The cold had not allowed dreams, and all throughout the night, the dust had laid itself heavily upon her chest. The bedstead, in its decay of mould, had squeaked with each toss, whilst the twill blanket had caused her skin great discomfort. She had still not grown accustomed to such destitute things, and perhaps she'd never live long enough to do so. Oraani was further disturbed from sleeplessness by the loudness below. A herd of voices from beneath the hoary floorboards had broken her from a restless slumber. It made no true difference. She had barely caught a wink. The fear that a drunken wretch could creep up the stairs and slit her throat, or worse – try to force his body onto hers – kept the young woman far from any rest. Albeit a grave circumstance, she found solace in knowing her sword stayed close by her.
"They do nothing but drink and fight here, like shameless beasts." She groaned to herself as the uproar continued. It reminded her of the drunkard she had stolen from in the night; the one who stank of purge and death. She sat up and found all muscles within her body ached with fatigue, burning from overuse and exertion. Oraani ran fingers through the black ribbons of coal atop her crown, untangling them from a night of tossing.
"I can't do this for much longer…" The fleeing was taking its toll. It had been half a year, after all. Hiding and lying. Living and running. Fear brought no true quality of life. She had learnt quickly that no place could be a haven. Death followed like a shadow and those who aided her often found themselves meeting that shadow. A path of corpses surely trailed her path, starting within the very halls of her own home. The memory of the last time she saw her mother's smile haunted her, bringing tears of anguish and hate to the surface, but Oraani wiped them from her cheeks, knowing she could not afford the luxury of weakness, not even for a fleeting moment.
"Creator, I ask that you guide me… In this moment I am lost." The young woman whispered, eyeing the desolate room she had hired with the coin she had stolen. Oraani placed a hand upon her gut and felt sick from its emptiness; she would need provisions before setting off to travel further up north. But how without coin?
"She did not raise a thief…" She pondered for a moment before leaving the false warmth of the bed. What would her mother think, knowing she had placed a blade to an innocent man's throat?
In the room's corner sat a rugged bucket that the barkeep had given her, half full with fresh water that once was snow. She examined its contents before cupping her hand and scooping some into her mouth. A reflection of a scared young woman appeared atop the ripples, but she did not hesitate to silence its truth by knocking the bucket over. Oraani climbed to her legs, gathered her things and left the dust and cold of the room to wander the tavern's dingy corridor. Across the old walls lingered dust and riven wood, and paintings of things that had long faded from colour. There were figurines whittled in wood atop dusty shelves, cast in wrought iron as most things in Elynire were, and candles that had melted right down to the hilt were sat draped in a spider's silk. She came to a turn at the end, where the breaking of daylight poured in from around the corner's bend. The herd of voices that had thrown her from sleep had grown louder the closer she approached. She took ahold the twist of a hoary bannister, being careful of its broken spindles, and walked squeaky floorboards into the light of the tavern's bellowing gut. Oraani feared for her life that she might fall through the hollow wood beneath her, and so she stepped delicately and with great care. And then she came to the heart of the alehouse, where the light spilt through frosted windows of a tinted red. It seemed much different in the day; the sunlight had conjured away the veil of darkness, to reveal the Braggin' Princes truest guise. Oraani wondered if she had awoken in the same place she had closed her eyes in; for she had not seen the blood speckling the wood, nor the whores draping themselves over men so desperately. The wen's wretches had already arrived to fill the shabby establishment with their drunken lurching and bellowing voices.
A not so subtle creaking trailed her descent into the tavern's gut, causing many eyes to wander about her. Be it a woman or a man from the south of Daar, they were not to find a welcoming embrace in Elynire; for the folk only could trust in what they knew. Gelid. Pale. A mountain of silver stone. And her home of Dravar could not be any more different. Arid. Swarthy. A river of gilded sands.
Oraani had foreseen the spurn, long before it had seen her.
"Creator's sake…" She cursed under a breath, as her gaze wandered the many bestial faces that had turned to meet her. They were brutish and scarred; wild louts who dreamed only of whores, drink and blood. She had heard many a tale of the folk from the Rimelands; men who had turned sour in the cold, who raped and murdered with rotten hearts. The Avarri woman kept a hand close by her belt, for her short sword accompanied each stride, ready to be drawn should the need arise. A strange silence dawned as a foot had come to keep her from the last step.
"And what do we 'ave 'ere, then?" The wretch asked through a besmirched grin. A quiver of bile filled Oraani's throat; the stench of his breath came warm with rot and soured more the musky air. Oraani went to pass him, but his hand took the bannister on the other side of the staircase, barring her with scarred muscle.
"Uh-uh, I ain't done, rust-skin." He eyed the curves of her body and flicked his tongue about his cracked lips.
"Oi, I wouldn't do that if I were you," came a bemused voice from the heart of the Braggin' Prince, by a table between two pillars, close to the fire's flickering. Oraani's golden eyes came to meet with the silver of his. They reminded her of light flashing through storm clouds, and as beautiful as they were, within their gaze lingered the promise to turn a pure thing foul and ruined. It was him, the man who she had robbed in the cold, the one who ambled with unsteadiness and spoke with drink staining his breath. She had not seen the bruise blooming black beneath his eye, nor the old scar carved from his eyebrow and across the crooked bridge of his snout. The ruffian could be only a few years older than herself, but a rough life had most likely aged him a couple more. He sat amongst two other men with the same air as him. One was raven-haired, with muttonchops and leery eyes the colour of a walnut's shell. The other had him a strong gut, a head and jaw tussled with auburn hair and a face with a round, ruddy nose. But the man with the grey-eyes blighted her heart with fear no other beast in the Braggin' Prince could. Even when gazing playfully, his eyes held nothing but bloodlust.
"She'll either kill you or mug you. Be warned Brimmi. She done me last night." Alasdair scoffed with a smirk as he sat at his table with a drink in hand. But Brimmi merely laughed at the man's warning.
"You've always been a funny cunt for an Iron-Blood, Al!" Brimmi bellowed with a hand on his gut.
"I'd like to 'av me an avarri for the night. She could do me all she wanted." He grabbed his loins with a rough hand.
"Had m'self this little half-avarri slave girl once in some whore'ouse in Kyssia. Costed a small fortune, but I got my coin's worth," Brimmi whispered, the black of his eyes feeding on Oraani's beauty.
"They like it up the arse, ain't that right, rust-skin?" He reached to touch her face, but Oraani was swift in grappling his hand. She twisted a snap from his joint and had the big man wail like a babe. His ugly face bounced against the wood with a thud and there it stayed, before Alasdair and his companions.
"Y-You fuckin' cunt! Avarri cunt!" He screeched through clenched teeth, his spit spluttering with each word.
The woman had brought his arm to curl behind his back before forcing him to bend over a table. She drew her sword with swiftness and placed it between the parting of his arse cheeks, pressing its sharpness against his trousers.
"Let us see if the men of Elynire like it up the arse." The sword's curved point pressed hard against the man.
"W-Wait! Milady!" He whimpered and swallowed a gulp.
"Waaaait! B-Bloody C-Creator! please! Just wait! Forgive me!" His face was planted firmly to Alasdair's sticky table, and his voice danced to the rhythms of panic.
"M-Milady! I beg you! Forgive me!" He kept crying out.
"Oh, so now I'm a lady?! No longer am I an Avarri whore?! A rust-skin!" Oraani's eyes had peered upwards to find Alasdair's. His silver gaze filled with bemusement.
Oraani sighed and roughly withdrew her sword and hold, leaving Brimmi to scramble to his legs.
The man cradled his wounded arm like a mother would her child and watched the flesh swell around his limp wrist. The tavern was in upheaval with laughter.
"J-Jorge!" Brimmi's worried eyes turned to the dark-haired man sat left of Alasdair.
"Your wife! She's a blue-palm! Could she see to my bloody wrist?" The man near begged.
Jorge nodded. "I'd go and see her now if I were you. Make sure you have the proper coin and Giselle will see to it that your wrist doesn't fall off."
And with that, Brimmi had rushed from the Braggin' Prince, but not before cutting Oraani with an icy stare.
"And for the record, milady," came Alasdair.
"I can't speak on behalf of all these wonderful Elynirish men, but I might secretly enjoy a finger or two. A blade to my throat is also quite the turn-on." His jape had the hoard of wretches laugh in choir, but the true joke existed just between Oraani and Alasdair.
Oraani ignored the chuckling fool and strutted her way to take a seat at the bar, where the tavern's old barkeeper was wiping the filth with an even dirtier rag. Nothing in Wal Gerrig made sense to her.
"Lady Oraani, wasn't it?" Jarn's ancient brow quirked with his question as he watched her take a seat atop the unsteady stool.
"I am no lady," she corrected him with a sharpness of tongue, which only had Jarn chortle.
"Well, after the way you dealt with that no good git, you're most certainly no lady, and from your grace alone, you're not like any of these ol' slappers lurching around the scumbags," he quietly said. Oraani felt a smile tug at her lips. She took the old man's joke as a compliment.
"So, what can I do for you, Oraani?" He kept wiping the dirty bar with the dirty rag, under the bewildered gaze of her watch.
Only to the north of Daar would you find a man cleaning dirt with dirt, she thought to herself.
"I am in need of coin. Where in Wal Gerrig can I find —" But before her question could even be formed and birthed, a stool beside her was tugged with a hasty snatch, causing its wooden legs to screech along the floorboards.
"I guess being a bloody thief these days must pay a petty coin?" Spoke Alasdair, as he took a seat next to Oraani.
"Quick was I to learn as a lad to never steal from drunks in the night, they've often spent all of their coin by then." Her eyes turned to his smug grin.
"I was bloody hammered last night, but I'm no sodding fool. You see, I have quite the memory, and know it was you who stole the last three gildings I had to my name." He pointed to her eyes.
"I've never seen anything like those eyes of yours, and it's not often I see myself an Avarri who isn't a merchant." The man swigged the remnants of his ale and sighed once his thirst had been quenched.
"Unless I've got it wrong and you've come all the way here to sell us some sand and silk?" The fool snorted at his own joke.
"And I'm hardly ever wrong…" Alasdair added.
Oraani and Jarn shared a snort at Alasdair's gobshite. The free-sword could squeeze shit between his teeth just as easily as he could swing a sword.
"When we do get folk from Dravar in our little city, they wouldn't be found dead in a shithole like this one." Alasdair cut his eyes at the old barkeeper and Jarn muttered something snarky under his breath.
Alasdair spun on his seat to face the woman and gazed into her lap; Oraani had fingers coiling tightly around her sword's boney hilt.
"What is it you want?" She hissed. "You speak too much."
"You owe me coin. You borrowed some last night, remember?" Alasdair gestured towards the wall furthest from where they sat, and she turned her head to place a bewildered gaze upon it. Across the old wooden wall were posters hanging by crooked nails, a collage of warrants and bounties.
"An avarri girl like yourself has two choices in Wal Gerrig." He gestured towards the wall.
"Be like me and make a little coin by selling your pretty sword for petty change. The bards will never sing of my feats but the Creator himself knows what I do many'll never dare. Most don't have the bollocks if I'm honest." Oraani saw that same thing buried amongst the clouds of his grey eyes, a vehement bloodlust she had seen in the eyes of one other man. The brewing storm within Alasdair scared her; she knew what would follow should it arrive. He was a dangerously broken man with a gaze begging for trouble.
"Or," Alasdair shrugged. "You could sell what's between your legs for a beggar's purse. The folk here won't even pay an Avarri to shovel their shit. But if you can ease the loneliness from a man and make him forget his woes for a night, he might pay you well…"
Oraani wondered how many times he had paid a woman to remedy his loneliness, for he seemed to speak only from experience. She spilt her eyes over him to steal a swift glance of his face – the scar across the bridge of his nose had intrigued her earlier, as had the one carved through his thick eyebrow. Alasdair had himself thinner lips than her, but the slight curve of their corners cursed him with an arrogant smirk, as though he never ceased to impress himself. His jaw and chin were adorned with stubble the hues of fire, of coppers and golds; but the short and unruly hair atop his head was a brown so dark it was closer to black. His ivory cheeks were pink from winter's kiss and his silvery eyes sunk in dark rings from restless nights. She would even go as far as to call him handsome - in a bleak and unkempt way, but Oraani had no doubt that he was a barbaric brute with a callous heart, just as most were north of Daar. But alas, it was to be expected.
"What is your name, free-sword?" Her voice rose with careless intrigue and cut through whatever he was rambling on about. She had known he was perilous the moment their eyes had met, but she would much rather sell her sword than steal, or rent out her body. Because of her inheritance of Avarri blood, the folk of Wal Gerrig would find it near impossible to hire her through their ignorance.
"My name? Alasdair Wuldric, milady," he said confidently, but there was a glimmer of hesitancy in the way his eyes briefly fell from hers. A churn twisted her gut. Alasdair Wuldric was a name known to her; he was known to the entire world.
"Guardian of the Opus?"
"Aye, but not anymore." A flash of his anger came.
Oraani had heard the tales of him. He was a man with a darkened history and bloodied hands. Four years ago he had done the unspeakable, and yet his head still rested atop his shoulders.
How?
"And yours?" He asked, his deep voice breaking Oraani from thought.
"Mine?" Her thin eyebrows creased at his question.
"Aye, your name? What did your mother name you?" The man asked a second time.
"My father named me, as all fathers do in Dravar. I am Oraani, daughter of Djir'ra," she spoke, earning herself a muted smile from the free-sword.
"Not a bad one," said Alasdair.
"Alasdair!" Jorge called out to him. "You want to keep us waiting any longer?"
Oraani watched the free-sword roll his grey eyes at his friend.
"Ratty little bastard, ain't he?" He whispered in jape. Alasdair stood from the barstool but left his eyes to linger upon the Avarri girl.
"Oraani, to put it rather bluntly… you won't find my coin sitting on your arse all day. Come on." Oraani felt herself grow lost. What was she to do? Would it prove foolish to trust Elynirish free-swords? To trust in the hand Alasdair Wuldric held out? She eyed it incredulously. His past. His story. It was a dark one known to all.
"You coming or what?" He asked her. The Avarri nodded and stood to follow Alasdair towards his companions.
"You know, I can only trust you as far as I can throw you," she said, just loud enough for him to hear.
Alasdair chuckled, "aye, I know. And I'm a big man," he winked.