A short story by Melody Villa
Typical of his luck, the previously demure sky cracked open and heaved fat raindrops just as Ethias had turned on his heel to escape the irate Rovhakan Constable.
Raking his sleeve across his eyes, Ethias searched for escape through the flickering glow of the covered lanterns that lined the Si’Lee market street. Light reflected in the growing puddles, scattering across the swarms of people whose trip to the market had abruptly become a fight to huddle under the awnings that interspersed the roadside stands.
Darting between vendors and patrons half blind, Ethias lurched forward, unsure where he was going, but certain just about anywhere was better than the end of the Constable’s blade.
“Stop him!” the towering man, red in both face and jacket, hollored through labored breaths. “Pirate!”
“Rover lapdog!” Ethias jeered over his shoulder before ducking around a busy corner. The mobs of soaked shoppers slipped out of his way. In the eyes of the Rovakhan Empire pirates deserved to hang, but the public perception tended to be a bit more favorable.
The rapid footsteps of the Constable rounded the turn. Ethias’ foot came down hard in a pool of water — a bit deeper than anticipated. His ankle balked at the miscalibration.
Hobbling slightly, he couldn’t keep his pace with this unfortunate new development.
He lurched himself sideways through the hanging door of one of the tents that lined the market, sucking in a much needed breath that smelled of perfume and musty earth as the waterlogged fabric fell shut behind him.
The Constable’s continued calls crashed straight past Ethias’ little hiding spot, almost disguising a far quieter sound — something soft like a kitten’s mew.
His eyes combed the small tent.
The glittering crystals that swung from the tentpoles and the sparse light of the kraken inklamp that glimmered off the gold ring in his nose reminded Ethias all too much of the sparkles that muddled his vision after a hard knock on the head.
It was on his second pass through the area that he caught the woman. Tiny and wide eyed, another startled coo escaped her lips, and her bony hands flew to her stomach.
He nearly took his leave right then, but commotion in the crowd outside advised against it.
“Pardon Miss.” He tried for a smile as he continued laboring to appease his lungs.
“I don’t have any money,” she said, pushing herself backwards, clumps of her long black hair falling in her face.
Although the scarred side of his face remained oddly numb to the rain, water had darkened the green of his tell-tale sash and dripped down the curve of his cutlass.
“I know how this looks…” A final deep breath steadied the ragged edge of his breathing. Mindful of how frightening he could look when angry, he worked to soften the sharpness of his features into something more appealing. “But I’m not here to rob you, sweetheart. I–”
“Don’t call me that!” Her bulging eyes caught fire and she sprang forward like an alley cat deciding if it ought to flee or fight. “Stay away and don’t ever call me that!”
His vision raked across her belly, hidden behind her lattice of bony fingers. Rounded with child.
Ethias was suddenly too big for her tiny tent. A cumbersome giant. One wrong move of his too-long arm might send the whole thing crashing down. One careless step might crush the tiny woman on the floor.
He sank slowly down in the small space, sitting crisscrossed in a way wont to make a man’s legs prickly and lethargic — a conspicuously difficult position attack from. “I meant nothing by it. It’s something I call my sister.”
“Sister?” She gnawed at the corner of her too-pale lip.
“Aye. I might be a wanted criminal straining your hospitality, but I swear on Martyr’s blood I’m not that kind of man.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, until his head was lower than hers. “If that Constable wasn’t ten paces away with his eye on my neck, I’d be gone. I’m sorry I frightened you.”
“I ain’t scared.” Her eyes cut into him with an admirable sharpness, despite the warble in her voice. “Just smart.”
“Of course.” He had finally calmed enough to offer the woman a true smile, and did so readily, keeping his tone light. “Very brave and very clever. Wish I could say the same of myself.”
“So are you scared or stupid, then?”
“Bit of both,” he admitted, glad she felt safe enough to be a bit mean. “Stupid enough to piss off that Rover Constable. Scared enough to barge into your shop to hide from him.”
She took a long breath, shaky at the start but steady by the end. “Alright. You can hide for a bit.”
Despite worry lines already carved in her face, his reluctant companion wasn’t as old as she seemed. While no longer a child, she was still a good deal younger than he was. Dark shadows hung below her eyes that nestled inside bony cheekbones.
“Thank you.” He couldn’t get over how frail she was. He was exceptionally fortunate to be unfamiliar with child-bearing. Still, he was rather certain she shouldn’t be nearly so thin and pallid in her condition. “You like parsley?”
“What?”
Moving slowly, as if the girl was a frightened animal, Ethias slung his knapsack from his shoulder and pulled out a bundle wrapped in wax paper.
“Bought myself a snack at the shops before incurring that Rover’s wrath. Took one bite before I realized it was riddled with parsley.”
He unwrapped the twine revealing a golden brown pastry teeming with spiced vegetables. His stomach objected as he offered the barely touched meal to her. “If you can stand the stuff, I’d hate to see good food go to waste.”
She snatched the pastry from his hands and had the first bite in her mouth before he’d even registered she’d taken it.
As she visibly relaxed with every bite, he took in her little shop. A pile of blankets and pillows were stacked in the corner, rumpled with use. Water from the pouring rain soaked through the fabric walls and onto her little makeshift bed. Ethias frowned and turned his focus to the little table between them.
“Ah!” he exclaimed, glad for something to say as he studied the feathers, rocks, and carved symbols. “You’re a fortune teller.”
“Three coppers,” she replied through her last bite of quickly devoured handpie.
“No thanks.” Some of the put-upon friendliness fell from his voice. “I don’t care to part with a single coin to hear whatever doom Fate’s sealed for me.”
“It’s just advice,” she argued, picking crumbs from her ratty shawl and stuffing them in her mouth. “I won’t tell you how you’ll die. I promise.”
He’d scrimped and saved, denied himself both luxury and the occasional necessity, to earn the fortune he needed. Three rotations on a pirate ship, and he’d hardly made a dent. Ultimately three coppers wouldn’t matter either way. But it might buy the girl another decent meal.
“Alright.”
“Yeah?” Her face brightened as she leaned forward, her hands motioning eagerly for his.
He presented his hand, the inklight highlighting his veins and tendons in gold against his dark brown skin. Scabs crusted across his knuckles and his fingernails were stained slightly pink no matter how much he tried to scrub the blood from them. Most conspicuously, his little finger was completely absent.
Ethias tried not to look at it.
“Oh,” she said, turning his hand so his palm faced up. “I usually read the right one.”
“I’m wronghanded.” Of course he ought to have presented his other hand. While he had little regard for the right-handedness expected by the Empire, he didn’t much care for how exposed he felt. “Shall I switch?”
A line nestled between her brow. “No. It’s alright. But I won’t be able to do a full reading.” She tapped lightly across the scar where his pinky once was, and it took some effort for Ethias not to jerk his hand away and tumble back out onto the street.
“That’s fine.”
She nodded and began to trace her cold fingers across his calloused palm. “Love line is the easiest,” she said. “We’ll do that first.”
“Let me guess,” he said, forcing a bit of joviality back into his voice. “A tangled mess?”
“You love a lot.”
“If that’s what you want to call it.” Heat bloomed across the bridge of his nose. He didn’t need this kid knowing exactly how many beds his pretty face and carefully managed charm had gotten him into, and he especially didn’t want her knowing how long it had been since he’d put those particular skills to use.
“Not like that,” she looked more annoyed than embarrassed. “Just means you care about people.”
“You mean the people I haven’t murdered for a bit of gold?”
“You’ve killed?” Her eyes bulged a bit and her hold on his hand tightened. She regained her composure quickly and slid her fingers down his hand. “But aren’t you from a’Rune Isles?”
“What gave me away?”
“You swore on the Martyrs.” She shrugged easily. “And you smell good. Like tea.”
“Tea gets the bloodstains out.” He tried, and failed, to match her cavalier tone. “And keeps my hair shiny.”
Unimpressed, she continued tracing across his palm. “Despite all that, your sense of justice is really strong.”
“You must read fortunes for some pretty rotten people.”
“I do.” She indicated lines on his palm Ethias was pretty sure had much more to do with how his skin folded than the content of his character. “But look, your sense of justice is quite thick, and crosses with anger here. Here. And here.”
“And that means?”
“It means I wouldn’t want to get on your bad side.”
The last man to get on Ethias’ bad side’s blood had splattered warm against his skin, quickly turning cold where it seeped through his clothes. It had taken him ages to scrub the rust stains from his shirt.
“A fair assessment.”
Her eyes shot up to his face before returning to his palm. “Your sense of duty splits in two here. Don’t see that much. I suppose being a pirate from a’Rune could do it.”
“What? You don’t think I’m a good pacifist?” He said it like a joke. It wasn’t.
“I don’t think you ever had a choice, honestly,” she said. “Your potential for harm is vast.”
“Delightful.”
“Why were you running from the Constable?” She turned her attention to his face. “You said you were scared, but your palm disagrees. You’re brave enough and apparently keen to fight.”
“I thought this was a fortune telling,” he spat, perhaps a bit too harshly considering his present company and the fear he’d inspired in her just moments ago. “Why don’t you tell me how soon I’ll die and be done with it.”
“I told you, that’s not what I do. If I could, I wouldn’t be living in a tent.” She narrowed her eyes. “Why didn’t you fight him?”
“There were people watching, I didn’t want to scare them.”
“It’s bad luck to lie while having your fortune read.”
“I was ashamed.” He hadn’t meant to say it. The fortune teller’s tricks were getting to him. He considered pulling his hand away but found himself unable. “I was ashamed to show them who I really am. So I ran.”
“Hm.” Her hands stilled, apparently no longer interested in providing the service he was paying for. “How’d you end up on his bad side anyways?”
“He was hassling some kid for pickpocketing. I stepped in. He realized what I was and threatened to hang me. So I ran”
Her jaw tightened. “Do you think he deserved your mercy?”
“It wasn’t mercy, it was cowardice.” He forced a wry smile he didn’t feel. “I told you I was afraid.”
“For better or worse, you’re no coward,” she said. “But your palm is a mess. You’re confused.”
“Illucidating meeting, Miss.” He went to pull his hand away but she held fast.
”I’m not done! I haven’t given you Fate’s guidance yet.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“She tells me you ought to embrace who you are,” the girl said, blowing past his objection. “You’ve got power in your future, beyond what you can imagine. But you can’t get there by running from yourself.”
Typical fortune teller nonsense. He didn’t have much future left, powerful or otherwise. “Fate wants me to become a monster?”
“She wants you to enact justice.”
He tried to free his hand again, but her bony hands were surprisingly strong. “Wish she’d chosen someone else,” he said.
“You think I enjoy the plan Fate had for me?”
Ethias looked at her round belly, her scrawny everything else, and her horrid living conditions. He sighed. “I’m a jackass. Sorry.”
She traced a small line along the side of his palm. “Actually, despite what you may think, you’re a good man.”
“That little line told you that?”
“No. It told me you love parsley.”
***
The rain had slowed by the time Ethias ducked out of the fortunate teller’s shop. The shining sun slanted between the thinning clouds, illuminating the freshly washed world.
He felt lighter somehow after the reading, even though he’d already convinced himself any claims of goodness were only stated to secure the sizable tip he’d given the girl. He’d stumbled into her shop, smelling of a’Rune tea with bloody hands. It didn’t take any magic to come to the conclusion he was a violent, confused man. Ethias had to admire her canny business strategy, selling fortunes without actually having Fate’s Sight.
Scanning the street to replace the meal he’d lost, his gaze caught the Constable instead. The man’s pink mouth contorted into a grin at the sight of him.
“Halt!” he called, readying himself to run. “Pirate!”
Children ducked behind their mothers as the Constable charged. Young girls hid their faces. Rage tightened Ethias’ fists and threatened to crack his teeth as they ground against themselves.
This time, Ethias didn’t run.
The Constable stumbled to a stop in front of Ethias, frowning at his undaunted posture. “You’re under arrest for piracy. Last opportunity to state allegiance before you hang.”
Ethias ignored his pounding heart, ignored the wide eyes of the terrified onlookers, and kept his face uninflicted. “Don’t think I will.”
The Constable drew his sword, his smile unpleasant. “This ought to be even more fun than chasing you then.”
“Fun?” Ethias scoffed. “You Rovers seem awfully keen to die for your precious Emperor. Though I doubt he’ll shed a tear after I cut you down.”
“Heretic!” The Constable raised his sword haphazard, sloppy with anger.
Ethias drew his sword righthanded tossed it to his left with a flourish. The unexpected change easily countered the blow and left the Constable’s right side completely open, an easy target.
A few members of the crowd gasped.
Ethias didn’t go for the kill.
“You’re just making things worse for yourself,” the Constable gritted as he struggled against Ethias’ steady block.
“You’re going to hang me twice?”
With a heaving grunt, the Constable twisted free, slashing low and nicking Ethias’ thigh.
The pain that boiled in Ethias’ leg was nothing new. Leaping headfirst from pacifism to piracy left a man with plenty of scars. That didn’t make it any more pleasant.
Self-satisfied at drawing first blood, the Constable centered his reddened blade. The smug upturn of the man’s lip, the enjoyment he garnered from causing pain, snapped any lingering control Ethias had wound about his temper.
Witty remarks evaporating with whatever mercy he had left, Ethias exploited his opponent’s stiff posturing, shoving his sword up between the bones of the man’s forearm.
The Constable beheld his injury with a slack-jawed bafflement, the wide blade of the cutlass sprouting from the sleeve of a jacket like an all-wrong tree.
Slowly facing Ethias, the man’s breathing hitched and fear seeped into the pink-veined whites of his eyes.
The salty seaside air was tinged with the hearty tang of blood and ragged breathing swelled to fill the otherwise silent crowded street. A dreadful thrill spread through Ethias, glowing hot just under his skin.
“You.” The once-booming voice that had chased Ethias through the market was scarcely a whisper now. “You’ll see justice.”
“Justice!” Ethias couldn’t help an uproarious cackle, the kind of laugh that had no business coming from a sane man’s lips. What was it the fortune telling girl had said about his fate? “Here’s your justice!”
Ethias’ sword slipped from the Constable’s arm, and without hesitation he split the man’s guts in two.
Blood darkened the puddles that filled the pockmarks in the well-troddened dirt path. Ethias turned to the crowd, bracing for the fear that still stung no matter how much he deserved it.
The wide eyed group had still yet to turn to disgust, and Ethias knew he should thank Fate and flee before the crowd’s shock wore off and someone called for his death.
“Serves him right,” muttered a crooked old woman, nodding at Ethias before spitting on the ground.
“I’m just glad he’s dead before he set his sights on me,” a girl with the same eyes as the crone agreed, offering her arm as they walked off together.
“That’s what happens when ya live like a pig,” a young man loudly whispered to his friend. “Ya die like one. Nobody even wants bacon from him though.”
“Just too bad the girl didn’t get to do it herself,” a woman with red painted lips exhaled over pipe smoke. She was alone, so Ethias assumed she’d meant for him to hear.
“What girl?” He wiped his sword on his pant leg before sheathing it, in hopes that keeping his hands busy might stop the shaking that still haunted him after taking a life.
The woman shrugged, taking another hearty pull from her pipe. “Some skinny kid from the farms. Her family kicked her out when her belly rounded. I feel for her, dunno how she’s keepin herself fed.”
“Unfortunately, I believe I do.” Ethias’ sigh was followed by a steady breath. “Don’t worry anymore about her.”
***
“You know, if you wanted revenge on the man who wronged you, you might have merely asked.”
Ethias leaned in the fortune teller’s tent, arms crossed over his chest. Now bandaged, the cut on his thigh couldn’t decide if it ached or itched, and Ethias couldn’t decide which was worse.
“Are you mad?” she asked.
She’d seen what he was, seen the blood on his hands, the lacking of his soul, and tricked him with meaningless assertions of goodness to kill for her. He respected her, even as the slain man’s last gasping breath remained stubbornly lodged between his ears.
“I’ll get over it.” He pulled a pouch from his pocket, red leather with the Emperor’s Crest stitched into the front, and lobbed it at the girl. “I relieved him of his coin purse, but I suppose this is owed to you more than anyone.”
She tore open the bag, and her sudden smile forced previously unseen dimples in her cheeks. It was hardly a fortune, but he figured it would be enough for her to stay afloat while her business of conning unsuspecting patrons took off.
Before he knew it, her arms were around him, squeezing his middle like a tourniquet.
“Thank you!” she said into his chest. “See? I told you that you were a good man!”
“Sure kid,” he patted the top of her head and wrung himself from her vice grip. He’d done what she wanted, and he didn’t care to hear any more of her faux niceties. “You take care of yourself alright?”
“You too, Ethias!” she beamed with newfound brightness, her bubbly wave following him out of her shop.
He’d turned the corner before realizing he’d never told the girl his name.
“What’s on yer mind, Mate?” the Boatswain Raffus asked through a mouthful of stew, a rare serious squint settling over his typically jovial, if seaworn, features.
“Nothing, Boson.” Ethias pushed his own meal around in his bowl. Usually Geddie’s excellent cooking was a silver lining of returning to sea, but Ethias couldn’t find it in himself to enjoy it.
He ought to have thought of another way to sneak the fortune teller some coins and saved himself the trouble of being reminded of his rapidly deteriorating honor.
“Surely you ain’t still guilty over killin that Rover prick back ashore,” Raffus said. “Thought you were over your stomach turning after a bit of fightin.”
Ethias had scrubbed for almost an hour just to ensure the Constable’s blood didn’t set in his shirt.
“I am over it,” He said, sharper than he’d meant to be. Fortunately the Boatswain didn’t mind a bit of mouth from his Mate.
“So what’s got ya so…” Raffus finished his sentence with a gesture at the way Ethias had pushed various stew components to respective sides of the bowl.
“I like to be tidy. What of it?”
Raffus arched his eyebrows, the moonlight catching in his canny eyes.
Ethias sighed, his gaze ambling across the deck where the other men scarfed down their meals. His missing finger was hardly notable among the various wounds and scars that peppered the motley assortment of sea-hardened men. “Some life we lead, eh Boson?”
“Ya wonderin what ya did to deserve it?”
“I know what I did to deserve it,” Ethias answered, forcing himself to take a bite of food to stave off the hunger pains of the following day. Eating seemed a bit silly with his imminent death looming so large in his mind, but he had to see his mission through.
Raffus exhaled through his nose. “Saw ya talking to that fortune teller.”
“Ah.” While only women had the gift of soothsaying, Raffus still had an irritating knack for knowing just the right, or wrong, thing to say.
“Skinny little thing, even with the belly.”
“Aye.”
“Scared too.”
“She was.” Ethias found himself looking to the setting sun instead of his conversation partner.
“Prolly had a good reason to be scared.”
“What are you getting at?” he snapped.
“Well. Whattaya think she did to deserve it?”
“Raffus!” Ethias’ fists curled despite being outranked. “What a horrid thing to ask.”
The Boatswain shrugged, unaffected by both his Mate’s outburst and the implications of his statement. “Thought we were talkin about how people deserve the lot Fate gives em.”
Ethias steadied himself against his instinct to fight his boss on behalf of a girl who’d tricked him into murder. “That’s different.”
“Ya think so?”
“Of course.”
“Wanna know what I think?” Raffus asked, mischief in his eye again.
Ethias exhaled heavily, knowing he didn’t have a choice in hearing. “What?”
“I think this Fate is a bitch.”
Melody Villa 