Ebudae (21 page)

Florsy smelled of metal oil recently used on
his chain shirt as he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. He was
the tallest of the group and skinny, although his ropey muscles
held surprising strength. “We’ll go with and do our best to keep
these ‘friends’ of yours out of trouble.” His sly voice added a
dubious emphasis to the word ‘friends’. “If we can’t, we’ll make
sure they don’t give it to you.”

“It might not be that easy, Uncle Florsy,”
Pelya warned as they began walking. “We broke into a warehouse to
rescue someone and I released some slaves in the process.”

“It sounds like a brave deed,” Grinkin said,
admiration clear in his voice. “I’m proud of you for it, lass.”

Pelya blushed at the compliment. The men
didn’t give them easily, even to her. “Thank you.” She became
serious. “But the warehouse belonged to Master Blavoci. Father said
he’s dangerous and vindictive.” She caught the quick glances they
gave each other. “I see you know it as well.”

“He’s a bad man with wealth, power and
connections in the High Council. That qualifies as trouble enough,
but he’s also under investigation if I remember correctly.
Something about smuggling illegal goods,” Florsy said, running
fingers through his thick grey hair. It had once been a rich brown,
but there were only hints of that left.

“Where are we going?” Clutz asked. He didn’t
speak much and his name was misleading. Clutz was a master of
travelling over tightly packed rooftops in the city. The three had
light duties because of their ages, so it was easy for them to take
extra time out for her whenever needed.

“We’re going to Carnival, a performer’s tent
near the east side,” Pelya told him.

“Your friends are Carnies?” Florsy
asked.

“Ebudae and I met them a few days ago. We
thought they were good friends.”

“I heard that the two of you were allowed to
go out alone now,” Grinkin said. “I’m afraid for the safety of
Dralin to be honest.”

“Hey!” Pelya smacked his chest with the back
of her hand and they laughed. “There were only a few dead bodies.”
She hoped it was a clever statement even if it was true. The
thought chilled her again.

Judging by even louder laughter, she had
succeeded. “Well said, lass,” Florsy said with a smack on her back.
It knocked her forward because she wasn’t expecting it. He became
somber. “You said you ‘thought’ they were good friends. I’m
guessing you found out differently?”

“They left us to rescue the slaves by
ourselves. We made our way through the ruins under the city and
might have died if Sir Imbra, a Knight of Reanna, hadn’t shown
up.”

Clutz looked over his shoulder. “I think our
young friend is trying to get an early start at an adventuring life
similar to our own.”

Pelya blushed. It wasn’t what she had
intended at all. The men encouraged her to tell the story and by
the time they reached the tent, she had told them all of it, even
managing not to cry when talking about the deaths.

***

“Which tent is it?” Clutz asked after they
arrived at the performance courtyard, which was illuminated by
lanterns on tall poles. A crowd watched a performance at one of the
stages while people moved about. Carnival was active all times of
the day and night.

“It’s the red and green checkered one.”
Pelya pointed to it. “Aphry runs the troupe.” There was no sign of
life anywhere around it and the two torch stands in front of it
were dark, unlike other empty stages. It was an ominous sign.

“Florsy and I will go ahead and make sure
everything’s clear. Stay with Grinkin.”

They disappeared into the crowd while
Grinkin led Pelya to a tree on the edge of the courtyard. He kept a
hand gripped on her upper arm for safety reasons. It bothered her a
little, but she didn’t resist.

A few minutes later, they came back with
unhappy expressions. Florsy ran his fingers through his hair again.
“Two of Blavoci’s guards were at the entrance to the tent. We
stopped and talked to them. It seems the troupe sold the location
to Blavoci and left town.”

“I don’t believe that,” Pelya protested. “I
bet they were kidnapped and sold into slavery. We need to go to the
warehouse and try to find them.”

“That’s not going to happen, Pelya,” Clutz
said firmly. “Grinkin, get her back to the Guard District.” Before
Pelya could protest, he held up a hand. “We’ll see what else we can
find out, but you’re not going to get into any more danger. Is that
clear?” His tone allowed no argument, so she nodded sullenly.
“We’ll tell you what we discover tomorrow.” He turned back to the
courtyard, followed by Florsy.

“Come on, lass. Let’s get you home.” Grinkin
led her away.

***

By the time she made it back to Healing
Hall, her father was asleep. The healers let her take the bed next
to him again and she was quickly asleep despite the worry for her
friends.

Chapter
14

Ebudae groaned as an urgent and unyielding
need for food woke her. It consumed every thought as she rolled off
the edge of the bed onto her feet. Still clutching the knife to her
chest, she stumbled out of the bedroom into the sitting area of the
suite. From there, she made her way to the door and into the
hallway.

Halfway to the stairs, she met Tina, who
happened to be carrying a tray of food. Alarm filled the servant’s
one good eye as Ebudae attacked the food. The woman set the tray on
the floor and jerked her hands away as though Ebudae might decide
to take a bite out of them. Tina ran as fast as she could.

There was no intelligent thought in Ebudae
as she knelt to get every last scrap off the plate. Insatiable
hunger dominated her actions and when Tina rushed back with more
food, Ebudae looked up and growled at the unfortunate woman.

Tina set the new tray down on the floor and
backed away. Ebudae leapt forward, grabbed a half-cooked chicken
and bit into it. Tina’s eye widened at the feral woman’s actions.
She rushed off again.

In addition to the chicken, there was a full
wheel of cheese and two loaves of bread. When Tina came back with
another tray five minutes later, Ebudae was gnawing meat off the
last of the bones and everything else was finished.

She stood and looked at the new tray of food
with intense desire. Tina held the tray away from her as she hugged
the wall to get around Ebudae and head to the suite. Ebudae snarled
at her and stalked the food all the way to the small dining table
on the far wall. Tina set it down and Ebudae forced herself to sit
down before digging in.

In addition to pastries, cooked eggs and
fried potatoes, there were jugs of milk and juice. Ebudae made an
effort to eat a little more gracefully, but her stomach roiled in
need for more. Everything she ate was digested at an extraordinary
rate to replenish her energy.

Her thoughts were becoming clearer again,
but the exhaustion was setting in fast and hard. There were
numerous books on the study of magic’s effects on bodies, but none
had definite answers to why or how a body could alter its normal
makeup to intake vast amounts of food and sleep as a recovery tool.
Something about magic altered the body, even causing many wizards
to die early from various cancers or debilitating diseases that
consumed bone and muscle.

Ebudae still felt heat from the dragon mark
covering her back. She would eat extra over the next few days in
order to replenish it as well. There were
no
books about the
marks, but she had figured out that it was helping her to use more
magical energies and protecting her body from some of those
debilitating effects.

Tina came out of the bathroom with sleeves
rolled up. She was drying her hands on a towel. Ebudae put her arms
around the food and hunched over in case the servant might try to
take it away from her. There was no chance of that, but Tina
carefully took the empty milk pitcher out with her as she left the
suite. Perhaps if she didn’t have such a terrible stutter, Tina
might offer words of encouragement. Instead, she patted Ebudae’s
shoulder and left the room.

A few minutes later, Ebudae’s hunger was
satiated. She nibbled on a pastry while wondering if she had enough
strength to make it back to bed. Hands on her arm lifted her to her
feet and Ebudae saw that Tina had come back.

Ebudae protested futilely as Tina stripped
her and put her in the bath. Strawberry and raspberry leaves mixed
with rose petals in the bath created a delightful aroma and felt
heavenly against her skin. Ebudae came out of the drowsiness while
Tina scrubbed her clean. The servant woman rarely spoke, but the
two of them had grown a strong bond. Lady Pallon’s cruel treatment
of them created partners in suffering. Tina was Ebudae’s faithful
ally and took excellent care of her.

Looking at her arm, Ebudae observed there
were no marks from the cutting she had done that morning. Looking
around, she wondered what time it was and if it
had
been
that morning. There was no clue as to what time of the day it was.
Ebudae decided she didn’t care. She ran fingers over her thigh
where she had stabbed, but those wounds were gone too.

The dragon mark: it healed her wounds in
addition to everything else. The thought was fleeting. Ebudae
wanted
to think about it, but it also protected itself from
her
and Ebudae knew she would forget about it by the time
she woke up. She twisted and saw the glowing orange lines covering
her back. It was only visible when working and she wondered what
Tina thought of it.

Water poured over her head and she gasped.
Tina pulled her arm to make her stand up and then dumped another
bucket of water over her head while the young lady uttered a few
choice words she wasn’t supposed to know.

A few minutes later, Tina had Ebudae dried
off, put in a nightgown and then into bed. As the servant tucked
her in, Ebudae quietly and sincerely said, “Thank you.” Tina gave
her a tight smile and left the room. Ebudae didn’t notice because
she had already fallen asleep.

***

The struggle between finding more food for
her bottomless stomach and remaining under the soft covers to sleep
was beginning to irritate Ebudae. She had already woken two other
times to eat and shouldn’t be hungry anymore.

With a sigh, she flung the covers off and
sat up. Once again, Tina had taken away the empty tray from the
nightstand and left another covered with a cloth to keep the food
from getting stale. She set it on the bed in front of her and
picked at the food while thinking about everything that had
happened.

Her grandmother thought she was evil.
Am
I?
Ebudae didn’t know. She had enjoyed killing the wizard and
would jump at the chance to duel another, preferably to the death.
It didn’t feel evil though. Ebudae had also enjoyed helping Pelya
rescue the slaves. Pelya was definitely good.

The events of the last few days were
starting to spin again. Her grandmother’s hatred, Pelya’s good, the
wizard’s head exploding, slaves huddling in the dark, slochunds
slinking in the dark, knights casting liquid light, Carnies
laughing at her all swirled about and began causing the room to
spin as well.

She opened the drawer and found her knife
just where it should be. Tina must have cleaned it and put it away
at some point. Drawing her left sleeve up, Ebudae slowly cut a line
into her arm. The pain felt good and stopped the room from
spinning. The blood was pretty and she stared at it.

The cut began to heal, closing just as she
had cut it, from one end to the next. The blood was drawn back into
the cut to be re-used. She cut one more time, enjoying the sharp
tip of the knife separating skin. Her back warmed in protest at
having to heal a self-inflicted injury yet again.

The second cut healed and Ebudae felt her
muscles relax and breathing come easier. She had to sort the
problems out though. Otherwise, they would come back worse than
before. Cutting helped for a little while, but if she didn’t
resolve things she wouldn’t be able to focus her mind for
magic.

The worst thing was her grandmother’s hatred
of her. It was a problem there wasn’t a solution to. Ebudae wasn’t
willing to kill her, because then she’d be stuck with the estate
and she didn’t want it. Moreover, the woman was smart. She would
protect herself against magic somehow, so if Ebudae tried to kill
her, things would get worse. The only solution was to avoid her
grandmother as much as possible.

Next was Pelya’s good. ‘
Why is that a
problem?’
She asked herself the question, but didn’t have an
answer, so she set it aside for a minute.

Death was the next thing. Ebudae liked
death. It was fun. ‘
That’s probably a big problem
.’ Dead
things were easy to understand. Living things were difficult.
People were the worst because they always had opinions and talked
about them. ‘
The problem isn’t death, it’s that everyone else is
afraid of it. I’ll like death and keep it to myself.’
That
decision was enough to solve the problem. The pressure lessened a
great deal and everything seemed a lot less chaotic in her
mind.

Slaves made her think of Pelya and good
again, so she set that matter aside for a moment and considered the
slochunds. They were scary because there were so many of them in
the ruins. Ebudae didn’t know how they survived, but they did. She
and Pelya had fought hundreds of them as well as other creatures,
but always explored alone and they had a system of battling. It was
something that she had an occasional nightmare about, but not worth
wasting any more time on.

The knight of Reanna and his companions were
interesting. They wanted to use Pelya for some reason. She was
important to them. It occurred to Ebudae that she didn’t care about
the knight and was able to remove him from the spinning in her
mind.