Tryal's Curse 6.0

(2628 words.)

Chapter Six~

A comedy of not-so-much


Evian drummed his fingers against the armrest. He tapped his feet on the ground. There were seventy-five candles on the shelf facing him. Fifty of them were red and the rest of them were white, and around seven of them had been reduced to waxen stumps. Evian concentrated on the candles, then pinched the back of his hand in an effort to stay awake. Glass ornaments littered the desk. He looked at those, too, then turned to eyeing the rest of Warren’s office with both distaste and … fascination.

It fit his personality very well—gaudy trinkets cluttered every available surface: large, purple, spangled, glittering and … large, Evian thought, wincing. But most of the things—Evian ran his hand across the large oak desk—were also old. There was a dash of antiquated wonder in everything he laid his eyes on, so he was torn between wanting to sneer at the expensive objects and just staring at them. It was like looking at the sun, Evian thought tiredly, in that it both turned your eyes to gorse bushes but was just so utterly fascinating to observe. Fascinating, observe, bushes gross—everything seemed to turn into a giant splotch in his brain. All that was left dancing across it was the memory of the night he had been shipwrecked—shipwrecked, Evian remembered, for the first time. But it had most certainly not been the last.

He was too tired to think. His mind was warped and his thoughts spun in circles. He dragged his hand across his face and slumped back in his chair. It had been a long night. After the vampires had left, Evian decided that it was easier to just doze in the same spot they had left him in, and he had been aroused most rudely by an angry Warren. Fifteen minutes of being yelled at and watching Warren yell at the little servant girl—who looked startlingly familiar—Evian was shepherded into Warren’s office. He was waiting for the man in question, currently, and trying very hard not to fall asleep.

He resorted to staring at his hands instead, twisting them in his lap. Outside, the sun was rising, dull light sifting in through the crack in the curtains. Soon, Syti would awake, and the morning workers would arrive at the Local Relations Office. And then—then, Evian knew, it wouldn’t be soon before half of Syti knew of his escape, and the Royal Rifle Crew would hunt him down.

Something lodged itself in Evian’s throat—something large-ish, like a lump, except it seemed to tear into his throat. A plank of wood he couldn’t swallow down. A crow that insisted on flapping its wings against his vocal cords. He was tired. His limbs were burning. All he wanted was to go to sleep and sleep into eternity.

The door to Warren’s office creaked open. ‘And cover the hole with a tapestry—I don’t want to see a single splinter when I come back, you hear me? Or you’ll be sleeping in the cellar!’ A quiet voice, whittled and shrill, replied, ‘Yes, sir!’ and Evian heard footsteps scurrying away down the hall.

The door creaked shut.

Warren stumped into the room, his footsteps heavy against the wooden floorboards. Evian’s gaze followed him as he plunked a metallic teapot most unceremoniously on his desk and pulled a couple of dainty—but dirty—tea cups from the nearest drawer. He glared at Evian as he poured the tea out, and continued glaring even as he stirred the sugar in—ten teaspoonfuls, Evian noted drowsily, but he was too tired to say a word. The encounter with the vampires, too, had left him in a stupor. Details of the memory swirled in his head, like tea, swirling tea, and he stared into his cup for a while, clutching it tightly between both palms until they burned.

Warren slammed his hand on the table. ‘Out with it—what do you want?’

Evian scowled. His head hurt. ‘You don’t have to yell,’ he said. ‘Though, incidentally, you’ve always been fond of—’

Warren slammed his hand on the table again. Evian jumped, spilling some tea on himself in the process. ‘You run up to my Inn at three in the morning,' Warren snarled, 'demand help, get into a scuffle with TWO—I say two—customers, make a dent in my wall, and faint.’ He hissed ‘faint’ like it was synonymous to ‘tore the place down and left the flooring’. A vein ticked in his temple, and despite Evian’s better sense telling him that riling Warren up was not going to help, he did it anyway.

‘Oh dear,’ he said, tilting the teacup in his hands and feigning great interest in its contents. ‘Fainting—such a ludicrous crime.’ He looked up at Warren and nodded at him seriously, then rubbed at the stain on his pyjamas. At this rate, he would smell of everything vile that existed before the night was up.

Although the sun was steadily rising.

His head snapped up as Warren made a strangled noise in his throat, something caught between an ‘Aaagh’ and a ‘Yegh’. Warren’s face was red and blotchy, his dark hair bristly on his large head. He seethed, and one of his ham-like hands reached out for an ornament on his desk—the largest one, a prism made of glass. His hand stopped a bare inch from it; he curled it up into a fist and slammed it onto the table again.

Evian quickly set the hot liquid on the table and scooted his chair back. Warren inhaled deeply and rubbed a hand across his face, before continuing, and Evian looked at him quite warily. When he spoke, his voice was calm—much too calm for someone who had been yelling at him a while ago and cursing his great grandfather Holeridge, whose name even he hadn’t remembered.

‘I ought to have thrown you out, you know,’ Warren said. ‘Ought to have thrown you out and let the night snap you up in its unforgiving jaws. Damn the binding oaths of piracy. Damn the bloody life debts—I don’t care if you pulled a sword from my leg, I’d’ve survived without your help and I don’t bloody well owe you.’ He sucked in a breath. ‘Do you know who those people were, Whirlwind?’ he asked, tapping his fingers against his desk, his flowered apron a stark contrast to the greyness of his face. ‘They were vampires from Dret—from Dret—from the council of vampire Elders that’s in cahoots with those Ixisters—do you know how much power they once had over the monarchy? Do you know, that as the king lies dying, it is they who have the most influence over the country? You saw the red cloak—yeah, you’re turning it between your palms right now—and if they come back here because you offended them, I swear, Evian Threshold, you will be dead before they can finish the j—’

‘I know who they are,’ Evian said. ‘I know and they’re the ones who—who ­did something to me, some weird vampire magic or something—it’s not my fault.’ He curled his hand tightly around the piece of red cloth, twisting a loose thread around his finger. ‘Besides,’ he continued, ‘what with the parting gift they left me, I doubt they’ll be returning.’ At Warren’s raised eyebrows, Evian explained, ‘They left an invitation in my head.’

‘An invitation in your head?’

‘Yes,’ said Evian testily. He leaned forward in his chair. ‘An invitation in my head. Have you heard of Mind Searching?’ Comprehension dawned on Warren’s face; his beady black eyes lit up with interest, although the expression on his face remained as hard and unfriendly as ever. ‘I think…’ Evian held the strip of cloth to the light, as though expecting it to exhibit sudden magical qualities. ‘I’ve been mind searched.’

There was silence. Warren’s grip on the table edge relaxed. He sat down, and reached for his tea cup.

‘I didn’t know that kind of magic was around anymore,’ he said, finally. He stared at his hands pensively, his eyebrows wild, his forehead scrunched up with worry. Then he smiled, in a self-satisfied way. ‘I don’t suppose we shall see much of it, though, not if the Blacksmiths win the war.’

‘The Blacksmiths?’ Evian asked eagerly. ‘What about the Blacksmiths?’

‘Never you mind,’ Warren said. ‘I suppose you’re a monarchy dingbat, aren’t you? But that’s beside the point—’ He looked at his wristwatch, a bulky thing that was strapped so tightly to his wrist that Evian wondered for a moment the struggle it must have taken for Warren to squeeze it onto his thick wrists. ‘Out with it—why are you here?’

Evian ignored his question. ‘What war?’ he asked. ‘The Blacksmiths—I’ve heard about them.’ He chose his words carefully. He didn’t want Warren to find out about the orb—about the suspicious circumstances in which he had bought it. But he needed to get the orb back—this, too, he knew, although he could only vaguely identify why he needed it. He ran a hand through his hair, before continuing nervously: ‘I was in the market the other day. Saw a couple of tinkers selling … things. They had this—this orb.’ Evian winced. At the mention of the orb, Warren had straightened suddenly; his eyes widened, and he looked at Evian attentively.

‘Go on,’ he urged.

‘I—well, I asked them what the orb was,’ said Evian. The words tumbled slowly at first—then faster, like a river crashing down a steep slope. ‘And they said it was an invitation to a council, a council for the Blacksmiths a month from now—a month from then, which would be … next week—yeah.’ His mouth felt dry. ‘Next week. And I asked them about the Blacksmiths, because I’d only heard rumours, and—and those stories, of the clan of Orn and how they lost to the vampire king, Dreidas, five generations back—you know the one, don’t you?’ He paused, and Warren nodded, and the river crashed and tumbled from his lips once more. ‘So anyway, they told me that one of the great great grandsons of Blacksmith Tenor, that—I think he was the lieutenant in the battles?—was trying to gather followers again, and that there was going to be a meeting of sorts by the Meare, somewhere by the caves or—well, I’m not really sure, but the orb had a map that you could tap into. It was like…’ Evian attempted to draw in the air with his hands. ‘It was like a tunnel that twisted and turned in strange directions. I wanted to go. I wanted to see this for myself.’

‘And you’re aware,’ said Warren, ‘that the men could have been tricking you into buying a pretty looking ball?’

‘I thought of that as well,’ said Evian, gripping the soiled material of his pyjamas between his fists. ‘But it had the crest on it. I rubbed at it with oil, tried to write an engarvment on it—nothing worked, and the crest was too—too real, as exact and intricate as the paintings in the books. Then I spoke to it—the password, the cart-owners said would work on it—and the orb displayed the message on the wall. I nearly jumped out of my skin.’ Evian laughed nervously, a reedy, high, humourless laugh that turned into a groan halfway through. ‘And tonight—last night, I don’t know—’ He rubbed at his forehead, exasperated. ‘Inspektor Luin came. With the Royal Rifle Crew. Found the orb. I ran. Came to you.’ He picked his now cold cup of tea, then just as quickly placed it back on the table. ‘You owe me,’ he said. ‘I gave you a succinct summary—and you owe me.’

Warren placed his fat chin on his steepled fingers. Evian waited for him to say something, but for a while, no one spoke.

‘Yes, I do. It’s most unfortunate, I’m sure you’ll agree.’ He drummed his fingers against the table in a most irritating manner. ‘What do you want? As it stands now, you can either run, or … you can hide. Getting the orb back is out of the question, at least currently.’ He stood up again and began pacing around the room. He stopped by the window; a ray of bright light shone in through the slit in the curtains. It illuminated the wrinkles on his face and Warren looked … old, Evian realised with a start. Old and tired. But then he looked back at Evian, the self-satisfied glint back in his eye. ‘I am of the position to make you an offering, Whirlwind,’ he said. ‘You wish to run?’

‘Yes.’ Evian cocked his head at him. ‘Although currently—’ He gestured at himself. ‘I’m not really … capable … of running.’

‘That does not matter. I own a compartment on the eight o’clock train—the Steeple. The trainmaster can be … coerced into allowing me a private compartment, and I bought it off recently. I use it to transport goods—antiques, to be precise. Do you follow?’ Evian nodded to affirm that he did. Warren opened his mouth to continue, but Evian interrupted:

‘You mean you bribe the trainmaster? Sorry—I mean…’ He hesitated as a dark, angry cloud passed over Warren’s face. ‘Where did you say the train goes to again?’

‘It passes through Treville, Durthnõt, then winds along the Tehshian river past Ramble. It continues down to Dret and stops in several places before that—here.’ Warren pulled a drawer open brusquely and handed Evian a rolled up map of Adreitus. I’ve marked the stops. You have…’—he checked his watch again—‘an hour to kill until you can leave for the station. Lira!’ he bellowed at the door. ‘That girl—I swear she had better be done with the cleaning….’ He turned to Evian. ‘Lira is my servant, bought her off last week from this person by the canal. It’s a dodgy place, but it was an excellent buy, if I do say so myself. She hails from Rek. Across the sea. Imagine! She’s a little slow with language, but she’ll be taking you to the station.’

‘You … you’ve imported a child?’ Evian asked, his mouth twisting with undisguised disgust. ‘Isn’t that illegal? Moreover, isn’t that … wrong?’

‘She’s getting paid for working for me, isn’t she?’ Warren said. ‘Did I ask you what the vampires saw in your mind?’

Evian tensed. He twisted around in his seat to glare at Warren. ‘That’s my business.’

‘And this is mine.’ Warren grinned. ‘Lira!’ he called again, and this time, a little girl entered the room. ‘Open the curtains, Lira,’ Warren told her, ‘then go get this man a fresh shirt and trousers from the servants’ haul. You will not be doing your usual chores today.’ The girl nodded and moved towards the curtains. Warren left the room.

Evian slumped back in his chair, rubbing at his eyes with his knuckles, his thoughts once more swirling. He gazed idly at the girl, feeling sorry for her. She was such a little thing, and she reminded him of—no, Evian, don’t think about Eleanor, he told himself. He wondered how old the girl—Lira—was. Twelve? Thirteen? Eleanor would be half her age now, if she had survived.

He rubbed his hand over his face. Lira was struggling with the heavy curtains, trying to pull them back with a sash. When she was done, she moved into the light, and Evian froze.

Brown eyes. A green scarf tied around her head. Coppery braids, yellow nearing the bottom, peeked out from underneath it. Her face was a tangle of misery and worry.

It was the girl from his memory.