Squire Hayseed

by S E Zbasnik

  Her sneer turned on her partner. Dear god, what had to have gone wrong for Hayley to wind up partnered with Larissa? No. Forget that. Focus on the task at hand. “We need a priest,” Hayley said to herself.

  Larissa stared a mile long at her. “No kidding. What have we been doing for half the day if not inquiring of every single priest in this God forsaken city?”

  “But,” an idea bobbed in her head, one that was liable to cause both Larissa and Gavin to turn on her. “It doesn’t matter which priest.”

  “What?”

  He’d hate her for it. No doubt the moment he learned of it, Gavin would send her from his presence. It was unbecoming of a squire, probably broke every damn law in the books. He already had another squire, so why keep Hayley around after that? Her fingers slipped off the grip of her sword to curl over her tattoo. He gave her wings, she owed him the same freedom.

  “Come on,” Hayley said, the plan’s mortar falling into place. It didn’t matter that this could cost her everything; she had to do it.

  It wasn’t in the city’s fanciest church with stained glass windows depicting the last gasps of Christ where Hayley would find him but in a smaller recluse. Her eyes darted to the horizon, well aware how little time was left. Rather than head to the front door, which was where Larissa turned, Hayley booked it towards the back. Her kind always entered from the back.

  “Friar,” Hayley shouted, waving her hand back and forth as if it was on fire. “Friar Benedict?”

  “Who wants to know?” a voice shouted from inside a small shrine. This one was dedicated to the saint of liquor instead of Francis or Mary, but the fervor was the same. Hayley paused in her steps, gasping to fill her lungs. Two days running back and forth over the city was catching up to her, and the day wasn’t done yet.

  “It’s me, one of your flock.” Hayley gritted her teeth, watching as Larissa eased her way into the garden of weeds. Benedict would trim the hedges overlooking his little sanctuary, but the rest inside was left to ruin. He had more earthly issues to focus upon.

  “Ah.” Benedict eased out of his still house, a smile painted upon his priestly cheeks. The face was rotund, but the simple frock implied a man stuffed with God’s love instead of every delicacy his side businesses could afford. He folded his hands as if in prayer, eyeing up Hayley warily before the famished eyes darted to Larissa.

  “You come requiring succor?” Benedict asked, his fingers drifting towards her forehead. Hayley knocked the sticky hand away, causing Larissa to hiss at her for daring to attack a man of the cloth. But Hayley knew him. Not personally mind, though his reputation more than made up for it.

  “I need you for a job,” Hayley began.

  The leering snapped away, and Friar Benedict’s beatific smile twisted to a sly grin. “I see. Is it a forged indulgence you require? Perhaps an ex-communication against a rival? Guaranteed signed by the Pope. Both of them if you need.”

  Hayley waved her hand through the air, trying to cut through his menu, when Larissa sidled up beside her. Aghast, the perfect girl gasped, “What are you doing? You cannot just sell such a thing! That is against the Lord’s law.”

  Sticking a mottled hand to his hip, Benedict eyed up Larissa. “Does the Lord not tell us to go forth and prosper? If I wished to be castigated I’d have remained under the thumb of Bishop Brighton.”

  “No, wait.” Hayley dashed for him, grabbing onto the cassock that clinked under the scratchy robes. Who knew what he was hiding under there. Not that she ever wanted to find out. To Larissa, Hayley hissed, “He is a man of the cloth.”

  “I find that impossible to believe.” She folded her arms.

  “And he’s our only chance. Benedict, sorry, Friar Benedict, I need you to claim a marriage ceremony.”

  “Oh, a number seven.” He dug into his pockets to unearth a dried flower wreath. “Where is the happy couple? I hope one isn’t bound and gagged this time, or that will cost you extra.”

  Dear God. Hayley shook off the shudders to eye him up. “They’re already married, what you have to do is claim to have been the one to perform it.”

  “Is that all?” Benedict wiped his hands off and smiled. “Should be simple enough.”

  “In front of the Magistrate…” Hayley said flinching.

  Red swarmed over the friar’s face in an instant, the barely legal on a holy day man swiping his hands through the air. “Oh no. No, no, you cannot get me anywhere near that place. I run a rather delicate business, and if certain people were to ever get word of it…”

  “We can pay,” Larissa spoke up, dashing into the fray. Hayley’s eyes darted over to her while Benedict began to salivate. Catching on to the Friar’s lecherous gaze, Larissa hunched inward to try and hide away her body. “Enough to compensate you for your actions.”

  “What are we talking?” Benedict purred, his wide load practically hurling Hayley to the ground in order to get at Larissa. She stood her ground in the face of such mass coming after her but cringed when his fingers began to break for her face.

  “With this,” Hayley shouted for his attention. Draped in her fingers was the serpent sword, which she held up for the Friar with only a second thought. The most beautiful gift she’d ever been given and she had to fork it over to the fraudulent Friar. It’s for Gavin. And Myra. And sort of herself as well. Larissa could suck an egg, though.

  Making certain to tip the jade crossguard to the light, Hayley enticed Benedict closer. His sinful fingers glanced over the blade but retracted before touching it. “And what does a man of my means need with a sword?”

  “What? Look at it! There’s jade in here. The craftsmanship alone is worth the price of your bloody still.”

  “Humph,” Benedict folded his hands tight into his cassock, “and no doubt you nicked it from a nobleman who’d be in a head-cutting mood once he found it in my hands.”

  “This isn’t stolen!” Hayley cried, tempted to yank her hair out. She was putting everything she had on the line here and that bastard was turning it away with a scoff.

  “Right, I remember you. Ran with Digger’s gang. One of the scragglier things steeped in the sewage. Weren’t you set to hang for nicking something worth less than this.”

  Her skin broiled as the Friar laid out her past without thought. Hayley’s hands wrapped tighter to her blade, the edge slicing into the skin, but she didn’t feel the pain. Shame rampaged through her blood washing over the glint of the sword she won for combat. Didn’t matter what she did, how hard she tried, the ink mixed into her flesh, she’d never escape her past. Damn it.

  “What will it take?” Larissa shoved her way back into the fray. The Friar’s head turned to her as he dug a finger in his ear. “To get you to testify to performing a marriage?”

  “Off of you two?” He eyed up Hayley’s weeping hands, then turned to Larissa. “Gold, and lots of it. I won’t set foot in the Magistrate’s district without ten grouts. Getting me to perform feats of altering past events requires another five more.”

  Shit. Fifteen grouts! That was easily the price of her sword. Where in the hell could she get that? Hayley’s panicking sight swept over to Larissa, and the strangest thing happened. The girl who’d mocked Hayley every step of the way, who knew what she was and tried to get everyone else to see the truth, nodded her head. She was in as deep as her.

  “All right,” Hayley sheathed her sword and stuck her bloody palm out to the friar. “We have a deal.” He took it without a qualm until Hayley clenched her fingers in a vise warning him that she wasn’t some mewling gutter trash anymore. “Come sunrise, you will appear before the Magistrate and inform the court that you performed the marriage of Ser Gavin Frey and Myra Chapman.”

  “Ser…?” The Friar rolled around the knight title a moment before he added, “Provided you appear with the coin.”

  “Agreed,” Hayley tipped her head and released her grip. Crimson smeared over the Friar’s palm, but without thought, he wiped her blood off on his apron. How many other’s blood di
d he do the same? He wasn’t just where you went when you needed cheap booze, documents no right-thinking priest would give, or a quick illegal wedding. Hayley knew about the bodies, the ones that needed to be stashed under rotting veg before guards grew wise. But he was her only hope in freeing a good man from a fate he didn’t deserve.

  Looking up to the sky, Hayley gulped. She had to get fifteen grouts and the sun was already setting. Without looking back at Benedict, even knowing he was watching her, Hayley and Larissa both ran out of the dilapidated garden back to the main roads.

  Beside her, Larissa asked, “Where are we going to get that kind of gold?”

  Hayley took in a deep breath, one face flashing through her mind. He was the closest person she ever had to a friend in the old days, and he was the reason she wound up in the dungeons in the first place. With the millstone hanging on her neck, Hayley said, “We gotta head to the sewers.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Hayley refused to admit it stank, if only because Larissa wouldn’t shut up about it. Every touch of her pretty boots into something damp made her shriek, every plop of water refuse sent her scattering to the wall. Hayley didn’t have the heart to tell her that when the city flooded, the shit would slop right up against where she kept placing her perfumed hands. She would chuckle to herself however at the thought while walking them down the twisting labyrinth of pickpocket row.

  At each cistern three branches would appear, some leading to dead ends, some to larger gangs of street rats Hayley knew better than to mess with. Despite it being a year, her feet led her directly on the path to Digger’s hole.

  “Where are we going?” Larissa kept on.

  “To get help,” Hayley repeated for the fifth time. She didn’t want to tell the truth out of fear the snot would run off, maybe try and tell Gavin what Hayley had planned. This was the only hope they, and he, had left.

  Larissa scowled, then jabbed a finger at a pile of rats fighting over food. That barely earned a glance from Hayley who sighed, “Yeah, so?”

  “How in the name of our Lord does anyone live down here?!” she shrieked, encroaching closer and closer to panicking and dashing away.

  Luckily, they were near the next entryway. A gate stood in the way, metal bars clear down to the ground to allow all the shit to sluice through. Hayley reached through them same as she had before to unlock it and let herself in. “It’s live here or die up there,” Hayley shrugged while ushering Larissa inside.

  “It’s barbaric,” she shivered.

  A spark struck the imposing darkness, light bursting upon an old torch. With the gas lingering in the air, sparks circled around a scarecrow standing upon his throne of broken beams. Digger picked up the torch to light his face. “It’s home.” He smiled with all the teeth, hopping down off the broken bones of burned down houses. “In fact, it’s my home and I am wondering just what brings a person of your delicate persuasion into it…”

  He reached a hand for Larissa and the girl glared. Before his grubby fingers could even scuff up her sleeve, she lashed a fist forward. It didn’t have much force, but the blow sent Digger skittering back, the torch’s flames whipping through the air.

  Coughing while clutching his chest, Digger gasped, “Okay, maybe not so delicate after all. What the hell are you…?” Finally, the moron turned away from Larissa to the other body skirting around in his shadows. The jaw dropped, his eyes widening as his teeth clacked. “Hay, Hay, Hay…”

  “Yeah, it’s me,” Hayley said without thought.

  “But…” Digger glanced around realizing three things fast. One, he was alone. Two, the girls out-numbered him. And three, the girl he left to die was armed. “I thought you had been…the guards were all, and they said that, um, there were a lot of hangings that…” Swallowing deep, Digger wiped a hand through his rotten hair. “Still alive, eh?”

  “Cut your bullshit,” Hayley sneered.

  “Oh come on, you can’t blame me. It ain’t my fault that you…” Out of the corner of her eye, Hayley watched as it was Larissa’s hand that cinched around Digger’s throat. Her face was stone as she pressed deeper, but once getting past the scarf and coat she seemed surprised to find very little meat on Digger’s body.

  “Stop talking,” Larissa snarled. “My head is splitting and your voice is nails on a coffin.”

  Hayley had to admit, it was fun watching Larissa turn all her spite on someone else — especially someone Hayley hated. Digger held up both his hands, exposing the burn on a palm. Greedy bastard thought he could pick up a bag of gold hurled into a fireplace. It didn’t stop the thief, but it did mark him for life.

  “Look,” Digger gasped, “whatever you want, take it. It’s…I mean, I ain’t got nothing really. Never do, you know. And anyway, it ain’t my fault you… Where the shite were you, Hay?”

  She didn’t run with Digger. She didn’t run with anyone, mostly because Hayley didn’t trust a soul to not blab her secret. But sometimes they’d work together, bigger jobs or when Hayley was starving. That was what led her to that supposed shit for brains merchant in the middle of the town square. Her hand up to the wrist in his pocket when she spotted the damn shield of the city on his cloak. Digger set her up with a Magistrate of all things.

  When Hayley didn’t immediately respond, Larissa squeezed tighter, “I told you to shut up!”

  “Fine,” the man incapable of silencing his tongue said.

  “I don’t give a shit about your trinkets,” Hayley began, pacing around the shit and piss-strewn room. To think, she once thought getting a spot in the sewers meant she’d made it. It felt another person ago. “I need information.”

  Digger’s eyes darted to Larissa, his mouth opening, but only the tongue lolled out like a dying cow’s. Sighing, Hayley gestured to Larissa to let him talk. When her hand swung off, the boy clung to his throat as if she cursed it. “Christ’s nails, what is your problem, she-devil?”

  “I’m going to kill him now,” Larissa reached for her dagger, but Hayley moved to stop her.

  “Fine!” Digger squeaked. “Fine, fine, whatever you want. What do you want?”

  “I ain’t been in the city for a while,” Hayley said, which earned her a no-shit eye roll. “Tell me where I can get coin, fast.”

  That caused the cutpurse to scratch his chin in thought. “Coin, eh? New scam gone belly up on you so you’re back to cutting?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, there’s a few clinks here and there up with the pilgrims marching to bone central…”

  Hayley sighed. “No. I need as much coin as fast as possible.”

  “Uh,” Digger gulped, “that’d be the festival of stars, but… You can’t be serious. That’s a level five, that is. Guards, real ones not the tin ones that wander drunk in the market watch over it. Cut one, maybe two purses at best and you’d have to run.”

  She took in a breath. “That isn’t an option. We take as many as we can.” The last part she said to Larissa who grimly nodded her head. They had less than twelve hours, and while the festival denizens would be well wrapped in the siren song of wine, they’d also have lighter purses. It was going to be close, if at all.

  Tipping her head for the door, Hayley began to lead Larissa on a path up to the festival area when Digger coughed from behind. “Hay, uh, if you’re gonna pinch that much glint, I’d say my fee’s gotta be worth at least…10%.”

  The air barely shifted as Hayley ripped free her sword, turned on Digger, and drew her serpent blade to his throat. “That I don’t kill you right now is your fee,” she hissed, her grip steady, her arm unwavering.

  “Uh, yes, that’s also a good one,” Digger moaned, his brain unable to piece together how the sticks and skin girl who’d run at the first sign of trouble was now capable of holding a weapon to his throat.

  With a snarl, Hayley wrenched the blade free and walked away. “If you try to sell us out to the guards…” she muttered to Digger over her shoulder.

  He snorted, “I ain�
��t no snitch.”

  “You sure about that?” were Hayley’s final parting words. If this went well she’d never have to see him again. And if it didn’t…it was doubtful she’d have her head long enough to see anything. Either way, it was worth it to watch the worm squirm.

  As the two girls crawled up to the surface, Hayley had to admit, “You have a good grip.”

  “It’s not hard. Go for the throat, eyes, or groin. The rest is just posturing,” Larissa rolled her shoulders and pushed open the grate. Nearly all of them opened across the city, the homeless making certain should they need a quick escape.

  While this part of Ostmount should be dark as a crypt come evening, lights blazed from a hundred torches propped into the ground. People spun in circles around booths selling games of chance, delectable treats, more wine, and other attentions. Hayley scrabbled up to gaze over the multitude all feasting in praise of the midsummer. It wasn’t for a few more days, but close enough to get besotted for a week.

  “It’s…” she began, when Larissa interrupted.

  “The festival of stars, I know. I attended it often as a child.”

  “Oh,” Hayley muttered, a hand scraping over her neck and fiddling with the back of the cap. “I ain’t never been before.”

  “Why? You lived here. Lived under here, I guess.”

  Hayley snorted at that. “It’s a big party, and yet the sewers were full of people. We ain’t all wanted under the stars.”

  That seemed to catch Larissa, her eyes narrowing as she gazed anew at the inebriated celebrations of the well off. They could all act like jackasses because they had the coin to get away with it. Well, not for long. Hayley cracked her fingers then shook them out. “Time to get to work.”

  “What do I…?” Larissa hopped on the balls of her feet, then crashed back down. “What do I do?”

  “Watch.” Hayley yanked off her cap and tucked it safely under her livery and into the waistband. After fluffing up her hair, she walked through the crowds getting a sense of who was coming and going. Quite a few ladies, but most would be escorted, meaning no purses on them. No, her only hope was going after the men, their belts bulging with coin for the evening’s celebrations, and other things to try and impress their arm accompaniment.