It had been a desperate decision.
Now Vaenuth sat at the tavern Lerran of Sheld had recommended, the Old Glory, in the streets of Lo Mallago. She held a small note, with an address on it, and a mug of whiskey in the other. In Radregar, men drank strangely, she decided. The mug was warm, the whiskey fizzed with something else, and didn’t taste of fruit like the drinks she was used to.
Tagg looked over at her. “We going to do this today?” he asked.
“Not today,” she said. They had only just arrived, that morning. The sandy walls of Lo Mallago were a foreign sight to her. In the desert, the closest thing she had seen to walls had been the boulders that out-skirted that Logren village she had stolen from. It was ironic to consider that now, she thought, staring at her amber whiskey. She had killed people then too, innocent people, just to accomplish her own goals. It didn’t weigh on her heavily, but the thought of doing it again churned her stomach a little.
“Have you got a plan?” Pressip asked. He and Arloe were playing a game of cards, despite the latter’s claimed misfortune. Krebin had disappeared, and, though none had said, Vaenuth was quite sure he was seeking female companionship.
She shrugged and took a sip of the drink. “Not yet.”
A few hours later, they set out from the Old Glory, just to scout things out. Alrin Jorath’s estate was a military castle, compared to most places Vaenuth had been in the last few years. There were guard patrolling its perimeter, and she’d assume more inside. Lerran of Sheld had told her a bit about the two people she was to kill, and she quickly decided that killing Alrin in there would be a bad plan.
They marched back to the inn quietly, but over another game of cards, Vaenuth came up with a plan. “Tagg, see if you can get some parchment or clay to write on.” He quickly complied, while she watched Krebin and Arloe exchange coins. Tagg found her a clay slab and a copper pin. She began writing as soon as he sat down.
“What are you thinking?” Pressip asked, lounging with his feet up.
“Dear Master Jorath, you must return quickly. Your father has become ill due to the recent storms, but his condition is deteriorating from a simple chill. Please come at once, as your presence may ease his wits.” She spoke out loud as she wrote her fictional message.
“We’ll draw him out then?” Tagg said. “Take them on the road?”
“Less chance of word getting back to Wartha Mull,” Arloe pointed out. He tossed down a fourteen card, and Krebin cursed something about the whore taking all his money before Arloe even started. Vaenuth guessed the latter’s luck was finally making a turn for good.
“Make sure you all do some training tomorrow. Go find an alleyway or something,” Vae said. “Arloe, you’re the most—normal—looking out of us, you deliver this in the morning.”
Pressip chuckled. Aside from a big beard, Arloe didn’t sport tattoos or piercings, or major shoulder scars like carefree Tagg. Vaenuth quickly brainstormed a fictional name for a doctor, and draped the wool cloth over it. Some people delivered tablets in boxes, but the poor folk used cloth to conceal their contents. “Find a box for it,” she said to Pressip. “These people are gold miners, not commoners. Not anymore.”
“Agreed,” Tagg said. “I’m going to go find food, you coming?”
Vae shrugged and followed her friend into the streets. She wore her blue vest today, since she was running around town all day, but had only donned her ear and nose piercings, not the chain. In a bakery, they purchased some pastries and ate them on a deck. As much as she had enjoyed watching the sunset with him the last few nights, that was not her plan for that evening. As soon as she finished the unhealthy supper, she told him she’d meet him back at the Old Glory come morning.
The Oldest Bar in Lo Mallago, which seemed to have no other name, was built near the Market Court, in the old, once-poor part of town. She only had to buy one drink there, before attracting attention with her tattoos and the lion brand visible below the cloth of her blue vest. She sipped another whiskey, at another bar, when a clean shaven man with short dark hair and a sleeve tattoo on one of his bare arms, sat down on a stool next to her.
“Buy your next drink?” he asked, with a small, smile. He looked at her with bright grey eyes that didn’t waver from her own.
Vaenuth took a strong swig of the whiskey. “I don’t want another drink,” she said, grinning. This time he glanced down her torso, the line of skin that was visible between the folds of her dark blue vest from neck to belt.
He shrugged and took a drink of his own. “Sorry, I’m not really into girls with that much ink,” he said, but he was full of horse shit. He turned toward the bar.
“And men with a strong jaw line aren’t really my type,” Vae mumbled, putting her elbows up.
“That’s a shame,” he said. “I usually help out even those I don’t care for, if they like my jaw line, that is.”
Vaenuth couldn’t help but chuckle. Maybe it was the whiskey, but she didn’t really care. “You got a room or what?”
“I’m Novon,” he said, locking eyes with her again.
“I don’t care,” Vae replied, flashing her teeth at him again.
Novon shook his head and finished his drink in one gulp. “Right this way, stranger.” He led the way across the street to a recently renovated inn called Ten Night Town, and up the stairs just inside the door. Vae had a quick whiff of drugs and alcohol from the common room, and then only the smell of recently laid teak wood. The third floor was entirely new, and the furniture more stable than most places Vaenuth had been that year.
She proceeded to have her world spun upside down by the chisel-jawed man. She had done this many times—not the act of sex, which had been her burden to carry since the day the unknown slaver took her from her home; rather the casual encounter with a stranger of her own choosing—but she had never felt what she felt that night. She had seen it on the faces of strangers, men who had paid to bed her in the whorehouse, she had pursued it with countless others. Almost every man and woman she had been with had shown her that face of joy, those flushed cheeks and arching back…
For the first time in her life, Vaenuth lost control of everything to this stranger named Novon and felt the universe pass through her in a moment of bliss. She lay awake long after—and thankfully so did he—as she thought about it. She had never imagined what it would feel like, despite seeing it so many times in others. She shivered through all the sweat of their bed and grinned yet again.