Parasite Soul

by Jags, Chris

  Repressing his impulses, he joined Niu at the bar, which apparently doubled as the front desk. The woman in charge, improbably skeletal and cursed with an unpleasantly narrow, horsey face, ignored the two of them completely. She sat and smoked with three rough looking local customers, all visibly armed. Isolated strands of hair sprouted from her chin, while her lower eyelids sagged grotesquely in an effort to escape her bloodshot eyeballs. Faded tattoos were visible on the shriveled skin of her arms. Clad in what appeared to be a moth-eaten black housecoat, she clearly held very little concern for her appearance. Simon was about to clear his throat and introduce himself politely when Niu snapped her fingers and jerked her head. Sighing, the gaunt woman made a show of heaving herself off her stool and wandered unhurriedly across to them.

  “We are looking for transport into northern Cannevish,” Niu said. “Incognito.”

  Her voice was oddly raspy, as though she were trying to disguise it. Or perhaps the smoke was getting to her. Either way, her precise manner of speech marked her as a foreigner, and the innkeeper scrutinized the depths of her hood mistrustfully. Her bleary eyes wandered across to Simon, without recognition or interest, then back to Niu. Neither woman spoke for a long moment. Simon was unable to determine whether each was attempting to stare the other down, whether they were just sizing one another up, or they were communicating in some silent fashion. He stood by uncomfortably and drummed his fingers on the bar.

  “Good for you,” the gaunt woman said curtly, turning away.

  “I hoped that Jock might be willing to take us.”

  The skeleton heaved a withering sigh and scratched her nose resentfully.

  “Could be done,” she said eventually. “For the right price.”

  Niu reached beneath her cloak and jingled her drawstring bag. It seemed a lot less bulky than when Simon had seen it last; no doubt Niu had secreted some of it away. At least she shows the kind of foresight I don’t have, Simon thought regretfully.

  The innkeeper squinted slightly. A second round of silent negotiation left Simon bemused and worried. He was well aware that several other parties had taken an interest in the interchange.

  “Sasha!” the innkeeper shouted at length.

  The somber serving girl wandered over, tray in hand. She glanced at Niu and Simon without curiosity, her eyes listless and dull.

  “Mother,” she said. Her tone was as hollow as her gaze.

  “Take these two back to see Jock,” the woman said. “They’re interested in passage north, quiet-like.”

  “Yes, mother.”

  “And hurry back. No dawdling. There are guests to think of. You hear me? Straight back.”

  “Yes, mother.” Had the girl even blinked during the interchange? Simon didn’t think so. Her eyes were black, glassy, and a little uncanny. Simon felt his pity for her shriveling away, replaced by mild aversion.

  The skeletal woman’s eyes drifted back to Niu as she tossed her spent cigarette to the floor, ground it under her heel, and lit a fresh one. “Jock will name his price.”

  “If it is reasonable,” Niu said firmly.

  “That’s your affair.” The innkeeper shuffled off, rejoining her circle of cronies.

  Sasha didn’t spare her charges a glance as she slipped around the counter, set her tray down, and disappeared through a shadowed door. With some trepidation, Niu and Simon followed her. Somewhat ominously, the innkeeper kicked the door shut behind them.

  The dour serving girl was difficult to see in the gloomy passage. Her raven hair, black skirt and leggings melted into the semi-darkness. Niu shadowed her closely, one hand dancing across the haft of a concealed knife. Simon hung back, relieved that Niu clearly also suspected a trap. His nerves were jangling violently; he barely remembered what it felt like to be able to let down his guard. It seemed so long since he’d been able to relax. Every shadow in the hallway might as well have been a lurking cutthroat. He longed for a torch, wondering what manner of dungeon Sasha was leading them to.

  “Up here,” Sasha said, indicating an alcove, the darkness of which must have concealed a stairwell.

  “What’s up there?” Simon asked instantly.

  The girl cocked her head. “Jock’s room, of course.”

  “Of course,” Simon muttered.

  “Could we have some light?” Niu’s request was reasonable, but the serving girl shot it down.

  “No. Mother doesn’t like her clients to… see.”

  “See what?” Simon asked blankly.

  “Are all your questions so stupid?” A tinge of scorn touched the girl’s monotone voice. Simon shuffled and cleared his throat.

  “We will remain here while you fetch this Jock.” Niu said firmly.

  “As you wish.” Stairs creaked.

  “I don’t like this,” Simon whispered to Niu as the girl’s footsteps faded above.

  “Nor do I,” the handmaiden admitted. “Keep your wits about you.”

  Thoroughly intimidated by the darkness, Simon put his back against what he thought was a wall. He cried out in shock as he discovered a curtain instead, and went tumbling through the rough, grasping cloth to land hard on the floorboards. Niu made a hissing sound of alarm.

  “Simon! Where are you?”

  Simon scrambled to his feet, clutching at the curtain for support. “A room!” he rasped. “I… I can’t really see much.” The chamber was as dark as the corridor, with the exception of one faint sliver of light which had clawed its way inside through a crack in the ceiling. By its meager light, Simon could discern lines of blocky shapes along the walls – bookcases, probably, or cupboards. At the center of the room lay a slab with something on it. Something roughly the size of a human being, shapeless in the blackness. Curiosity overcoming him, Simon moved carefully toward the slab, almost immediately bumping into an unseen table. Staggering sideways, he then tripped over a stool and hit the ground cursing.

  “What are you doing?” Niu hissed.

  Drawing every cutthroat in the joint down on me, Simon thought angrily, but he did not answer. Righting the stool, he stood and brushed himself off.

  “Come out of there.”

  “Just a minute.” Simon had reached the slab now. He reached out gingerly to touch it, or more precisely what lay on it, but the dark unknown overcame him. A thrill of dread shot through him just as his fingers were about to make contact; he retracted his hand as though he’d thrust his fingers into a forge. An unbidden recollection came to him of the butchered man in the cabin outside Saber Bend and his sightless green stare. Whatever it was that lay there, stiff and silent in this oppressively lightless, forbidden chamber, he discovered he didn’t want to know after all.

  “She’s coming!” Niu breathed urgently. The stairs were creaking again.

  Simon hurried urgently across the chamber, careful to avoid the furniture, and fought his way through the curtain just as the shape of the serving girl reappeared in the hallway.

  “What were you doing?” she asked with obvious suspicion.

  “I tripped,” Simon said, truthfully enough.

  The shadow regarded them quietly for a moment or two, then turned and padded down the hall.

  “Jock must be outside,” she said over her shoulder.

  Outside, Simon thought, fighting the crawling dread which slithered up his spine. Outside sounds truly wonderful at present. Whatever went on in the dark recesses behind the Nameless Nymph’s bar were secrets the serving girl and her mother were most welcome to keep.

  Relief flooded him as daylight spilled into the corridor. Niu was holding one hand to her heart as though she feared its imminent failure. The serving girl had opened a door onto a small, gated stableyard behind the inn. Now this, at least, was familiar; the smell of horses and hay – even of manure - set him at ease, and he began to pine, once more, for his father’s farm. Several beasts were stabled here; five horses and an enormous ox. A large wooden cart stood just inside a metal gate which opened onto a narrow, cobbled lane.

&nb
sp; Curled in a pile of hay, his straw hat pulled low over his face, lay an exceptionally tall and equally thin man. A red-and-white checkered shirt, hanging open, was tucked sloppily into a pair of incongruous black leather pants which were much newer than the rest of his wardrobe. His boots were badly scuffed but might once have also been black.

  “Jock.” Sasha said tonelessly. She looked pallid and unhealthy in the warm sunlight. Jock didn’t stir, so she took two steps forward and crushed the fingers of his right hand beneath her boot.

  Yelping, the spindly man leaped to his feet, cradling his injured digits and staring at Sasha with baffled rage. He was young, not significantly older than Simon, beardless and mildly androgynous.

  “What… Sasha… you bitch!” he shrieked, making a grab for her. Hands clasped behind her back, the girl danced back without any shift in her expression. Simon, astonished by her behavior, cleared his throat, attracting Jock’s attention. The anger didn’t fade from Jock’s dark eyes as he scrutinized the newcomers. “Who the hell are you?”

  “My name is Aletta,” said Niu. Simon squirmed inwardly, thinking of the girl they’d abandoned to be devoured by her father, and wondered what had possessed Niu to adopt that name. “This is…”

  “Arles,” Simon interrupted. His grandfather’s name.

  “They’re looking for passage north. Mother cleared them.” Sasha said. She didn’t seem anxious to return to her duties and stood, watching, as Jock studied his would-be passengers critically.

  “I’m not doing any runs today,” he scowled, nursing his throbbing hand. “Your mother damn well knows that.”

  Niu pulled out her drawstring bag. “How much?”

  Jock cocked his head. His eyes glinted.

  “Two hundred serrins.”

  “That is ridiculous.” Niu forgot her false rasp for a moment.

  “Yes, well, there’s a good chance I’m going to have to see a doctor about a mangled hand.” The glance Jock shot at Sasha was filthy with poison.

  “That is not our problem,” Niu said.

  “It is if you want my services,” Jock hadn’t taken his eyes off Sasha. “Aren’t you needed inside?”

  “I’m coming with you,” Sasha said. “I need to get out for bit.”

  “Your mother will un… will whip you bloody,” Jock said, then thought about that. “Not that I’d really mind at present.”

  “I can look after myself,” the girl said. Her expression, still uncannily frozen, suggested nothing, but Simon noted that her jaw had set in stone.

  “You nearly didn’t survive last time.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Sasha said blandly. “You know perfectly well I…”

  “You know what I mean.” Jock hastily returned his attention to Niu. “Two hundred serrins, no negotiation. Take it or leave it. It’s all the same to me.”

  “If you will take us all the way to our destination,” Niu said slowly, “Then I will pay you two hundred serrins.”

  “And where’s that?”

  Simon started to answer, but Niu held up her hand. “We will let you know once we’re safely through the valley.”

  Jock pursed his lips, considering. “When do you want to leave?”

  “Immediately, if possible.”

  Scratching his head, Jock looked from Sasha to his potential clients. The moment stretched. One of the stabled horses nickered and nipped at its stablemate with surprisingly sharp teeth. A hawk cried out plaintively as it wheeled overhead. Just as Simon was beginning to think Niu’s offer was going to be rejected, Jock came to his conclusion.

  “For two hundred serrins,” he said dryly, “It can be arranged.”

  VII

  As it turned out, Niu didn’t want to leave immediately immediately. She had some coin secreted away and she decided to use some of it to replace her knife and arm Simon. Sasha wasn’t best pleased that she had to return to her duties while she was waiting – Now I’ll have to sneak out, she said – but Jock was dismissive of her concerns. His wounded hand played no small part in his ambivalence.

  Simon couldn’t help but wonder why Sasha’s mother kept her on such a short leash. While young, the girl was almost certainly of age. Was the mother just overbearing, or was Sasha dangerous? She certainly struck Simon as being a little unhinged, and privately he hoped her mother would manage to prevent her from accompanying them.

  “Just be back within the hour,” Jock told Niu. “I’ll have the cart ready shortly. If I have to do this, I don’t want to be waiting around all day.”

  “Exactly how will you get us past the guards?” Simon studied Jock’s wooden cart and found its security features lacking.

  “Subterfuge and misdirection,” Jock answered cryptically. “If you’re going to market, go on will you? If you’re planning to just stand about, give me a hand.”

  “We will be back,” Niu told him, tugging Simon away.

  Rather than cut back through the inn, they followed the road back to market. It slithered past a gambling den and a brothel, both of which looked even less reputable than The Nameless Nymph, if that were possible, and ended in a roundabout the only escape from which was an alley so claustrophobically narrow that Simon’s shoulders nearly brushed the walls.

  “So, Jock… do you trust him?” Simon wondered, worried that the passage was a death trap for unwary tourists. He kept expecting thugs with crossbows to appear at either end of it, or maybe for someone to pour boiling oil onto them from above. There was simply no room to maneuver.

  Niu considered him with upraised brows. “Of course not. But I do not know how to pass the northern checkpoint without help.”

  “The staff of that place are almost certainly cutthroats.”

  “Yes, but if they routinely killed their customers, they would ruin their reputation.”

  Simon hadn’t really thought of underworld types having a ‘reputation’, at least not in the way that honest folk did, but he supposed Niu was right. All the same, he vowed to be on his guard.

  Exiting the alley with some relief, Simon saw that the market was still bustling, although the people’s focus had changed. A large crowd was gathering around the newly erected stage and several people of obvious importance had assembled upon it. Soldiers flanked the platform, and they seemed to be scanning the square, so Simon hung well back. Niu had no interest in the proceedings and slipped off to make her purchases; Simon agreed to meet her behind the inn. Simon found himself sandwiched between a corpulent, heavy-breathing merchant and an iron-haired woman clad in an outdated dress of the type his grandmother might have worn, complete with an unfashionable bustle. This stern anachronism stood stiffly, pretending to be oblivious to the catty sniping of two young women nearby who were giggling behind their hands as they critiqued it.

  Peering over the shoulder of the man in front of him – damn his outsized hat – Simon watched as one of the men on stage exchanged a few final words with his peers and waddled forward, holding out his arms for silence. Surveying his audience with piggy little eyes, he tugged at his braided beard. Golden robes cascaded down his torso like a waterfall, spilling over his swollen stomach and pooling about his feet.

  “Good people of Vanyon’s Parade,” he called, acknowledging the statue of the god looming behind him with a curt nod. “I come bearing glad tidings.”

  “Who are you then?” someone shouted. The man’s lips tightened as he located the heckler with narrowed eyes, but chose not to dignify the challenge with a response. No doubt he assumed he was of sufficient importance for the question to be impertinent, but Simon had to admit that he had no clue as to who the official was, either.

  “As you are no doubt aware, our beloved ruler, His Majesty King Minus, issued a decree that the man who was able to rid our lands of the dragon which plagued them for so long would win the hand of his beautiful and accomplished daughter, the Princess Tiera.”

  “Nothing new there!” yelled the heckler, but he found no support amongst his fellow onlookers, most of whom had
caught the past tense: plagued. Simon felt resentment welling within; whatever he was about to hear, he knew he wasn’t going to enjoy it.

  “People of Vanyon’s Parade, visitors to this fair town, I am pleased to announce that the dragon is dead and the princess has announced…” The official paused to allow the scattered cheers and swelling babble to subside before continuing. “…has announced her intent to wed the slayer of the beast, Prince Anton Stallix of the kingdom of Quell. With their union…” Another uproar, much louder this time, drowned the speaker out. He made suppressing gestures with his hands, but the crowd would not be silenced.

  Quell was a tiny kingdom of minor significance, bordering Cannevish to the south. It managed to remain unconquered due to topography; a mountainous region accessible only by a high pass, it had proved an extraordinarily difficult land to lay siege to. If not for its famous diamond mines, no one would ever have tried. The pass which so successfully thwarted invasion acted as a double-edged sword, preventing the House of Stallix from attempting to expand their own territory.

  Uniting the Houses of Stallix and Minus, however, was a savvy political maneuver. Simon could understand that. Cannevish would get access to Quell’s diamond mines - and more importantly their military – strengthening the kingdom’s defenses in the wake of the dragon’s depredations. Quell, meanwhile, would finally join the outside world; the gates to this hermit kingdom, passed previously only by selected merchants and nobles, would swing open at last. Although Cannevish’s other neighbors would certainly grumble about the alliance, Quell was insignificant enough that major conflict was unlikely.