Lizzie of the North (Yrsoreth Chronicles 2)

44 ◦❀◦Imperial Inn

-ˋˏ ༻❁༺ ˎˊ-

Alec covered her head with the hood and led her out of the bar through the back door, with the three flanking to protect them.

"Curse it, Yetic!" A man in a drunken stupor emerged from a small office by the kitchen. He was small, but bulky and had a curly moustache as thick as his eyebrows. Alec's group waited for him to raise his head, whilst Lizzie was hidden behind Alec. "How many times have I told you those groups don't get along! Savage, I'd say. Those mariners and mercenaries, savages! If one group comes in, don't let the other one—you're not Yetic!"

"I'm not," was Alec's calm reply and removed his hood. "Hello, Bludis."

The man called Bludis blinked as if he sobered from the drunken state that his words had few to no slurs. "Why you—stop wrecking my bar, Alec."

"I'm not, we just arrived. I'll visit soon." They flinched from a loud 'bam' and another curse. He then pulled Lizzie out the door. The last they heard was Bludis asking for payment for something.

Out the bar's backdoor, she read as Short Barrel, Lizzie was greeted with the blue sky. They walked through the maze of alleys and over piled trash cans until finally, they reached the main street.

Lizzie took a breath of dust from the sunkissed pavement, the smell of tobacco and thick perfumes from the brothel ladies slowly coming out for the night.

"This is the Peduha Slums, isn't it?" She asked in a quiet voice, even the big arc ahead said that it is.

"It is." His tone and the face peeking from his hood were genuinely apologetic. "I'm sorry we ended up here. We'll leave right away."

But Lizzie didn't move an inch when she was led away.

"Li—"

"—It is the Peduha Slums!" Lizzie exclaimed and caught a few passing men's attention. With one glare from Ulbaim, they moved on with hasty steps.

Her companions were taken aback by the excitement on her face. When Gran Dacchia was still a kingdom, Peduha Slums was widely known to be the shadiest part of the capital.

When Lizzie was living in its streets, the new emperor has just established the empire and Peduha was still a slum and criminal's den. It was as if the whole area was covered with permanent dust, death and poverty hovered like a dim film that filtered the sun.

Children, too thin and sick to be sold as slaves littered everywhere, shops were closing, closed or in the middle of being robbed. Lizzie survived through sheer luck and getting out of everyone's sight.

But the Peduha Slums she was looking at now had a bright sky. No dying children littered the streets and a few Gran Dacchian knights were seen roaming the area.

The dilapidated homes and closed shops were replaced with drinking bars, brothels and gambling houses. It was as if life returned to the area, although still shady, it was livelier.

"It's beautiful!" Lizzie exclaimed, unknowingly having clutched the sleeve of Alec's robe.

"Is it?"

"It is." She pointed to a house, with gaudy paint of pink and a busty woman sending flying kisses to passersby. Two more women giggled by the window and coax people to come in. "It was a bakery back then, I used to steal bread from there. Oh—" She grinned at the house on the opposite side of the street. "—So, it's still there, the gambling house. Sometimes I'd beg alms from winners there. That's where I was caught and almost sold to a noble."