Crooked Empires: Blood and Crystal

Blood and Crystal: Part 9

Hard sand-dusted earth scuffed Song's cheek as she tumbled to the ground. She spat and cursed as she rolled over, but even as she projected vitriol to the two guardsman who cast her so recklessly into the roadway, they simply smiled and retreated behind a barred door.

'Try not to get yourself killed until you've paid what you owe.' One of them winked, a sly smile spreading across his sun-reddened face. 'They say the debtors' hell is one of the worst.'

'Oh piss off with your superstitions,' Song sneered, but as she attempted to regain her footing, she staggered and slumped against the wall. The sun-blotched guard seemed to find that particularly funny and spluttered out a phlegmy laugh at her expense.

She sneered again, used the wall to stand upright, cursing this time about her own weakness. It didn't matter that she had barely escaped a beheading, that she had been trapped in a cell for the past few days or, that she had eaten nothing and only drank what little water they had sloshed into an oily trough in her cell. She derided herself, and wanted nothing more than to pierce the sun burnt guard with her dagger. Of course her dagger had been stolen by that damned executioner as compensation for letting her keep her head.

'Good luck, anyway,' the red-faced guard smirked, pausing only briefly before retreating into the shadow of the indoors. 'It's folks like you who keep us fed and watered.'

She spat after him but her arid mouth wouldn't relinquish a single drop. She settled instead for another common-tongued curse. She had hoped to goad him back and grab a fist of his shirt through the bars, to enact revenge on him for what the imperials had done to her, but as his footsteps faded into the dark so too did her ire wain.

She turned to the street, cradling her arm as the pain in her wrist made itself fresh. After her stint in the cell, she had been taken to a forge before release. A searing iron band had been fastened around her wrist, signifying to all that her freedom was forfeit. She had managed to ignore the pain as she had fought with the wrangling guards, but now that she was alone in the street with the slowly meandering lay folk, the pain came back two-fold.

Wincing prematurely, she risked a glance at the damage. The iron was tight on swollen flesh, rimmed with seeping blisters. It made her ill to even look at it. She wondered if she might be able to remove it once the swelling relaxed. As finger teased the iron band, she balked at the lance of pain and reconsidered. From what she could see, even when recovered, she wouldn't be able to remove it without breaking a few bones in her hand. Still, that was a small price to pay for her freedom. She certainly wouldn't be getting out of the walled city with it still affixed to her arm, every guard knew what it meant.

She set off gingerly down the road. Less concerned with how she would accrue fifty thousand gold pieces, than how she might escape her fate entirely. Even then, the more pressing matter was how she might survive the night, buy food, or find clean water.

Feeling vulnerable, and not wanting to attract any attention from the locals passing down the dusty thoroughfare, she kept her eyes low. Occasionally, however, the sensation that she was being followed or watched would draw her gaze up and when she did catch the eyes of another, it was they who looked away first. It seemed even the civilians recognised the iron band of a convicted criminal and wanted less to do with her than she did with them.

As she reached a crossroads, she picked another direction at random. She hadn't a clue of where she might go other than the markets, and she didn't feel much like stealing right now. Sooner or later, it would have to be her last resort. For now, the thought of getting captured again and losing her head was enough to put her off.

She rounded the corner, passing a florist decked with the imperial's favourite blossoms. Most on the outside display were browning or dead; very few of them native to the southern continent and about as used to the intense heat as Song was herself. Even though she had only moments before decided to postpone her larcenous ways, she reconsidered upon spotting a plump succulent amongst the dried fronds of northern plants. It was well known all such flora were rich and packed with what she most craved in that moment: water. She could almost hear her dry lips creaking, made all the drier by the prospect of the moisture inside the thick body of the plant.