Hungry Heart - Book #3 - Ch. 17 (Patreon)

Chapter One / Chapter Two / Chapter Three / Chapter Four / Chapter Five / Chapter Six / Chapter Seven / Chapter Eight / Chapter Nine / Chapter Ten / Chapter Eleven / Chapter Twelve / Chapter Thirteen / Chapter Fourteen / Chapter Fifteen / Chapter Sixteen 

Chapter Seventeen – Separated

Varg watched the walls in the distance over his shoulder, his mind full of thoughts of different kinds. During his life’s adventures, he had never seen anything quite like it. They were part of the crowd taking the road back, having been refused entry into the city. He could only assume that the guards on the other flank were just as busy and followed the same rules, so the direct way into Scercendusa was not something to consider.

“Hey, hey,” someone called from behind, “friends!”

They stopped and turned, only to see Decottieri rushing toward them on his horse. His face was pale, and there was a wild look in his eyes. They all waited patiently until the country squire was close to them.

“I lost my papers,” Decottieri complained. “You’ve been close by. Did you happen to see the thief who took them?”

“We didn’t see anything,” Varg said. “You don’t seem very well.” Even though they had been the ones to play that dirty trick on the pompous man, that didn’t mean that he didn’t feel guilty for employing such methods to get one of them inside.

“That’s not important right now,” Decottieri said while holding a hand over his stomach. “My papers are important. And they’re nowhere to be found,” he whined.

Varg held out a hand when Decottieri leaned to one side, and helped him get down from his horse. “We have some remedy for bellyaches just like the ones you seem to suffer from.”

Toru and Claw were looking intently at him, probably wondering what he was doing. He stared back at them, and then took a small bag of herbs Duril had given him not too long ago. “Let’s get you sorted out first,” he told Decottieri.

Toru walked close behind him as he pulled the country squire to the side of the road. “What’s happening?” he whispered.

“We should at least put him back on his feet,” Varg replied quickly.

It looked like Claw didn’t need any explanation and he was already busy making a fire to prepare a tea.

“But he’s so obnoxious,” Toru argued while Claw helped Decottieri to sit by the small fire.

“Even if we did what the situation demanded of us, that doesn’t mean that we should be satisfied with it.” Toru didn’t appear to understand very well, so Varg continued, “You wouldn’t like to suffer from stomachaches like that, right?”

“No. But my belly never hurts.”

“He’s not a shifter like us. See, Claw is already getting him to drink that tea. It will help him get back on his feet.”

Indeed, Decottieri was accepting the small cup from Claw’s hands and drinking slowly. “What will I do now?” he said mostly to himself. “My family expects me to become an important scholar.”

Varg could tell Toru was fretting a bit by now. They hadn’t thought about what it meant to take advantage of the pompous man for their own gain, but that was now what they needed to think about.

“Is it possible to have your papers redone? Those schools you attended, they could give you new certifications, right?” Claw asked. Varg noticed the bearshifter frowning. Just like him, he knew that what they had done could be justified as necessary, but it still didn’t make it right.

“It will take months,” Decottieri said dejectedly. “But yes, they can give me new papers.”

That meant that Decottieri still had a chance to be admitted at one of the many libraries of Scercendusa in the future. Right now, what they could do to correct a little of what they had done to him was to heal his aching belly.

“Do you write very beautifully?” Toru asked all of a sudden.

Decottieri appeared considerably less obnoxious than before, now that he was taking the way back, just like them. He just nodded and took another sip of the concoction Claw had prepared for him. His face looked less flushed and now there was even some color returning to his cheeks.

“Can you show me?” Toru asked again.

“How? I don’t have anything to write on,” Decottieri said.

Toru picked a small twig up from the ground and handed it to him. The country squire took it and looked at it, then at Toru, asking with his eyes what was expected of him.

“Write here, in the dirt,” Toru said.

“Ah,” Decottieri said. He rubbed his belly a little. “Thank you for the remedy, good people. I already feel a little bit better. What would you like me to write?”

Toru pondered for a bit. “How do you write ‘tiger’?”

Decottieri said nothing, but he began to trace the letters in the dirt with his improvised pen. Toru leaned in to see. “There, like this,” he said and pulled back to admire his handiwork.

“You write very beautifully,” Toru decided.

“I’ve spent ten years studying beautiful letters,” Decottieri said with self-importance. “I should write very beautifully. My parents spent a small fortune to pay private tutors. They will be very disappointed now.”

Toru shifted in his place again. Varg put a hand on his shoulder. “But you will try again?”

“I will,” Decottieri said with determination. “And I’ll hire a physician to travel with me the next time. Alas, that is life. I’ll be on my way now. Thank you again for your help.”

“So quickly?” Varg asked. “Are you sure you can ride?”

“My family takes care of horses.” Decottieri stopped for a moment, realizing his mistake. “I mean, my domain has many horses. I was born riding one, as they say.”

That had to be a lie, but Varg didn’t bother saying anything. “What’s the name of the place you’re from?”

“Rebulia, but why are you asking?” Decottieri seemed guarded and now in a hurry to leave.

“We’re just curious people,” Varg replied.

“Well, I would stay and chat, but I have many things I must do,” the country squire said hurriedly. “I’ll bid you farewell now.”

There was nothing they could do to stop him, so they only stood there and watched the dust raised by the hooves of his horse as he rode away.

“Why did you ask him where he’s from?” Toru spoke as soon as Decottieri was out of their sight.

“Because we will have to send some compensation one day for the unwitting help he provided us with,” Varg explained.

Toru looked down and seemed troubled. It wasn’t like him to frown a lot, but that was happening to him right now. “We did a bad thing when we stole his papers, right?”

“It wasn’t good,” Varg confirmed. “But sometimes we need to do things that are like that, so that we can do better ones.”

Claw scratched his head. “Puppy, you just served me a lesson in humility. I didn’t know the poor man would have such a sensitive stomach. I should have been less generous with that bellyache inducing herb.”

“We all agreed to the plan,” Varg said. “No reason for you to beat yourself up over it. One day, however, we should send our apologies to Rebulia. Along with a lavish gift, provided that we can afford one.”

“Will the guards let him inside the city once he comes back with the new papers?” Toru asked.

“The world is far and wide. There might be plenty of Decottieri’s all over the place. And as long as Scercendusa needs new scholars, seeing how beautiful his letters are, he will be welcome.”

“That’s good to know,” Claw confirmed. “But now, what are we going to do? Do any of you have a plan? Or should we start thinking of one together?”

“I say we should climb the walls,” Toru was the first to speak. “We can beat the guards and then get into the city. But it’s not a very good plan, because there are many guards, and the domestikos might just start hating us if we get inside by force.”

“Indeed. This place is a fortress,” Varg said. “Even if we climbed the walls and beat the guards we happen to find in our path, there will still be the matter of being received by Ewart Kona and asking him for advice. The road of fighting, as much as it is familiar to all of us, is not the one we should take this time.”

“Should we wait at the other line? Maybe the guards there will let us in,” Toru said with something akin to hope in his voice.

“That’s doubtful. And I don’t think any of us is ready to pull another trick on someone like Decottieri anytime soon,” Varg said, taking in his companions, first Toru, then Claw.

There was no need for verbal confirmation. Quite obviously, neither of them was keen on another bad deed, even if the end justified the means.

“That leaves us with getting to know the lay of the land better, right?” Claw suggested.

“What does that mean?” Toru asked.

“It means, I think,” Varg said, “that we should go back to The Dregs, and see if there is any way for us to get in through there.”

“But that girl Rosalind said that it’s not possible,” Toru pointed out.

“It’s true, but maybe Rosalind doesn’t know all the ins and outs of that place. First of all, the fuel they gather there to send to the city, it needs to get carried there, right?” Varg looked at Claw, and he immediately saw the bearshifter’s eyes light up with the realization of what Varg was implying.

“There must be at least one way to move between Scercendusa and them. A tunnel or something similar through which wagons of coal are sent inside and then return empty,” Claw said.

Toru seemed quite impressed with Claw’s conclusions. “But how do we know where to find that tunnel?”

Claw grinned at them. “We’re all strong lads here, aren’t we?”

“Yes, we are.” Toru crossed his arms to prove that he was very proud to be that.

“Then maybe those people at The Dregs could use our help with hauling coal.”

***

Duril felt in a daze as he passed through the gates and found himself out in the streets of the city. At first, he needed to shield his eyes from the dazzling light, allowing them to grow accustomed to everything around him. It took him a few moments to realize that it was because of how white the walls rising left and right were that the light seemed so unusually bright. But the walls soon gave way to the hustle and bustle of the city, with its myriad of colors.

He didn’t know where to look at first. Having been separated so abruptly from his friends, he had had little time to even consider what was happening to him. A man in a long white robe, adorned in front by what looked like a sophisticated symbol hurried toward him as the guard pushed him from behind.

“You must be Decottieri,” he said in a high pitched voice and slapped his hands together, only to rub them in satisfaction. “I was told to expect a new scribe any day now. Come, come,” he said and gestured for Duril to follow him.

The guard didn’t pay him any mind as he bade him farewell and returned to his work. Duril turned all his attention to the man who was supposed to be his employer. He had to hurry to catch up with him. The man half-turned toward him to make sure Duril was following. He had to be in his mid-fifties, and everything about him pointed to a life lived with no suffering or lack of anything the body needed. He was filling the robe, leaving little room for it to flap around his heavy set frame, and his bald head was as shiny as an egg.

“Hurry, hurry, Decottieri. I’m Master Granius, and you’ll address me as such. You are already late.”

Duril didn’t comment and almost broke into a sprint to close the distance between them. Around them, people of all colors, stations, and sizes, talked, walked, sold, bought, and haggled, as the road was lined with multihued stalls where wares were on display. He murmured apology after apology as he crashed into a few people while he struggled to keep up with Master Granius.

To his relief, they didn’t have to walk for a long time, because Granius stopped in front of a large wooden door that immediately allowed them access to the inside of a considerably cooler building. It didn’t take him long to realize that he must have arrived at one of the many libraries of Scercendusa. The experience he had imagined the first time he would step inside such a place was nothing like the underwhelming feeling washing over him right now.

The library consisted of a main room stuffed with shelves up to the ceiling, on which old tomes were stacked high, and there were at least two doors, one to the right, and one to the left, leading to other rooms in the building, but Duril had to admit inwardly that the place had not even a tenth of the vastness of the library in Shroudharbor.

“You carry very little luggage,” Master Granius noted out loud. “This will be your room.” He opened the door to the left and gestured for Duril to follow quickly. The passage was narrow and there were only two doors. One led to one room, as austere as the type that could be seen in places of faith, Duril noticed right away. It contained a bed that was barely adequate for one person, a table, a chair, and a small dresser. “And there, you’ll find the lavatory,” Granius added, pointing at the other door, but without bothering to present it to Duril as he had done with the bedroom. “I’ll bring you your clothes right away. Wash. And be careful of ink stains while working. Washing those off is expensive, and the cost will be deducted from your salary.”

It didn’t appear that his employer cared about whether he had any protests or comments regarding that, so Duril naturally kept silent and just followed his instructions without a word.

“You talk very little. That’s good,” Granius said. “I don’t need a chatterbox to waste time that could be much better put to good use by working.”

“What will my work entail?” Duril asked his first question.

Granius straightened up, pushing out his generous belly. His face was smooth for someone his age, but his jowls hung low, which gave away the true number of years resting on his shoulders. “We document every transaction taking place at the Somergan Market. Be aware of sneaky vendors, Decottieri. They always try to pinch a coin here and there. To imagine that they would even dare to think that they could steal from Scercendusa.”

Duril didn’t let his disappointment show. This wasn’t a library, but a bureaucratic office where day in and day out, scribes like him had to jot down every coin that changed hands. Would Decottieri have been disappointed when he realized what his work in Scercendusa was all about? Somehow, Duril doubted it. That man seemed enchanted only by the thought that he would be allowed into the city. Duril felt guilty for stealing his papers, and thought that maybe being stuck in a stuffy office with dozens of tomes waiting to be filled with numbers was proper punishment for his part in preventing the real Decottieri from taking charge of his promised scribe position.

The Somergan Market had to be the one right outside. Duril wondered briefly what working hours they kept. If he just got stuck indoors with nothing to do but fill the pages of those tomes with the transactions taking place at the market, he would not be of any help with Toru’s quest. There was also the matter of having been separated from the rest, and a pang of loneliness surprised Duril while his eyes traveled across the austere room. They had been separated before, but here, in this place that teemed with so many strangers just outside, that feeling was all the more intense.

“Do you have any more questions?” Granius didn’t wait for him to say whether he did or didn’t. “Good. Use the lavatory. Change into your working clothes, and meet me in the main room.”

Duril didn’t add anything. Whatever steps he needed to take next, he would have to consider them carefully.

***

“How are we going to do this?” Toru asked. “Should we search for Rosalind and ask her if she thinks that they’ll have us? Or should we ask someone else?” He wasn’t very happy about going back to The Dregs, not when he knew that Duril was all alone in that big unforgiving city. What was he doing right now? Toru truly hoped that Varg and Claw were right, and no one would suspect Duril of not being who he said he was.

“We’ll just ask the first living soul we meet. I think we’ll find work before sundown,” Claw replied. “I don’t suspect the work down here to be coveted by many.”

Unlike the city that was guarded to keep anyone from entering without having any serious work to do, The Dregs were open to anyone who cared to walk onto the soot-filled ground. Claw hurried toward the first man they saw. “Good man, do you happen to know who we should talk to about finding some work?”

“What kind of work?” The man stared at Claw openly, and then at Toru and Varg who were standing a few steps away.

“The kind you do,” Claw replied.

The man continued to stare without blinking for a few long moments. “You don’t know what you want.” With that, he walked away, ignoring them and without even throwing them one more look.

“That was odd,” Claw said.

Toru couldn’t agree more. “Do you think that only certain people are allowed to work here?”

Claw seemed to be as befuddled as him. “I wouldn’t have thought that, seeing what kind of work they do around here. But maybe that man was just not in the mood to talk to us.”

Toru somehow doubted that was the reason. He could tell that Claw didn’t believe it, either. They walked in silence and stopped by the edge of one of the large pits – much larger than he had first thought it would be, now that he could take a close look at it. A stair cut directly into the wall of the pit wound round and round, deeper and deeper, and they watched as a line of people climbed upward, the heavy baskets on their shoulders making their walk a struggle.

Varg caught Claw’s arm. “Let me try this time.”

Toru knew something about the way Varg could look so hard into someone’ eyes that he could read what was in there. He had seen it at work, and then when Varg had looked at him and smiled, his pupils had shrunk and Toru could breathe again, although he hadn’t realized that he wasn’t breathing anymore.

Claw didn’t protest and even made a courteous gesture for Varg to do as he wished. Varg walked over to an old woman who was so bent at the waist by the burden on her shoulders that her eyes were fixed on the ground she walked on.

“Can you tell us where we should ask for work?”

The woman stopped and looked upward at Varg. She remained like that for a while. “You cannot ask for work here. You are either born into it, given to it, or you’re just a stranger.”

“What do you mean by that?” Varg insisted.

“We don’t take strangers. This is our clan,” the woman said. “The Dregs of Scercendusa.”

Toru understood less and less. He looked at Claw to see if his confusion was shared by his other traveling companion, and he could tell the bearshifter was as troubled as he was. So it wasn’t only the place that was called that, but a clan? What did it mean, born into it, or given to it?

“How does one become one of your clan?” Varg asked.

“What don’t you understand? You were not born here. Did they give you to The Dregs? They didn’t,” the woman continued, prey to increasing agitation. “You don’t belong here.”

She walked past them, mumbling something. It seemed that not even Varg’s gift to get the truth out of anyone was enough to convince the people there that they wanted to work just like them. Not that Toru really wanted that, but it was the only way to find the tunnel to the city, and he didn’t want to miss his chance to get reunited with Duril as soon as possible.

That meant that it was his turn to try and get what they needed. With confidence, he went to the next person climbing out of the pit. “You,” he said loudly, “who’s in charge here? Who’s the head of your clan?” They needed to speak to someone who knew and could tell them more than just a few words that didn’t make any sense.

“People of Whitekeep,” someone called to them, and then Toru noticed Rosalind hurrying toward them. “And The Quiet Woods,” she added, looking at Claw, and grinning broadly.

“Rosalind,” Toru acknowledged her right away. “We want to work here, and everyone says we cannot.”

Neither Varg, nor Claw, stopped him from taking the lead, so he could just assume that it was all right for him to do so.

Rosalind put down her heavy basket, placed her hands on her hips, and then began laughing. “Work here? Has the rest of the world ended, and there’s no other place you’d rather be? Why would you want such a thing?”

“Because--” Toru stopped and bit his tongue. He was about to tell the truth about their reasons, and now he didn’t know how to continue what he was saying.

Varg hurried to the rescue. “We weren’t allowed into Scercendusa yet. So, until our services are needed there, we thought about spending our time putting ourselves to work instead of waiting.”

Rosalind looked at them with curiosity. “There was another one with you. That man with the pretty eyes.”

Toru puffed out his chest. “Duril,” he said. “He’s mine.”

Rosalind chuckled at that. “I could tell by how you only looked at him all the time. Where is he now? He must have gone inside,” she concluded for herself.

Rosalind was pretty quick-witted for someone her age, Toru thought with admiration. “Yes, he’s already there. But they didn’t need us, too, and now we’re separated.”

“I wish I could help you, but you don’t just walk into The Dregs and start working. That’s not how it’s done. There are only two kinds of people that work here. The ones born into it, and the ones given by the city.”

“We heard that from an old lady,” Toru said, eager to hear proper explanations. “But what does that mean?”

Rosalind nodded patiently. It looked like she really liked to chat about the place, and Toru hoped that her father wouldn’t appear to stop her again. “The Dregs are a clan,” she began. “Everyone who is born here is bound to the place. That’s what The Dregs do. But if it all depended on how many children we could have, the city would have a real problem on its hands and quickly.”

“There wouldn’t be enough hands, right?” Varg interjected.

She confirmed with a short nod and adjusted a dirty strap on her hand. “Yes, that’s it. So, the city must make sure that there are enough hands. So, anyone who commits a crime in Scercendusa, and their crime is not bad enough to warrant execution, is sent down here to work.”

Toru was surprised to hear such a thing. “Everyone’s a criminal, here?”

Rosalind laughed. “No, Toru of Whitekeep.” He was grateful to Varg for including him as one of them. “No one’s really a criminal, if you’re asking me.”

“But you just said--” Toru began, confused by her words.

“In Scercendusa,” she explained, “if you’re a murderer, a thief, a kidnapper, a forger, or you do anything that warrants a stay in prison, you either become short of a head or you rot in the dungeons there. But if you do any of the little things, the pinched coin here or there, talking things you shouldn’t talk, or commit an act that’s not pleasing to the ears of the people in power, that’s when you get sent to The Dregs.”

“But it’s not like anyone cannot just walk away from here,” Toru pointed out. They had walked in and out of there without anyone asking them the slightest thing about their whereabouts.

“You can,” Rosalind said and pushed one finger against his chest. “But we cannot breathe out there.” She made a vague gesture that stood for what she meant as the rest of the world outside The Dregs. “We were made to live and die here.” It was just a simple statement of fact, not bitter, nor inconsolable.

“But what about those sent here from Scercendusa?” Varg questioned. “They’re not of your kind.”

“No, they’re not. But they’re first sent to take care of the waste, and either their noses and chests get used to the air here, or they perish.” That was also said in an even voice, as if Rosalind didn’t feel anything about the lives of those that ended there. “If they grow into it, they become as the rest of us.”

“How are they sent to take care of the waste? Do they go through those large gates?”

“No one goes out of the city through those gates without having their papers in order and the permission of the powers that be,” Rosalind explained.

It looked like getting inside the city was hard enough, but people weren’t even allowed to leave as they pleased? That was something that Toru didn’t like the sound of at all. Now, it seemed like Duril was as good as trapped inside that horrible place. Did they really need to talk to the domestikos? He regretted more and more that he hadn’t chosen to take the path to The Scarlet Peaks. Fighting beasts along the way and struggling against the cold seemed a lot easier to handle than going against the white fortress in the distance. He clenched his fists. “Why do you accept living like this?”

That appeared to take Rosalind by surprise. She licked her chapped lips and remained silent. “It doesn’t matter whether we accept it or not,” she said. “The only choice is between life and death. I walk over there,” she said and pointed toward the edge of The Dregs, toward the open plains and forests from which Toru and his friends had come, “and my chest won’t take it. I’d be on the ground, writhing and dying, within the blink of an eye.”

They didn’t say anything, even after Rosalind stopped speaking. Toru felt guilty about even asking her that question.

“So, you see,” she eventually said, “it’s no use wondering how it would be to walk freely on the other side.” Like before, she kept her back to Scercendusa, while her eyes moved to the vastness of the rest of the world.

“Are there many people thrown here from Scercendusa?” Varg inquired.

“It depends on what counts as many for you,” Rosalind replied, tearing her eyes away from the freedom lying beyond The Dregs and looking at them again. “Thousands go through every day. Not everyone survives a day hauling waste. Not many,” she added quietly. “Just don’t ask me what many means for me.”

They didn’t. Toru hated the helplessness and dread growing inside him. He didn’t know these people. He didn’t know those that were sent to haul waste, or what they did to deserve such a fate. But he knew that they deserved better than that. “What an ugly, hateful place,” he said through his teeth. At Rosalind’s baffled look, he added, “I’m talking about Scercendusa, not The Dregs.”

She smiled at him. “Do you people want to get inside the city still?”

“We do,” Varg said. “Is there anything you could tell us that will help us? Is there some way to get inside?”

They could trust Rosalind. If Varg thought so, and he had the power to look inside people’s souls through their eyes, it had to be the truth.

Rosalind shook her head. “Not that I know of. Many, many years ago, before I wasn’t even a spark in my father’s eye, and he wasn’t in his father’s either, not for a lot of generations, some people tried. Their bones are deep inside this earth,” she said, and now, a note of bitterness snuck into her voice.

It couldn’t be true. Toru didn’t want to think that would be the answer, because it would mean that he wouldn’t be able to see Duril again, not for a long time, and also that they were stuck there, and that couldn’t be the answer, either.

He moved toward the fortress in the distance, his feet not even listening to anything he wanted to tell them. No, he didn’t want to tell them to stop. The domestikos of Scercendusa had to tell him the truth about another tiger who had saved the world once if he knew about it. He would have to let Toru come inside his palace, and he would have to let him talk to him, and then, he would let him and Duril leave that place.

“Toru, what are you doing?” Varg asked, but Toru heard his voice as something coming from far away.

Once more, the scent that had left him alone for a while now, tickled his nostrils. Toru could sense only it and nothing more. His ears caught faint shouts of surprise as he leapt through the air, and touched the ground, first with his front paws, then with the hind ones. He leapt, and then leapt again.

TBC

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