Chapter Nineteen

“I hope you have a good explanation for that.” Master Eujin said wryly, pointing to the dark purple ring around one of Ven’s eyes as she sat down across from him.

Without a word, Ven pulled the heavy purse she’d won from a half-day’s worth of brawling and dropped it onto the wooden tabletop with a thud.

“Ah.” He replied, lifting his mug to his mouth.

“First match was a Qamethean with a mean cross.” She said, stowing the purse away. “My fault for getting sloppy.”

“If he’d been using a weapon instead of a fist, you’d be missing an eye.” Eujin noted dryly.

Ven rolled her eyes.

“Yeah, yeah. I know.” She said.

Master Eujin looked at her with an ever so subtle look of disapproval, but said no more as someone approached to take their order.

The serving girl, a young Kekusi girl with cream skin, a mane of golden feathers, and amber eyes stopped at the table and took orders for food and more drinks. Ven ordered one of basically everything, because she deserved it. Master Eujin went to protest, but relented when Ven gave the prize purse she’d brought a little shake. The serving girl, whose name Ven knew was Alfanaea from the times they’d been here before, took one look at Ven’s face and her eyes swelled wide as saucers.

“Oh Ven! Are you alright? How’d you get hurt?” The serving girl asked, picking up Eujin’s empty mug. “Did this old monster here do this to you?”

Master Eujin shot her a sardonic glance, and Alfanaea’s eyes crinkled in the tell-tale sign of a smile hiding under her mask.

“It’s actually not me this time, believe it or not.” He said.

“I got it while fighting in the pit at Hair of the Dog.” Ven said. “Some blueberry used my leg as a springboard so they could deck me in the face.”

Master Eujin snorted, and Ven shot him a sideward glance.

“And you won all that?” Alfanaea asked, resting a hand on their table. She nodded towards the purse Ven had beside her, adjusting her mask as she did so.

Ven nodded.

“My goodness, you must be really good, then!” She said resting her other hand on the tabletop. She was now leaning forward over the table a little and not so subtly pressing her breasts up and together with her arms. And was her mask starting to slip down too?

“Uh, thanks, Alfie...” Ven said awkwardly, trying to ignore the increasingly obvious cleavage aimed in her direction. “I… do my best.”

“Well, I wasn’t expecting to be in the company of someone so talented. Must be my lucky night.” The girl said, leaning back up and crossing her arms in front of herself. She looked at Ven just a second longer than seemed normal, then cleared her throat.

“Well, I’ll go get all of this put in, and be right back with your drinks!” She said, turning abruptly to go.

When Ven turned back, she found Master Eujin looking at her with his eyebrow raised.

“...What?”

“You know what.” He said.

Ven cast a glance over her shoulder at the serving girl, who was leaning into the doorway to the kitchen.

“What? Alfie? No!” Ven said. “She was just being nice.”

“And I just help people purely out of the kindness of my heart.” Eujin said.

“Oh come on! She obviously thinks I’m a boy.” Ven said, finding her face grow hot. “And she’s a lot older than me.”

“Are you sure? About either of those things?” Eujin asked.

Ven cleared her throat uncomfortably, then turned another glance back towards the kitchen. Alfie happened to catch Ven looking at her this time, and winked at her. Ven jerked around, her face now fully red.

“You like her.” Eujin said.

Ven stared down at the tabletop for a long moment, feeling the blood rushing in her ears. Finally she looked up.

“I guess..? No. I don’t know….”

Eujin chuckled softly.

“You don’t have to have everything figured out, kid. You’ve got all the time in the world to decide what you like.” He said.

“And what do you know about any of that, Mister ‘everyone I ever knew left me’?” Ven said.

Something akin to fury flickered in Master Eujin’s eyes for the briefest of moments, but then softened into something else she couldn’t read. He chuckled humorlessly.

“You’re a piece of work, kid.” He said, rubbing his eye.

“Sorry, I was just-”

“Relax. There’s no need to apologize for making a valid point.”

He crossed his arms, looking down at the tabletop as he spoke again.

“I had a wife once, if you can believe it. She was my best friend. We even grew up together in the same village. I loved her. She had a smile that would put the stars to shame. We even had a child together. But in my quest for justice, I lost them both.”

“What happened?”

“In my late teens, our village was visited by a powerful lord and his retinue. Wanting to make a good impression, my family invited the man and his guards to stay in our home. They accepted, but soon made my father regret the decision with their demands and abuse. Finally, in a drunken fit, his lordship decided he was going to have my mother, and no one and no thing was going to dissuade him. My father tried anyways, and was run through for trying. I was forced to watch him die and my mother suffer, as a lesson for why I should never forget my station. My mother wasn’t breathing when they finished, and I couldn’t bring myself to get off the floor by their bodies for two days.

“She spent almost every moment with me then, and for a long time afterwards, comforting and supporting. She finally agreed to marry me not long after. Probably to watch out for me. I petitioned the local governor, then our baron, and finally onto the Grand Court for justice, but no one would even allow me an audience. They all called me a liar. One even made sure I was flogged before I was thrown out.

“I grew more and more desperate and angry. I was so obsessed with this fight that I barely noticed that my wife was pregnant. I finally decided that if no one would help me, then I’d get my own justice. I knew Shikari were allowed to operate independent of the law, so long as their actions were in service of the stability of the realm and ‘benefited the common man’. So I became a Shikari, and spent nearly every moment from dawn to dark making myself strong.

“When I felt I was ready, I left to find the man I was hunting. It took me years and and more bodies than I care to admit to finally track him down. Once I’d dealt with him, I returned to my village and to her to find she’d remarried, and that the child we conceived had grown into a young girl who had no idea that I even existed. When my once-wife saw me, she went pale and sent our child inside just long enough to tell me to leave and to never come back. So I did, and I didn’t.”

Master Eujin pursed his lips, and sat in silence for a long moment, seemingly lost in thought.

“I’m sorry, Master…” Ven started, unsure how to respond.

Master Eujin seemed to snap out of his reverie, and shook his head.

“It’s fine. It was long ago. It’s what I chose. And I have to live with that, for better or worse.” He said.

Before Ven could reply, Alfanaea returned with more drinks. Master Eujin was favoring liquor tonight, which meant he was in either a particularly good mood, or a particularly bad one. Ven preferred ale, for the simple fact that it didn’t taste like wound disinfectant. After putting down the drinks, Alfie reached inside her blouse and pulled out a pair of papers roughly the size of a man’s hand, which she set on the table between them. The gesture elicited another flush on Ven’s face, and Alfie, seeming to have noticed it, subtly cocked an eyebrow at her, which only made things worse. Before things could get any more… whatever they were, she abruptly excused herself for the privy.

Despite being located in an area with an active sewer and even running water, The Hair of the Dog was still using old night-earth latrines that were situated in an alley behind the bar. Ven picked the one at the far end.

As she sat, she heard a pair of voices talking loudly as they approached the toilets. Instinctively, some part of her was instantly transported back to the night with the Krins, and it took her several moments to regain her composure. Within moments they were close enough to understand, and Ven idly listened to their chatter as she set about pulling up her trousers.

“... So’s what I’m saying is, you gotta give it some attention first. You can’t just go at it and ‘spect them to like it. ’S disrespec’ful.” The first man said coarsely.

“Rogan, what in heaven’s name are you blathering about now?” The second man said, his voice refined. “Back to the subject at hand. You said you had news from Harrowden. Let’ hear it. I don’t have all night.”

The two of them stopped a few paces from Ven’s latrine and she paused, waiting for them to pass by or enter one themselves so she could leave. It was probably irrational, but after her experience on the way to the capital, she wasn’t going to risk it.

The coarse man coughed, then spat something into the alley.

“‘At’s jus’ it, Reval- ‘ere ain’t no Harrowden no more.” He said.

Ven froze. Had she just heard that right?

“What do you mean, there is no Harrowden?”

“I means the damned thing looks like some’ne stomped on it with a giant boot and ‘en lit the pieces on fire.”

A chill swept up Ven’s spine, and she suddenly felt herself grow nauseous. That sounded exactly like what happened to her village. She knew Harrowden, at least by name. It was northeast of Renning, a few days walk from the capital.

There was a long pause before the refined man spoke, this time more quietly.

“Invasion, do you suppose?” He asked, seemingly to himself.

“Can’t says I know. But I’d be a swivin’ looner if I said it didn’ look just like what ‘appened to the other one down south.” The man named Rogan said.

“Mother damn it all.” Reval said. Hearing something so crass out of a voice so polished would have made Ven laugh, under different circumstances. As it was now, she felt like she was about to shake out of her skin. “You said what was left had been burnt. Was it still burning, or were the ashes cold?”

“Din’t see any flames, though big pieces still smoked a good bit.” Rogan said.

Reval cursed again.

“That means it happened in the last few days. How in the frozen hells does an entire village get destroyed and it not be the talk of the entire city? Even more so, how the swiving hell does it happen twice?”

“You ‘hink someone impor’ant is keepin’ the news from speadin’?”

“Oh, there is no doubt now. An attack like this should have half the army mobilized by now, if what you say is true. That means either not a single soul survived to spread the news of the attack, or someone in the Grand Court is knowingly preventing them from talking.”

By now, Ven couldn’t keep her pulse down. There was no doubt in her mind now that the attack these men were talking about was caused by the same terrors that had destroyed her home. And if it was, that meant Sevastian had been in the village only a few days ago. He could still be close. The thought made her feel like her chest was about to explode. She had to get out of here and tell Master Eujin.

“Well, we knows Rennin’ didn’ ‘ave no survivors, so wouldn’ be shockin’ if the same thing ‘appened ‘ere.” Rogan said. “So’s it’s ‘ard to say.”

“Yes. Having literally any idea of what happened there would certainly make this a lot easier, wouldn’t it?” Reval said, then sighed. “Who else knows about this?”

“No one bu’ me, ‘nless ‘ere’s someone who followed me back wi’hout me knowin’. And ‘at would take some doin’, as you migh’ imagine.” Rogan said.

“Well, that gives us the advantage, at least. If whoever is behind this doesn’t know we know, then we might have a chance to find out more before everything tightens back up again.”

At these last words, something, whether it was a need to know more or something else, compelled Ven to do what she, in retrospect, realized was probably a very, very stupid thing to do. She pushed the door of the latrine open and stepped out.

The man she assumed was Reval was short and slender, with a tossled mop of silvery hair atop a boyish face. He wore a finely tailored waistcoat and breeches in shades of blue, and a pair of circle-rimmed pince nez on the end of his nose. Rogan was fat and balding, with a splotchy red face and small watery eyes that seemed to constantly be darting around, checking his surroundings. He was, surprisingly, somehow even better dressed than the man named Reval, in a rich suit made of crushed Red velvet trimmed with gold.

The eyes of both men jerked towards her in unison, the expressions on their faces the same you’d see when someone has a knife pulled on them. Reval’s hand immediately went to the rapier at his waist, which bore a basket hilt of intricate wiring.

“Who are you? What do you want? What have you heard?” He asked, taking a step towards Ven.

Ven stopped a few paces away, and raised her hands.

“Relax. I’m not an enemy, if that’s what you’re afraid of. In fact, I think I might be able to help.” She said.

“And what exactly can you do to help us? Hmm?”

Ven smiled.

“Well, you see… that whole thing about Renning not having any survivors? That’s… not necessarily true….”