wretched and wonderful: beginning

Darzi first met Lyuben five years ago.

She’d been full of wine and leading some dark-haired human back to the shop.  She couldn’t remember his name.  Or much of that night.  The majority was a blur between moments clarified by their intensity.  Even then, even five years later, the recollection twisted in her guts and knocked the breath from her lungs.

Her first sight of him was a flash in an open door, a glimpse of mottled grey struggling against the brown and beige of five others.  “Hold ‘im still,” barked one above the rumble of the tavern.  “Half-blood piece a’ shit—”  The door slammed shut.

Her thick soled boots kicked it in then rushed her up to the five men.  They stood about a round table.  Her fists, closed tight, knocked into the lower backs of the pair before her.  They crumpled.  Eyes—open wide, golden brown, pupils constricted—stared through thick slashes of red.

“Don’t be afraid.”

It was her voice echoing those words in her ears as the five grabbed at her.  The fight was a mad tumult.  She kept throwing her fists, kicking her boots, bashing her forehead.  They buzzed and wavered all around.  Once or twice, she connected with flesh.  More often she whizzed through the stifling air.  Someone shouted for guards, guards.  They knocked her back.  One kicked at the back of her knee; one shoved at her chest.  She crashed down, wood exploding under her.  Her head connected with an empty thud against packed earth and muddy straw.  Her eyes lost their focus in swirls of wood grain as white spots flashed before her.  Her stomach lurched.  She waited for it to settle.

But it fucking wouldn’t.  Lurching up, she gagged and coughed back a rush of bile.  The five scattered as she fell forward.  Hands braced on the dry ground, she heaved and retched.

The five laughed around her.  Two crouched beside her then helped her up, into a seat.  Slumped against the warping planks of the wall, she wiped at her mouth.  She eyed the five.  Humans, males, dark-haired and varying shades of pale–more of them came from the forests every fortnight or two.  They came in large bands—alliances of clans once bitter rivals, mercenary companies now united under a common banner—and they came in small waves—a few families who were without tribe or homeland, survivors fleeing destruction.  They were all the same: desperate and lost.  It had been thirty years since any divinity had communed with a human.  The Imperium Liberorum had grown by thousands of leagues in the last hundred years.

In the grand scheme, that was all nothing.  Darzi herself was nearly three hundred years old.  She knew this Imperium would fall in upon itself as such grand nonsense always does.  It didn’t matter how far east or west they pushed.  The more they consumed, the more they would hunger.  They would glut themselves on conquest and glory until they burst.

These humans who fled were fools and cowards.  They would have done better to stay at home.  Wait it out until the inevitable.  Even if it took another three hundred years, what difference did it make?  Pay tribute to the Liberi for protection or pay an elite caste of warriors, either way the life of a farmer would be the same.  They’d wake in the morning and go about their chores.  They’d spend what time they could with friends and family.  They’d worship whomever they like, however they like.  So what did it matter if Liberi took the first pick of your harvest instead of the warriors?

That she could remember.  She would never forget sitting in wreckage of a bench, vomit on the ground before, the five around her—and she’s thinking about how pride is the stupidest fucking thing.  Because these men’re laughing and helping her to stand and offering her water and rubbing the splatter from her cheeks and chin.  But all she wanted to do is kick their fucking teeth in.

The guards appeared then.  Trolls—three of them, heads nearly knocking the exposed beams of the floor above–trailed behind a Liberi woman.  Darzi recognized the woman.  Ligeia, four months past, she had bought half a bolt of silk, dyed in the colors of a faded flame.

“What’s all this, then?”  Ligeia kept a hand on the leather wrapped hilt of her sword.  The other hand swept over the mess they had made.

The five had another laugh at that, and Darzi faded away as they all began to talk at once.  Head against the wall, she wondered where that man had gone.  Just as well if a brawl was enough to scare him off.  Especially when–

Darzi surged up, across to the thin grey-furred man bent over on the table.  He had his face in his hands, and he tensed up when Darzi came to stand over him.

“What’s your name?”

He looked up at her with a hand still covering half his face.  “Lyuben.”

“Where do you live?”

“With me.”  One of the five stepped up next to her, and she glared down at him.  “Little shit owes me a debt–“

“How much?”

“Thirty drachmas.”

She slipped fingers into the back of her belt.  Pulling loose four aurei, she flashed them at the man.  ”I’ll give you these for him.”

“Done.”  The man snatched the coins from her.  He bit at one, and she rolled her gaze away.

“My shop—”

Lyuben was still staring up at her with wide eyes and a hand covering his left cheek.  Blood dripped down his neck and arm.

“What are you doing?”  She snapped her fingers at one of the trolls.  “Get this man to a healer.  Then bring him to my shop.”

The five laughed and shouted, the gravelly cadence lapping over itself.  One pressed a mug into her hand.  She remembered knocking it back; she remembered choking down the cloying sweet of mead.  It burned all the way up into her nose when it came rolling back up.  She jerked over, heaving onto the woven rug beside her bed.  Wide eyes stared at the mess spattered below.  The room tilted to one side.  Groaning, she pressed her face down into the wool-stuffed mattress.  She felt heavy against it, but the room kept sliding about.

“Water?”

The voice was soft, above her elbow.  She shifted back, bit by bit, until she was blinking up at wide eyes.  Their pupils dilated, glowing with candlelight.  Darzi smiled.  He glanced down.

“Here.”

He held a cup out to her.  She tilted up, and he brought it to her lips.  The water was warm.  It settled into her gut, and she sighed.  He stepped back, around her mess.  She saw then how his woolen tunic hung from his shoulders.  They were hunched forward, and his eyes avoided hers.  He bent down, over her mess.

“Stop.  Fetch Radana.”

“I will.  But her back is bothering her.”  He flopped the rug over itself with a wet plop.  “I’ll help her.”

She watched him rolling up the rug, lifting it up, carrying it from the room.  He had a tail, nearly long as his legs, poking out from a hole ripped in the back of his ragged pants.  She would have to take his measurements.  He deserved better.

Glancing down at the spatter on the floorboards, she sighed.  So did Radana.  Darzi never should have kept drinking.  Such a loss of control was unacceptable.  She felt the weight of her guilt pressing, twisting down into her chest.

Silent and still, she watched him return with Radana.  The human woman did not spare a glance for Darzi.  Radana stared at the mess on the floor.  She sighed.  Then set to cleaning with scrub brush and bucket of [diluted vinegar].  Its pungent odor stung Darzi’s nose.  Wrinkling it up, she sniffled.

Radana stilled Darzi with a glare.  “You promised.”

“I apolo—”

“No more strange men.  You promised me, and now you have bought one?”

Lyuben kept scrubbing at the floor.

“I didn’t buy him.  I paid his debt.  He is free.”

He stopped.

“Why is he here?”

“I had intended to explain my work to him, to offer him an apprenticeship.”

“He can’t stay here.”

“He has no interest in your daughters.  Lyuben, tell her.  You have no interest in human girls, do you?”

“Girls?”  He shook his head.

“You promised.”

“Shall I buy you a house, then?”

“Don’t be a shit.”  Radana waved the suggestion off.

“Rent you one, then?  Our agreement was a job and a home.  It doesn’t have to be this one if it no longer suits you.”

“Who will clean up your early morning messes?”

“I will,” Lyuben answered.

Radana eyed him, and Darzi smiled.

“I trust him.”

Radana shook her head but said, “It’s your decision.  But I’ve got my eye on you, boy.  Keep scrubbing.”

That was the last thing she remembered before falling into sleep again.