The Endless Solvent

Her mother’s most senior maid left that morning, citing some excuse about a family emergency back in her home village. That would be the last servant to leave House Lokah, leaving the massive sprawling estate to just Rakel and her mother. Mrs. Polle was nice enough to stay as long as she had and there was some unspoken agreement that her loyalty at least meant something; it was enough to earn her the option to leave without a Lokah questioning it.

Questions weren’t necessary on Rakel’s part, it was easy to surmise why Mrs. Polle was leaving: she wasn’t being paid. It’s why everybody else left. For weeks they had been paying the serving staff ‘in kind’: Rakel’s mother had reluctantly given up a few bottles of their aged wines and bundles of cured meats, then finally gave up a few pieces of jewelry to pay.

“It’s just metal and rocks,” her mother had said cheerfully, but Rakel could see the pinched look on her face as she gave her treasures away. She remembered her mother used to adorn herself with sparkling jewels and gleaming gold every time they had a social outing. She had jewelry and precious stones with every imaginable color, along with fine silk dresses and pots upon pots of rouge and powders. All of that had been pawned off or given away to maintain some sort of income.

Mrs. Polle never made a fuss about the shambling condition of the estate or mentioned anything about the Lady of the house selling all her belongings. She just shut up and did her job, then had the decency to lie about needing to leave to spare Rakel and her mother the embarrassment to admit they were no longer living the lives of nobles.

Rakel boiled water on the stove and prepared her mother’s medicine, brewing the dried herbs carefully in the small pot until it turned a dark amber and filled the kitchen with a pungent smell. She then strained the liquid into a bowl and placed it on a tray to let it cool. Rakel then did the things she usually saw the kitchen staff do when she was younger: prepare ingredients for lunch and dinner, wash the dishes, sweep the floor. By the time she finished, the medicine was cool enough and she brought it up to her mother who was already sitting up in bed and reading.

“At least put a cube of sugar in it,” her mother grumbled the moment she saw the dark amber liquid in the bowl. “Or a spoon of honey. We can still afford that.”

“Doctor Noth specifically said you’re not to eat anything sweet anymore,” Rakel said. “It makes your cough worse.”

Her mother gave a phlegm-filled cough in response and screwed her wrinkled face as she drank her medicine painfully slowly. Rakel nonchalantly sat back on the bedside chair and leafed through the book her mother was reading. She wasn’t going to give the book back or help her out of bed until she finished the medicine.

They had this battle every morning. For months she had asked if Father would fund a trip to the Heart so they could see a specialist about that cough and her constant fatigue. Her mother argued that specialists in the Heart were all rune-loving blasphemers who would probably sacrifice her soul to snub the Parts. Rakel had started to wonder if that would be a more effective treatment than these strange smelling herbs gathered from Doctor Noth’s backyard.

“I don’t want to drink this anymore,” Lady Lokah said insistently, putting down the half-finished bowl of medicine. “I refuse.”

Rakel gave a deep sigh. “It’s the only way to keep your cough down.”

“What use is it if it makes me vomit half the time,” her mother continued, stubbornly putting the bowl down on the nightstand. This wasn’t true, it only made her vomit about three times when she made herself bring it back up. “I can’t believe you still make me take this.”

“It’s for your own health,” Rakel put down the book and picked up the bowl of medicine again, nudging it against her mother’s hand. “Doctor Noth said - ”

“Doctor Noth’s an ass and you’re a terrible daughter for making me take this,” Lady Lokah lashed out. “What do you know about my cough? Almost twenty summers and you haven’t once set foot into a college - you don’t know anything.”

Rakel held her tongue and the bowl of medicine a little tighter. “Please, mother, finish this and we can move to the library - ”

“I said I don’t want it!”

“Can you just drink it for once?” Rakel snapped. “Without needing me to baby you?”

“How dare you talk to me like that!” Her mother smacked the bowl of medicine, sending it flying and it shattered on the bedroom floor, the liquid splashing across the stone tiles. “I am your mother. That’s it… Mrs. Polle… Mrs. Polle!”

“She’s gone back home. Mrs. Polle is no longer employed with us.” Rakel gingerly knelt to pick up the pieces of the bowl, gathering the wet shards onto the tray.

“And you couldn’t keep her with us?” Lady Lokah shouted at her, infuriated. The effort made her dissolve into another fit of coughing. “How… How useless can you be? Get out… get out!”

A pillow was sent flying and it smacked her as Rakel tried to get the last pieces of the bowl. The impact knocked her off balance and the pieces she collected slid off the tray and crashed back down on the wet floor. She barely heard it over the stream of abuse coming out of her mother’s mouth. For a few seconds, she stilled and considered shouting back but the heat of fury made it impossible for her to form words, so instead she just walked out of the room.

She waited a few minutes just outside the room, listening to the fit of coughing the shouting caused. Trembling, she stared out the window at the end of the hall and willed the nasty thoughts away. Thoughts that she’s begun to have every day.

Thoughts like how life would be easier if her mother just… left.

Lady Lokah gave a wheezing gasp and Rakel’s heart nearly lurched in anticipation. But she heard her mother’s breathing even out again and she silently returned to the kitchen. She aimlessly stared at the stove, dirty with soot and spilled food; she wondered how much work it would be to clean it. After a few hollow minutes, she collected her purse from the hall and left the house for a walk. She thought leaving the house would mean leaving the dreadful thoughts behind.

A fine Kuvanian family like the Lokahs once were would have sent her to a women’s college when she became of age. Rakel spent her teen years painstakingly deciding what she would study in college and looked forward to living in the Heart or the Academy for her studies. Not that any self-respecting Kuvan liked the idea of sending their children to the Heart, but they were technically still a part of the Gaian empire. Rakel would have to concede to studying something that agreed with her home kingdom like religion or literature.

But her father started disappearing on them frequently years before she would be considered for college and her mother couldn’t find any tutors when the money ran dry. Rakel didn’t even bother asking if she would ever go to the women’s college since the answer was obvious. It was even more obvious that there would be no suitors lining out the door, waiting for hand in marriage. Not once has her father suggested any potential candidates to be his son-in-law. She wasn’t going anywhere.

Rakel sighed and stared up at the gray skies. Even the weather wasn’t cooperating with her. She passed by the same old shops two blocks from the Lokah estate, the same merchants that joyfully called out to her years ago now ignored her. It was no secret that she could no longer buy things on a whim. She sniffed and continued her way towards the park further down the street.

She heard the commotion before she saw it. A scuffle, the sound of which echoing down the alleyway to her ears. The alleyway was narrow and barely fit the shoulder width of a man and Rakel saw a handful of people crammed in it. One of them had a strained, angry expression as a figure was pushed into a building. She thought she heard the sound of fist on flesh.

Her step never broke its pace but her mind stuttered at the passing incident. She should ignore it. Rakel knew that many things happened in the shadows in many major cities so it was no different here. There was nothing a sole woman could do, a woman without even a father to watch over her. The right thing to do was to ignore it, just like everything else in her life. Whatever it was, it would be resolved by someone else. It wasn’t her responsibility -

Uttering a curse under her breath that would make her mother turn pale, Rakel turned on her heel and hurried back to the alleyway.

—

The men were gone.

She crept down the narrow path, gingerly stepping over discarded garbage and weeds growing out of the compacted dirt. Rakel wrinkled her nose at the acrid scent of stale urine and tobacco of discarded cigarette stubs. The buildings lining the alleyway only had one door each and she approached the one she recalled the figure being shoved through.

It was a plain wooden door, slightly warped and scuffed from wear. Rakel carefully sidled up to it and strained to hear anything; maybe a few male voices, then the sound of metal clanking. She started when the voices started getting louder - a split second decision had her running to an end of the alleyway and waiting around the corner, heart pounding. By sheer luck, the voices spilled into the alleyway only after she was out of sight.

“…don’t need him to talk, we just need him to perform,” one of the men muttered.

“But how can we hand him tools if we know he’s just going to use his blasphemous power against us?” another said heatedly.

“We’ll just keep him there until we find a way,” the first one snapped. “It’s like you don’t even want to try…”

They thankfully headed off in the opposite direction, voices fading and Rakel couldn’t hear more of their conversation. However she didn’t observe them spending too much time at the door after closing it, maybe…

Rakel counted to twenty after the last of the men rounded the corner, wiped her sweaty palms on her brown skirt, then sneaked back down the alleyway. She paused at the door, but ultimately gave it a firm push at the metal handle and it easily swung open. She gave a surprised gasp, her suspicions confirmed: they hadn’t bothered locking the door.

Her heart pounded in her chest, her fear abated a little when she was just confronted with a nearly empty room with a small table against a wall. The fear returned when she spotted the doorway to the adjacent room, darkened as it’s in the back. She nearly shrieked when she heard a metallic rattle from the darkness.

“W-who’s there?” she said, hating how her voice wavered.

Through the doorway to the other room, the darkness was pierced by a pair of glowing green orbs. Rakel felt her limbs lock in fear. Her eyes adjusted in the dark and she could make out the faint outline of a metal cage.

“Hello?” She swallowed and took a step forward.

“Greetings,” a voice responded. A deep male voice, using a Sekrelli formal greeting. Rakel blinked - the familiarity of it allowed her to actually stand at the doorway and look inside.

A figure sat hunched on the ground while trapped in a large metal cage. When it moved and looked up at her, she saw that his eyes looked like strange, like green, swirling liquid in a glass container. As she approached, they looked less bright but no less strange

“Are you Sekrelli?” she asked. “Did those men I saw earlier trap you here?”

“I am not Sekrelli,” he replied. “And yes.”

She crept closer, making sure she wasn’t close enough for him to grab her clothes. There was enough light through the open door to see him even in the dark room. His tunic was tattered and looked filthy, his hair scraggly over his shoulders. The stranger’s previously glowing eyes were now like dark liquid in their sockets and they studied her through the bars.

“You aren’t Gaian at all, are you?” Rakel stiffened. “Are you Yscian?” She had never seen a Yscian before. She’d assume they were simply gray-skinned savages that lived in the trees on the eastern side of the continent - she’s never heard any details about their eyes.

“No, I am not,” the stranger said.

“I heard one of the men say you have blasphemous power,” she continued. She had no idea why she was even here, talking to this strange creature. “What do they mean by that?”

“Will your aid be contingent on my answer?” he asked. He leaned forward, strange eyes glowing a little again. Long pale fingers grasped at the bars.

Rakel chewed on her lip. It really wasn’t any of her business, but it bothered her to just leave this strange man caged up like an animal. Furthermore, she had already come so far as to talk to him next to his prison. She gave a long sigh.

“Fine. Is there a key around here?” She studied the small door to the cage and the large metal lock on it. It looked like it could be a Kuvanian made lock, built into the cage itself. It would be difficult to physically break through it and even more difficult to pick it; not that Rakel had remotely any idea how to pick a lock.

“No need. I simply need something to make markings with. A piece of chalk or charcoal, or even a rock…”

Rakel glanced around the rooms. They were incredibly well kept, with barely a hint of dust or grime on the floor. The small table in the other room had a pair of Sekrelli tinted glasses on them.

“Those are mine,” the man said when he spotted her picking them up.

“Can you use this to make markings?” Rake inspected the glasses’ metal frame.

“Maybe but that would ruin them,” the man shrugged. “May I have them back anyway?”

After handing the tinted glasses to the man, she ventured in the alleyway to find a single pebble large enough to grip. It was tossed to the man in the cage and Rakel kept her distance as he moved towards the cage lock and started scraping on the metal.

A few minutes later, she saw symbols glow on the lock and it rattled, then something gave a loud ‘clunk’ and the metal door swung open. “Runes?” she gasped.

The strange man ducked his head to step out of the cage and Rakel backed away even more. He had a tall and lean frame but he bent to clutch at his ribs as he approached her. Besides his strangle liquid green eyes, his face looked like any other man her age. And despite saying he’s not Sekrelli, his hair was jet black, typical of someone from that region.

“Are you hurt?” she asked. “What did those men want from you? How - ”

His strange green eyes glowed sharply once again and he squinted past her shoulder. “We need to leave,” he said, grabbing her wrist.

Before she could protest this grossly indecent contact, he hurried them out the alleyway. Just as they turned the corner, she thought she could hear male voices clamoring in alarm.

“How did you know they were there?” she asked breathlessly, trying to keep up with him.

“I need a place to hide.” He was ignoring her questions. With one hand, he slid the tinted glasses over his eyes, masking the green glow from them. “Somewhere I can recover for a while. Do you know a place?”

This liquid-eyed stranger dragging her around was not someone to be trusted, she knew. Dangerous people surrounded him; worst of all he knew how to use runes. If anyone found out, Rakel herself would be exiled for even allowing it to happen.

But for some reason when he asked for a place to hide, she immediately knew what to do. She twisted her wrist out of his grasp and straightened her sleeve primly.

“Yes, and I can take you there without holding hands,” she sniffed. “Follow me.”

—