To Paxaria: part 6.0

Review: Ruelle and her mentor Altha visit the market in the small village they are passing through. They get separated from each other, and Ruelle decides to follow Altha at a distance to see if she can pick up on any clues as to how/why her mentor knows so many secrets about important things. Ruelle catches Altha talking to a cloaked stranger, who surreptitiously slips Altha a piece of paper. We pick up right after Ruelle smugly confirms to herself that her mentor is also a spy. In this section, she demands answers, encounters danger, and meets an enigmatic stranger who might have a slight flair for the dramatic....

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Hardly had these words of gilded triumph passed through Ruelle’s thoughts, when the thing she least could have wanted in that moment unfolded before her eyes.

All smug feelings vanished as Ruelle saw Altha step to the side, fix her gaze beyond the shoulder of the stranger, and call out:

“Ruelle, you may come here.”

It was more of a command than an invitation.

Ruelle sensed this, and knew instantly she’d do well to heed it immediately, as much as she wanted to disappear just then. She had no idea how Altha had spotted her.

Scrambling up from her hiding place behind the crates, she determined at least to preserve an appearance of dignity, as if she hadn’t just been eavesdropping on two adults. She would not show any regret.

Once she was near enough, Ruelle crossed her arms and looked Altha directly in the eye.

“So when were you going to tell me?” she demanded, straight to the point.

If Altha was not going to pretend she didn’t know Ruelle was eavesdropping, then neither was Ruelle going to pretend she didn’t see the exchange between Altha and her strange conversation partner.

“Tell you what?” Altha had the audacity to ask.

“That you’re a spy,” Ruelle hissed, casting an apprehensive glance around for fear anyone among the market crowd might be watching or listening.

Altha raised her eyebrows.

“That is not exactly the correct word.”

“Are you certain?” Ruelle countered, squinting skeptically. “Then what is that piece of paper doing up your sleeve?”

Altha looked at her as a long-suffering parent might look at a pesky child.

“There is no paper up my sleeve.”

She said it very matter-of-factly, as if it were most obvious. When Ruelle arched an eyebrow in plain disbelief, Altha held out her arms.

“See for yourself,” she offered, shaking the edges of her sleeves.

When no piece of parchment was forthcoming and it was evident that there were, in fact, no foreign objects up Altha’s sleeves, Ruelle did not know what to say.

Altha sighed.

“I expect you have many questions, but not all answers are suitable to be provided here and now.”

“Can we at least begin with who he is?” Ruelle asked, wheeling around to face the stranger.

But she froze with her accusing hand half raised to point at him.

The man was gone.

Ruelle’s jaw dropped, and her arm fell slack at her side. Not even a second scrutinizing scan of the shadows nearby revealed a trace of the mysterious figure.

Ruelle felt almost dizzy with the whirlwind of half-formed questions that whipped up within her. What earlier had been a pleasant, bubbling curiosity now simmered in earnest with pent-up frustration and boiled into anger.

“What is going on?” she demanded through a clenched jaw.

She barely managed the control to keep her voice low enough so as not to attract the notice of the crowd that flowed unheeding around them.

She stepped closer to Altha so that the toes of their shoes nearly touched.

She felt manipulated.

Was this just a game to Altha, something she could do to amuse herself at the expense of her new apprentice?

Altha shifted her satchel across her shoulder and tilted her head toward the center of the market square.

“Let’s head back,” she said. “This is not the best environment to talk through these things.”

Ruelle retreated a step and appraised Altha with a scrunched brow.

“But you will give me answers?” she pressed.

“Yes,” Altha said. She raised her chin ever so slightly and met Ruelle’s stare with eyes that did not falter. “I will give you answers.”

***

“This is not the road we took going to the market,” Ruelle noted pointedly as she and Altha walked back toward Elfrida’s house on the edge of the village.

Like the path they had taken into the market that morning, this way turned from the cobblestone streets of the village’s center to an unremarkable earthen road, only this was distinctly a different route. Here Ruelle noticed the dirt beneath her feet seemed a little less packed by frequent use, and rather than being out in the open, this road was well-shaded by trees on either side. They were large trees with age-roughened trunks, spreading their splendid branches overhead and sharing their shade with travelers below, who welcomed the pleasant reprieve from the bright sun.

“No,” Altha confirmed. “This is not the same route we took earlier.”

Ruelle looked about her.

This road felt undeniably more sequestered. Maybe Altha had purposely chosen it so she could finally share the answers she’d promised Ruelle.

But Altha had given no indication of even approaching that subject.

Ruelle decided she would have to bring it up herself.

Straightening her shoulders, she took a deep breath and prepared to get straight to the point.

“So, about those answers you promised-“

A sharp snap sounded off to the side of the path, the sound of something too big to belong here.

Ruelle’s head swiveled to the side just in time to see a figure lurch toward them out of the trees.

Her breath caught in her throat.

“Halt!” a rough voice shouted.

Before Ruelle had time to think, harsh hands descended upon Altha’s shoulders.

Stunned, Ruelle registered the scraggly face of a man leering at them. His hands seized the strap of Altha’s satchel and wrenched it so forcefully that Altha was jerked towards him in the same motion.

“Give me what you’ve got, woman,” he growled.

Altha tried to duck away while simultaneously attempting to elbow the assailant in the ribs.

“Get away, you filthy scum,” she spat.

Ruelle suddenly felt herself moving, lunging forward, not even knowing what she intended to do.

She full-body collided with the thief – or she would have - but his resisting arm broke the impact, and she stumbled to the ground.

All the air fled her lungs in a painful gasp.

For an agonizing instant, Ruelle felt suspended in time, stripped of all senses except that terrifying lack of breath. Everything sounded far away.

Then a new voice shattered her daze, and she dropped back into reality.

“Away with you, foul thief!”

Ruelle’s senses returned just in time to see a dark blur spring toward their assailant.

There was a yell, a mayhem of motion, and the next thing Ruelle knew, the thief was lying sprawled upon the ground. 

He gazed wide-eyed up at the tall, dark-cloaked figure towering over him, and Ruelle felt certain the angry red splotch forming across the thief’s temple had something to do with the mysterious cylindrical tube the dark figure was just putting away, visible one moment, concealed beneath the folds of his cloak the next.

“What’re you doing prowling around here?” the cloaked man growled. He reached down and pulled the would-be thief back to his feet in as quick a motion as he had incapacitated him, and did not let go.

“’Ey, no need to be so rough with a fellow!” the crook sputtered, but he had turned pale and cast his eyes about skittishly. “I meant no harm!”

The cloaked man snorted in open disbelief.

“No harm indeed!”

The thief squirmed in the taller man’s grip.

“Look, I’ve fallen on hard times, and it’s not my fault I know who’s got good stuff! I weren’t goin’ to do no harm once I got what I wanted.”

Ruelle’s heart thudded. Did this scoundrel know something?

The cloaked stranger glowered at the thief with stormy eyes.

“I will hear no excuses. There is no acceptable reason for ambushing women on the road!”

The thief stammered, but his captor jerked him closer by the front of his shirt and glared into his face.

“Has your head not gotten enough of my map case yet? Now get you gone, and don’t come near this road again!”

He spun the crook around and shoved him back toward the trees.

The thief stumbled away in no small hurry, muttering and sputtering to himself under his breath, but never once sparing a backward glance. The trio on the road watched him until he disappeared from view and Ruelle could finally breathe easier.

Their dark-cloaked savior folded his arms and shifted the weight of his lanky figure, shaking his head.

“Foolish roadside thieves,” he sizzled. He sighed, then turned to Ruelle and Altha. “Are you harmed at all?”

Ruelle shook her head, and Altha assured him, “I’m none the worse for it. And thank you for stepping in and ridding us of that thief. It was perfect timing.”

“It was nothing. I owed you one anyway,” the man said, and Ruelle noticed that he absently brought his hand to the side of his neck where a faint white scar ran up and disappeared into the scruff of facial hair on his jaw.

Finally, Ruelle could bear it no longer.

“Who are you?” she blurted, facing the strange man squarely.

He cocked his head ever so slightly and gave a peculiar half smile.

“You do not recognize me?”

Ruelle opened her mouth to say “no,” but suddenly the pieces fell together.

“You were the one talking to Altha in the market!” she realized. “Which means,” - she put her hands on her hips and appraised him with skeptical eyes - “If Altha is not the spy, then you are!”

She expected him to bristle, to deny it, to say something mysterious and evasive. Instead, he gave a short laugh, low and warm. His eyes, which had glared at the would-be thief like a threatening storm, now glinted with amusement, clear as a summer’s evening just before the stars come out.

“Ah, you like to sniff out secrets like a bloodhound,” he said, the smirk not yet wiped away. “But you deserve a proper introduction.

The man shifted again – a strangely restless habit for one with such a bearing of confidence.

“Where you’re going,” he explained, “I am known to most people as The King’s Stray.”