Chapter Ten: Orphans and Assistants

Mostly, the crowd rushed up the steps toward the temple dais. With their pikes lowered, the guards backed up a few paces, giving enough room for what Val had to assume was a warlock to blast the crowd back with a great whoosh of air. It was so powerful it sent her hair whipping from fifty or sixty feet away and at least one or two people near the front were briefly airborne.

Val didn't have much time to mind the magic, though, because the crowd hadn't forgot about her. Fortunately, they seemed unclear on which child had started calling for the bishop's death. Grasping hands reached up and at least one child was drawn, shrieking, into the crowd. Val shrugged out of somebody's grip, had her heavy jacket yanked right off her back, and then she stomped as hard as she could on the hand reaching for her ankle.

Next thing she knew, she'd been yanked backwards and was flailing through the air for one dizzying second. She threw her feet back and even bit at the wrist of the arm that had grasped her, but it was clad in hard leather and her teeth and kicks did nothing. She reached for her knife.

Only when she gave up on her pack to worry about saving herself did Val realize who it was. A hand shot out, lightning-fast, and snatched her pack right out of the air. It was Ette who was pulling her back and out of the frenzied crowd.

When Val finally stopped panicking, Ette set her down and she cut her way through the crowd behind him, briefly reliving her several months as a cutpurse between her stint with the Sisters of Resonant Grace and her time at Mrs. Lavoie's. She was a lot bigger than she had been then, but she was still small enough to squeeze through spaces that grown-ups couldn't - under legs, between bodies, and through all the little gaps. It didn't hurt that Ette managed to muscle out a nice path to follow.

"What in the good godsdamn were you thinking?" he shouted as soon as they'd escaped the press of people. He went to grab her arm again, but Val dodged out of the way. She was pretty fast, too.

"Wasn't any thinking needed," Val said. "The bastard got his just desserts."

"It was foolish," Val said. He hopped to the side to allow a line of constables to rush by, truncheons at the ready. "How many do you figure are getting hurt or killed back there?"

That was a fair point - but Val hadn't started the riot. Ansibald, eighth duke of Aurilicht had done that when he stabbed the man through the heart in front of the whole crowd. Val had taken a certain satisfaction at watching the life fade out of the man's face, but all she'd done was shout that he ought to be hanged and she didn't feel the least bit sorry about it. Ette was just cross because she'd been in danger - which was both infuriating and reassuring.

"I'm sorry I did that," she said as they met up with Ginn across the street. "I know we're trying to lay low and I shouldn't have called attention like that."

Ginn gestured them toward the alcove where she'd found refuge. "Don't be sorry. Be smart. How's that arm, dear?"

Val hadn't even noticed it, but her arm had a three-inch gash just past the elbow and it was dribbling blood. "My jacket!"

She quickly divested herself of her velveteen jacket before it could get too stained. Miraculously, the sleeve had been pushed up by whatever had scraped her but the fabric hadn't torn and there were only a few visible spots of blood.

Ginn dabbed at Val's arm with a cloth. "It'll wash right out. Let's get to Sabine's and get this cleaned out before it has a chance to go bad."

+++++

They proceeded another few blocks down the avenue in the direction of the palace, making clear of the road when the duke's entourage of four carriages rumbled past. They stopped at a dilapidated storefront that would have been nondescript, were it not for the carving of an oversized wooden sword dangling above the front doorway with the name 'Sabine's' carved into the wood.

Ette saw himself in, at which point the large woman dozing just inside the entrance jerked awake, hopped to her feet, and wrapped him in a great big hug.

"Ette!" she laughed.

Sabine, it turned out, was Ette's old mentor. Val supposed that was reassuring, because it meant bondswomen could be respected. People usually thought it was funny when Val acted tough, but they might think differently if she had a big hook sword at her hip like Sabine did. Of course, it wouldn't hurt to be as large as the woman, either.

She looked to be somewhere in her fifties and was easily the size of Mrs. Lavoie and even more solid. That made her a few inches taller than Ette, though not quite as broad. Her skin was the same olive tone as Val's, her eyes were dark like Ette's, glittering like obsidian, and her gray hair was done up in tight braids like Ginn's. She sat there thoughtfully, finger twirling one of the attenuated tails of her braid around, as Ette recounted their story.

"And this little one, Val, what is she? A charity case?"

"I'm not a charity case," Val stated.

"Well you've got lip. I'll give you that," Sabine chuckled. "Why does the Pale Order want you so badly? Dressed as you are, I'd guess you're some lord's flighty daughter. What are you, the illegitimate issue of that archbishop? That would explain it…"

"She picked that dress out at the discount rack back in the Green Procession," Ginn said. "She's about as far from a lordling as you can get - she's been assisting me and Ette for a few weeks now and doing a damn good job of it. We got her mixed up into this nonsense, and then the nonsense kept escalating. We thought we'd lay low in Verdenlecht and let things de-escalate back home for a while. The Pale Order hasn't got the stranglehold here that they've got in Wayfair."

"That they don't," Sabine agreed. "But not for lack of trying. All right, fine, why don't you get yourselves situated in the guest room and I'll make inquiries among the sept for longer term arrangements. First of which should be getting papers for Val, as the authorities have been getting more particular about that of late."

Val had never had papers before, outside of a few files and lines of ledger in some church and orphanage documents. Orphans, almost by definition, didn't have any official paperwork. Only rich folks got them for young children, and everybody else got theirs a lot later. If you got an apprenticeship, your mentor would foot the cost of the paperwork as soon as your probationary period was up and they knew you were in it for the long haul. Val supposed this meant she was in it for the long haul.

Ginn turned to Val. "We'll be a while getting situated, so why don't you go out and get an outfit for each of us. You and I need something for the streets and the man needs something for proper company." She reached into her purse and tossed Val a small gold coin - worth five high marks, if she remembered her currencies.

"This is worth close to a golden three!!" she said. She'd never even seen a three-pound coin, and this was probably worth more.

"When you're traveling in a hurry, you take the largest denominations you can. It’s a waste of weight otherwise. I'll expect half of that back in small coinage."

Val nodded. She was the assistant and getting outfits and change were the sorts of things that an assistant might be expected to do. And Ginn had trusted her with a five-mark, which was quite a bit of responsibility. She carefully slipped it into the hidden pocket she'd sewed into her jacket and stepped back out into the streets of Verdenlecht.

+++++

It was refreshing, being out on the street with nobody looking to nab her. In a way, not having a bounty on your head was the perfect disguise.

Val could feel the weight of the coin in her pocket. Maybe it was just her imagination, and maybe not. It was a lot of money. Enough to cut and run and live reasonably comfortably for a month. A little orphan's instinct in the back of her head told her to do just that, but Val ignored it. The orphan instinct was afraid of getting crossed and would sooner betray her friends than be betrayed. But Ginn and Ette could have betrayed her a dozen times over by now. Just because they'd given her a golden egg didn't mean it was time to go to ground.

She didn't know Verdenlecht the way she knew Wayfair, not even close. She'd examined Ginn's little pocket map during their trip with the night caravan, but knowing the basic layout of a city was a lot different from knowing the streets. Looking as she did, she'd have to be especially mindful of cutpurses, too.

"I see you, boy," she said to one of them.

"I ain't a boy," the girl said.

The girl was maybe two years younger than Val - she could have been Val's younger sister if she'd had one, with the same medium complexion and red hair, though her eyes were green instead of violet. She was skinny and a bit dirty and harbored the same hungry look that Val had possessed up until about three weeks ago. She'd learned to hide it, but that look was still lurking underneath and waiting for a return to hard times.

"Suit yourself. Point is I got no purse to cut nor pocket to pick…"

"Got to whinge it out of your rich parents, do you?" the girl laughed.

"Got no parents, neither. I've got my own problems going on, the same as anybody else." She reached into her dress pocket and pulled out her only non-hidden money - a pair of tuppence. "I got a pair of Wayfair tuppence for you if you'll tell me where I can get the sort of clothes that won't peg me as a mark."

The girl made to snatch the coins, but Val palmed one and only let her take the second. The girl understood what they were doing and nodded thoughtfully. "That's easy - the Riverway ain't but a few blocks from here. Give me the other and I'll even walk you there. Say, did you hear that the duke killed the bishop what buggered all them kids?"

"Yeah, I was there," Val said.

The girl started down the side street and Val followed after, keeping her eyes peeled for an ambush. The girl prattled on about all the stories she'd heard of what the bishop had done - stories that Val, frankly, didn't want to hear. Val tuned it out and looked for signs that she was about to get crossed. She thought it unlikely, but this was a new city and she didn't know how the orphans here operated. Presumably, they didn't work for chits.

"What's your name?" Val asked.

"Iselde. What about you? You come here from Wayfair?"

"Yeah. I'm Val."

"Pleased to meet you, Val." Iselde skipped around in front of her. "Might be I could carry whatever you're buying for another tuppence."

"I ain't got another tuppence."

"Oh? What're you paying with, then?"

"My charming personality." Val stopped in her tracks and Iselde visibly wilted under her gaze. She glanced around her but, maddeningly, her danger antennae were completely quiet. "It's my auntie's money, not mine."

"Thought you said you didn't have any parents."

"Aunties ain't parents," Val said. She sighed. "Get me back to Sabine's when we're through and there'll be something else in it for you. How's that?"

Iselde hopped up and down. "You're with Sabine? Wow! Did you see her sword? Did you see her use it?"

Things continued along those lines for a while, with a dozen rapid-fire questions about a woman who Val barely knew. Iselde's brother, Estan, who was around two years younger than her, spotted her and wandered over just as they arrived at the Riverway. He repeated most of the same questions about Sabine and then the siblings exchanged rapid-fire questions about Wayfair and all of the things they'd heard about it, most of which was completely absurd, such as that the people there rode lizards instead of horses.

She taught them to count to ten in Farsian, after which Estan tried to teach Val to count to ten in Arleng, to which Val pointed out that they were conversing in Arleng, so obviously she knew how to count to ten.

"Speaking it doesn't mean you can count," he said. Val supposed that was technically true and let the matter pass.

The Riverway was, unsurprisingly, along the River Imber, three terraced levels of bustling trade rising up from the riverbanks. The lowest level was the fish market and the wharf, with goods getting loaded and unloaded from boats on big wheelhouse cranes and fishmongers carrying out great boxes of fish, some of them still-flopping, to place on the great, black cool-beds of the fish market. The smell wafting up from the fish market was a lot closer to Wayfair than anything Val had smelled yet in the city.

Iselde tugged on Val's sleeves. "The textiles and clothiers are on the second level over there. Come on, I know a short cut."

She got to shopping, trying to split the difference between rude and naïve, letting Iselde and Estan follow along behind her, taking Iselde's advice about where was good to shop, and letting her make introductions to the several merchants she knew. She bought them all kebabs Val did not, however, let the siblings touch her money or any of her purchases - if they made off with any of it, their haul would be a lot more valuable than a pair of tuppence and Ginn was expecting change back.

She picked clothes for Ette and Ginn on the basis of what she'd seen them wear before and then found an outfit for herself. Obviously, she didn't base it on what she'd worn around town before, since that had consisted of shabby urchin clothes and boy clothes, neither of which suited Val's fancy.

Since she was Ette's assistant (though, come to think of it, she spent at least as much time with Ginn) she was delighted to find a protective leather doublet in her size (the next-smallest one was two sizes larger). It wasn't chem-hardened like his was, but Ginn said it was best to do that yourself to make sure it was done right. Maybe when Val got the Gift (assuming she ever got it), Ginn would show her how.

Val secured the jacket over her new shirt and carefully folded up her dress, laying it down in the shopping bag. Immediately, people treated her differently - they no longer stepped aside and tipped their hats, but they were a bit mindful, their eyes casting in Val's direction as she passed. Iselde stopped pointing out obvious things about the area and instead asked if Val was going to buy a weapon.

"Already got a knife. If Ette wants me carrying a bigger weapon, I imagine he'll give me one."

With her shopping done, Val had about eleven 'low marks' left over, the middle-sized silver coins worth one tenth of a high mark. She'd overspent her budget a bit on account of her new leather jacket - which, being a work expense, she thought more than acceptable. She gave Iselde a two-pfennig piece, which was worth a few tuppence, and gave her brother her whole assortment of little copper coins, which weren't worth half that in aggregate.

"I've got to be headed back. Do you want to see the inside of Sabine's?"

+++++

It occurred to Val that Sabine might not want two random urchins wandering into her place of business but, if she was the sort of person to get too bent out of shape over that, Val wouldn't be too upset at annoying her. However, the bondswoman's reaction was not one that Val had expected.

"Oi! What are you two doing stinking up my parlor?" she barked.

Iselde hid herself behind Val insofar as that was possible. "We were just showing the new girl around town, Miss Sabine, honest!"

"A likely story. You're telling me Gotkosen Mellia gave her okay to you to run around town in your street dirties on the day before Taagsnit Eve? Mind you, I've been to thirty services in a row and I know how Priestess Oestel likes you to drill your lines and choreography. Are you telling me she up and changed her mind all about that, Iselde Zinn?"

Iselde cowered even lower and her brother looked to be sidling toward the door, perhaps thinking he'd avoid a reprimand if he made a run for it.

"No, Miss Sabine," Iselde said. "It's just… we were running a little late and didn't want to get in any trouble over it…"

Sabine was not impressed. She crossed her well-muscled arms. "And now you're very late and sneaking into the shop of the priestess's sister? Guess they don't teach common sense at that orphanage. You pair have got until the count of three to git from my shop… one… two…"

"Can we see your sword?" Estan blurted.

Sabine was more amused than annoyed. She unbuckled her hook sword from its scabbard - you couldn't just pull it out like you could a regular sword. She wiggled it back and forth so it glinted in the sunlight and then took a big, slow step toward them. Val had to admit it was a bit intimidating.

"There she is. Now, if you don't git now, I'm going to swat your behind with the flat of it."

"Yes, Miss Sabine! See you at services, Miss Sabine!" Estan said, and he dashed out the door.

"By, Val! Will you be at services tonight… don't swat me, I'm going! I'm going!" Iselde said. She, too, dashed out, fast on her brother's heels.

Sabine took a moment to buckle her sword back into place, chuckling to herself. "You sure know how to pick 'em. You didn't let them nick anything off you, did you, Val?"

"No, but Iselde tried," Val said.

"Figures. And I'd say you look a smudge more street-smart than you did this morning. You dirty down pretty good."

"Um… thanks?" Val said. "If you don't mind my asking, what was that all about?"

They walked back to the guest room, where Ginn and Ette were napping, and roused them so they could take a look at Val's purchases. Ette took one look at Val's new jacket and burst into laughter. Val would have been offended, but he also pulled her into a hug, which she hadn't expected at all.

"Looks like I’m rubbing off on you," he said. He scratched at the shoulder piece with his fingernail. "We'll have to get that properly hardened before you make good use of it."

Ette and Ginn offered to make supper for everybody, which Sabine happily accepted, and she and Val sat down in the bondswoman's little office area to chat. Sabine had three battered and broken swords mounted on her wall - all of them previous versions of her current weapon, and she went on to emphasize that the sword was mostly for show, since ninety percent of confrontations were nonlethal and ninety percent of the remainder were best done at a range. Most of the time, she didn't even go out with the sword.

All of these revelations were spurred on by Val's questions, but Sabine had a piece to say, too. Val had already gathered that Iselde and her brother lived at an orphanage associated with Sabine's church - which wasn't really a church at all. The followers of the old gods had a different sort of religion that wasn't at all like the Pale Order… which could only be a good thing, as far as Val was concerned. She asked Val blankly what she thought of the old gods, and Val told her flatly:

"I never had much use for religion, but I figure yours is a good bit better than the other one, and some of it might even be true."

Sabine didn't seem too offended by this. "Ginn says you stayed in a church orphanage for a while?"

Val nodded. "Yeah, but it never rubbed off. I've never even been baptized."

The bondswoman's dark eyebrows went up. "Is that so? And tell me, Val, what do you know about the old gods?"

Val told her what she knew, which turned out to be a decent amount. And, unbeknownst to her, their interaction set into motion a chain of events that would forever alter the course of her life.