Category: Vaenuth

Old moss, dangling down the edge of the wide cistern opening, gave out beneath Vaenuth’s hands, and she slid down inside.  It was a controlled drop, and she landed on the sloped stones below along with a scattering of dirt and green.  The cistern was built on the hill above the Ra’las estate, shaded by a few trees and surrounded on all sides by distant towers and maze-like streets.  She had wrapped her sword belt around her torso, and her sword hung from her back. Continue reading Vaenuth 43

The city of Starath seemed to scrape the clouds with its blacked brick spires.  They rose all over the city, cornering big factories and warehouses and towering castles with ramparts or slanted roofs.  It wasn’t until Vaenuth and the crew of the Roost sailed down the channel between Starath and Blackrock Isle that she realized those were not towers that brushed the clouds.  Nor were those even the same clouds that roofed the sea—those spires spewed forth coal smoke into the heavens, smouldering a new, lower layer of clouds.  Starath was a machine that made metal. Continue reading Vaenuth 42

If they had trained heavily before their long voyage had reached Sheld, then this voyage forth was full of battle.  Vaenuth could beat anyone they paired her against, though Tagg gave her the most trouble.  Many a day was full of sweat and bruises, and the occasional loss of blood drops.  The sailors aboard the Roost gave them a wide berth of the deck for their training.  Even Lerran’s guards joined in once in a while.  One of them rivalled Tagg in skill, and gave Vaenuth a bloody welt on her shoulder one afternoon.  Pressip had almost started a real fight because of that, until Vaenuth declared it was a training bruise, nothing more. Continue reading Vaenuth 41

The sky was overcast and the air was dry, even a day after Vaenuth had arrived back in Sheld.  Tagg and she shared a small breakfast at the inn they were staying at, the Rogue River.  It was a large building overlooking the cliffs and waterfalls of the river that rushed down from the Radregar highlands.  They sat inside, and Vae watched subtle curtains of water droplets form on the glass window nearby and drip down to the window sill.  It seemed like the only moisture she had seen outdoors in days. Continue reading Vaenuth 40

Tagg and Vaenuth shared a coffee on an open patio roof, at a small Lo Mallago Cafe called the Imported Shrine.  Indeed, everything sold at it seemed to be a delicacy from afar, save the coffee.  Tagg informed her of her ignorance—coffee didn’t grow in Lo Mallago yet, not even in the jungle woodlands that had re-grown after the Orrish’s blight. Continue reading Vaenuth 39

Novon put her back against a wall that time, and neither of them held back.  Someone in another room called for them to be quiet, but they weren’t, and they didn’t.  The muscles in his back felt like iron, but rippled like the surface of the sea as he lifted her up and down.  Vae threw back her head, but it smashed off the wooden wall with a thump and she started laughing until everything else robbed her of the rest of her breath and she finished with a panted gasp.

He poured her tea, later that afternoon, and they shared it at a small round table. Continue reading Vaenuth 38

The village of Wartha Mull housed no more than fifteen hundred, with a few streets and outlying farms with barley or maize growing in patches.  There was a palisade wall over a small ditch, to keep out as many wild animals as possible, and a single guard on duty where the trail entered the town. Continue reading Vaenuth 37

Before the sun shone, Vaenuth was awake.  She glanced at Novon, who’s bed she had shared now for a second night, and quietly climbed off of his mattress.  Before she could get her sandals laced up, she felt him stir, and his hand gently rested on the brands in the middle of the back.  “Is today the day?” he asked, quietly.  She had told him she would be leaving, abruptly, to complete private business.  Judging by the presence of her weaponry and the sharp lines of her muscles, he knew it was not the task of a travelling merchant. Continue reading Vaenuth 36

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. Continue reading Vaenuth 35