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Barmaid's Quest - Chapter 1

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chapter one
of pewter mugs and guides to acceptance

SLAM!

The misshapen pewter mug was, well, slammed forcefully on to the bar, beer sloshing over the rim and pooling on the wooden surface.

In the cloud of smoke and voices and people that filled the tavern, no one was really paying much attention to the little drama unfolding. Travellers from many miles away were enthusiastically having their first try of authentic Piddling cider, followed by foggily wondering if the drink was just named after the town, or if Piddling had a different meaning altogether. Locals were discussing their farms, smoking, gambling and leering at unfortunate young ladies. A yellow-haired bard sang with his eyes closed in the corner, plucking away at his harp and looking attractively tousled. The cold night had brought everyone in the little village inside to the noisy, convivial warmth of The Stubborn Donkey tavern.

This little drama in particular involved a swarthy young newcomer to the farming village of Little Piddling – most likely a traveller from the blistering Sarhi deserts – and the barmaid, a local girl of just seventeen by the name of Cvusscha Mistbane. Apparently a comment was made that should not have been made, and the boy was paying for it. She was leaning forward over the bar top, almost nose-to-nose with the terrified young tourist.

"Here's. Your. Drink." she hissed menacingly.

You couldn't call her unattractive in that low, flattering lighting, despite a certain eagley cast to her pale, pointy-nosed features. One could also tell she desperately wished to be taller and scarier, but that she made up for it adequately with a narrow-eyed glare that could kill.  

"I – I have much sorry in me," the poor boy stuttered in broken English. "I mean no offence – "

"Then don't bloody well make comments like that one which I will not repeat for the sake of common decency! That's not how we do things down here." She had brown hair tied into a long thick braid. It hung over one skinny shoulder.

"Oh, I dunno," said the other bar wench, a much more friendly looking curvaceous maiden (well, maiden could be debatable, but that's irrelevant) with blonde ringlets and hips that could sink ships, "the lads down here say things like that more often than not. Not so much to Vuss, here though. You're a brave boy." She winked as she wiped out a glass with a dirty rag.

The tourist looked hopelessly confused.

"Ta-ta, enjoy your drink, bugger off now." Cvusscha, known as Vuss, that Mistbane girl and also the aggro bitch of Little Piddling, smiled sweetly at him.

The other lady grinned and shook her head, humming along to the bard warbling away in the corner.

"What's that look for, Regina?"

Regina's grin turned into a conspiratorial smirk. "Nothin'. How d'ye think you're ever gunna get married, Cvusscha Mistbane?"

"Not planning on it."

"Course you are. You just don't say."

"I don't like people."

"What's so bad about people?" Regina asked. "I don't mind 'em, myself."

There was the charming sound of a belching contest from the corner, interspered with roars of manly laughter.

Vuss looked incredulously at the other woman. "How can you say that?"

Regina smiled. "Coz I'm normal, Vuss. Still, can't blame you, I suppose – growing up in that rickety house with no one but that horrible old man and your own head for company."

"Don't talk about my grandfather like that." Vuss stared at her feet, which were encased in heavy leather boots. "And my own head is perfectly good company, thanks, at least it can hold a decent conversation without talking 'bout marriages or tossing its hair."

"Beer, wench!" yelled a man from the corner, waving a wallet enticingly. Regina walked off, flicking her hips and laughing to herself. Despite her outward appearance of a roughly-spoken, overly friendly country girl, Regina was quite perceptive. She was the only one who was close to understanding how Vuss worked - a bundle of frustrated under-used intelligence, internal anger and sullen loneliness – and therefore was in the best position to annoy the shit out of her.

Vuss rolled her eyes and got on with the evening's work, a quiet sulky figure in the midst of the noise. She wasn't very talkative as a rule – words just seemed to explode out of her at the worst possible moments. She knew the world didn't revolve around her, and thought this was a really bad design.

The evening rolled onwards.

People talked about the new Empress Salaré The First, crowned just three weeks ago, absolute ruler of Anturium. While these things didn't really concern country villagers hundreds of miles from the capital too much, they'd heard rumours. And they voiced them loudly. Beer glugged and stories flowed.

Vuss knew they were just rumours, and therefore filed them as below her lofty attentions. She listened anyway, trying not to be worried.

They said she was like a vampire – skin white as snow and eyes fiery red. ("Maybe she is a vampire." "God Almighty…a vampire as Empress? You know how it went last time that happened.") They said she had long hair, dead straight like a stick or like, like a really really straight stick, and that she was so beautiful you couldn't speak properly before her face without going all tonguetied and babbling like a teenaged twit. They said that she'd burnt villages already, working her way down from the old city in the north, crushing homes for her own evil ways. They weren't specific about why she was burning villages, or what the evil ways were, but it was implied that they were pretty damn evil. They said she'd kill the country slowly, leeching it of its supplies. They said she'd raise the taxes, demanding huge portions of all produce, so everyone would starve. ("I've got a wife and six kiddies to raise! She can't take any more of my crops!") They said she had evil, necromantic magic at her fingers, that she'd take dead bodies of soldiers she killed and resurrect them, ten times stronger than a man.

They said she was a real bitch.

******

"Empress Salare's a bitch!" yelled a short rain-drenched man forlornly. He stood outside the castle, waving a sign in the typical upwards and downwards motion, a couple of supporters going "Yeah!" occasionally.

Protesting in the old city was never the pleasantest of occupations.

The old city…

North of the Drakmir Peaks and always hidden in a cloud of grey damp fog and rain, the old city was built of stone and rigid laws. It was the place where humans had first settled, a scared collection of immigrants in a country occupied entirely by vampires, werewolves, the fey, demons that had found the Dread Realms a bit boring, wild vicious animals and a huge assortment of other creatures that thought of them as so much pork-reminiscent meat. They'd hunkered down in the shelter of the big mountains after a treacherous and horrible journey from the coast. They had lost many on the way, and it seemed as if the odds were far too high, as if they'd never survive. However, humans had proved to have a quality the constantly warring native species didn't have.

Humans had imagination, and they always found a way. And they had this pesky habit of not giving up, even after the twentieth attack.

They had pitchforks, and minds full of anger and love. They were weak, easily distracted beings that you were so busy laughing at you didn't realise they'd taken everything from you.  

So they built their city from a little collection of wet, falling-down bark huts, and they spread, and they tamed the country. Vampires were still in denial about it, and muttered dangerously about taking back what was "rightfully theirs". Werewolves thought about how they couldn't run free at night anymore, and scratched their ears thoughtfully, and occasionally hackles rose. The little coloured fairies retreated to the forests, and flitted around having a good time, humans or no humans. The demons retreated sullenly to the Dread Realms, and occasionally popped their heads through the borders of space-time to scare a human and avenge their great-great-great-grandfather.

But the fact was, the country belonged to humans now. And it all began in the old city.

The stones radiated history and solemnity.

Young groovy people had occasionally tried to modernize the city, turn it into something more along the likes of Itius and Genenea. They'd tried to give it a proper name, but people just…forgot it. They'd tried to start up youth clubs and takeaways and build up a Vibrant, Buzzing Nightlife. So far, the only buzzing nightlife that had stuck around were the mosquitoes and the petty thieves.

It was a depressing place to live.

Empress Salare quite liked it.

She liked the castle even more. It loomed impressively over the old city, a patchwork of added extensions. You could see a lot from the windows, dirty as they were.

Her heels clacked on stone as she delicately stood up from the window seat, smoothing down the velvet folds of her gown.

"Kill them," she said.

She didn't have red eyes – they were a rather cold blue – and she was a bit more mid-thirties looking than the portraits and the rumours would have you believe, but she was still a strikingly beautiful woman. Her hair was long and straight and dark and the climate and makeup worked together for a pale complexion. She was tall and thin and her carefully designed clothes managed to cling, sweep, intrigue and reveal all at once.

"What?"

"Oh, hello Athenaa darling." Salaré smiled a red-lipsticked smile at her daughter, standing in the doorway.

Nineteen-year-old Princess Athenaa was almost as pretty as her mother, but in a very different way – she was short with masses of fluffy blonde hair and puppy-dog eyes the colour of jade. She reminded you of the type of princess that clasped roses and sewed tapestries, although not right now. Right now she was flushed and angry looking, one manicured hand gripping the doorway tightly.

"You're…you're not going to kill them?"

"Oh, no, of course not dear. That wouldn't be right. The guards are going to kill them."

"No!" Athenaa squeaked.

"Too late."

A faint "aaaaaaaAAAAARGH" could be heard.

Salaré cackled. Athenaa stared.

"Did you just…cackle?"

"Maybe." Salare pursed her lips and picked up a little ball of blue flame, one of the magic toys she'd had created. She tossed it from hand to hand idly.

Athenaa said a word that no decent rose-clasping, tapestry sewing princess should know.

"Athenaa!" snapped Salaré.

"Right, that's it. This is for you, mummy," she said angrily, striding forward. Despite being short, she'd inherited her mother's striding abilities. She could have strode for Anturium. Her violet gown trailed on the floor.

She pressed a folded piece of parchment into her mother's hand, and sat down on the window seat with a petulant pout to her coral coloured mouth. A few maids hovered nervously near the door,

"What is this nonsense…" Salare unfolded it, long painted nails getting in the way somewhat.

"I thought you ought to read it."

"…So You Think You Might Be Going Insanely Evil. A guide on realization, acceptance and recovery. You have got to be joking, my dear." That last word could have cut glass.

"Realizing you have a problem is the first step on the journey of – "

"Insanely isn't even a word. Get out. Dearest. Someone fetch Crowfeet for me, I wish to consult with him."

"You're not going to get anywhere if – "

A couple of armoured men leaning against the door – true royalty are never properly alone – straightened up and looked meaningfully at Athenaa, although not too meaningful because she was the next in line, after all.

"Mother, this isn't some ridiculous play! You can't just suddenly – "

The meaningfully-looking armoured men both took a step forward. Salaré quirked an eyebrow.

"Hmpf!" Athenaa stood up with a wounded look and, holding her skirts up, huffed out of the room.

Once outside, she leant her head against the cold wall and tried not to cry.

It was all…so…so…it just sucked.

Athenaa had been named after the goddess, but was saddled with an extra "a" because her totally embarrassing mother thought it sounded more interesting with a drawn out finish.

They'd spent their previous nineteen years together being cold in a little farmhouse, their very faint royal connections doing nothing for them. Salaré hadn't been the best mother and it wasn't the most comfortable of lives, but it was so much better than this miserable castle. Then the day had came.

Emperor Justinian the First had died of a heart attack.

Athenaa and Salare had been dragged to the old city and made royalty, and something changed in her mother's eyes.

Back before the heart attack, back when everything made at least a little sense…Salaré had been dissatisfied and unemotional but it was better than…all this killing, all this cold-blooded oppression, this crazy abuse of power. It turned Athenaa's stomach. She got nightmares these days, with plenty of interesting metaphors that basically boiled down to head-spinning fear. Her relationship with her mother had always been fragile and detatched, but now it was turning into a horror show. Some day she'd have to take on this job, too, unless her mother could hurry up and have a boy.

Athenaa was one of those people born uncurably good.  She had an angel on both shoulders, one just the smidgest less angelic than the other. Her mother had always had a disregard for anything that wasn't currently benifiting her, she knew that, and she'd tried to raise Athenaa the same way. Unfortunately, Salaré had failed. Those who say personality is a matter of upbringing hadn't met Athenaa – cursed to be sweet and instinctively know what is right from birth. Her sense of moral obligation could knock down cities.

Unfortunately, she was also uncapable of being properly angry. No one listened to you when you had fluffy blonde hair and stamped your foot indignantly. It was an odd mix – she could have been an avenging angel, if only she was scarier.

So she lived her life being sweet, and gentle, and kind, and in a constant state of frustration at the evilness of mankind, unable to do anything about it.

She contemplated kicking the walls, and then remembered how expensive her shoes were, and how long they had taken that old tailor to craft.

"…bother," she muttered vindictively, and clattered away.

******

Crowfeet was the head of experimental wizardry in the royal laboratories. He didn't look like the type to be working daily with volatile magic that might go off at any second, being a jittery, nervous man scared of pretty much everything. However, by one of those odd twists of life, he could remain perfectly calm when in danger of having his head blown off by a single wrong move (followed by the bleeding stump of his neck turning into something even more interestingly disgusting) but was terrified of pretty much everything else. He was really the best person for the position – anyone else  with that much magical ability at hand and that close to so much power might have got dangerous ideas. Crowfeet was terrified of dangerous ideas. Such as the current Empress. She was a pretty dangerous idea.

The last Emperor had been a fairly quiet man, ruling in a just-ish manner. He hadn't had much use for wizardry apart from the traditional role of trying to turn lead into gold, so Crowfeet had been left to tinker alone, working long days in his quiet laboratory. However, his new mistress was of quite a different mindset. She was very unmagical herself, but had great plans for what other people could do with it. He hadn't had huge amounts of responsibility and had never before been asked to design such…elaborate magical, well, things. He didn't have the disposition for making torture implements.

"Crowfeet," the Empress said coldly.

"Yes, your majesty." He bowed as deep as someone with back problems could bow.

"How are the plans coming along? I trust you're going to meet my deadline."

"Yes, your majesty. Um. We've managed to form a highly volatile compound using raw magic and an interesting combination previously used in crude fireworks in the heathen countries, ehm, saltpeter, sulphur and charcoal feature largely in the – "

"That's enough." Salaré raised a hand. "Crowfeet, you've been working for the royal family for quite a while now, I assume you're familiar with The Council?"

"Ye-es." He nodded his gingery head, wondering where this was leading. The Council had been a, well, council. Hence the name. A council of twelve old men that advised the royal party on matters of great importance. They had a lot of power and therefore many thrilling plots of royal murder and subterfuge revolved around them on a daily basis. It provided light entertainment for the country and a chance for the reigning sovereign to talk to someone who knew what they were about.

"They're gone."

"They're…wha?" The Council were as much a part of the government as the royal leader themselves. Though the members were frequently murdered and being plotted against, hung for murdering and plotting or simply keeling over from the stress, there was always the ruler and there was always the Council. No ruler had ever tried to eradicate them fully. Crowfeet felt a cold sense of dread shiver through him.

"Some of them were rather impertinent."

"Impertinent, your Majesty…?"

"Impertinent." Salaré remained outwardly calm, but behind those cold eyes she seethed.

The Council were sensible men. They'd seen a lot in their time. And naturally, at the sight of a grown woman acting as if she was a villain in a Disney cartoon in all apparent seriousness, they chuckled. They thought it was an act for the public, something to terrify the commoners.

Imagine their surprise when their laugh was cut off with a knife held tight to the throat.

Salaré didn't like being laughed at. She didn't like being advised, either.

Gentle threatening hadn't worked. They were strong men who stood by their ideals, and even when she described exquisite tortures available at her manicured fingertips, they still thought she was all talk and lipstick and no action. They hadn't been afraid, so she'd had to rectify that.

Even after two-thirds of them were gone, there were still a few tenacious members that were dreadfully bothersome for a while. What was it that fat one had said, even as the blood ran down his chin? You think they're just commoners, but you don't know what they do to rulers like you. Anger makes people strong. And that's even without the Knights of Nice. The Knights of Nice will get you, you harlo – aaaaarghglkglllllllllll.

Put simply, there wasn't any Council now.

"That is…no good, your majesty." Crowfeet wished he was dead.

"There were several other servants of the crown in this castle, Crowfeet, who were rather too…loyal to the ways of the old Emperor for my liking," she purred.

Were. Were. Were. thought Crowfeet.

"I trust you will not have the same problem."

A very quick moral debate went on in the man's head. Very, very quick.

"No problem, your majesty."

"Good. I have a very special place in my castle for the Head of Experimental Wizardry." She smiled.

"Heh."

"Heh what?"

"Heh, your majesty."

"Now, Crowfeet, since we're starting to be such good friends, would you care to enlighten me on a certain subject?"

"I shall do my best, your majesty."

"The Knights of Nice. Tell me about them. Of course I've heard the name, but I never bothered myself with such things."

"What…concern would you have with the Knights of Nice, Your Majesty?" Crowfeet swallowed painfully.

"It's not your place to ask questions. You answer them."

"Well, your majesty, the Knights of Nice…are an organization. They enforce….justice."

"Justice," Salaré said coldly.

"Yes, your majesty. Justice. They act independently, employing young heroes and adventurers and sending them across Anturium to fight battles in the name of the Knights of Nice."

Salaré was quiet for a moment, gears turning in her head. Despite outward appearances, she was an intelligent woman and she knew when something was likely to be a threat. What do I do now?

She leant forward slightly, strands of shiny black hair falling across her face, propping her chin up with long, slender fingers.

"Tell me more."
Wooohooo!

This is chapter 2 of my novel The Barmaid's Quest.

Blurb: [link]

Prologue: [link]

I hope you like this. I've edited it so, so many times and finally I decided to stop fiddling with it and just upload it.

Oh, I'm so excited!! Yay!!
© 2011 - 2024 Meggie272
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Panthershade's avatar
This is awesome! Great job with it! I like it already, definately going to be a great story. Poor guy, Vuss is mean huh? I like her though, reminds me of one of my own characters :)