The Obligator's Daughter

Of Voices and Magic

'So, what happened to you?' grunted the man.

She might well ask him the same question, Bem thought. They were in the man's lodgings, dark and pungent, in a tenement a row back from the circle. His living room had few domestic trappings, save the sink and stove, and seemed to be more a repository for jars and vials than a place to live. Row after row of wooden shelves festooned every wall at various heights, holding a vast array of different coloured and shaped glass vessels. Oil lamps hanging from the roof cast the room into relief. Bem felt her throat tighten. Who was this man?

'I...ahhh...' there seemed little point in lying to the stranger, 'ran afoul of my father's temper.'

'Now that,' the man reached up to a shelf, and ran his finger along the jars, making them click and jingle against each other, 'is the work of a coward.' He extracted a small, squat jar, pale blue and corked, and tossed it to her. Bem caught it with both hands.

'Rub that wherever it hurts. It's not magic, but it will help.'

Bem felt a tingle in her scalp at the mention of magic. She opened the jar, and an acrid waft snaked into her nose, like pine needles mixed with the lye she used to clean the privy. The jar held a thick brown paste. Bem winced as she smeared some on her cheek, her eyes stinging, she would deal with her other hurts later.

'Thank you...I don't even know your name.'

The man leaned against a wide wooden desk and hovered in front of a wooden chair. 'I am Roonix Flandaver'. He positioned himself over the chair and leaned back. With a practiced chop of his leg brace behind the knee, he collapsed, clanking into the chair, breathing gustily. He leaned his crutch against the desk.

'And you,' he beheld her with both his unblinking good eye, and his weeping bad eye, 'are Bemilly Pulver, daughter of the obligator Thurander Pulver.'

Bem's skin raised into tiny bumps. 'I'm sorry, I don't believe we've...'

'We haven't,' Roonix barked, 'but I have means of knowing certain things.' His good eye wandered to the desk. His bad eye just wandered.

Bem noticed a peculiar-looking apparatus on the desk. It was constructed from hollow black bull's horns and wide-mouthed rosy seashells, twisted into an arcane sculpture, bound together with copper wire, supported by brass struts. A jumble of metal protrusions; levers and switches, bristled among its chambers. It looked confused in its design, yet somehow, there seemed a purpose to it. The whole affair was polished to such a high gloss it looked wet in the flickering light of the room.

'I did not want us to be seen together, but now, we have been. So, since we are implicated, we may as well be straight with one another.' Roonix rubbed his face, stretching and pulling at the skin around his eyes. 'Yesterday, the Compellors took you and another man. You were questioned about events that occurred in the forest.'

'They took us...yes.' How did he know that?

'They released you after you had told them everything that occurred.'

'I don't remember.'

'That wasn't a question. Have you seen this man since?'

'No.'

'Is he what brought you back to the Shank?'

'No, well, maybe...I don't know. I was walking and I just found myself there.'

'It was foolish to seek him there. The compellors are fond of asking questions; they are not so well-disposed towards answering them.'

Bem jiggled her knee. 'I don't need reminding of that, but where else could I look? You seem to know a great deal about things that don't concern you and ask plenty of questions, so tell me, what would you have done?'