Killing On Command

"I've told you, Elana. I'm sorry, but you're going to have to pay for three." Grogg - the inn keeper at the Cheshire Inn - told the delicate young woman. She looked extremely worn out, but her scruffy brown hair had still managed to fall in perfect curls over her shoulders as she held her two newborn daughters in her arms. Elana was desperate. Her husband, who had been a soldier from a very early age, had to leave her behind to go to war, and she was left pregnant with twins. She was basically homeless and had no money. Grogg was her last hope, and all she could do was try. 

She looked into the short, fat man standing behind the bar. He was slightly balding and had a slight twinkle in his eye. He was well known for this as it often showed the most when he sure he would make money. Elana's eyes were weak and grey from disappointment and malnourishment and somehow, she could tell that she wasn't going to make it through the night. She had to stay awake, for the girls.

"Please, Grogg. I'm begging you. I've only got enough for the two of them, I can't keep them out on the streets. Take them, please?" She pleaded, crystal tears falling from her soft grey eyes. "I think I'm dying. It may be the only way I can keep them alive..." She told him, looking down at the girls.

Grogg looked at them too. They looked so fragile in Elana's arms. He sighed. What use were they to him after all? It would only be another two mouths to feed. His eyes averted to Elana's pretty face. She had married into his family when she was only eighteen, and now, he was her last hope.

"Fine. You'd better come through. I can't keep them here without you." He finally said, helping the woman around the bar and into what looked like a completely normal house. "You can have the back room." He said softly, leading her into a small bedroom. "But if they come for you-"

"I'll go quietly, I promise." She finished quickly in a wheezing voice. She nodded at him as he held out a hooked hand. She took it, and the the balding man helped her over to the bed, where he took the girls and lay them down next to each other in a cot at the end of it. He looked down at them and smiled.

"They're beautiful. I don't think I've ever seen twins look so different though," He told her. She smiled weakly. The girls did, indeed, look strangely different. One with a tuft blonde hair, and one with a full head of jet black hair. The blonde girl, the eldest, looked just like her mother, but her twin looked nothing alike. her skin was much paler and her features looked much different.

"They're my most precious. Look after them, Grogg. Promise me that." Her voice was desperate, and with each breath she took, the wheezing in her throat got worse. She was breathless, and stumbled at the start of a sentence. She was really dying. Grogg took a seat next to her. 

"I will. I promise you." He placed his normal right hand on her shoulder.

"It's a shame I'll never see them grow up." She sighed, looking sown at her bare feet. They were bloody and dirty, and her filthy beige dress was bloody too, and ripped just below the knee.  

"Promise me something, Child?" He asked sympathetically. 

"Yes?"

"Watch over them." He told her simply, looking into her eyes.

"Of course." She said, looking down into the cot and down at them. "Promise me something?"

"Anything." He replied, his hazel eyes widening a little. 

"Don't let them get my babies." She breathed. Her eyes began to close slowly, and she slumped down onto the bed and slept peacefully through the night. Little did Grogg know that she had passed away in the room with him that night, and the crying of one of the baby girls was not because of the noise of the Inn, but because their mother had slipped into an eternally dreamless sleep. The next morning, he knocked the door and waited for an answer, but none came. Elana lay dead in the same place he left her, and the twins were sound asleep.

It was a hard few weeks to start with; Grogg didn't know what he should do with the girls, but didn't want them to be in danger later on in life. He decided to tell anyone who asked that the girls were his daughters, and he would never have to tell them any different. He had hoped that things would seem normal, and because of his reputation, it was likely that they would. The girls grew older as he did, and he seemed to age none for the first eight years of their lives, but the grey in his beard began to show more and more as they grew older, and it was clear that he was getting too old to be drinking and working the bar each night, and so when the girls were old enough they began to help out.

At least he could say that he had done his best to try and keep them out of harms way. The fair haired girl grew up with lots of friends from the local school and the local church, but the raven haired girl was not so popular among the other local girls. Grogg grew worried for her when she turned twelve and was still sword fighting with the blacksmith's boy with sticks outside the tavern and wearing tattered clothes. She had torn holes in all of her clothes from grazing her knees on the cobbled streets outside, and was often covered in scratches and bruises from her adventures in the forest with the boy. Hoping she would grow out of the phase, he ignored it, and let her get on with what she wanted to do.

That could have been the worst mistake he had ever made.