Traitor's FestivalA Chapter by SpeedyHobbit Armstrong Xenia has a narrow miss with Dremeadow guards seeking a man and an adolescent hobbit. She then decides to follow the wanted pair. She wants information but learns more than she bargained for. Xenia stared ruefully
into the larder that towered nearly two feet above her head. The chestnut
shelves told her brunch would be impossible unless she left the house and went
to one of the markets in the area. The contents amounted to barely two slices
of bread, a jar of tea leaves, ale and a tiny serving of dried blueberries but
otherwise it was empty space.
It had been positively dismal the
past few March days, with thunderstorms scattered amid drizzle, fog and
torrential downpours- exactly the type of weather no hobbit would want to be
out in. It had kept her confined to the room she rented for the better part of
a week. Xenia adamantly refused to go out in the abominable weather for anything but the privy. There was one exception. Xenia had
made a failed attempt to procure food two days ago. It ended with her
sloshing as fast as she could through the mud back to the doorstep to escape an
abrupt downpour. Xenia had encountered her seldom-seen roommate and the owner
of the house when reentering, but the elf had not talked to her. He never did
unless absolutely necessary.
That was the best thing about the
elf. In Xenia’s opinion, the tenant-landlord relation far surpassed her wildest
hopes. Not only was he perfectly willing to permit her to rent a room without a
lease or any idea of when she might leave but he did not even demand a name!
Back when the hobbit answered his resplendent “Room for Rent” sign, she’d
been prepared to introduce herself as Daria Goodlett. The taciturn elf had
shaken his head. “I didn’t ask yours,” he’d reproached. That reply had piqued
Xenia’s suspicions, but then the hobbit had remembered her own circumstances.
Considering she herself wished to conceal her identity, it would be
outrageously hypocritical of her to pressure others to divulge their name. That
in mind, she’d decided the reticent elf could keep his secrets. Keep his
secrets the proprietor did. They were well-guarded under lock and key like her
life before leaving Drémeadow never to return.
Xenia raked her hand through her loosely
curled dark hair, mulling her quandary over. She might be in brown hose and a
grey tunic instead of her nightgown, the halfling thought, but she was in no
mood to get wet. The hobbit moved to the single window in the room and ran her
hand along the dusty pane, blackening her palm. Wrinkling her nose, Xenia
rubbed her hands with the rust-colored rag on the windowsill, contemplating the
sky. No longer did it have an ominous black color. She could not see lightning
in the distance, although her sight was partially obscured by other buildings
in the city rising up as high as three and, incredibly, four stories. In one
brightened area weak beams of sunlight permeated the clouds enough to
illuminate the sky. It was the most hopeful the sky had looked in
days even if the sun’s rays had yet to reach the ground.
“Groceries, then.” Xenia moved towards the mirror to check her hair and
clothing. Instead, she noticed her face. Frowning, she ran a finger along the
faint lines in her forehead. Were they deeper than yesterday? And was it her
imagination, or were her cheeks beginning to sag?
Leave
it, a voice in her mind chastised. You’re merely worried about
looking old because you’ll be thirty next year. So old you have to
stop having fun like when you’re twenty-something, get married and have
children. Xenia shuddered at the thought. Childbearing disturbingly
resembled torture. She’d never forget the anguished cries of her mother first
at six with Odo’s birth, then nearly ten with Folco. Thank goodness it seemed,
given the way her life had gone, she would never have to worry about it. As a
wanted criminal it was impossible to make friends let alone court a potential
husband. Subjecting theoretical children to the constant fear of capture would
be nothing short of cruel. Children deserved better than the exile lifestyle.
She was nearly out the door when she remembered it was Wednesday. Xenia seized
a nondescript badge from her dresser, affixing it to her dark gray cloak for
the Traitor’s Festival. That badge guaranteed a discount from all vendors who
bore the same badge. Even though the hobbit, unbeknownst to others, had far
more money on her person and in this room than all but the richest echelon of
the Simillioran city of Dolingdarrow, she had to account for decades of life
ahead. Prudence demanded the discount.
Besides, appearing ordinary was of
paramount importance. She had even taken various odd jobs despite never working
a day of her life until settling in Simillior. The beauty of Dolingdarrow, one
of five districts in a city largely occupied by elves and refugees from various
lands, was that people kept out of each other’s business. Furthermore,
obscuring her face with her hood and occasionally wearing masks was not out of
the ordinary. In fact, it was something of a fashion, a trend the hobbit gladly
embraced. Dolingdarrow was where she lived the longest other than Drémeadow and
that atrocious university in Rheeding she’d attended until her expulsion six
years ago. ~*~*~
She paused at the signposts bearing Wanted posters from various places. Her
eyes went first to a Drémeadow poster depicting a glum hobbit-woman with
darkened bags shadowing melancholy golden-brown eyes, a wan complexion, frizzy
chestnut curls, and untidy clothing. The words in biggest lettering read
“Wanted for Conspiracy: Xenia Foxtrot.” Her height and general description had not
changed. The Xenia depicted in the sketch was the same despondent version
of herself she’d been half a decade ago. However, the reward for her capture
had. A few weeks prior, the runaway had been dismayed to notice the amount of
gold on her head had dropped from 15,000 gold pieces to merely 10,000. Today,
it remained stagnant at 10,000.
The number of wanted Cancalian murderers had declined. There was Patricia
Twomey, a glowering flaxen-haired woman from Bolingbarke, Cancalia, but the
others had been removed. Xenia’s attention shifted to a faded Dremeadow flier that had appeared shortly after New Years’. This particular one had been an utter shock to Xenia’s system. She had read it only because it bore the Drémeadow crest. “Wanted for the Assassination of Her Majesty the Queen Arabella: Kiran Mani.” Twenty thousand gold was the prize for his capture. According to a note at the bottom, he was from the kingdom of Cancalia.
To this day, Xenia remained astounded she
had not done something like vomit learning of the death of her mother in such a
manner. The assassin perplexed her. Kiran Mani, an olive skinned man with wavy
shoulder-length brown hair, was smiling. Xenia wanted nothing more than to rip
the smiling fugitive limb for limb when she first saw that. She and her parents
undeniably had their differences. She’d been outraged by their response to her
flight but she had never wanted either of them dead. Mani’s
kind-eyed face was as far from resembling how she envisioned a murderer
as possible. Then again, appearances could be deceiving.
Xenia had never questioned whether Kiran
Mani had been the culprit until the appearance of another Drémeadow Wanted
poster. She had almost overlooked it because of the colors but recognized the
shape and image. The abrupt change puzzled her. If the royal family had decided
to change the national crest, why alter the colors and not the image? Why the
eerie combination of sinister shades of green, silver and purple?
The contents of the poster troubled her
even more than the unseemly colors. A lad in his late teens stared from the
sketch. One dark-brown eye was swollen halfway shut; the other glowered
defiantly at the unseen artist. Mottled bruises marred his jaw, cheeks and
right temple, starkly contrasting pallid uninjured flesh. A line of crimson
split distended lower lip asunder. What suspiciously resembled dry blood had
congealed in matted golden-brown hair. “Wanted for Conspiracy in the Murder of
Her Majesty the Queen: Folco Foxtrot.”
Xenia gave the image of her battered little
brother the usual anxious look, winding the string of her satchel between her
fingers. She did not believe Folco had anything to do with her mother’s
death any more than she had when it first appeared. When Xenia first saw this
poster just over a month, she’d literally dropped a basket of apples in shock,
necessitating an awkward explanation her reaction as a recent hand injury to
people nearby. No… it cannot be. He wouldnot have done this.
She remembered Folco as sweet-natured, playful and sensitive. The age
isn’t even right. He can’t be nineteen. Nineteen-year-olds graduate upper
school come September. Folco was just a U2 when I left. He was only
fourteen. He can’t be a U7. Then Xenia did the math. She had been
just twenty-four when she fled. Five years had passed. Fourteen and five was…
nineteen! Seeing her youngest brother near the end of adolescence on a Wanted
poster careworn, haggard and bruised, Xenia had felt very old indeed.
After a final brooding gaze between the colored sketches of her brother, the
enigmatic Kiran Mani and herself, Xenia sighed and continued toward the
marketplace.
~*~*~
When Xenia got to the town square, the first she noticed bearing the telltale
badge announcing refugee-friendliness was an elf with a gold bar through the
sharp point of his left ear and a single auburn braid ending at his waist with
a fastening precisely matching the earring. Shuddering at the idea of
voluntarily ramming a sharp object through her own ear, the hobbit approached
to rifle through the various options. The elf beamed down upon her. “Good
afternoon, miss,” he said to her. “Please let me know if I can be of any
assistance to you.” He added under his breath, “I do not mean just my merchandise.”
Xenia mumbled indistinctly under her breath, shifting aside an alarmingly blue
block of cheese. She hoped this overly inquisitive elf would leave her alone
and allow her to get on with her business. She filled a shopping basket with a
block of cheese and several small bottles of coconut milk, the only kind
Simillior offered. The elves, dwarves, gnomes and humans down this far south
had never heard of cows or goats, it seemed.
After paying for her selection, Xenia proceeded to her favorite baker. The
corpulent man was helping a fidgety badgeless gnome. The baker beamed at her.
Xenia moved to the left side of the booth. Even though this human was here
every week and she knew perfectly well the options he had, Xenia did not wish
to conduct her own transaction until the gnome was at a safe distance.
Once the jittery customer had gone, the baker cast a look around the area, then
swiveled his green eyes to her with a nod. She moved to the counter, resting
her chin and left hand against its edge while fishing for her purse with her
right. “Thank you for waiting,” he said. “I am not particularly fond of awkward
questions I get when people like the gnome notice people like you paying less.”
She gave a terse chuckle. “Yes, well, I can wait if it means no unwanted
attention over price differences.”
Chuckling, the baker queried “the usual?” Xenia nodded, smiling. Not only was
this baker among those who sought to make life easier for fugitives and
refugees seeking asylum in Simillior, but he gave bigger loaves at the reduced
price just so that those with badges marking them as outcasts would not have to
emerge in public as often. Because of this, she was willing to forgive minor
faults like his disregard of her race’s preference for the term hobbits.
“You know, I’ve noticed a lot of halflings lately. You used to be the only
one,” commented the baker, laying loaves of barley, wheat and oat upon the
counter and reaching underneath to extricate a sack of loose oats for porridge.
“I wonder what brings them so far from Drémeadow… and what was that other place
they sometimes live?”
“Rheeding,” replied Xenia, rifling through
her leather and silk purse. She withdrew a silver piece. “Here. Keep the
change.”
“Thank you.” The man brushed a scraggly
wisp of salt-and-pepper hair from his face. “You know, I have a long memory.
You used to think it required gold just to buy a few loaves of bread! Are all
halflings like that?”
“No, I just didn’t know much about what
stuff is supposed to cost.” Recognizing dangerous territory, the fugitive
awkwardly added, “I was a child whose parents sent… ah, paid for everything.”
She’d remembered, just in time, that most did not have servants shopping in
their stead.
“Say no more, say no more,” the baker
chastised her. “I’ve asked too much, I think, and I seem to have another
customer coming… good day, now, and see you next week.”
Xenia walked past a badge-less dwarf to
look for a butcher. She then passed a pair of hobbits. They looked ready to
greet her. Xenia arranged her face into a scowl and averted her gaze. One made
a disbelieving face to his friend, who shrugged dismissively. Neither,
fortunately, said anything. A breath of relief escaped the former princess’
lips.
As usual, there was not much meat Xenia
considered acceptable fare. The elves, who were vegetarian themselves, offered
meat only as a courtesy to other races. The trouble was, they knew little about
the meat preferences of dwarves, gnomes, humans and hobbits. Coney was fine,
but she for one would never touch dogs, lizards, snakes, frogs or rats unless
she was choosing between those or death by starvation. ~*~*~
After an hour, Xenia was ready to head
home. Suddenly, a small figure sprinted right past her so closely that he
nearly knocked her sack out of her hands. Startled, she jumped back a pace. The
green-cloaked fellow, about her height or perhaps slightly taller, threw
himself sideways between two buildings. Golden-brown curls protruded from his
hood for a split-second before he disappeared from sight. At the same time, a
human in a golden cloak bearing what she recognized as the symbols of Cancalia
and Heironeous shot past her after the hobbit down the same alley.
Xenia stared indignantly. What was the
human doing chasing someone half his size? Had the hobbit stolen something? Was
he one of those bullying louts who derived pleasure from terrorizing smaller
races? She felt tempted to investigate but ignored the impulse. It would have
been her duty to intervene back home but it would do more harm than good now.
Two orcs appeared on the same trajectory as
the fleeing hobbit and human. They wore the new green, silver and purple of
Drémeadow. Her heart seized in terror as their yellow eyes fell upon her. One
pointed; they both made to approach her. Xenia froze, blanching. Had they
recognized her? It would do no good to flee now. It would only arouse more suspicion.
What were orcs doing wearing Drémeadow uniforms anyway? How could orcs be
working for them? Was her father out of his mind?
“Where did they go?” snarled one of the
orcs, stopping slightly within arm’s length. “The man and… child. Where are
they?”
She did not dare let down her guard. Even
though it seemed neither orc had recognized Xenia, she was afraid. “I’m sorry,”
she squeaked. She considered claiming to not know what they were talking about
but their quarry’s presence had been too obvious. “I saw them, but someone
taller blocked me from seeing where they went.” Even to her own ears her words
sounded unconvincing
The other orc narrowed its cruel eyes. “Who
blocked you?”
Heart sinking, she cast a quick glance
around for a likely culprit. “Them.” She pointed at the gnomes, praying
silently that she had not just gotten them into trouble.
A third orc appeared. “I think they went
that way.” He pointed down an alley in the opposite direction. The other guards
lunged toward where their comrade indicated.
When they’d gone from sight, Xenia’s
shoulders sagged in respite. Curiosity, however, overwhelmed her. It would be
more prudent to go home but she needed to know what those orcs wanted with the
human and slender hobbit. She inched toward the alley where the running pair
had gone, ducking behind an empty barrel, setting the encumbering sack upon the
ground, and listening hard. Tense words broke the eerie silence. “I
think they’ve gone.”
“Thank goodness we got away!” replied a
deep voice that could only belong to the human. No hobbit voice reached that
low a pitch
The hobbit’s voice snapped “no thanks to
you! Calling all that attention to us! We’re lucky we weren’t caught!”
The man rejoindered apologetically, “well,
we paladins aren’t exactly known for our stealth."
“You idiot!” the hobbit snapped
impatiently. “Well, we’d best be getting back before our good fortune runs
out!” A broad human and tall, lanky hobbit materialized and passed by the
barrel; she tensed her muscles. Once they were at a far enough distance that
her presence would seem insignificant, she emerged to trail them.
Their path led the hobbit-woman to a pastry
shop called the Bolingbarke Bakery that she had never visited before now. Xenia
took an instant to wonder why this place was named after a major city of
Cancalia before crossing the threshold. Her gold and green-cloaked objects of
marvel were at the back of the shop conversing with the elf behind the counter.
Head high, Xenia boldly traversed the large room to a display of elaborately
adorned wooden cakes modeling the talent of the decorators near the counter in
time to hear the man say “the Waste of Dré shall fade away.” Xenia’s jaw
dropped. This human was familiar with the colloquial term Drémeadow hobbits
used for the marred southeastern region that had been devastated in a baffling
and cataclysmic attack fourteen years ago?
Her confusion intensified when the elf
unlocked first the door blocking customer access to the area behind the
counter, then the door leading to the back room, gesturing both into the
employees-only area. While the elf reclosed the two entrances within the
restricted area, Xenia noticed a door indicating that this shop was equipped
with an indoor privy, a rare luxury. Enthralled at her luck, she slipped into
the facility, locked the door and pressed her ear against the back wall.
There was a raspy voice clearly
unaccustomed to whispering saying he’d made an important discovery, a chorus of
excited murmurs and a few grumbles. After a span of time where Xenia’s valiant
efforts to gain more specific information than “new recruits,” “orcs” and “we
are still safe”, footsteps faded into a direction that sounded as though it
were beneath her feet. Did this stop have a cellar not immediately noticeable
to those outside?
Presently, there were several knocks on the
door, then a loud complaint. Xenia moved to the bowl of water, taking care to
splash loudly so people waiting outside would assume she was washing her hands
after doing lengthy business with the hollowed box over a hole in the ground.
Half an hour after she’d disappeared into the privy, Xenia reemerged.
Embarrassed to see a line of five awaiting the room she’d just vacated, the
hobbit cast the teenage girl at front a contrite look before going to peruse
the items for sale. She opted for half a dozen fruit tarts and held out a
silver piece. The elf merchant shook his head. “It’s on the house.”
Xenia blinked. “Are you certain? I have no
money troubles…”
“Indeed,” said the elf, “so you can put
that thing away and take these.” He handed over a white box with a pink bow.
Without warning, the back door opened with
a crash to reveal the human and hobbit from earlier. She could see a gleam of
dark brown through the shadows of the hobbit’s hood and a mask covering his
face but the human’s visage was fully obscured. “Thank you…” Xenia said
to the elf as the pair came back to her side of the counter, struggling to not
appear overly attentive to them. “Have a nice day…” She turned to leave only to
find herself blocked by the human.
“You were following us!” the man accused.
Xenia cocked her eyebrows in her best
impression of surprise. “What are you talking about?” The man glared
suspiciously. She frowned back. “Actually, I’ve been grocery shopping,
if it isn’t obvious enough…” She brandished the box of fruit tarts and her sack
of bread, meat, dairy, nuts, fruits and vegetables.
“Indeed,” scoffed the human. Next to him,
the hobbit watched her pensively. “Well, then. Have a good
afternoon.” He beckoned to the lad beside him to follow departed the store.
Xenia considered pursuit but felt she’d be
trying her luck now she’d been noticed. When she left and turned towards home,
however, there was a delightful surprise. They were going the very
direction in which she lived. Smiling triumphantly, the rogue casually
followed.
Half a mile later, the human looked over
his shoulder to see Xenia still there. He held up a hand and turned fully
around. The hobbit youth followed suit. The hobbit-woman gulped but continued
valiantly toward them. Let that man accuse her of following them! She would be
telling the truth when she said she lived this way!
When she tried to pass them, however, the
man impeded her. “You’re still following us,” he said succinctly.
“No. I live this way,” snapped Xenia,
unfastening her sack while trying to go around him.
“Do you, now?” He stepped sideways to block
her again.
“Yes,” Xenia said, adding the fruit
tarts to her bag, “and I would like to get home, if you don’t
mind.”
“Very well,” said the human. “We shall accompany you.”
Xenia opened her mouth to protest but then closed it again. Voicing her
thoughts would only confirm his suspicions. “Here, let me help you with that.”
The man indicated the sack slung over her back.
“It’s okay… I’ve got it…” She tried to
straighten but nearly dislodged the bag from her shoulder
“Are you sure?” he said skeptically.
“Well, if you insist…”
She resignedly held out the sack. The man
took it with one hand. The hobbit beside him was still staring. She wanted to
ask what had him so transfixed but did not dare. All Xenia wanted was for these
two to disregard her so she could learn more about what they had to do with
Drémeadow without fear of vengeance or capture.
Xenia was able to shake off her sudden
unwanted companions only by telling them she lived in a dilapidated shack two
doors from her actual location of residence. She watched them enter another
building on her road just four doors from her, but decided to follow would be
pushing her good fortune too far. Xenia doubled back toward her own dwelling,
wracking her brain for ways to find out more about the enigmatic pair.
© 2014 SpeedyHobbit ArmstrongAuthor's Note
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SpeedyHobbit ArmstrongLong Island, NYAboutMy name is Cher Armstrong, also known as Speedy Hobbit. I'm a USATF athlete in racewalking for the Raleigh Walkers club team. I just graduated from Queens College in Queens borough in New York Ci.. more..Writing
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