If only she knew the real story, Addie mused. She had assisted the woman much: saved her life, was now saving her child's. Surely if she told Nayari she was a magus, the woman wouldn't be that mad -

Don't be idiotic, her mageic nails reprimanded her. Maybe if you were a Seer, but you're not. Telling someone you're a Skiller with so many guards right near you . . . Master Harl would be furious if he knew you even had the audacity to think this.

Master Harl. The man she had begged to help hone her Skills. The man who would not let her be placated by the House of Ations like countless others after watching her strength grow exponentially in the course of less than a year. The man who would get her to the Pheeliax.

The man who sat on a trunk besides a small girl, eating dry flatbread and what had to be pork, as she approached. He grunted an acknowledgement when he saw the stalk resting on Addie's shoulder.

"No need to get up," she said sarcastically.

Nayari, the color in her cheeks somewhat settled, pulled her daughter into a rigid hug. Aeri squirmed free, eyeing nervously the arm with the lichen-patchwork drawn on it. Addie scouted the area for those two guards, and for Pedgram.

There was a hub of silent, unassuming people standing at the head of a wagon of sorts. If someone raised their voice, everybody else shushed them immediately. If someone tried to push into the line, they were pushed back also. You could cut the tension in the air with a fork.

The well's rim was a discontinuous parapet of black rock, hewn roughly in an agape ring. It stood in shambles, a borehole devoid of water. Non-coastal southern cities were in dismal need of premature summer showers. Some evacuees were leaning against the ruins of the vanquished thing, and Addie found herself worrying if they would accidentally fall in. Others were huddled around a guard astride his steed. When you couldn't afford an orrock, you had to stare at it and grit your teeth inappropriately - same with every commodity out of your budget, really. That was just the way of things.

The sun threw long shadows everywhere. There was no need for a fire, and if there had been, Addie doubted the guards would have let them have one. Smoke shows for miles, unless the pit is a deep-seated boul.

Instead of disgruntled guards, what her eyes and ears pivoted on was a greasy-haired minstrel standing by the dilapidated well, talking like the innate storyteller he was. His face was narrow and his eyes sharp, and he stood out amongst the others like an eagle in the midst of thrushes. She knew the man was a minstrel simply from his mannerisms, from the way he swayed with dialogue and buckled his shoulders in confidence. He was perhaps in his mid-forties, handsome as her knife. A small crowd was gathered before the well in a circle around the minstrel, listening enraptured.

Something tugged at her hand. Addie looked down at Aeri, her doe eyes filled with sadness and excite. "Can I go listen to the story-man?" the child asked.

Addie looked behind her. Nayari was fast asleep against a boulder shaped like a bull. Master Harl, teeth still grinding on the pork, had set down to make the ointment. A group of ten or twelve had already muddled around him to see what he was doing, chittering amongst themselves. Addie wondered what was so curious about an old man beating rect-honeysuckle leaves, poultice and tallow in a wooden mortar-pestle.

"Sure," she said to Aeri. "Stay by me, okay?"

"Okay." Her eyes twinkled as they walked closer to the well. Close enough to clearly hear the minstrel's booming voice, but not too close as to merge with the other listeners.

". . . Belraed storms into the Star Palace to face Sayle Niyardele, seated atop his gilded throne. 'O you smug swindler, you Niyardele,' Belraed speaks aloud, so that the gods can hear and justice do provide. 'You knew full well of our marriage and yet you dare fancy her. She is mine, and I am hers, and you are not to stand in between us.'

"Sayle laughs, at Belraed and at the gods. 'Aeomar isn't yours, son,' says he. 'She is, has always been, will evermore be mine. Cupar and Roteb, they are the yield of my soil. Every crater on them carries my blood.' Belraed's angry silence rings clamor in the courtroom. He carries his-self to the throne wordlessly. He unsheathes his sword and strikes true. Sayle falls, and so falls House Niyardele. The Holder proclaims this just. But one of the anointed gods corners a broken Belraed. Who, pray tell, can this be?"

"Joe Esper!" hummed the audience in scattered tones, as did Aeri, when the minstrel took a pause.

"Indeed," agreed the minstrel, obliged to elaborate. "Belraed, as is known by monk and bandit alike, is Ser Joe Esper's apprentice. Sworn to live a life of no violence. Sayle Niyardele's slaughter has had him break his word, and so Ser Esper thrusts his fist and a bar of light so pure, so white as never seen before nor after, irradiates Belraed. He does all he can, but the light seeps into him and becomes a part of his-self. Till date, Belraed stands on the horizon, shedding life as 'the usurped son,' or simply the 'sun.' "

Some of the listeners cheered. Addie smiled, watching Aeri clap cheerfully.

Belraed and Mooch Aeomar, the sun and the moon - a love story no child ever went without hearing tens of times, and then ten times more as an adult. But the minstrel had a manner of storytelling which kept the recital from seeming stale. He ran a hand through his hair, flourishing the other romantically at a chance to expand.

"Now, Belraed loves Aeomar still. He cares naught if she was deflowered by his fiend. He raises Cupar, violet and vile, as though he are his own kin. He raises Roteb, scarlet and seething, as though he, too, are his own kin. Tragedy has it that the sun heralds day, fair Aeomar as moon does night. Is aught amiss?"

"Aye!" roared the crowd in union, forgetting for a while they might likely never see their homes again.

"I ask you, little lady, is aught amiss?" Eyes turned to look at Aeri, at whom the minstrel was pointing. But Addie could swear the man's own black eyes were pasted on her.

"Aye!" chirped Aeri.

"I ask all of you, is aught amiss?" said the minstrel, branching his ear out like a mule deer.

"Aye!" Great was Addie's astonishment in finding herself involved. Strangely enough, she felt her heartrate ratchet down.

"Aye, aught amiss is when Roteb and Cupar, lovingly brought up by broken Belraed and woeful Aeomar, serve their duty in the sky at night - the sun and the white moon then can stay together, be it once every two maes or nil.

"That is what this next song is about."

With a brilliant sleight of hand, the minstrel made a flute - or maybe it was a clarinet, or some other woodwind instrument - appear in his hands. Aeri gasped, and the showman began to play The Sword Of Belraed.

Addie's stomach gave a lurch. It would not be patient any longer. "Aeri," said she, "stay right here. Don't move. Anyone tries to talk to you, go back to where the old man is. Aye?"

A grin split the girl's face. Her eyes never left the minstrel, his flute singing pleasantly. "Aye," muttered Aeri hypnotically.

Addie traced a hand over the jagged lines on her forehead, gentle as a lamb. They were nearly running down the side of her cheek now. She glanced at Master Harl, who was adding the tincture into the -pestle. The ointment would be prepared sooner than one could clap.

So she crept away. A portion of her brain grumbled at the fading music, but her belly was grumbling louder. Addie joined the hungry file leading up to the wagon. She stood between a tall, gangly boy and a tall, gangly man. There were about fifteen people ahead of her, so she prepared herself for a long wait. Here, the smell of food was both incredibly repelling and undeniably magnetic. Quality mattered not now; anything edible to pacify the gerbils in her stomach would do.

Her eyes wandered over to the minstrel, swinging on his feet like a petal in the breeze, partly visible through the ever-growing group of fourscore listeners forming a hive around him.

Eventually the gangly boy in front of Addie turned to her, leaned over, and whispered: "Name's Poe. Casteless."

Addie smiled and looked down at her sandals, the most appropriate response she could think of.

"Yours?"

"Oh. Addie. Casteless," she hastily added.

"Addie. By the stars? Thought so. Pretty name. Not as pretty as you, 'course."

She retained her smile.

"You look like my mum. I mean - not like that. She was a pretty woman, my mum."

She retained her smile.

"Feels like an adventure, don't it?" Poe pushed. He had an exceptionally beady pair of eyes.

"Adventure my ass," the man behind her said. He had a gruff voice for someone having so spindly a frame, and seemed to be holding back tears.

Thankfully, this remark made Poe look back ahead towards the wagon and not speak any more. He started fidgeting with his tunic and muttering quietly as their turn arrived. Soon, Addie could tell why. By then her stockings were sticking unpleasantly to her femur, and she became more and more aware that she stank like leftover lunch cruft.

"This is your second time here, you cunt!" the guard distributing the flatbread exploded. He was wearing a tabard and not an armor. That meant that he wasn't a soldier but of the Watch. Nevertheless, he looked like he'd chew on iron and spit out nails. Behind him in the wagon a grubby man Addie could somehow tell was a placated magus – they just had that look about them, like they were done with life but had been forbade to die – eating slop. "Want to steal from the King, do you, cunt?"

"N-no," the boy named Poe defended himself. "I promise, this is my first time, I promise!"

The guard glared. Diamond would break under that glare.

"He's lying," Addie said involuntarily, then immediately regretted it as both the glare and the boy's pleading, beady eyes turned to her. "He did have the food once already."

Dolt, her nails spoke. Why did you have to butt in?

"How do you know it, girl?" asked the guard.

"You can smell it on his breath."

The guard stooped his nose out of the wagon, hard face punctuated by a green-flamed lantern, holding the boy by the collar of his tattered tunic. "That settles it then. He's a numpty little cunt."

"Don't hurt him!" Addie said as the guard lifted his gloved fist. "He was just hungry."

Before the guard could reply, she pushed Poe aside roughly. "It's my turn, please."

While a stone-hard flatbread teeming with mold, a piece of shriveled, peppered pork and a water-bladder was thrust into her hands, Addie flicked her fingers down by her waist at Poe. Gathering the meaning of the gesture, he hastily collected himself and scrambled.

"Well, move on now!" snarled the guard. "There are others behind you. Good Vaven!"

"What about sauce, sir?"

The glare returned. Or perhaps it had never left. "What about it?"

"A gentleman I met earlier said - "

"Do I look like I piss gravy to you? Well?"

"No, sir."

"Then tell the gentleman to stick his cock up his arsehole."

"As you say, sir."

"Next!"

Addie trotted away, eyes scanning the place for Poe. Momentarily they fixed themselves on Aeri, momentarily longer on the minstrel, but then they started their search again. People were falling asleep left and right. It had been a long day.

At last she saw him scooching by a stringbark at the perimeter of the west-flanking woods, face cupped in his hands. She put the bladder in her cloak and started towards him.

"What do you want?" he said as she approached.

"A mattress, a farmhouse and a pet lion. But since that isn't happening, I'll settle for this pork right here. You want some?"

"I would have my own if you hadn't felt so strongly about the truth."

"Well, you don't exactly have the moral high ground to chastise me here, do you?" Addie stood there awkwardly, trying to make eye contact. "They have a very limited supply. And so many people are left. You've already had a go at it, maybe there'll be some left. I'm offering you mine, aren't I?"

Poe looked up, up at the lit sky. "You can either be just or kind. No one can be both."

"Are you hungry or not?"

"Not anymore."

"Good. I'm famished." She chomped down on the flatbread first. It nearly shattered her teeth, but that was immaterial. The gerbils had a banquet. "Can I sit?"

"As if I own the ground."

Addie took that for a yes, unwinding her back against a thirsty tree trunk. It felt good. Sitting felt good, and so did the anise aroma of sunlight on stringbark hanging around her.

"Sure you don't want some?"

It seemed to her that Poe was explicitly trying not to look at her. She didn't blame him. "I have self-respect, you know. Just 'cause you're from the pigsties, everyone thinks dishonor is inbred in you."

"Some honor, when you went asking for food twice."

An animal larked somewhere behind them. A robin twittered.

"I'm sorry, that was mean," Addie amended through a mouthful of bread.

"So you do know others have conceivable feelings."

"I'm from the slums, too."

"Bullshit."

"I really am!"

"Yeah, right. That's why you find this food so normal, inn't it?"

"What do you mean?"

"That - that bread. You eat it like you've had better meals. Like you have better meals." Poe dropped his gaze from the sky to his feet. "This was the best food I've had in my mouth. I just wanted some more. Some . . . you're not from the slums. You don't look like you're from around here at all. Have that look about you."

This gave Addie a start. She chewed on the pork now, which was like eatable rubber, wondering how this could be the best meal anyone had ever had.

Always, Adeline, hectored her swordhand mageic nail, there is somebody out there who has seen worse than you, and suffered worst.

Pity is a funny thing, spoke the other. And self-pity . . . let us not even go there. You've forgotten what it was like to live with no roof over your head, to beg and be kicked, to sleep amongst pigs and wake amongst harlots. You might be strong now, but you have grown weak.

"What look?" said she, surprising herself.

"Like you've swallowed a star," explained Poe. "Like you're royalty. Under all that dirt, you glow."

The boy's enamored by you, said both her mageic nails. Imagine if you hadn't caught his lie. He'd be running chores for you.

"I'm no royalty. I come from the slums, same as you."

He looked at her, finally, and he looked long and hard before speaking: "I believe you."

"Flattered."

"You're welcome."

They sat silent. Most paupers near them sat silent, except for a few noisy, contagious yawners. The minstrel's flute sang mellifluously, putting more and more off to sleep. In between the flute stopped, and his bass graced their ears instead. His crowd of listeners thinned and drowsed. They looked for shade from the sun, being sleepers of night and not day, but none went more than a couple spans into the woods of either side. Those that did took time for recreation, in bowers or fences. Nymph dryads were unwelcome to visit, and so were slinkhounds or devils of any other sort.

Addie struggled with her pork, and when the pepper singed her throat she had to wash it down with water. She saved a little, but not too much, for later. Guiltily enough, she was glad Poe had not taken her up on the sharing offer.

He was in slumber by the time she was done, the boy whose best meal had been that which even the gerbils in her stomach thought repulsive. Addie studied his features, hollow, blunt, unmemorable, for a moment before her feet carried her doggedly towards Aeri. The child did not look sleepy in the least, engrossed in the stories and music of the minstrel. She did not seem aware that she would never ride her father's shoulders again, or how close a brush she had had with a fatal disease.

Why is he doing this? thought Addie, eyeing the minstrel. His lips were moving, but Addie could not process the words. He's not getting paid. Then why?

Just because you stumble into the most egregious refuse of mankind a lot of the time, replied her mageic nails, does not mean the Holder has stopped hatching good eggs completely.

"I suppose," she said. "Come on, Aeri. They're going to send us walking again in . . . oh, I don't know. Soon. Have a sleep."

"One more song, please?"

"Okay. Okay." Now Addie saw the oily sheen on Aeri's infected forehead. So Master Harl had done his job; the lines broken at small angles were growing faint already. She looked for him, but where he had been sitting earlier there was now a yawning woman with a stirring bundle of blankets in her lap. Nayari was still dozing against the big boulder. "Aeri, do you know where - "

"The Qwhib Prophecies!" someone yelled, like they were choking on their own tongue. "Tell us about them!"

Addie searched, as did the minstrel and many others, for the speaker. He turned out to be a podgy middle-aged man with an untidy stubble and stunted legs. An acrylic beret was perched on the top of his head.

"Why, sir," said the minstrel, so low Addie could barely hear him, "those hardly make for good stories. I am a showman, not a blessed ner'ang. I am afraid I know no more on this subject than you or anyone present here."

"Tell us anyway," said the man. "I've heard rumors. That the Third Quenching is nigh at hand."

A chitter went up in the audience. Soon a fistful of people were demanding to hear what the minstrel knew of the matter, scant because they had heard things, more than a few because they were afraid.

"The Great Disaster building - "

"Why hasn't there been a monsoon this year, do you think - ?"

"Wrath of the Holder take us all - "

"No crop, our children - "

"The end of the world indeed - "

"Speak, minstrel! What do you know of the Cycle and the Prophecies - ?"

"I do not believe," boomed the minstrel, his voice scarcely raised a note but shearing through all others' effortlessly, "in any of that. I am an atheist by choice. I suggest concentrating on the more real threat we all face. The war. Because that, at least I can witness not from textbooks written by faerietale-lovers but from my own two eyes. I should hope that resolves it for you, kind sirs, madams."

The portly man spat so aggressively that his beret fell off, revealing a reflective bald head. Picking it up, he bounded off.

Some others did, too, as though they had been paying the minstrel and been let down by his services. Those that remained looked more than a little uncomfortable.

On impulse, Addie said: "Do you know the verses to 'Loras And The Cage'?"

"I do," said the minstrel, a most interesting sparkle in his eye. "I do indeed, madam."

"Go on then."

No sooner had the man set the tune with his flute - for now Addie saw for sure that it was a flute, black as crow, black as his onyx-eyes - did two guards march onto the scene. One of them waved his hauberk arms importantly, and the minstrel stopped at once.

"Did your father plant everything but sense into your mother when you were birthed?" the guard barked.

Pedgram. He had his helm on, but the voice was unmistakable.

The minstrel gave a mirthful nod. "I assure you, Gulzohar Gryphik planted all of me, including my brain, into my mother right when I was conceived, which was quite a while before I was actually birthed. You see, that's just how pregnancies work."

"Yap yap goes the fool's tongue," Pedgram growled. "We don' want the Ptirrens to know we are hid here. And you are blarin' out our location like a big fat trumpet!"

"I am not a fool. I am a minstrel trained by the Gorub Pahnk and I will be addressed like so." There was a firmness to his voice, like to a cambric mat, that every listener felt. Those who had left earlier on grounds of the man being a disbeliever now edged close again. "And being an instrumentalist myself, I feel confident in saying that the size of the trumpet has bugger all to do with its sound."

"Fool's a fool. No distinction between smelly quims, same flows with retards."

The minstrel smiled. Addie thought it a grave but playful smile. "Then you may call me Gryphik. Puhezer Gryphik."

"I will do no such thing," Pedgram rasped, stepping closer to the minstrel. He was significantly taller. "What you will do is gather up your little toys and roost over them like an obedient cock."

"I would be appeased to. Only problem is . . . can you perchance find me such toys? You see, I don't have any on me at the moment. Why, if I did, I'd use them to delight the children."

"I meant," said Pedgram, making each syllable sound like four, "your flute. Your mat. Pack your shit up and stay quiet in a lonesome corner. I catch you makin' a noise, I'll see to it the tongue you seem so fond of never twitches again."

"Again, I have no shit to pack. Although perhaps I'll need to relieve myself after dinner. There will be dinner, right? I'd hate to have to eat rats."

Pedgram was standing right in front of him now. The minstrel scarce seemed to notice.

"As for now, I have only a lovely flute which - " Puhezer whistled into it " -if you think will attract the Ptirrens from all the way on the battlefield, it was your father who forgot implanting a brain into your mother's pouch."

In a flash of sun and steel the longsword, heavy and trenchant, was on the minstrel's shoulder. Several people shielded their eyes. Several shielded their children's. Several gasped. Hence several who were a-dream, including Poe, were wakened.

While the second guard cast a glance at the listeners, Pedgram cocked his helmed head. "You were sayin'?"

"That I was merely attempting to lift the sullen mood. My digestion doesn't quite agree with gloom, as I'm sure you'll understand."

Now eyes were being unshielded. The minstrel looked anything but afraid. He went on. It would have been best if he hadn't.

"Why, just now, this charming young lady asked me to recite the Ballad Of Loras And The Cage. You tell me how I could deny her the pleasure."

With this Puhezer Gryphik, the king of fools, the fool of kings, pointed right at Addie.

Pedgram chuckled as he turned to look. "Well, well. If it isn' the squealin' sisters." His gaze travelled downward. "M'lady, you look even more Sauvendi with light on you."

She tried to shiver into her cloak, but the thing barely had fabric to spare. Her pockets pealed heavily. Beneath her, Aeri shuffled on her feet.

Perhaps the minstrel felt their discomfort; his eyes did pass over them with some knowledge. Either way, Gryphik regarded his keen audience: "I will go rest now. So should you. Thank you humbly for lending me your ears."

Nobody stirred.

Pedgram turned back to the man. Pressed the sword against his neck. "We ride again at evenfall."

You ride, thought Addie. We walk till blood comes out our asses.

She did not think others could hear what was said to the minstrel next, because Pedgram lowered his voice to a whisper. Her ears, though, were whetted to promote sensitivity.

"Seeing as how there's a food shortage, if we were alone, the two of us, I'd have fed fitter pies made of your flesh to them all. Not a fighter, aa' you, fool graduate of the Gorub Pahnk?"

Then something strange happened, and it happened rather fast. Anger in its most abraded form flared up on Gryphik's face. In that instant, Pedgram dropped his sword. It tipped over the minstrel's shoulder and onto the ground with a clang.

Pedgram himself staggered two steps backward, pulled up his visor, and retched up his meal.

"His puke looks like sauce," Addie observed, while the crowd made barfing and belching noises of all varieties. "How fascinating. Let's make like a twig and split, Aeri."

The child was looking at her like she had lost a couple of her marbles. Or at least misplaced them.

The last thing Addie saw as she and Aeri went over to the boulder where Nayari was sleeping, was Puhezer Gryphik fawning over his own reflection in Pedgram's longsword and ruffling his glossy hair, while the second guard helped Pedgram with his helm. Vomit specked their corselets.

Nice to see you here again! I hope you enjoyed reading this chapter no less than I enjoyed writing it :p

It was supposed to be longer and end on an . . . aggressive note. But it was getting too long, so I split it and you'll get that in the next chapter.

Chapter 6 will be the inciting incident for Addie. Look forward to it, dear, dear readers.

Muah <3