Nasty Little Witchling

I pretended not to notice Amir’s offered hand as he tried to help me down the single step of his carriage. He’d chosen to sit almost in my lap despite there being another seat opposite us, and I wasn’t interested in him having another excuse to touch me.

The carriage itself was not as large or gaudy as I’d imagined it would be when he’d mentioned it at the inn and actually seemed quite plain, with only his family’s crest on the door.

A crest depicting a horseshoe holding a budding plant. I wasn’t clear about the symbolism, but I wasn’t too interested since the last time I’d asked about a crest, Annalise had given me a lengthy explanation that required historical and geographical context.

From the lack of line trailing out the door and down the street, I assumed the gambling house was closed. Even the animals in the basement were relaxed or asleep despite being stuck in a cage, though sadly, that was probably what they were used to.

On our way over, Amir mentioned that the cat-sìth had been sealed away for the time being, and since I couldn’t find them, I assumed that involved a lot of iron. He talked extensively about how unfair it was that the establishment was being blamed for everything, and if I hadn’t felt guilty for my part, I would have argued they were for having the animals in the first place.

He hit a knuckle against the doors that were soon opened to us by a man who smiled wearily at Amir. “Ah, the Baron said you would be making an appearance.”

“Mister Hopler, this is the girl I was talking about. One of the biggest winners from the other night. Father wishes me to take her to the vault to collect the winnings after a quick tour.”

“I assume this was cleared with Baron Olivihier? And that you have the keys?”

“Of course, make sure it’s all set up, please. We won’t be too long.”

We moved towards the opposite side of the building than the last time I was here. Mister Hopler went down to the basement while we went upwards to an open floor that was only populated by stone columns and felt-covered tables.

Most were empty except for some staff setting up the tables or refilling the shelves behind bars. Amir walked me to each of the tables and explained the different games to me with a smirk on whenever he got to the odds of the house winning. The fairest result someone could hope for was a coin toss, and even that wasn’t entirely equal odds.

I couldn’t understand why anyone would even bother sitting at some of the tables when there was a sixty per cent chance they’d walk away with less roe than they came in with. However, the tables with briscola and weird contraptions looked enticing enough to throw some bronze at.

We went up another floor with fewer tables that had far more craftsmanship devoted to their design. Each one had a private bar stationed behind where the staff would sit, a kitchen and sitting area also taking up an entire side of the room.

The last floor we visited were private offices and a ‘secret’ room hidden behind a bookshelf that held a single table that the Barons and their friends would sometimes play at.

When Amir was walking around the table, running his hands over the felt and detailing how he walked away with triple his roe at one game here, something with a glint to it caught my eye. It was one of the carved marble pieces from a board of Succession, meant to represent a knight if I remembered Trissa’s limited teachings.

It hardly looked like a person but rather the head and mane of a horse, which was far more interesting than the other pieces.

“Ready to head down?” Amir asked, fiddling with an iron box built into the wall.

“Hmm? Oh, yes,” I said, swiping the piece now that he was distracted.

“Maybe you can come back up later when we open to spend some of your winnings. I’ll be a gracious host and sit next to you, show you how to play.” He pulled out a steel stick lined with tiny mana crystals and shut the door to what I assumed was a safe.

“I’ll think about it.”

When we got down to the basement, past a guard stationed outside an iron gate with a dormant enchantment and more on two wooden doors at the bottom, I was excited that one of them led towards the animals.

That excitement was squashed when Mister Hopelr opened the other door for us.

The far wall was entirely occupied by iron with a large wheel in the centre of it. The monstrosity of faded metal looked to be cast in a single mould with only a few bolts near the hinges that would make the whole thing one big door.

A desk was tucked into one side of the room, piled with loose paper, binders, and overflowing folders. The rugged vault door looming over the messy workstation in an otherwise spotless stone room was a humorous sight to behold.

“Ready?” Mister Hopler said, casting me an annoyed look beside a gold panel while holding a similar steel stick. “On three. One, two, three.”

He and Amir both stood on either side of the door, inputting the same mana sequence into the panels and then each placing their keys in after. There was a moment of silence where the two looked at each other to check if the other had messed up the count.

They both turned when the door suddenly started to emit muffled creaks and clicks as I lost track of the mana behind all the iron.

Amir went over to the wheel and braced himself before throwing his weight into turning it, a squealing sound grating on my hearing as it did. When he started pulling open the door, I thought it was a bit much that he asked Mister Hopelr to help him until I saw the door was almost a yard thick.

It swung open and narrowly avoided hitting the desk I was standing near. I’d been looking over the papers on it but only found rows of names, numbers, and dates that I could barely read while the paper was facing the wrong way.

The light from a single mage orb that was staying far away from the iron glinted back at us with a yellow hue. Inside were wooden shelves on iron walls as thick as the door covered in leather sacks, wooden chests, and loose coinage.

The bigger chests rested on the floor with their own locks. The one closest was open and only partially full of neatly stacked silver coins in steel cylinders.

“Impressed?” Amir asked, and I nodded. Not so much for the abundance of roe since I wouldn’t know what to do with it all, but for the organisation of it all and the ingeniousness of the vault.

He flapped a hand at Mister Hopler, who stood his ground as the two stared at each other for a long while. He eventually shook his head and retreated out of the room, closing the door behind him.

“As you know, a Tiscar sat with the first king of Werl when we declared sovereignty,” he said, walking into the vault and opening a leather sack. “We understand how unfair it is that the Rikers only had a few years before the deal that separated personal funds and those earned from titles. You’ve made the most of finances and created something meaningful out of it.

“Though, all those scholarships aren’t cheap. We hope the duke understands how much the Tiscars staying in the position of Drasda’s Baron could benefit him. Father would never allow the duke here, but we’re hoping someone close to him could deliver the message of just how much support there is to offer.”

“Ah, ha,” I said, trying to reconcile with him including me with the Riker family and the offer of what sounded like a bribe. Amir was taking different coins out of a sack to slot into the metal cylinders that fit snugly into a small wooden chest. After counting out the twelve thousand owed to Janette and me, he had a few left over that he slipped into his pocket. “I’ll let him know.”

“Mister Hopler…Hopler?” Amir said, hands on his hips. “Well, guess it’s up to me then.”

He squatted near the chest and awkwardly lifted each side to get his fingers underneath. There was a strained grunt as his slender arms lifted it while attempting to use mana to help his muscles. An attempt that was thwarted by the iron in the room that may have emptied an entire mine.

He shuffled over to the door. “Be a dear and get that for me.”

I stood by the open door as he turned to the side to fit through comfortably. Luckily for him, the guard opened the gate because I wouldn't have been able to get past him on the staircase to help.

When we got out of the staircase, he clumsily reduced the chest’s weight by a meagre amount and managed to hold it under one arm, almost dropping it on the floorboards of the carriage as soon as he climbed up.

I eyed the hand he offered me again after he had just used it to wipe his brow and made a show of ignoring it.

“I suppose Mother has a point that I haven’t been training as hard as I could,” he said, plopping down on the cushioned seat, letting me take the other. “Can’t exactly blame me. What’s the point of a Baron being good at all the heavy-lifting stuff.”

“Besides what you just did?”

“Hopler should have known to wait for me; he knew what we were doing.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, my mind drifting to the influence behind that addictive habit as we rolled through the castle gates again, only a day after I’d left. I felt more whole compared to a mess barely holding herself together that I’d left as.

Training had already ended except for a few diligent knights still behind the Bastion, which was well enough since I planned to leave after he dropped me off, told Jeremy about the opera, and got rid of the fortune’s worth of gold—no need for another confrontation.

“I hope seeing the vault left the appropriate severity with which you will convey my father’s message to the duke.”

“Absolutely,” I said, picking up the chest and being shocked that it wasn’t as heavy as he made it look. It was still an awkward size and shape to carry, but I got my arms underneath and leaned around it to take the step down. “Goodbye.”

I walked into the foyer with only a nod from the knights standing guard at the entrance. The stairway to where I assumed the duke would be in meetings was given a brief glance, yet I walked past to head towards Jeremy’s tower.

The guard outside made me stop and open up the chest, her eyes widening at the collection of gold and silver, picking up one of them.

“You can have it if you want.”

“That…wouldn’t be appropriate, ma’am.”

I shrugged and carried on, taking extra care up the steps.

“I WANTED THAT REPORT YESTERDAY. WHAT GOOD IS THIS TO ME NOW?”

Jeremy’s shouts echoed across the stone walls and were punctuated by the slam of his door. It was quite a shock to me since I’d not realised the usually calm man could even raise his voice, let alone reach that.

The operators at the top of the stairs were walking with all the care they could muster to keep quiet, doors were being crept to a close, and voices were hushed.

I shuffled the chest to lean against me with one hand and used the other to knock on his door. The entire room came to a standstill and even the knight looked at me as if I’d just rung the dinner bell of a hungry monster.

Steps stormed up to the doorway, and Jeremy flung it open, mouth open to shout, but froze when he saw me. His jaw closed as he studied the chest and stepped out of the way. “Come in.”

The staff behind me quickly started moving again as he scanned the room before flicking the door closed.

“A young female with long dark hair, amber eyes, short of stature, and wearing a yellow sweater. Please tell me that’s you?”

“Yes,” I said, clearing a place on his desk to push the chest onto before sitting down.

Jeremy walked up behind my chair and pulled my head towards him so he could press his lips to it. “Muah.”

He quickly walked around to his chair and scattered paper across his desk to try to find a blank piece and a pencil. “Tell me everything.”

“Ahh.”

Telling Jeremy about Ghaven was one of my first thoughts when I found out he was at the opera, so finding a way to explain how I got to the stage that didn’t involve Jay would be a good place to start.

“I was walking down the steps to the bathroom when I heard the commotion. I got scared and drained my necklace, then moved towards the stage to see what was happening…”

…

“...so when the attackers tried to trigger the explosives above the entrance, it unfortunately buried them.”

“They should be glad; I’d be wringing their neck about now if they were still breathing.”

I’d had to stop my story a few times to give more detailed descriptions and many times for clarification if I was quoting someone or paraphrasing them.

Jeremy had chewed off most of the end of his pencil and almost bit through it when a timid knock sounded at the door to drop off a note containing what I assumed was Yis’ version of events from what Jeremy mumbled while reading it.

He hadn’t named me or talked about going through enchantments, which was just as well since I hadn’t mentioned that either.

“Well, we now know where the leadership from Tamil ended up. Why no one was able to find that out before this epic fuck up is beyond me.

“I want to smile, shake your hand, and celebrate for what you did at the risk of your own life, but you’ll have to accept a grumpy thank you since I’ve been up since it happened, so thank you and don’t ever do that again. What if your mana weirdness detonated the whole pile? Or one of them found you on the stage?”

I shrugged under the sentiment, not sure how to respond.

“So, what’s with the chest?” he finally asked, the thing almost blocking our vision of each other the whole conversation.

“Oh, Amir took me down to the gambling house vault to get my winnings. This is that.”

“The actual vault? In the basement? Huge iron doors? How much was in it? What kind of security are we talking?”

“Umm, he also had a message for the duke that I wanted to tell you instead. That first or all those questions?”

“Go ahead.”

Jeremy ended up snapping the pencil halfway through my repeat of exactly what Amir had said to me. “That poor imbecile has no idea you can’t read between the lines, or his father is so desperate he didn’t want you to.”

“He might actually lose his title?”

“It’s hard to say until the actual day, but it’s more of a chance than ever before. Tiscar roe basically built the foundations of Drasda, and they were in line for the ducal title before Riker took it in wartime. It’s honestly shameless offering financial support when the duke lets them get away with skirting their tax obligation in favour of funding scholarships that go to their own people anyway.”

He glanced at his watch and sighed. “They’ve probably slashed my wing’s funding by half, but with this”—he waved the notepad with my story on it—“I should only lose a quarter of it to whichever vulture wants it. Probably the watch for more patrols as if that’s going to stop pillows of this stuff getting through.”

“That’s not a nice thing to compare vultures to.”

“I thought you making nice with one was a weird rumour, but maybe not…what do you want to do with the chest and, more importantly, with what’s inside?”

I shrugged and wanted to ask how much a cat-sìth was but refrained. “Bury it in the garden until I need it?”

“How about,” he said and stood, slowly picking up the chest and bringing it over to his side. “I keep it safe for you. You can have as much of it as you want, whenever, just not the whole amount without some notice.”

I was planning to hand it over to the duke, which would probably come with the exact same kind of restrictions. It would also be nice to know that my entire stash of roe was not dependent on keeping one person happy enough with me that they didn’t withhold it.

“On one—a few—conditions.”

“Have at it,” Jeremy said, already picking out cylinders of gold to stack on his desk.

“Teach me about how taxes work…and how to pick a lock.”

Jeremy’s hand froze mid-air as he slowly dragged his narrowed eyes away from the chest towards me. “Why?”

“For fun?”

…

After I answered more questions about the vault Jeremy was more than happy to agree to teach me more about his favourite tricks of information gathering. However, learning about taxes took so much convincing I almost gave up on it until he sighed and gave in when I reached over for the chest.

I still took a roll of silver for the trouble.

He questioned why I cared. The answer I kept from him was that since I’d be breaking into the gambling house’s basement to see the animals, I might as well try to find out what the sum the Tiscars owed the duke in taxes was.

Something Jeremy fantasised about seizing from them and funding his operations.

It was a delusional urge to think getting past the first guarded gate would be possible, but it was something to do besides follow Yis around every evening. The bulgasari and I also needed to get together and discuss how to get metal to behave how I wanted it to, which would never happen at another event.

Jeremy had to run and catch the tail end of the meeting now that he had something substantial to bring to the table, hopefully saving his funding despite the ‘failure’ that was the dragon’s breath making it into the country without notice.

He blamed himself for that so much that I wished I’d connected the ‘foreigner’ I knew about days ago to Zara and brought it to Jeremy. However, even looking back, it would have been almost impossible to know anything concerning the dragon’s breath.

If only I’d tried harder to find Jay’s new meeting place after the chase, I could have helped him more with information before it happened.

Would I have given myself and my activities up to let him know that something was going to happen at the opera? I liked to think I would have.

I made a slight alteration to my gambling house plan. If Jay was…still around, I could go back to helping them and then find out where Zara was. They might not have much appetite for more daring nights anymore, but it was worth a try to help out Jeremy and stop more dragon’s breath from being used.

I returned to my guest room to pack another change of clothes and drop off the sweater that still had pinkish blood stains on the neckline. The marble knight piece was also placed where it belonged in the locked drawer, and I sighed at the missing plant I’d thrown. Though, the picture frame had been replaced with another depiction of a forested landscape.

With a clearer mind I was able to better pack for the week I still planned to spend away from the palace.

The emotional turmoil I’d felt after the arena was behind me, but it constantly threatened to break through my reassuring thoughts and Yis’ words of solace. Would another week away do me some good, or was it just me being encouraged by my desire not to face Haily after my behaviour?

“Ma’am?”

“Haily, hello.”

“Hand it over.”

The only thing in my hands was a satchel, getting increasingly unlikely to close with each addition I made, so I held it out to her.

Haily pulled out a skirt that was already crumpled along with my nightgown. She continued to extract more articles of clothing that were each accompanied by an eye-roll or glare depending on how badly I’d packed them.

The worst was the soap I liked that had already leaked onto a white blouse. I followed behind her into the dressing room, where she started folding the clothes into a knapsack.

“I’m sorry about the porridge.”

“So you’ve said, ma’am,” she said. “I’m honestly not the least bit mad. Made for an interesting story at lunch.”

She handed over the knapsack and satchel, now filled with items I hadn’t thought I’d need to complete the outfits I’d originally packed.

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure, just make sure you come back. Yanla has me filling in on the worst shifts without you to keep me busy.”

“I will.”