Plight of an Empire

Chapter Eighteen- part 2: Runa

The days were cold and the nights colder, but the blanket Runa had carried with her kept her warm in the chill of the Rat’s Nest, the slums of Elis Rock—home to the rats of the animal nature and to the street rats that roamed the streets.  They all sought refuge in the stone pits of the city.  The walls kept the winds at bay, which was enough.  Northern winds blew from the Medeas, freezing the south of the mountain range for miles.  With Elis Rock in the shadows of the mountains, the winds tore at the city.  Still, the slums were a better place to be than anywhere else in the city for Runa.

Once word had spread about Lady Maelys’s murder, a manhunt for the killer began and all the lips of Elis Rock were speaking Runa’s name.  “Matricide,” they spurned.  “It was the daughter! She disappeared the night of the lady’s murder.”  She closed her ears off to the talks of them.

Eight nights had passed since she fled from her home in the dead of night.  Eight nights of clawing and pawing to find her own place in the slums, fighting with the rats for a bite to eat.  No man or woman gave her a passing glance as she wandered the streets.  Her once fair hair was now matted with frozen mud and sweat, turned brown by her dirt bed.  No one suspected her—just another street rat.  She thought about taking her knife and shearing it off, but it helped keep her warm.

After eight days of searching to no avail, many of the guardsmen had just given up, suspecting that she fled town.  She was not safe—she would never be safe—but for a moment, she felt relieved.

The grumbling of her belly reminded her of her famished body, still beaten and bruised.  She could thank her mother for one thing: the bruises that swelled her face provided a remarkable mask.  With her swollen face and matted hair, she could easily pass for a boy.  She would rather be perceived as a homeless boy than a homeless girl.  She had seen what happened to the girls who wandered the Rat’s Nest after nightfall.

A huge rat crawled across the alley in front of her.  With a flick of her wrist, she threw her knife at the creature striking it square in the head.  It fell to the side, dead.  She picked it up by its tail and wrapped it around the loop of her belt.  The second fat rat she had killed that day.  The butcher she visited daily, a man called Redface, would certainly give her something good for these fine specimens.  Rats were plentiful in the Rat’s Nest, but the butchers will only take the fat, healthy looking ones.  It gave Runa good practice with her knife.  Necessity had improved her aim.

She approached Redface, a fat man with a scruffy beard as red as his face, with a proud grin on hers.  She unlooped the rats from her belt and handed one to Redface.  “One for some gruel and one for some bread,” she said, holding the second rat in her other hand.

“You know how to drive a bargain, boy,” he snorted.  He scooped up a ladle of gruel and poured it into Runa’s wooden bowl.  Steam from the hot soup, of one could call it that.  Bits of carrot and celery floated to the top, as well as some questionable looking foodstuffs.  But Runa did not complain.  It was warm and edible, which was more than what she had minutes prior.  He handed her a small loaf of black bread, stale but chewable.  It was the first real meal of the day, a sad thought as she watched the sky darken from the setting sun.

She thanked him and carried her food to her corner of the slums.  She had found it her second day in the Rat’s Nest.  Squeezing through a narrow alley, she came out at a comfortable hole.  Surrounded by four stone walls, only one entrance and exit, completely private and remote, it was like a dream for Runa.  She pushed hay into the opening to make a bed out of.  While she picked up more bugs with the straw than without, it was still better than sleeping on the ground.

She plopped onto her bed of straw and began sipping her soup.  She tried to not let it linger in her mouth lest she actually taste it, but it warmed her belly.  Once she had finished the gruel, she tore the bread, inspecting it for maggots or other critters.  The third day in the slums, she found a piece of bread and proceeded to bite into it only to be met with a mouthful of maggots.  She had retched all night that night.  A light from the window of the whorehouse behind her provided enough light for her to see any movement in the bread.  Seeing none, she bit into it.  It was dry and hard, but a wonderful taste all the same.