over in her mind.
All she knew was failure, pain, and a sense of undeniable purpose urging her to get back up.
4
Hospitality
“Get up,” the voice repeated, her honey voice speaking in a sing-song rhythm. “Get up, lazy. You can’t stay abed all day, you’ve got shit to dooooo.”
Jone groaned her way awake; it felt like sky-sprites had hammered on her skull all night long. Her stomach was an empty rumble once more as if she’d utterly neglected it the day before. The voice in her head was too loud, too invasive, as if Jone had drunk herself to sleep the night before and awakened with a nightmarish hangover. At least, she thought she knew what those were like.
And…where in the Abyss was she?
Instinct and panic kicked headaches aside, and Jone rolled out of bed into a fighting stance, accessing her surroundings. Bed. Claymore. Dresser. Rug. Daylight. Small room, high up window; I can see the street and the open market. I’m at the inn…
...and completely naked?
Jone’s head swam as the emergency resolved itself, dizziness returning with a vengeance alongside a shallow swarm of memories. Yesterday reasserted itself like violent flashes of lightning, along with the terror, sadness, anger, and desperation triggered by the name Arcadia. Those memories were at once as real as yesterday, and as distant as the clouds.
And why was she naked?
Dizziness won the war; Jone’s foot caught on a curl of the rug and she tumbled to the floor in a tangle of coarse woven rug, her own limbs, and thin linen sheets.
“Whoa, there. Calm down, psychopants. Dial back the crazy, and let’s try to limit how much we damage ourself just getting out of bed in the morning, maybe?”
“Eeep!” Jone bit back a mental retort as the door to her room burst open. She chirped once in alarm and made a mad, frantic grab for enough free sheet to pull across her bare torso.
She was only halfway successful, rendered mostly helpless with her legs immobilized in swirls of linen bedding, as Adrienne rushed over to her.
“Jone! Are you okay?” Jone’s head swam one final time before settling, and Adrienne suddenly appeared, leaning over her, wheat-blonde locks of hair and soft, fluffy blouse nearly brushing Jone’s face.
Valiantly fighting a blush, Jone leaned her back against the bed. “I’m…I’m fine. Thank you. Just got…tangled up.” She flushed anyway.
Adrienne stood up with a smirk. “For such a swordswoman, you’re not terribly coordinated, are ya?” She looked Jone over. “Guess if you got it where it counts, that’s all that matters. You feelin’ okay this morning? Gave me a terrible fright last night, passin’ out like that.”
Jone frowned. “I’m sorry. I truly did not intend to worry anyone.”
The barmaid rolled her bright blue eyes. “I’m not fishin’ for an apology, silly. I’m askin’ if you’re okay.”
Tugging futilely at the tangled sheet, Jone nodded. “Just disoriented, otherwise fine. Thank you for checking on me.” She blinked. “That was a pretty quick response, by the way.”
To Jone’s surprise, the barmaid blushed. “I’m—It’s not like I was waiting outside, or anything, okay? I just happened to be in the hall! That’s all.” Turning away in an abrupt whirl of skirt and ruffles, she disappeared out the door in a flash, then leaned her head back in. “I’m glad you’re okay!” she called and was gone.
Jone shook her head in confusion and slowly untangled herself, rising to her feet. The plain, worn claymore she’d claimed yesterday lay propped against the foot of the bed, leather straps and sheath dangling, in easy reach of a sleeping Jonelise. But she didn’t see her clothes anywhere.
“Incoming,” the voice said cheerily.
Caught between looking for suitable garments and wondering what the voice meant, Jone froze in the middle of the room as the door popped open once more and Adrienne stuck her head back in. “I left you some fresh clothes in the dresser, by the way! Took mine back for cleanin’ when I checked your wounds last night. See you downstairs!”
Stunned and red-faced, Jone slowly recovered and started moving again, her mind gradually working through the implications of Adrienne’s comment. It took her a long time to stop showing her embarrassment, even to the empty room. And all the while, a faint, honeyed chuckle echoed in the back corners of her mind.
Jone dug through dresser drawers full of ruffles, lace, and bright colors, searching. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate Adrienne’s kindness and generosity; far from it. But she wanted something that felt more her. Assuming, of course, that she’d recognize such a thing when she saw it.
“That. No, that. The other one. At the bottom, on the right. Your other right.” In an uncharacteristic display of altruism, the voice directed her, unbidden, toward a pair of tight, charcoal leggings. From there, Jone located a long tunic on her own: a dark, earthy green trimmed in silver that the voice assured her complemented her eyes.
They were simple, comfortable, and nice. She found she liked them.
The leggings were a little long, the chest of the tunic a little tight, and she sighed at the lack of appropriately sized undergarments. Maybe she should go shopping today. She had money, and it wasn’t like she could leave town, at any rate; she’d given the Mayor her word. Perhaps some breeches to go with the leggings? That sounded nice.
Jone looked into the polished steel mirror hanging over the dresser and smiled. Maybe if she searched long enough, she could find herself again. There was always hope.
It wasn’t much to speak of, but for the first time she could remember, there was a bounce to her step as Jone traversed the stairs of the multi-storied inn. First was upstairs, for a quick bath, along with a swift washing and re-braiding of her massive length of hair. She promised herself to have a good, long soak sometime soon; she’d need several such attempts before her hair was fully clean once more. Then she went back down to the ground floor, but instead of taking a seat in the common area, she turned the corner and went into the kitchen.
Inside, the innkeep and Adrienne were hard at work, him cooking, her bustling and serving, both cleaning. It took a little convincing, but she finally managed to get them to let her help, and the passage of time disappeared for a little while as she busied herself with simple, helpful work.
The doubts, stress, and lingering confusion went away for a little while, too.
Finally, though, the barmaid made a concerted effort to run her off. “Alright, that’s enough.” Adrienne put her hands on her hips. “We can manage from here. You’ve got plenty to do that don’t include stuffin’ yourself into a kitchen all day.”
Jone started to protest that she really didn’t, but the taller girl wasn’t listening. Adrienne dusted her flour-coated hands off on her apron and firmly pushed Jone toward the door to the common room. “Go in there an’ order somethin’ already.” She grinned. “And don’t say you don’t want anything; I’ve had to listen to that stomach of yours rumble for the last half hour.” She huffed out a breath. “Besides, those ‘friends’ of yours from yesterday are in there eating.”
Jone frowned. “You don’t like Esmeralda or the Lady Bellamy?” She thought about it. “I don’t think they meant any harm in the way they teased me yesterday, if that yet bothers you.” Remembering it still made a hint of warmth rush her cheeks though.
Adrienne shook her head. “Ain’t that.” She lowered her voice, peeking out the cracked door. “I…”
Jone studied the girl’s clear blue eyes. “You don’t trust them.”
The serving girl hesitated, then nodded. “I see a whole lot of people come and go, okay? Just call it a hunch…they seem a little too interested in you, if you know what I mean.”
Jone didn’t.
After a moment, Adrienne flushed again. “It’s not like that! Just promise you’ll be careful, okay?” Her freckled face tinged with red, the barmaid resumed shoving Jone out the door. “Go order your food already.”
Jone nodded and let the girl evict her. She made for the corner table, the same one she’d passed out at last night, but by the time she crossed the room, both of the other women were on their way out the door, laughing, arm in arm. They waved though, and Jone waved back. She took the table anyway, and ate in quiet, savoring the peaceful silence as much as the food. Even the voice in her head let her be, for now.
Two full breakfasts later, Adrienne wouldn’t take her payment or her tip, instead throwing the silver coins at her back as she tried to sneak out.
Call of Arcadia Page 5