Holding Onto Hope Read online

  Heffog was nothing like the fae lands. Everything there had been beautiful and sleek, in soft colors or brilliant crystal, clean and scented with flowers. The city was filthy. Instead of empty corridors, streets were filled with so many people that the cart barely had room to get through. The buildings near the docks were all jumbled together. Dingy houses and shops made of plaster and exposed beams stood wall to wall with leaning shanties with roofs scraped together from tarps and pieces of stone and pottery.

  Not only that, it smelled of seawater, both old and new fish, and a great number of things he did not want to know about. The resulting mix was unique.

  They arrived at the inn after what seemed to be an interminable journey. Now freed from seasickness, Ben’s stomach grumbled loudly—something that didn’t relate well to the particular set of smells he encountered.

  The driver helped them haul their trunks into the inn, where the proprietor informed them that there was only one room left with one bed. Kural haggled a lower price with remarkable skill, clearly unimpressed and still slightly and unsettlingly blue-skinned, and their trunks were brought up.

  Inside the inn, things smelled marginally better, the worst offenders being stale beer and the odor of fish that seemed to permeate everywhere in this godforsaken town. At a glance, Ben saw humans and dwarves in abundance but no orcs or fae. Or elves, come to think of it.

  “Keep your head down,” the wizard advised him in low tones.

  “What? Someone will shank me if I look around?” He was more intrigued than anything else.

  “No,” the man said, his tone one of long-suffering. “They’ll try to sell you things.”

  “That’s easy enough to manage. I don’t have any money.”

  “You’d think it would be so simple, wouldn’t you?” Kural asked in dire tones.

  Ben looked at Zaara, who only shrugged. She didn’t appear to be willing to interrupt her eating with conversation. Spiced beans and greens had been served with a platter of flatbreads instead of utensils, and she had wasted no time in using the flatbreads to make little packets of stew, which she popped cheerfully in her mouth.

  Initially dubious of the whole concept, he came around quickly when he realized the stew was hearty and savory, set off nicely by both the mild taste of the flatbread and the slight cut of the beer. He felt like he hadn’t eaten in days—which, given the amount of food that had successfully stayed in his stomach during the journey, was probably true.

  They ceded their table to one of the clusters of merchants who stood around drinking and headed upstairs to the room. It was small, with a bed that could only possibly fit one of them. He suspected it had been made with a dwarf in mind.

  “Zaara gets the bed,” Kural said. “She’s the shortest. Ben, help me spread the bedrolls.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a bath,” she said longingly.

  “There are public baths. Well, there were the last time I was here.” The wizard scratched his chin. “That was over a century ago, though, so I couldn’t tell you. This also used to be the heart of the fish market. Things change.” He yawned widely. “Either way, it’s time to get some rest.”

  Ben also wanted a shower, but the bedroll seemed to call his name fairly loudly. It couldn’t hurt to rest for a few minutes, he decided. He’d resolve the shower or bath situation after that.

  He woke well over twelve hours later. When he opened his eyes, it was to faint sunlight creeping in behind the shutters. After a moment, he realized that what he had thought was a chainsaw battle outside was, in fact, Zaara and Kural competing to see who could snore the loudest.

  As far as he was concerned, both were winning. The loser was anyone in a hundred-yard radius.

  With a scowl, he remained where he was and wiggled his fingers and feet until they woke up. He was hungry but still too tired and bruised to want to move.

  After a brief breakfast—people in Heffog apparently did not believe in that particular meal—Zaara and Kural headed off to find a conveyance to Insea and left him with strict instructions to not get into trouble.

  Ben had heard that often in his life, and he wasn’t about to start listening now.

  He pushed into the crush of the streets. The city was as crowded as it had been the day before, and he was startled to see what looked like obscenely rich people mingling with the poor and the merchants. Fishmongers called prices to people in gold brocade, who answered as often as those in burlap.

  A surprising number of children were present—many stood beside their parents at market stalls, some babies slept in slings on people’s backs or were carried on their shoulders, and still more darted underfoot.

  What surprised him most was how much he was enjoying himself. Ben had always been someone who enjoyed remote, quiet places. He enjoyed beautiful views and silent mornings, but something about the impersonal crush made him feel almost as free there as he had ever been in the mountains. Everywhere he looked, he caught another flash of color, a smile, a laugh, a new smell, or a beautiful piece of art.

  He shoved his hands into his pockets and forged through the crowd. In all honesty, he wasn’t sure where he was going—only that it gradually sloped uphill and away from the piers. Little stalls or blankets on the ground slowly gave way to storefronts with painted wooden signs, and the people began to thin. The streets were only marginally less dirty, but from the painted touches on the buildings to the general level of clothing, he could tell that he was in a classier area.

  In addition, he drew a fair number of dirty looks too, which he conceded he deserved, all things considered. He was a strange man crusted in salt who didn’t quite walk correctly.

  A child brushed past him and raced away with a quick call of, “Sorry!” over his shoulder.

  Ben hardly had time to process that before a woman pounced. She had been leaning in a shop door, so quiet and unassuming that he hadn’t noticed her, but she lunged out of the aperture with surprising speed and grasped a handful of the child’s shirt. The young one yelped and scrabbled at her hand.

  “Give the man his purse,” she instructed. She hauled the child to where he stood with his mouth open.

  “I don’t think he—” He patted his pockets, then gaped again. The woman was completely correct. What little money he had was gone. “Huh.”

  “I didn’t take it,” the child protested. He glared at the woman. “Check my pockets.”

  “I could,” she said and sounded bored. Her skin held a faintly purplish hue, although she didn’t look entirely like an elf, and her hair was night-black. She leaned closer to the child and smiled to reveal a large number of teeth. “Or I could do this until you give him the purse.” Her other hand snaked out and twisted his ear.

  “Stop it!” Ben protested as the child yelped and tried to free himself.

  “It’s fine,” she said cheerfully. She hung on as her captive sank to his knees. “It won’t harm him.”

  “But you’re hurting him,” he said, not sure what else to say.

  “Mm-hmm…that’s the point.” She tilted her head to the side and must have increased the pressure in her hands because the child shrieked and threw the purse into the air. She caught it with a grim smile, handed it to Ben, and released the culprit. “I don’t want to see you pickpocketing my customers again,” she told him.

  The boy ran off, holding his ear.

  “Do you honestly think that will stop him from stealing?” he asked skeptically.

  “Who said anything about him not stealing?” the woman asked quizzically. “I told him I didn’t want to see him doing it.”

  He opened his mouth but closed it with a snap.

  Her mouth twitched. “You’re a strange one. Where are you from?”

  “Colorado,” he said wryly. “It’s very far away.”

  “It must be.” Her eyebrows quirked. “Journey well, stranger.”

  “Why…” He looked around quickly and realized there weren’t many people there. “Why did you help me
?”

  She looked uneasy at that—enough so that he was intrigued. After a slight hesitation, she raised one shoulder in a studied gesture of indifference and said carelessly, “You looked helpless. I couldn’t simply let him prey on the weak.” As if to assure him that she wasn’t soft, she added, “Not to mention that his form was terrible and he needed a lesson.”

  Ben didn’t know what to say to that, but he began to have a hunch about who she was. Before he stopped to consider that this might be a terrible question, he took a hasty breath and asked, “So…do you run this part of town?”

  Thankfully, she threw her head back and laughed. It was genuine and full of warmth that surprised him given the black hair, cool skin, and acerbic advice.

  “Do you think I run a protection racket?” she asked when she stopped chuckling. “Take fees from all the shops, swagger in and make nice-sounding threats? Dump a few bodies in the bay when I get screwed over?”

  The ease with which she spoke of it was chilling, but there was no mistaking her derision for that way of life and he wanted to know more. “Okay, I was clearly wrong.” He folded his arms and smiled at her. “Enlighten me.”

  “Look at you, asking for a king’s ransom worth of information so casually.” She smiled, leaned in the doorway, and mirrored his folded arms. “Genuine curiosity, though, unless I miss my guess. I have no interest in threatening my neighbors or having little territorial spats with gangs. It’s hardly conducive to a pleasant existence, for one thing. It’s also tiring.”

  “Does this mean you once tried to be a crime boss?”

  “Again with the questions.” She seemed to be enjoying herself. “Theft is the fuel that powers this city, traveler. It is a shadow on every transaction at the market, on every good that crosses your palm, and every coin you spend. In the end, it unbalances the world…and I re-balance it.”

  “Eh?”

  “I mean,” she said, amused, “that gold is wrung out of the bodies of the poor while their sweat and blood trickles through the strata and the shadows and lies…and I take back what was stolen.”

  “Robin Hood,” Ben said, understanding at last.

  “Hmm?”

  “Steal from the rich, give to the poor?”

  “Ah. Close enough.” She shrugged.

  “Doesn’t that seem somewhat roundabout?” he asked quizzically. “Shouldn’t you change the whole system?”

  She stared at him. “Sure. I think I have a few spare minutes before my dinner—or do you think we should set aside a whole evening?”

  “Point taken,” he said and grinned. “So…is this attacking caravans in the night with a whole group of mercenaries, or pickpocketing merchants who wander past you, or what?”

  “Always with the questions. Do you ever stop asking them?”

  “Speaking from experience,” Kural said, “no.”

  Ben jerked around to focus on his two companions. “Where did you two come from?”

  “From a caravan leader’s shop,” Zaara said. “How did you wind up making the acquaintance of the best thief in three cities?”

  The woman scoffed. “Three? Make it the world.”

  Zaara rolled her eyes.

  “Picking pockets, then?” Ben asked.

  “Sometimes. For fun.” She shrugged. “But I usually go after larger prizes. It means more time and effort and a great deal more gain.”

  “Elantria helped Kural when he was first defeated by Sephith,” Zaara explained. “She found him the artifacts that helped him recover some portion of his powers as well as transform and be able to venture safely toward East Newbrook again.”

  “Ancient history,” the wizard said shortly as Elantria said, “Less details, if you please.”

  “You know,” Prima commented in his head, “you’re doing fairly well on gross motor control. Perhaps it’s time to switch your focus to fine motor skills.”

  His eyebrows raised in surprise. Was she suggesting what he thought she was?

  Hmm.

  Before he could stop himself by thinking too hard about it, he blurted the question. “Would you have any interest in taking on an apprentice?”

  His friends both gaped. The woman stared at him for a moment. Her eyes scanned him intently, a deep enough scrutiny that he blushed.

  “Why?” she asked finally.

  “I like learning things,” Ben said promptly and Zaara put her face in one hand.

  “Done,” the other woman said.

  Zaara’s head jerked up. “Wait, really?”

  “Really.” Elantria smiled at him. “A strange man from what sounds like a strange homeland—and he has a pair of stones on him to boot. I like that.”

  Chapter Five

  Ben woke early the next morning to see his two companions off with their caravan. It turned out that trade caravans between Heffog and Insea were accustomed to taking passengers as extra funding for the trip, so the two of them had been able to secure places without much trouble.

  They had intended to take another ship to Insea, but after the storm, neither of them wanted to go back on the open water.

  Zaara yawned and clutched a wooden mug of tea as she embraced Ben with one arm. “This is your last chance,” she said through her yawns. “Are you sure you don’t want to come with us? They’ll grumble but that’s simply out of principle. They’d be happy to have you.”

  “She’s right, you know.” Kural nodded at him. “Conservatively, about forty percent of a leader’s time is spent doing performative grumbling.”

  He smiled at the two of them. Only a couple of weeks before, he had loathed the man, but it turned out the wizard was merely an acquired taste. Zaara, meanwhile, was someone he could make neither head nor tail of. Just when he thought he had a grasp on who she was, she showed another side.

  For one thing, he didn’t think she was entirely convinced that she wanted to spend a centuries-long life alone. He would have said something but he suspected that wouldn’t be taken well.

  Now, he shook his head firmly. “I want to stay here,” he said. It was something he had repeated several times over the past sixteen hours or so, mostly because they constantly repeated the question.

  “And learn to be a master thief?” Zaara asked skeptically.

  “You don’t have to be obvious about your lack of faith, you know.”

  “First, I can’t use facts and now, I’m not supposed to be honest? What conversational gambits do I have left?”

  “You know very well I wasn’t talking to you,” he mumbled so the others wouldn’t hear.

  “It seems like such a big change,” Zaara said, having sleepily missed his argument with Prima. “We met two weeks ago and you weren’t willing to even consider violence because it so compromised your ethics. Now, you’re heaving caution to the winds and training for a life of crime? It honestly seems like too much of a stretch.”

  He had to admit she had a point and gnawed at his lip while he considered his choice. His decision had been impulsive, based on Prima’s mention of fine motor control. On that front, he was honest with himself. But he couldn’t tell Zaara that, obviously, and he was also able to admit to himself that he stayed for reasons he didn’t entirely understand.

  “I’m staying to learn how to do these things,” he said. “I don’t necessarily intend to use them.”

  “You could cut yourself on that knife-edge,” she said cheerfully. “So handle it carefully.”

  Ben was still laughing as the caravan set out. His friends would return to Insea to update their mysterious leaders on their equally mysterious and vital peace missions. No matter how many drinks he bought them, they still hadn’t told him exactly what the problem was.

  Which didn’t matter, he decided. They both seemed to be doing the best they could for the world, and for all he knew, their seemingly opposed natures—Zaara the young idealist and Kural the world-weary pragmatist—would help them achieve more together than they ever could apart.

  When the caravan moved out
of sight and he refocused, it occurred to him that he was completely alone in a strange city without much money or a place to stay.

  And he also didn’t know how to get in touch with Elantria. He’d wandered aimlessly the day before and wasn’t sure where he’d been. What if he couldn’t find her again—or if she had been joking about training him as an apprentice?

  “I’ve made a huge mistake,” he said to Prima.

  “You’ll have to be more specific.”

  He glowered at the sky. “I should have gone with Zaara and Kural.”

  “So why aren’t you running after the caravan right now?”

  “I…okay, that’s a good question.”

  “I thought so.” She paused and he simply waited. “Do you intend to answer it?” she demanded.

  “I thought it was rhetorical.”

  “No, I wanted the answer. It has been a rough few days when it comes to communication with people, I’ll tell you that. The way you use language is…”

  “More an art than a science,” he suggested smartly.

  “I wanted to say ‘completely fucking bonkers,’ but sure, put a good spin on it if you want.”

  Ben was still snickering when a woman behind him asked, “Who are you talking to?”

  He leapt in alarm and stifled a shout. When he turned, Elantria studied him with her eyes narrowed. If she hadn’t already been regretting her choice to help him, he was fairly certain she did now.

  Carefully, he weighed his options, considered what he knew of the world, and said finally, “I’m possessed by a demon.”

  “What the fuck did you call me?”

  The woman stared at him before she walked up to him, pried one of his eyelids up, and examined it. She opened his jaws forcibly, pulled his tongue forward, and made a thorough inventory of his teeth. A few more tests followed, each seemingly meaningless from his perspective.