Lenaara
Dreaming of honey cakes.
TucanSam
The Brass Minotaur, the placard read as it hung above the door on rusting chains. The wind shook it, made it rattle its chains and hit the slated roof. The words were so washed out from the rain that only the figurine of a minotaur of dim brass was recognizable nailed to the plaque. Standing surrounded by uniform buildings in a various state of decay, the Minotaur took pride in the fact that it did not share its walls with the corpse like buildings around it. It stood out in its own way, as grey and dirty and damp as any other tavern in the city.
There was no particular reason to choose the Minotaur. It was as any other tavern in the city. Prices were decent, the ale was old and cheap and the food was as filling as anywhere else. A company for the evening could either be a whore from the streets or some rodent or another from the tavern’s cellar. It was an ugly wooden stub of a building, offering only one thing that kept the patrons going in and out often enough to continue its business – it had a mercenary board.
Many a service would be offered, all displayed on the notice board that hung on the tavern’s outer wall, hidden beneath the shadow of a slated roof, and displayed several miniature wooden plaques hanging off the protruding iron nails. Irene’s plaque was no different from the others. It only had a few words carved onto it – name, the length of her stay and what job she offered:
Irene Dalaklis
Until the month’s end
Bodyguard and guide
The words were carved with a steady hand, unlike so many others that looked to have been made in a hurry. The top plaques were the old job notices, old and rotting, with washed out from rain and wind words. Mould grew on some of them and others were covered in moss and dirt and streaks of rain. Irene had put hers at the bottom, where it’d be seen and possibly noticed by someone willing to pick it up and bring it to the inn keep to ask for her.
It had been five days since she’d run out of coin. Two weeks since the plaque was put up here and at another tavern, The Green Scroll, and she’d checked both daily to see if they’d been picked up. With almost a month since her last job the wait was becoming unbearable. It would’ve been unusual had Irene not known the reason for the sudden lack of interest.
It was easier to blame it on the change of season, on the flooded roads and expanding swamp, than accept the true reason for people’s fears in hiring someone named after a people cursed by witchcraft. It was her fault, she’d stayed in this town too long. She should’ve left with the last merchant caravan a week and a half ago but they were less than enthusiastic to hire someone who’d bring them trouble going west.
Thankfully, there were other ways to earn coin than swinging around a weapon.
A smile. A comment. A challenge. Some softly spoken words, masked under embarrassment and complete innocence, as if they rolled off the tongue by accident to keep the conversation going after it paused and the deep rolling voices of the tavern’s patrons subsided. This was all it took to get the tavern bursting with life, even if it was only a company of half a dozen men crammed into one seating area.
Irene propped her elbow on the table and rolled her shoulders. It was hot. The table was pushed closer towards the hearth and fire danced on the surfaces of goblets of ale and bowls of fruit, steaming meat and cold cheeses. More dishes came from the kitchen at the back, brought over by a plump girl in a cotton dress with a veil draped over her shoulders to fight off the cold wind coming through the door. The feast dwarfed in comparison to the still-life composition sewn onto an old tapestry that hung above the table – bejewelled silver goblets were filled to the brim with wine, large bowls were stacked with smooth and ripe fruit, and the dishes of meat and fish were mouth-watering. It was out of place, placed perhaps in a desperate attempt to decorate the otherwise naked walls.
A large clay mug was put down softly beside Irene and she thanked the serving girl with a nod over her shoulder. Just at that moment the man sitting across from her slammed his fist against the table. Mugs rattled, candlesticks swayed from side to side and almost toppled over, and the serving girl jumped away from the table with a soft squeal, hugging the basked of stale bread towards her chest. Even without seeing the poor serving girl’s face, Irene could safely guess that she was mortified by the mercenary on the other side of the table.
“Ha!” The mercenary roared in a deep voice. “I’d wager it is my win.” His words were slurred and his moustache was wet from drink.
He propped his arm on the table, leaned forward and pressed his curled into a fist tattooed hand against his side. He beamed at Irene with happiness, the grin lopsided and smug as he looked at his opponent with one good eye. He was a man of an unidentified age – he could have been thirty or fifty, the harsh scar slashed across his face distorting his features and making it hard to see the bright gleam in his eye that many youths shared in the prime of their life. Tall and strong, he was a mountain of a man clad in leather and chain, exposing his heavily tattooed muscular arms. A lapis lazuli gem on his mask, which covered half the man’s face, shone faintly in the dim candle light. The gem was shaped in a form of an eye, either to mock the mercenary’s missing eye or to make up for its loss, Irene didn’t know.
Malcolm jerked his chin at the table and reached towards the half empty horn at his side. “Lady luck can’t always favour you.”
“Would be a shame if she stopped on the day of my birth, no?” Irene reached towards the deck of cards that lay between them, her hand hovering over the spread deck for a moment before she took a card out at random. Without flipping it over, she slid it towards the row of cards laid neatly before her. “And,” Irene gathered the cards, looked at them, and with a grin laid them out facing the man, “she still favours me, it seems.”
Malcolm was taking a swig from the horn when he’d looked down at the cards and nearly chocked on his drink at the realization of his yet another loss. He put the drink down, placed his large hands flat on the table, and stared at the cards. They stared back at him, the faces grinning and frowning, laid out on top of his own set of cards.
“How—“ He lifted his eyes and frowned, leaned back and ran his hand through his dark dirty hair. “It’s all luck. No skill. A game of chance. You shouldn’t be so smug about it, Irene.”
Irene laughed softly and reached over the table towards the leather pouch they’d betted on earler that evening. She weighted the pouch in her hand, untied her own purse from the belt on her waist, and deposited the coin into it. It nearly fell out of her hand when a man sitting at her side had slammed his hand against her back, patting it harshly and muttering congratulations on her win.
Her back ached but it was a good ache. The feeling of having won was nauseating.
“Jealous of my fortune?” Irene propped her elbow on the table, rested her chin in her hand and chuckled. “You are the one who lost three times in a row.”
“It’s a card game, for fuck’s sake. Entertainment for superstitious women who believe in shit like guessing your husband’s name from a flower. Ton of bullshit, this.” Malcolm waved dismissively at the cards and knocked back his drink. “I bet you enchanted the cards with your Izmarian shamanistic voodoo crap. Them symbols on your clothes must give you some fake luck. Heresy, I say.”
Well, the man was not far from being wrong.
Irene’s clothes were very different than those the mercenaries – there were two others – at her table preferred to wear. For one, she was not wearing any sort of protective padding over the vital areas of her body and did not cover herself with chainmail and bits of metal. One look at the clothing of the men around her was enough to get the overall impression of them being mercenaries, a blade for hire. With Irene, it was different. She, like the others, possessed the hardened look of a warrior but her clothes were not close cut and skin tight; they were not heavy with iron or thick leather padding. Instead, her clothes were loose and made entirely of fabric and thin, light leather.
She wore a coat of thick deep purple fabric that reached down towards her knees and was set at the waist by a wide leather belt lined with rabbit fur on the edges; the sleeves were wide and ended just below her elbow. From underneath the sleeves the leather bracers of soft brown leather peeked out and covered her forearms. The dark brown pants were straight and wide, tucked into her knee length boots that have seen better days.
The symbols Malcolm called shamanistic, were simple embroidery. It weaved through the bottom of the wide sleeves in various patterns; the high collar was decorated in a similar style and was pulled tightly around her neck and secured with a bronze clasp. Similar clasps were visible along the middle of the coat, all closed to keep the fabric of the coat in place. The hem of her coat depicted more geometric symbols that changed at the back as the embroidery blended with the symbols woven on the back. The leather bracers and the wide belt were decorated as well, but not as heavily as the coat. The golden thread gleamed with each movement that the woman made, the fabric folding here and there and reflected the soft orange glow of the candlelight.
Everything about the woman screamed foreign. Deep purple, gold and bronze, these colours stood out among the grey mass of people in the tavern. She was a bright spot of colour in the group of darkly dressed men around her.
She had just turned twenty-eight but appeared to be older as the fine lines already fanned the corners of her eyes. Olive skinned and tall, she was athletically built beneath her foreign clothing. An ashy brown braid reached towards her hips, pulled tightly from her face, exposing it to the heat of the hearth. High cheekbones, refined jawline, almond shaped silver eyes, a straight nose – the woman’s features, skin colour, the colour of her clothes and broidery, everything indicated her country of origin, Izmar.
Broidery was a part of her culture and had it not been common knowledge, Irene would’ve chosen to go for a simpler attire to avoid the Church of the Blessed from dragging her to a nearby Cleansing Pyre. While they were not as bold as they were in Escus, where Pyres burnt often, they still looked unapprovingly at Irene. The symbols had no magic, only a belief that they could bring luck or prosperity or ward off the evil eye. Not that it stopped many from believing otherwise and spreading rumours of witchcraft worn on clothing. Silly superstitions.
The heat from the hearth made sweat trickle down her spine. And yet, Irene did not remove her coat. She could only imagine how hot the others must feel, trapped beneath all the leather and chainmail.
Irene lifted her hand and slid her calloused finger over one of the symbols woven at the sleeve her coat. “This is for luck. This,” her finger slid over a triangular shape, “is for prosperity.”
“Bunch of bullshit.” The man lifted his recently refilled horn and grumbled some words into the drink as he took a swig from it. It was hard to hear what he had said, but Irene got the general impression of him cursing the Izmarian voodoo crap.
“Alright.” Irene reached towards her own drink. Instead of wine or ale that her companions favoured, hers was water. “What do you call fair entertainment, then?”
“Fighting.” Malcolm shrugged, his lips curving into a lopsided smirk. His scar made the smirk look like a snarl.
“Swinging your axes at thugs armed with dull swords isn’t fighting, Malcolm.” Irene set down her mug and collected the cards.
“Neither is poking your enemies from afar with a giant toothpick.” Malcolm retorted.
“Still sore over that one incident?” The deck of cards was set between the two once again.
“You stabbed me.”
“No, I hit you. It was the dull end. All you got was a bruise and an empty stomach after you vomited your guts out. You walked into my spear, flailing your axes about like a drunken idiot. I would have won without my toothpick, anyway.”
“Care to back that up?” Malcolm got up, his hands braced on the table. He was swaying slightly from side to side, his eye looking down at Irene but not really focusing on her.
“What?”
“That you can beat me. Without your toothpick.”
“You’re drunk. I’m not going to fight you.” Irene pressed her lips into a thin line.
“Arm-wrestling then.” Malcolm pushed back his bench, circled the table, and then pulled the bench towards the table’s end. There, he sat on one side, and jerked his chin at the direction of the bench before him. “And don’t give me I’m a woman excuse. I’ve seen you lift men up into the air. You ain’t fooling me.”
And so, Irene agreed.
She had won the first match between them, then the second. Malcom’s hand hit the table’s surface each time, his body leaning and twisting to the side along with his hand. He groaned in frustration, his muscles bulging beneath the tattoos, his forehead had turned red under the mask. Each time he lost a rematch was demanded and Irene obliged, if only to finally show Malcolm that no matter what he did he would lose. If there was coin on the line, he would have lost every single copper that he had to his name.
Several other patrons of the Minotaur gathered around the table, whispering bets to each other. After the third loss Malcolm had pushed his bench so far back it toppled over and fell on its side. He stormed from the table, his steps uneven and swaying and muttered all sorts of vulgar curses under his breath. A woman had beaten him in a match where strength mattered above all. Irene was not too surprised to see him react in such a way.
Two more men asked for a match and both of them were beaten. This time, however, Irene chose to bet her coin. It was merely another way to earn some more silver until she would be offered a job. If she was offered a job.
The thrill of winning was so nauseating that it dulled out the pain in her biceps and her hand. It was a good kind of pain.
Winning was easy enough. Malcolm had been drunk, his core unstable and swaying under the influence of the cheap ale. All she had to do was lean forward in the match and work his strength to her advantage. She would pull on the man’s hand towards her in order to force it away from his body. His leverage would be put out of balance even more and instead increase hers. The grip would slip, and she would move her own higher up on the mercenary’s hand. With others it was harder, but she changed her strategy accordingly. Their hand would be forced back, thus increasing her own power, and exposed their wrist by twisting her hand towards herself. Each man entered the match thinking they would win, and each left the match with less coin and a wounded pride.
“Anyone else?” Irene asked and leaned back, the knuckles of her left hand massaging the palm of her right. The coin wasn’t much but it’d be enough to last her a few more days.
Here’s hoping I don’t lose it all to a stupid bet.
