T/W: this chapter includes references to spousal abuse and sexual assault.
'Curses, Elara, one day I shall best you at this game, I swear by the dead gods, I will.'
Elara grinned as she swept the coins across the tabletop into her open purse, pulling the strings tight and concealing it inside her tunic. Seated opposite, her companion Anton Gordako, leant back on his stool and pursed his lips with frustration. Pouring himself a long draught of ale from the flask, he drained the measure quickly before deciding it wasn't quite enough and opting for a second tankard. His eyes were already glassy with the intoxicating effects of the strong liquor, and Elara felt a small stab of guilt knowing his increasing inebriation had aided her in her victory.
Foolish Anton, will he never learn?
Still, rather it be in her purse than in the hands of some slum scoundrel who would try to take advantage of Anton in other ways once he'd had more than his fill of ale, and at least the coins would be funnelled back into their shared lodgings and put food on the table. Left with Anton, his earnings would just line the pockets of the nefarious droukzas that lurked in the darkened corners of the tavern, searching for their next target, whether that be for coin or for supple flesh. Either way, Anton would lose. He always did.
'Then you will have to drink less, be quicker and think more with your head than with that kreeworm between your legs, Gordako,' Elara said, winking at him.
Anton pretended to look shocked at her words and slapped his palm down hard on the table, causing a few nearby patrons to look sharply at him with narrowed bloodshot eyes. Standing up abruptly, he lewdly grabbed a generous handful of his crotch. 'You would call this a kreeworm? I would wager my very last coin that half the citadel would tell you my côck rivals the legendary great serpent of the Setalah for its size and power.'
At that moment, Kelena appeared with a steaming bowl of soup in one hand, and another full flask of ale in the other. On her break from serving the Seadog Inn's customers, she seated herself at the table next to Anton, and eyed him and his crotch with a raised brow.
'You do realise the great serpent of the Setalah is an old fairy tale?' she said dryly, while pouring herself a measure. 'Which means, dearest Anton, the legend of your côck is a myth and nothing more.'
Leaning forward and placing both hands on the table edge, Anton clucked his tongue at her.
'Pah! A myth, indeed! You ask Leon Kro-Balnar if it is just a myth. That man couldn't sit down properly for a whole week after I last pleasured him. When I took off my britches, his greedy eyes grew larger than the dark moon itself and he howled my name louder than all the wolves in the Dreynian mountains.'
Elara choked on her laughter, but Kelena just stared steadily at Anton as she spooned a healthy serving of the soup into her mouth. Swallowing, she shook her head at him. 'And yet he still hasn't sponsored you a place to study at the Academy.'
'Ah, but he will,' Anton replied, wagging his finger at her. 'And if by some chance, he does not, there are plenty more who will fall for my most obvious charms. I will be at the Academy, brush in hand, before the ninth cycle ends, mark my words.'
Gaining a place at the Druvarian Academy of Arts was all Anton had ever dreamed of. Arriving in the citadel with nothing but his easel and brush and barely a coin to his name, he'd worked tirelessly since that day, taking advantage of the quivering côcks and desperate mouths of the rich and powerful of the mid and upper echelons. With his sleek, muscular body, he was a much-desired courtesan, who earnt his coin and attempted to steal the hearts of the men who yearned for him, knowing that if he was to gain entrance to a coveted place at the Academy, he would need the sponsorship of someone far greater than he. It had been a long road so far. His clientele cared only for money, power, and secrets, and it was not easy finding someone willing to put forward Anton's name without revealing just why they wanted this beautiful young man from Grimefell to be admitted to the Academy. A slum-rat was a slum-rat, after all, no matter how he could master a brush or magic life out of colour and clay.
Refilling her tankard, Elara clanked the side of Anton's and Kelena's, who had raised theirs to meet hers. 'And well deserving of your dreams you will be, my friend. Your talent is wasted in Grimefell and I'm referring to your exceptional artistic skills, not the Setalah serpent in your britches.'
'Still a myth,' Kelena said with a sniff.
Elara would have told her that the serpent was not a myth at all, or at least, hadn't been before her foremothers had cursed these waters. Her own mother had recalled stories of grasping onto the serpent's scarlet fan-like tail as a child and feeling the rush of the water as the creature sped through the depths, winding in and out of the catacombs deep under the citadel. A powerful beast it might have been, but it had been no threat to Elara's mother with its diet of sea orchids and river roaches. Of course, the serpent and all the other secrets Elara knew of the waters, were to remain just that – truths only she could ever know.
Ban-Keren despised the Naiad and had made them an eternal enemy of Druvaria, his hatred and poison seeping down even into the filth-infested cracks of Grimefell. The people here feared and loathed their King, but they feared and loathed the water witches more. Times had always been hard in the slums, but now life cut into their hearts with a particular cruelty, as the cursed waters ravaged them the hardest of all.
Nodding towards the bowl of thin grey slop that Kelena was shovelling into her mouth, Elara grimaced. 'I see Pinch is still serving up bowls of brogboar shit for supper. When is Dorienne going to kick him to the gutter and employ someone who can actually muster up something half-edible? And how do you even eat it without wanting to vomit?'
Kelena shrugged and slicked a tongue over her teeth, attempting to pick at a morsel stuck there. 'It's not so bad. He adds extra spice for me. It makes the turnips taste much better.'
Anton and Elara looked at each other, both smiling a knowing grin.
'And I know what you're going to say,' Kelena said, with a roll of her eyes. 'But Pinch is okay when you get beyond that gnarly old exterior. I mean, yes, he enjoys looking at my breasts far more than he should, but if it means I get more spice in my food, then by the dead gods, it's a small price to pay.'
'Well, as long as the only place he sticks his spice is in your food, then I suppose you're right.' Anton blew her a kiss and drank some more.
Kelena nudged him hard with her elbow and chuckled, and Elara couldn't help but steal a glance at her friend, enjoying how her smile lit up her whole face brighter than the midtide sun. Kelena was always beautiful – something that often came with a heavy price in Grimefell, particularly when you worked the tavern and had to deal with too many patrons who liked to touch what was not theirs – but when she smiled, Elara was reminded of the Kelena who had first arrived in the slums nine cycles before.
That Kelena had been a bruised, broken thing. A thing of shadow and fear, haunted by the all-too recent memories of her life in the mid echelon. Married off earlier than most by her status-hungry father, Kelena's husband – a silk merchant much older than she, called Mica Koh-Miralus – had beat his young wife and forced her to bed him, growing increasingly free with his fists when she failed to find herself with child.
After one particularly brutal beating, when Kelena thought her skin would never truly regain its original hue, Lyla, one of the household maids took pity on her, bathing her young mistress's pummelled flesh and nursing her back to health with a gentle touch and kind words that Kelena had thought were lost to her forever. When those touches later turned to desire, and the words became those that lit her soul aflame with passion and love, Kelena dared to dream of a different life, understanding too late that secrets were a deadly burden in the citadel.
On discovering their illicit liaison, Mica Koh-Miralus had the Highguards throw Lyla into the Setalah, forcing Kelena to watch as the waters blackened her lover's blood and crushed the breath from her body. Then, Kelena's fate was to be sealed, or so her husband had thought.
Managing to escape, Kelena had fled to Grimefell, with the fresh scars of the whip still on her back and here she had remained ever since.
Her flaming hair was gone, dyed like the blackest of pitch to conceal her identity and she'd made a life here, if the endless scramble for coin and for pure water could be called a life, but to Kelena it meant freedom. Of course, Koh-Miralus himself would never dare set his over-privileged foot in the slums, but that didn't mean she would be out of his grasp forever and it didn't stop her from glancing at every stranger who came to the tavern. Men were often appreciative of Kelena's beauty, and their hands had a nasty habit of straying to unwelcome places, but she had come to understand the difference between those who coveted that beauty through a drunken gaze, and those who wished her a different kind of harm.
Now, Elara would drown the heart of any man who dared to turn Kelena into that bruised thing again.
By my foremothers. By the waters, she had silently sworn.
A sudden commotion behind Elara made her turn her head. Jeers and shouts of anger erupted, as a wily youth with unruly dark curls and a hawkish face danced from tabletop to tabletop, deftly avoiding the over-flowing tankards lining each one and somehow managing to slip from the grasp of any rough hand that attempted to curtail his flight. Reaching the friends' table, he ducked just in time as a piece of wet cabbage flew past his ear and landed on the side of Kelena's bowl. Shrugging, she simply spooned it into the soup and continued.
'Greetings, droukzas!' the boy exclaimed cheerily, slapping his knapsack down onto the table and shaking it with glee. 'You will be pleased to know that it was a rich day indeed in the citadel today. So many stupid dutzals going about their business ridiculously carefree. The pickings were ripe and our fortune good.'
He began to untie the knapsack, but Elara's hand shot out and held it closed.
'A good thief can only enjoy the ripe pickings if he manages to keep hold of them before the day is out, she said, keeping her voice low. 'A bad thief ends up in the Setalah with his belly sliced open and an empty knapsack floating next to his rotting corpse.'
The youth sighed and pulled the knapsack from her grasp. Reaching in, he pulled out a small battered tin, and from it he took a clay pipe and a generous helping of dried riverweed.
'Fear not, fair but scowly maiden,' he replied, stuffing the riverweed into the chamber and lighting it with the flame from the candlewick on the table. Taking a long drag, he blew the smoke out of his nostrils and grinned through the foggy haze. 'The lazy drunken beasts in this place would have to catch me first, and they are too busy staring into their tankards or at Kelena's breasts to move quick enough for my nimble feet.'
Kelena just shrugged again, and Elara shook her head, chuckling. 'You're an arrogant shit, Bazel Borna. One day it will be your undoing, that's if Ban-Keren's guards don't catch your loose hands first and cut them off. You know how he despises thieves.'
The dark green riverweed mist curled into the air, and she inhaled deep. She did not partake of the pipe herself, but sometimes it was good to let the smoke fill her nostrils and feel the second-hand haze relax the tension that seemed to permanently haunt her spine. Plus, it helped dullen the pain of the beating she'd taken from Luca Zar-Kuron.
'The King is the thief of all thieves,' Bazel commented, taking another delicious drag, this time puffing out the smoke in expert rings, that Kelena popped with her spoon. 'That old bastard has spent his whole life stealing that which isn't his. He should appreciate the likes of me far more, in my opinion. He loves to be idolised and how can we worship him more than by following his lead?'
Elara grabbed Bazel's wrist and glanced around the tavern. There was no love for the King here, that was true, but you could never tell when sharp ears were concealing their intent behind the façade of smoke-pricked eyes and a drunken, slobbering jaw. Life was wretched in Grimefell and growing ever more desperate by the day. One pertinent morsel of information leaked to the Order, and you might just fill your table – or your tankard – for the next few eventides, or even gain yourself an extra flask of Dreynian water if you were lucky.
'I doubt very much that the King approves of slum rats picking the pockets of the merchants and all his entitled allies. He'd sink the slums into the Setalah given half the chance, so if you want to live to see your fourteenth moon, I would suggest caution is needed, Bazel. It's unusually overcrowded here today.' She glanced around again, scanning the tavern for unfamiliar faces and seeing far too many for her liking. 'Either people have suddenly seen a rise in their fortune or there are those here who seek to gain from information careless young droukzas like you let slip freely from their big, stupid mouths.'
Bazel blew smoke out the side of his mouth, his young face suddenly all hard lines and shadow as he drew en empty tankard towards him and filled it to the top. 'You know, you never used to be this boring, Elara. Perhaps you should pay Anton for some pleasure. I hear his côck is becoming infamous for putting the smile back on the faces of the tired old men of the citadel. Maybe it could work for you too.'
'What did I say to you?' Anton said, with a smug pout. 'And yes, when it comes to pleasure, I am not fussy, Elara Consuli. Cross this palm with coin and I'll even show you a good time.'
Elara glared at them all as they sniggered into their ale, before breaking into a laugh that pulled on her flesh and taunted her aching bones, making her wince. 'Bastards.'
Kelena's eyes met hers, with more scrutiny and understanding than she cared for. That was always the way with Kelena. Intuitive to the last, Elara didn't want her to scratch the surface this time. There was too much to risk. Even more to lose.
'You should go see Bogan Zeal in the lower east quarter,' her friend said, scraping the sides of the bowl with a piece of flat nettle bread, sopping up the last remnants of soup. 'He'll give you a salve for those bruises. They'd be gone by morntide.'
'Or let me loose with a brush, and I'll mask them like they were never there,' said Anton, eyeing the half-full flask with drunken yearning.
Bazel pointed a finger at him. 'That, my friend, is a great idea.' He hammered his fist against the table with conviction. 'You could really do something with that face. What is it you artists say? Like making art from a very plain and very boring blank canvas.'
Elara grabbed the boy around the neck, pulling him towards her as he laughed hysterically, coughing out puffs of green mist. 'Watch your mouth, maggot,' she said, rubbing his head with her knuckles before kissing him soundly on the cheek and releasing him. 'And, by the dead gods, lay off the fucking riverweed before it turns your already miniscule brain into brogboar shit.'
Shaking his head and rendering the curls wilder then before, Bazel took a swig of ale and belched. 'Talking of brogboars, are we all gracing the brogboar run with our presence tomorrow midtide?'
Elara stiffened. 'Tomorrow?'
With the ordeal of the past two moons still crowding her mind thicker than even the most potent of riverweed and her thrill at discovering the pendant in the temple, Elara had barely slept since, her thoughts and plans overwhelming her even more than the way Zar-Kuron's fists still haunted her bruised flesh. She'd thought she'd had more time, forgetting that the brogboar run – the infamous sport of releasing a herd of half-starved droukzas from the dead fields into the narrow alleys and streets of Grimefell – was the next midtide.
Fuck.
'I'll be there,' Kelena said, gathering her bowl and draining the last remnants of her tankard as she stood. 'With any luck, this tide we'll witness a Highguard tossed into the Setalah or at the very least, see his balls impaled by a tusk.'
'I would usually protest against the impaling of balls,' Anton said. 'But when it's a Highguard's tiny fire fruits, then I would not miss it for all the ale stores in this tavern.'
Bazel raised his tankard, frowning at the lack of liquor left and reaching for the flask once more. 'Which look sorely depleted now.'
Elara despised the barbarity of the brogboar run, for while she had no love for the beasts themselves, she loathed the cruelty the tusked animals endured before being released, a cruelty that ensured the droukzas would spare no mercy upon anyone who had the misfortune to stand in their way. This tide, however, she would be grateful for the distraction. It was a sport of chaos and bedlam, and thankfully, more crime than the slums would usually see in a whole cycle of the bright moon, which meant the eyes of the Order would be firmly fixed upon Grimefell.
Her heart raced.
Come the next midtide, she would be at one with the water.
'Count me in.'