Chapter 114: Ch114 – A Performance

Time passed quickly in the carriage. Before long they had reached the eastern market, which was aptly named.

It ran the full length of the city’s eastern wall, it was longer than it had looked from inside the carriage, the stalls packed close with barely room between them. The noise was constant whether it were vendors or animals. The crowd parted naturally for the Blackwood colours.

William moved through the crowds with ease. He simultaneously scanned the stalls looking for the best wares, while he greeted the men women and children who gave him a bow.

William noticed a man, sleeping in the doorway of a shuttered shop as they passed. He stopped, reached into his coat without breaking his stride, and left a coin inside the man’s pocket without waking him. He didn’t mention it and kept walking.

They moved through the weapons and armour section of the market. It was hot, really hot. Sweat beaded down Ryan’s face. His eyes glistened as he looked into the fire of a blacksmith with great interest. His nostrils flooded by the smell of metal and fire.

They travelled quickly, flying from stall to stall.

At one market stall, they ate tender, skewered meat. William, being William, had bought enough for everyone, including the guards, again.

William moved out onto the main avenue that led out of the market.

They heard… rolling, low drums.

They had a deep, foreboding rhythm.

BZZZZZZ

A loud horn, that completely out of tune blasted from the same area, leaving Ryan on edge.

But to the contrary of Ryan’s expectations, laughter followed after the sound, coming to them from somewhere ahead where the crowd had thickened around something Ryan couldn’t yet see.

William changed direction toward it without a word, and the group followed.

They pushed through to the edge of the gathered crowd.

What they saw was… unexpected.

There were three people—they were performers on a low temporary stage. A king in a golden crown too large for his head, announcing at a volume that required no amplification whatsoever. A hero in a travelling cloak with a painted sword that wobbled when he moved. And the third…

The third performer was covered head to toe in black clothing, streaked with dark red stains.

A full mask covered the face, the eye holes ringed in black. The figure moved differently from the others. Where the king bellowed and the hero stumbled, this one was slow.

“I have cursed your cattle,” the death mage intoned.

“My cattle, damn you death mage!” the king roared.

“All of them!”

“How many cattle do you think I have?”

There was a long pause in which the death mage appeared to count internally. “Fewer than before.”

The crowd erupted.

Ryan was smiling. The timing was spot on, the death mage somehow kept a straight face throughout.

The hero poorly swung the wobbling sword. The death mage sidestepped it, and then looked at the sword, looked at the hero, and then back to the sword.

“What is that.”

“A sword.”

“It bends.”

“It doesn’t bend.”

“It’s bending now.”

The sword was, in the afternoon heat, bending. Flaccid even. The crowd lost itself.

The play ended with the hero defeating the death mage using the combination of a holy symbol, a bucket of water, and a strongly worded letter from a priest, each escalating to greater laughter. The death mage’s defeat was prolonged and theatrical—a final speech of thirty seconds delivered while staggering. He then collapsed off the edge of the stage, being caught by the audience. They then formed up on the stage, and bowed to a sustained applause.

James, Jared and the others clapped as well.

Ryan looked at the death mage.

Someone tapped Ryan on the shoulder.

“Hungry?” William asked.

The restaurant they found themselves outside of was narrow and set back from the main avenue down a side street Ryan would never have found on his own in a hundred fortnights. The sign above the door was small, the frontage dark timber, like everything. The only distinguishable quality it had from the buildings on either side was the smells that drifted through the window.

William pushed the door open and before he’d even stepped inside, he was greeted by name.

The owner was a broad woman in her fifties who came around the counter, quite quickly, to shake William’s hand with both of hers.

She immediately began moving tables, to create space for the large party of people. together without being asked. She spoke to William in an easy way. She even commented on how tall he’d gotten, and then she disappeared back toward the kitchen before anyone else had properly sat down.

The restaurant held maybe thirty people. Most seats were taken, it had a comfortable atmosphere.

There were mismatched chairs and tables worn smooth from long use, a menu written in chalk on a board near the door that William didn’t look at because he already knew, off by heart.

“James used to come here when he was home,” William said, settling into his chair. “He used to say it was the best food in the city.” He picked up his cup. “He was definitely right.”

When a younger, beautiful girl, who was maybe the same age as William or a year older than him, skipped over to them. William began to blush.

Her voice was as sweet as the powdered doughnut, “Hey William! Welcome back, hey William’s friends.” She gave a small bow. “What would you like for lunch today?” She whipped out a notepad.

William began to list off every item on the menu, but gave up halfway.

“Can we just have everything on the menu, three times over, p—please.” He stuttered, uncharacteristically.

Ryan stifled his laugh. He was surprised by the flustered noble.

“Of course! Right away. And I’ll be right back with your drinks.” The girl said, skipping off to her mother.

When the girl left, William slowly regained his composure.

The food arrived in stages. Some slow-cooked meat in a dark sauce that had been going since morning by the smell of it, bread for the table, something pickled in a small dish alongside that cut through the richness in exactly the right way. It would take a while to name every dish that came, and each one had two more of the same with it.

“The Gods, their statues,” Ryan asked William. “Are they… accurate? Are they what the gods actually look like?”

William shook his head. “Nobody knows what they look like. They are simply educated guesses. Whoever commissioned the carvings… around twelve hundred years ago, based them on the all of the descriptions they could find.” He tore off some bread. “Nearly every cathedral in the kingdom has different versions of the same gods. The Lithara cathedral’s Apollo apparently looks nothing like ours.”

“Which cathedral is better?” Jared asked.

“Ours, duhh,” William said without the smallest hesitation.

Ryan thought about the stained glass light falling across the carved faces.

“What about that performance,” James said, after a moment. “The death mage costume. Remember the markings, the black and red ones on it. Is that based on anything real, or is it just theatre?”

William was quiet for a beat. “I doubt they are the real thing… But there are records,” he said, with a quiet serious tone. “In our archives. The oldest ones, from before death magic was outlawed. Accounts of what practitioners actually did, how they operated, and what markings they used.” He looked at his plate. “The costume is supposed to be based on those. The red lines which are patterns are—apparently, close to what they actually used to draw on themselves… using the blood of their enemies.” He picked up his cup, and put it to his lips, but stopped himself before he drank. “They would even in some cases, use the blood and their rituals to summon monsters to their cause.”

Ryan thought about the lines on the costume.

He then thought to Edward walking into the dining room.

He didn’t say anything, he just kept it to himself.

Eleanor said nothing either, but he felt her attention shift out of the room.

The meal continued. William, loosened by the food and the familiarity of the place, talked more freely than he had at the castle—about the city, about the market traders he knew by name, even about the restaurant, and the waitress who was the daughter of the owner.

He talked about James once more, briefly, a memory about the two of them eating at this exact table three years ago and James accidentally ordering the wrong dish, a type of dish that he usually hated, but stubbornly, James refused to say he didn’t want it.

“He ate the whole thing,” William laughed. “Every bit. He would never admit he’d made a mistake.”

Jared smiled. James did too.

An hour later, they were out of the city.

The carriage back up the hill was slower than the descent had been, the horses working against the gradient, the afternoon light thick and golden coming through the windows. William fell asleep against the door before they’d cleared the city gates.

Ryan looked out at the forest as they climbed, the black trees pressed close to the road on the eastern side, the canopy was so dense that the afternoon light couldn’t pass through.

If it was already this dark in the forest, in the afternoon.

…What would it be like at night…

He took his mind off of that, and glanced at Eleanor. She was looking out her own window quite lazily, it seemed she was starting to get tired.

The carriage soon came into the castle gate and into the outer ward.

Then half asleep Eleanor, within half a second of entering the gate, lit up in a fury.

“What are the Rellick’s doing here?”

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