seek and ye shall find [solo]

[Vendredi]

A cute little origins story.

When he woke up, his mother was gone, and the circumstances around her departure was a mystery to Firelis Tyv’ern only. None of the others seemed the least bit surprised. That angered Fii. He sulked for all of five seconds, his mother’s departure note crumpled and clenched tight in his fists, before stalking off to find his father.

Child, the crumpled vellum read. I have gone away. Stay with your father. Keep yourself safe. Farewell.

---

They were nomads. Wanderers. Weary travellers who were always on the road, occasionally stopping to earn a bit of coin before journeying onward. They were family, though only a few were related by blood. They had no one but themselves. They could love each other and hurt each other because they were a rough, hard people, but never before had Firelis Tyv’ern thought that they would leave each other.

The group had always grown. They picked up stragglers, sometimes. Other times they buried their own because of diseases or ill fortune. Never once in the past sixteen years had anyone left. Fii had grown up knowing nothing else.

“Why’re we always leaving places?” he asked once, many years ago, beneath a canopy of stars far away from here. He had laid in his mother’s lap. Her fingers ran through his hair gently, and he leaned into her touch.

“Because we have no homes,” said his mother, and there was something in her eyes then. He recognized it as sorrow years later, but never understood it. “But we have each other,” his mother continued, “and that’s just as good.”

He burrowed into her embrace, and slept contently that night.

---

“Where is she?” Fii demanded when he found the man. “Where could she go?”

“Who?” the man replied, his back turned to Fii, strong arms drawing water from the well behind the barn. His father was a strongman of forty, a mercenary by trade, with arms large enough to crash a man’s windpipe with raw strength.

“My mother,” Fii said, arms crossing against his chest.

The elder man paused a second in his movement, as though to consider something. Then his arms were moving again, pulling a bucket up the well. “Did she leave for good?” he asked mildly.

The mildness of his father’s tone angered Fii.

“Yes!” he snapped, and began pacing. His feet stomped against dry dirt and sent dust flying into the air. “Gone. No goodbyes. No reason. Nothing. I don’t understand. Why would she leave us? Where would she go? Where could she go?”

When the water bucket was perched safely on the ground, his father stopped and turned around to face the boy. Looked Fii right in the eye until the boy stopped pacing. “She’s a grown woman, boy,” he said gruffly. “She’s got legs. She can go anywhere.”

Stopped in his tracks, Fii looked down and threw his hands into the air, aghast. “But she’s gone. Don’t you care?”

His father looked at him strangely, pondering some faraway thought that Fii was not privy to. Then the man turned away and picked up the water bucket. A sign of dismissal. Some conclusion had been reached and drawn, Fii knew not what.

“Take today off, boy. Maybe she’ll be back by nightfall,” his father said and walked away.

“You don’t care,” Fii wailed in sudden, horrified surprise, rooted in his spot. “What if she died?”

That was when father burst out in loud, uncontrolled laughter.

[Vendredi]

His mother wasn’t back by nightfall. Neither was Fii.

He had sulked for a solid hour after storming off alone. Then, after the rest of his adopted and blood kin had scattered for the day to earn their keep, Fii sneaked away on his own. He had a single gold coin in his pocket, and a slab of bread and an apple wrapped in cheesecloth slung on his back. He had the unbridled arrogance of an untested youth who sincerely believed that life would bend his way with every fiber of his being.

Fii hadn’t had a clue about where to begin. So he began with the city.

Scara Brae was a good hour’s walk from the abandoned farmhouse his kin had commandeered for their duration in the area, but Fii was young and angry, and so it took him significantly less. He half-ran down the well trodden gravel road and made his way to the city walls. There, he stood for a while, catching his breath while watching the city guards at the gates. The line going through the gates was long today.

Too long, Fii thought, when he had finally caught his breath. Then he turned heels and dashed off again, to the corner where two faces of the city walls met. That was where the gutters were, where the rats were the fattest and men the meanest.

Fii and his kin had only been around this land a week, but by now Fii knew the lay of the city well. The first day they were here, Fii had scouted out the criminal haunts and the city guards’ folds. The second night, he hung with the street rats, and they showed him the gutter tunnels leading in and out. All cities were the same. There was always more than one way out, and by extension, more than one way in. Thievery was the trade of the prepared.

A twist, and Fii skidded to a stop in front of a tunnel over a ditch of fetid wastes. The opening was small -- Fii had to bend low to fit -- and the smell almost sent him gagging. There were thin ledges at the two sides of the tunnel, and they served as footholds to avoid the ditch below.

With one last breath of clean air, Fii shuffled in.

[Vendredi]

The drag through the gutter was suffocating, heat and stench gushing up from below Fii with every step. He cursed himself the whole way through, and cursed himself when he stumbled out, now smelling like something puked out of a sick cat’s gut. The minutes-long journey felt far longer than it took.

Fii made it through, regardless. The idea of turning back hadn’t once entered his thoughts. His mother once called him a single-minded fool in humor and half exasperation. Fii had always thought she was serious.

The other end of the tunnel was within the city walls, in an area where half-collapsed huts and wooden shanties were propped up against small mountains of trash. There was a thin, sprawling dirt path that would eventually lead to the city proper, and there was the ditch of sewage where smaller gutters from all over the city met. The trash here included people, too. Forgotten children abandoned like wild animals, women with no where else to turn, maimed men in drunken stupor, old folks waiting for the day their lives end. Few reacted when Fii stumbled out. The ones who did soon turned back to their daily grind. The folks here weren’t the kind to be curious.

He wiped his hands on his rough, linen pants, and grimaced in disgust at the sticky brown goo that now covered his shoes and knees. Then he shrugged, and took off down the brown, beaten path.

[Vendredi]

“Ho, Fii,” came a voice to his right, as soon as Fii slide down on a stool in front of the bar.

“Ho, Rat,” Fii nodded back.

In the corners of of a little known alley, this small tavern was Fii’s default haunt in the city. It was close to the docks but not quite there. The place was ran by a terrifying matron who traded in gossip and hearsay, and the regular crowd here liked to say that she was more a whirling cesspool of information than a person.

Rat was her son, one of the first people Fii had met in this city, and possibly the shrewdest boy Fii had ever known.

“Came to ask your mam something,” Fii said, fingers clasped tight atop the wooden counter.

“Yeah?” Rat grinned, drifting close. Then he yelled. “Mam! Question for ye.”

The matron came waddling down the bar moments later. Fii offered her his gold coin and a hopeful look. She tested the coin with her teeth. Finding it satisfactory, she nodded at him, and handed him a few silver coppers of change back. Fii breathed, and scoured his mother’s vellum out of a pocket, smoothing it flat on top of the bar.

“My mother,” he started. “She disappeared this morn’. Trying to figure out where she’d go. You heard anything?”

“Now, I’ve got rumours of most of your lot,” the matron said. “Folks talk about hiring your people, you know? Afraid, some of them are. Like to know who they're hiring.”

Fii knew. Charlatans and thieves and liars. That’s what they call us. Those words had always sparked a burning inner rage. The type of rage that fueled his thieving habits to the utmost.

“But your mam?” There was a frown on the matron’s face, and that made Fii’s heart fall. “I’ve got nothing on your mam.”

The trip here had been a blind dart thrown, and he had been hoping for luck where there was none to be had. His mother was a discreet, sensible woman, the honest sort. Of course there would be no rumours. Why should he have expected otherwise? Because you’re a single-minded fool, some part of his mind offered.

“But,” the matron continued, her face softening. She pushed the vellum back towards Fii. “I’ve got a couple of contacts who knew men working with her yesterday. Try your luck with them, boy.”

Fii nodded, sullen. He stuffed the note back in his pocket, and stood. The matron offered him names and an address, which he committed to memory. That was somewhere to begin, at least.

“I’ll go with ya,” Rat chattered, following Fii out the door. “I know that place where--”

[Vendredi]

Rat chattered the whole way, spittle flying occasionally as he spoke incessantly on about everything and nothing at once. Fii was silent throughout, and somewhere between the second alley they ducked down and the fourth bridge they crossed, Fii stopped hearing Rat.

Rat was named for his ratty clothing, for his wily speech, for his abnormally large front teeth and his ability to be a pest in every situation. Despite all that, Rat knew every escape route and every shortcut within the city. He was an useful sort of friend to have, but not the quietest.

It took them half an hour to find the matron’s contacts, who then redirected them to a granary on the other side of the city. Fii’s frustrations set the pace, and he pushed himself and Rat hard beneath the early afternoon’s glaring sun. It was another good hour getting to the granary, and that was with Rat and Fii racing down rooftops. The sun had sunk a good stretch or two by the time they got there.

The pair of boys slid down one last copper pipe, until they finally stood on solid ground. They were close to the part of the city where Fii had entered earlier. They were both rank with sweat, and Rat was wheezing even as he blathered on. Fii fared better. He had spent years running from other thieves and law enforcement. This much wouldn’t knock the air out of him.

The granary itself was an old, abandoned thing, built with a limestone base and a wooden roof, two stories tall from the outside and large enough to sleep two dozen men comfortably. The stone had been weathered smooth, and the wood looked chipped at the ends. It stood largely alone. Few buildings surrounded, and the few that did were placed far apart. It smelt old, too. It smelt like dry rot and dust and ancient mold.

Fii stilled, and did not walk forward. Something eerie was in the air. There were two silent crows perched atop the roof, and no other signs of life. Even Rat must have caught on and sensed something, for his chattering came to a lull.

“We can turn back?” Rat offered, moments later. “Looks like a dead end, dunn’it?”

Fii hesitated. Then he shook his head. “No. Let’s go in.”

He was a single-minded fool, and he wasn’t the giving up sort.

[Vendredi]

The lock into the granary took Fii only seconds to pick. The insides of the granary fared no better than the outside. There were cobwebs clinging to the walls and dust on the ground and in the corners, and dried straw littered everywhere. The first floor had nothing but rickety, broken, chair, a fleet of stairs leading up, and another leading down.

“Footprints,” Rat hissed, pointing down. “Lots of them.”

Fii looked, and indeed, there were. Large footprints. Men’s boots. A smaller pair. A woman’s? The prints were clear as day in the layer of dust that coated the ground, and they went everywhere. Someone had been here recently. Would they still be here? Was his mother one of them?

Rat followed Fii, and they moved carefully, quietly, as though afraid to disturb the eerie atmosphere that permeated the place. The stairs up creaked as they climbed. The second floor, however, offered fewer clues than the first. There was nothing more than a few broken barrels. Disappointed, they made their way down. The basement, then, thought Fii.

The stairs downwards to the cellars were narrow and barely fit one, so Fii took the lead. He edged down slowly. The thin hall that housed the stairs was dark and damp, a sharp contrast to the upper floors of the granary. A cold draft upwards brought the sickly sweet smell of rot. There was another smell here, too, but it was foreign to Fii and he knew not what it was.

“Wicked,” Rat murmured, eyes bright, as soon as they were down.

The underground cellar was vast; far bigger than it had a right to be, and judging by the span of the ceiling, far larger than the size of the granary from the outside. Around the stairway, wooden crates and metal cages were stacked up to the roof, hindering their line of sight to the rest of the cellar, but also hindering echoes from Rat’s voice. A beacon of torchlight shone faintly in the distance. It cast whispery shadows upon and around the boys.

“Quiet,” Fii muttered back. He sidled forward, keeping his back close to the crates. The solid wood behind his back offered some semblance of safety, assuaging some of Fii’s nerves. He peeked out between the tight opening between two heaps of crates, to the rest of the cellar.

Shadowy figures were moving in front of the torchlight. There were three, mayhaps four of them. Two were seated at a small table near the center of the cellar. One learned against the wall. The last was squatting on the ground, shoveling something in a corner. There were cages, with things -- animals?-- in them along the far wall, and there were hooks, hanging from the ceiling.

And then, there were the things hanging from the hooks.

A chill ran up Fii’s back. Suddenly, the solid wood at his back did nothing to assuage his nerves. There was no comfort here, and every instinct he had were beckoning Fii to flee.

[Vendredi]

Rat, now tired of waiting, plastered himself against Fii and leaned across Fii’s shoulders for a look as well. Moments later, Rat pulled back, and even with the shadows, Fii could see his companion’s face turning ashen.

“Oh,” Rat said.

“Oh,” Fii echoed.

There were bodies swinging from the hooks, hung by the neck, like slabs of meat for the butchering. They were too far to see clearly, but those bodies were clearly human and small. Fii could imagine no other creature with that shape. There were so many. Dozens, if not more.

Oh.

They had stumbled upon something. Something big. Something bloody. Something criminal. Something out of their leagues. Something my mother was involved in?

“We should…” mouth dry, Fii fumbled for words, His voice was as small as he could make it, but every word felt too loud and pounded in his ears. “We should leave.”

“Yeah,” Rat agreed, quiet as well.

Neither of them moved. Fear and uncertainty rooted their legs to the ground. Their breathing was shallow and irregular, and both seemed to have shrunk into themselves. Neither wanted to draw attention. Suddenly, their actions mere moments ago felt too bold, too reckless.

With a silent gulp, Fii began inching back towards the staircase, beckoning Rat to follow. Whatever he had sought to find, it would not be here. My mother, Fii thought, would have no part of this.

[Vendredi]

Rat was named for his lousy eating habits, his ability to get underfoot at all times, his ability to scurry off in a flash, and his ability to be a pest in every situation. Rat was not named for his agility or grace. So when Rat tripped on his own shoes somewhere between the third and fifth stair, Fii grimaced, but was not completely surprised.

The fall was loud enough to draw attention. From the stairs, they could hear the echoes of startled footsteps and chairs scraping against the stone ground.

Fii's eyes widened. Oh.

“Run,” Fii yelled, and took off upwards, all semblance of care abandoned. His heart pounded in his ears, and his focus narrowed to the light at the top of the stairs. Rat scrambled behind him. They raced up, even as heavy footsteps thudded behind.

Half a dozen thoughts flitted through Fii’s mind as his legs pumped, including we’ve seen too much and Y’edda, let me stay alive, but none stayed in his mind. A last trio of steps, and he was at the top of the stairs. Behind him, Rat pushed. Fii saw the ground and felt himself stumble down, even as Rat jumped past and landed on Fii’s fingers. Ahh--

“Sorry,” Rat cried, scurrying away for the door.

Fii grunted, and followed in short order. Now was not the time to be fragile. He was not fragile. Behind them, the footsteps grew heavier with every ticking second. The pursuers were ever closer. His blood thrummed with adrenaline. In front, Rat had pushed open the door, and was dashing out.

Fii was close now. He could feel the wind against his face now. He could almost taste the sunlight and the city air. Sweat glistened upon his brows.

Something was swiping at him. Swiping at his back. Something sharp. Something blunt. The footsteps were so close they were practically in his ears.

Then he was out, but so were his pursuers. Rat had bolted to the left, so Fii darted to the right. As he ran, his head turned slightly, and he could see the pursuers from the peripherals of his eyes. Men, all four of them. Two had split off for Rat. The other two trailed him tightly. They were large, but fast. One had a stave. The other held a sword. Both had a determined, mean look.

Abruptly, Rat screamed, high and shrill. No, Fii thought. His heart clenched in dread and terror. The scream seemed to make Fii’s pursuers more determined, more confident.

Then, before he could react, before he saw anything, before he could even scream, Fii felt the impact of a wood bashing into the back of his skull. Brilliant white filled his vision. His thoughts splintered and exploded into a light nothingness. Pain erupted with a flash of color to chase away the white, and his eyes watered and saw nothing. Then nothingness became a void, and the void became his world.

[Vendredi]

When he came to, Fii was hanging from a cage, next to corpses hanging by their necks, and an unconscious Rat in another cage. The cage was too small to maneuver in, and metal bars pressed uncomfortably against his spine. The back of his head ached like someone had smashed a ten-ton iron rod into it. White spots still specked his vision. Fii patted the back of his head. His fingers came away with blood.

They were back in that cellar. The men -- his pursuers -- were crowded around the little table, playing cards.

The cellar was still dark and damp. It still smelt of rot and something else. Now, close enough to see and looking at the cages lined against the wall, Fii thought he knew what that something else was.

It was the smell of terror and wretched woe, of people pushed well past their endurance, pushed to their very limits of being.

Children. They had children in those cages. Skittish, soundless, terrified children, the lot of them. Thin and emancipated, battered and bruised, the oldest couldn’t have been more than fourteen, and the youngest no more than three. His breath hitched. Not for the first time today, Fii felt fear gripping his heart with its terrible jaws.

The men must have heard him, for one of them turned and walked towards Fii. A tall, thin one, with spectacles and thinning grey hair. The man was dressed roughly, with a thin gray jerkins and light armour, and poor leather breeches. They all dressed roughly, along similar veins.

“Awake, princess?” The man grinned. He even sounded friendly.

Fii croaked a response and rattled the bars of his cage. His tongue had yet to find its use yet after that battering.

The man laughed. “Well, I’d say you’re awake. In good health too.” His eyes gleamed. His voice lost its playful edge. “Now, princess. Who sent you and your friend?”

“W--what?” Fii looked up, bewildered. His voice sounded like sandstone grinding against gravel and rocks.

The man stepped closer, a hand now gripping the bars of the cage. His other hand had found a knife somewhere, and was toying with it. His eyes found Fii’s, and the man bared his teeth. Those teeth were ominously sharp.

“Who sent you? That Rattan bastard? Viresh?” A wider grin. “The fucking City Guard? Aren’t you too young for that shit?”

“I--” Fii swallowed, huddling backwards as far as he could go.To his side, Rat moaned, but had yet to regain consciousness. “Nobody,” he managed.

The man’s response was a raised brow of disbelief. The sheath on the knife went off, and the blade began slapping on the cage’s bars. The other three had stopped their game, and were watching with interest.

“I’m looking for someone,” Fii spieled out. Never once in his life had he been this close to real danger. He was a goddamned pickpocket. The worst he had ever faced was a night or two behind a law-keeper’s bars. Nothing serious. Nothing real. Nothing like this.

Today, he was learning that danger and fear loosened his tongue far more quickly than anything else did.

“My mother. Avesta née Tyv’ern. Someone said she was here yesterday. I-- I was hoping to find her here. She disappeared this morning.”

In front of him, the man began chortling. The knife found itself sheathed in the torso of a nearby corpse. The coppery stink of blood soon wafted through the air. Fii shuddered, huddled tighter, and pulled his arms around his knees.

“Avesta’s son!” The man laughed. “That bitch! Well, princess, you won’t find her here to-day.”

[Vendredi]

The confirmation that his mother knew these people -- or that they knew her -- loosened something in Fii. He felt lightheaded, empty, as though the words that had poured out of his lips carried his soul with them.

“You know her,” Fii whispered.

By now, the man was walking back to the table, where the other three had continued their game. He was still chortling, laughing at a joke that only he knew. “We know that bitch well, princess. Best bodyguard we've hired. Too bad the bitch quit.”

Fii turned away. His eyes gazed, unfocused, at the blood dripping out of the corpse beside him, where the knife had plunged, and the many bodies hanging alongside it. These bodies, too, were children. Older than the ones in the cage, all unclothed, each marked by a burnt bird symbol on the arm. One had its mouth open. Fii saw no tongue.

Fresh corpse, some abstract part of his mind supplied, unhelpfully. Dead a day? Can’t be more than two. See the throat? Slit..

The man must have saw Fii staring, because he turned back instead of sitting down. “Avesta slit their throats herself,” he said, amused. “Possibly why she left.”

Fii gagged. “Who’re you people?”

The man’s eyes gleamed in the dark. “Slavers, that’s who we are.” As though purposely being cruel, he taunted. “See the hanging meat? Useless stock.Too old.”

“You,” the man continued, pacing closer to Fii. Fii could smell the stink of soured breath. “You’re too old too. So is your friend.”

Then the slaver pulled back and beamed. “But you’re Avesta’s son. Suppose I should consider that too.” He clapped his hands. Once. Twice. “I suppose it doesn’t hurt to try. Well now, you’re stock, too.”

In his cage, Fii clenched his fist. The metal bars were unbearably cold against his back, but the heat in his heart raged and burnt, and it warred with the flood of fear that was drowning his mind. Fury kept him from weeping. Horror kept his mouth shut.

Witty. Composed. Hard. Capable. That was his mother. That was Avesta née Tyv’ern. Today, Fii learned she was another thing altogether. Slaver. Murderess. Today, Fii learned that he was a fool, and not a very brave one.