A Sword of Roses

Chapter 5

Cammys version of showing me the shop was handing me a duster and broom and instructing me to clean. Every time I tried to ask her a question she would point to an area I had missed.

Whilst I swept and dusted she would serve the customers. I tried to listen to what they were talking about but every time I lent forward to listen, their voices were just mumbling. After a few hours I had had enough.

"Cammy, I don't think Balon meant for me to be your cleaner." I lent the broom against a table and crossed my arms.

Cammy was standing behind the table counting the coins she had been given, she raised her head to look at me, her eyes casting a withering glare over me.

"What would you rather be doing?" She asked. "It isn't like you know what anything is and could actually help any of the customers."

She dangled the bag of coins at me.

"I bet you don't even know what these coins are, do you?" She taunted.

"No I don't." My blood began to boil, she was infuriating. "And I don't want to know, I want to find out how I am going to get back home!"

"Wolf is on the case." Cammy looked back to her coins, sorting them into two piles.

"Why can't we just go find a magician?" I whined.

"Madje." She rolled her eyes at me. "Do you want to get caught by the Grey Men and rot to death in a jail in Rumanti?

"Why would we be arrested?" I stepped towards the table she was working on, leaning on it.

"I told Wolf I wouldn't tell you." She lent back against the wall, she tucked her hair behind her ears and looked straight at me.

"But you think I should know?" I could see she was at odds with whatever Wolf had told her.

She nodded. "I think you should be prepared."

"Tell me then." The tone in my voice was desperate. "Please." I added pathetically.

She openly surveyed me for a moment.

"You travelled here by a portal." I nodded, well Wolf had dragged me through the portal, I hadn't travelled through it by any means. "No mortal being can survive travelling through a portal. Which means you are something else." Cammy reached under her table and pulled out a big maroon leather book. Covered in intricate whorls and flourishes.

She opened the book and leafed through the pages till she found a map. She spun it to show me.

"Wolf told you Rumanti and Paloman are at war?" Her hand rested on the book, I could see the river flowing through the page.

"He didn't tell me why though."

Cammy laughed. "Why does anyone go to war? Power."

"What does that have to do with me though?" I tried to keep the whine out of my voice.

"You're a mortal that survived travelling through a portal. You are either a threat or a power to wield." She pointed at the top of the map. "Rumanti's ruler is merciless, the atrocity she has committed in the name of war would make your toes curl."

"The crown princess?" I remembered what Wolf had told me in the forest.

"Yes, Esmeralda." Cammy's voice was full of disdain when she spoke the name.

She pointed to the kingdom of Rumanti and drew a circle around it with her finger.

"There is no light or joy in this kingdom, all it breeds is hate and darkness." The door to the shop opened, before I could blink the book had been snapped shut and was stowed under the table.