Saebrya

“So!” a big woman barked, wiping her hand on her apron as she approached, “What can I do for you?”

Saeby stared at the woman’s breasts. They were clearly showing through a thin, gauzy film.

“Dragonsilk,” Ryan whispered into her ear. Clearing his throat, he said, “We need a room for five days.”

The innkeeper eyed him critically. “You’re sick.”

“Yes,” Ryan laughed, helplessly. Saebrya’s skin crawled at the desperation in his voice when he said, “I need someplace to lay down.”

“I charge double for anyone who’s sick.”

Ryan then glanced at Saebrya. “We won’t be long.”

“Damn right, you won’t.” The woman reached out, and without asking, tugged the purse of sparks from his belt. She counted them. “You got enough for two nights, with meals.”

Saebrya’s heart clenched. Two days?

“That’ll be wonderful, Mistress…?” he hesitated.

“Jayna.”

“Mistress Jayna,” Ryan said, flashing the innkeeper a smile that would have been charming if he didn’t look like an emaciated corpse.

The woman grunted and poured the sparks out into her apron, then tossed his purse back at him. “Come on, then.”

She led them to a small room on the second floor of the inn, tucked into one corner. Saebrya wrinkled her nose as she drew close to the bed. It smelled like urine and vomit.

“Clean sheets are extra,” the woman said, shrugging. She went to the window and flicked open the curtains, exposing the opposite face of another building across the disused road. “At least you got a good view.” She eyed them again, her eyes coming to rest on Ryan, who had sunk onto the bed without even a single complaint about the dirty sheets. “Dinner’s in an hour, though you won’t be eating downstairs. Might spook my guests. I’ll have a boy leave it outside your door.”

“Thanks,” Ryan whispered. He leaned back into the filthy covers, not even bothering to take off his shoes.

The big woman grunted again. Then, jingling the sparks in her apron, she trudged back down the hall, her footsteps making the hard wooden floors creak beneath her weight.

Saebrya immediately closed the door and went to the window to cinch the curtains shut. “Why’d you let her swindle us?!” she demanded, turning to her friend. “We needed that money to get home, Ryan.”

He gave her a weak grin from the bed. “Wasn’t thinking straight,” he whispered. Then, softer, that terrified gleam in his eye once more, he said, “I really want this thing off me, Saeby. I’m not feeling too good.”

Saebrya’s anger collapsed. She went to Ryan’s bed and started unlacing his boots.

“Leave them,” Ryan said, feebly tugging them from her grip. “Thieves.”

She stared at him. “Thieves?”

“Take…boots.” He closed his eyes and took an uneven breath. From his chest, the sipper watched her. Pulsing. Swallowing. Draining the life out of him.

“Ryan?” she asked, quietly.

He didn’t respond. His breathing was already growing deeper, the ether flowing off of him in greater waves, infusing their wretched surroundings with molten silver beauty. Saebrya looked at the stark contrast between the swirling silver flood and the stains and cockroaches and immediately found herself struggling against sobs.

“I’m sorry, Ryan.”

“For what?” he said softly, startling her.

For not sending you to the Spyre when I should have. “For bringing you along. I could’ve done it myself. Let you rest.”

“Liar.” He gave a shaky laugh, but didn’t open his eyes. “You wouldn’t have made it past the Unmade. The way you were looking at them… I would’ve been laughing the whole time if it didn’t hurt so much.”

Ryan, she thought, in agony. She turned away. “I’m going to help you.”

“Good,” he chuckled unsteadily. “I’d hate to have stumbled all the way here for nothing.”

Biting her lip, she turned to go outside, to start looking for the Auld.

“Saeby,” he said, as she reached for the door.

She turned. His eyes were open and he was looking at her, his head lifted slightly from the mattress. “Thanks.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” she said, fighting back tears. “Thank me when you’re better.”

“I mean for being my friend.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “That sounds too much like dying talk to me, Ryan.”

“I don’t feel too good,” he admitted softly.

In his chest, the sipper’s fangs rose and fell with the shallow motions of his breathing. It watched her.

“I’m going to help you,” Saebrya said, wiping away tears.

“I know.” He closed his eyes and let his head fall limply back to the mattress. “Thanks anyway. Even if you didn’t marry me when you should have.”

Saebrya gasped. Then she stepped forward and hit him in the arm.

From the bed, Ryan chuckled weakly. “Gotcha.”

“You…You…” She struggled for the right word.

“Turd?”

“Shithead.”

“Same thing.”

Glaring at him, she turned back to the door and wrenched it open. Before she left, she growled, “I hope they do steal your boots.” Then she slammed the door behind her. In the room, she heard weak laughter.

“Rot!” she screamed at him.

“Already am,” came his thin reply.

Narrowing her eyes at the rough grain of the wood, she spun and stomped down the hall and back down the stairs. The big naked woman looked up as soon as she entered the kitchen, after taking the wrong turn for the common room. She was kneading dough in a big wooden bowl. “You walk any harder, girl, and I’ll think you were trying to wake the dead.”

Saebrya’s anger faded instantly upon seeing the woman’s huge brown areolas staring at her through the filmy fabric, reminding her of just how far she was out of her league. They bounced and jiggled as she worked with the mixture in the bowl.

“My face is up here,” the woman said, pounding at the dough.

Saebrya tore her eyes up to the woman’s gray eyes, a flush creeping up her neck.

“Country bumpkins,” the woman muttered under her breath. She dumped the dough from the bowl and began to mash it with her big hands. She looked Saebrya up and down. “Why’d you bring your friend to the city, anyway?”

“Healing,” Saebrya said.

The big woman laughed. “It takes ten times the sparks you paid me to get an Auld to even look at something like that.”

For a moment, Saebrya thought the woman meant the sipper, and her heart gave a start. Then she realized she meant the fever and she lowered her eyes. “How much would it take to cure it?”

The woman wiped a thick arm against her nose, then went back to kneading bread. “A few hundred, I’d say. That boy’s dying.”

Saebrya’s heart hammered and her head shot up. “No he’s not.”

The woman gave her a sharp look and continued pounding away at the dough.

Saebrya swallowed. “Where can I get enough sparks to cure him?”

“Become a whore.”

At Saebrya’s aghast look, the woman shrugged. “This ain’t the country, little one. People don’t do people favors, not around here. You want to help your friend, you’re gonna need sparks.” She lifted the dough from the counter and started molding it into a round shape with her hands. “Only way to do that in the time you’ll need to do it is to start walking the streets. Might be an Auld out there who’d fancy that pretty face of yours.”

Saebrya backed away, disgusted. “I’m not a whore.”

“Aye. You’re a virgin, by the looks of ye.”

Her jaw dropped open.

The woman shrugged under her stunned gaze and stuffed the rounded lump of dough into a baking pan. “Facts of life, girl.”

“Where are the Aulds?” Saebrya asked. “I need to talk to one of them.”

The woman snorted as she began throwing more ingredients into the bowl. “The Aulds are in the Spyre. Even if they’d stop long enough to listen to you, barren commoners aren’t allowed inside the Spyre unless they’re staff.”

Saebrya bit her lip. “How do they get to be staff?”

The innkeeper snorted. “Get born to a staff member.”

Saebrya lowered her eyes again. “Can you tell me how to get there?”

“Sure. Go outside, turn left down the mill road, go east until you hit the baker’s, then walk down the alley ‘til you hit the main street. Then take that to the center of the city. Mind the cutpurses in the alley, though. There’s a few nasty ones out there of late. One likes to carve on his victims faces before he leaves em for dead.”

The directions blurred in her head the moment she heard that, but Saebrya thanked the woman anyway and hurriedly bowed and left, not wanting to stare at the woman’s nipples any longer than she had to, the whole conversation leaving her on edge…like the innkeeper wasn’t being entirely truthful with her.

As soon as Saebrya stepped into the common area, several men sitting at a table in one corner looked up and gave her lewd grins through rotten teeth.

“C’mere lassie,” one of them said, jiggling his crotch with a dirty hand. “Your ol’ boy’s almost dead, anyhow. Time for a real man, eh?”

Eyes widening, she all but ran out the door—

—and ran headlong into the sipper’s body, sprawled in a huge semi-coil in the road outside of the inn. As she was righting herself, someone snickered. She looked up.

A grime-crusted boy sat on an overturned bucket across the street, whittling at a twig with his knife. As soon as she saw him, he locked eyes in challenge, and Saebrya quickly averted her gaze.

What am I doing here? she thought, brushing the mud and horse dung from her breeches. She felt so out of place. The smells of cooking food mingled revoltingly with raw sewage. Somewhere nearby, the sounds of lovemaking wafted across the darkened street. From his bucket, the boy was still watching her.

I can’t do this. Saebrya shuddered and went back inside. She ignored the jeers of the patrons in the corner and hurried back up the stairs, back to the room. She reached out to open the door, but stopped.

I have to do this. We only have two days.

Swallowing, she lowered her hand. Then, trying to hold her head as high as possible, she walked back through the common room one more time and back outside. She was relieved to see that the boy was still on his bucket. Stepping around the sipper’s body, she strode over to him.

Rancor glared up at her from the face of a child, and Saebrya was caught off-guard.

“What?” the boy snapped. “I didn’t steal nothin.”

She quickly gave a nervous laugh. “No, it’s not that. I’m trying to find an Auld.”

“Came to the right city, then, didn’t you?” Looking into his eyes, she had the feeling he was mocking her.

Saebrya swallowed. “Yes, I think. I need to find a Vethyle Auld. He’s tall and gray and…” What? He’s got two faces? “And he likes dogs,” she finished lamely.

To her surprise, the boy easily said, “Auld Rhydderch.” He put the blade of the little dagger to his mouth and began picking his teeth.

Smiling with excitement, she said, “Can you take me to him?”

The boy lunged up, slashed his blade across her face, and, as she was falling back, stunned, he tore the little slip of paper out of her pocket. Blood poured into Saebrya’s eyes, blinding her, as his footsteps scampered away down the dark alley behind his bucket.

Later, once a passing old woman dabbed the blood out of her eyes and helped Saebrya back into the inn, the innkeeper looked up and shook her head. “Forget what I said about the pretty face, girl.”

Saebrya, trembling, went back to the room and shut her door. She stood there for long minutes, staring at her friend. Ryan was asleep, his bed overflowing with ether, the stuff saturating the walls and floorboards. A wheezy rattle emanated from his chest, reminding her of an old man who had died of pneumonia after getting swept downriver in a storm.

The innkeeper’s right. He’s going to die.

The sipper watched her as she crossed the room, holding the bloody rag to her forehead. As silently as she could, she curled into a corner and cried.