Quote from: Whim on October 24, 2019, 12:38:37 PM
"He- well, he can can be a handful, I suppose." She murmured. The difficulties of minding children were not something she often considered. "Your brother seemed nicely behaved. Different story when your back's turned I guess."
Niamh paused, probing her mouth. She preferred to bury the how and why of this. She was not anything like the girl who ran away from the order years ago, or a blubbering mess working for scraps. Not anymore. "I used to do some work for the Order of the Moon in Serendipity. Taught me how to handle find and handle dangerous magic. The eye for quality came later.
"Eventually you just learn that most mirrors from the myr Caladwyn dynasty have a little ghost in them that opens portals to other mirrors. At least the ones with the ocean motif. Mostly familiar with olden Serenian things. And that's what tends to interest my buyers." The girl was probably harmless. Still, it was best not to go revealing too many trade secrets like how she made connections with various warlocks and necromancers around Le'raana.
The trader braced herself against the bench as they rounded a sharp turn and into the brush-covered road. By day in the spring it must have been beautiful, but with foul weather it was another matter. Everything was black but for an orange haze in the distance. Some yards ahead, through the gloom, she spied a stray wagon axle and assorted bric-a-brac blocking the path. This was an old bandit trick. Niamh armed herself and had Elowen and Ewan clear the debris while she kept watch. In the end no bandits jumped out. Still, it was a grueling and dirty bit of work for a boy and young woman.
"Suppose we ought to make camp. Meat and hardtack should to last the trip unless one of you cares to cook." Niamh did not cook, not well, but settled for guiding the wagon off-road and building a fire.
I wondered what it would be like to be my own master, like Niamh was. I turned my face away, a pang of jealousy feeding the ever-growing resentment in my gut. Sometimes I feared the injustice of the world would become too much to bear, and that dense tangle of resentment in me would one day explode out and obliterate everything around me. Much like my mother had exploded. I almost huffed with the irony of it - I might not have her curse or her magic but in spite of that I could still end up just like her, just with a different force driving me towards that fate.
Niamh tensed up beside me, and looking ahead I saw what had disquietened her - a broken down wagon, half on the road, its contents littering the path. There were no horses or beasts of burden to be seen, nor anyone who might own the wagon, and while I presumed that the owner had taken the animal and moved on, I understood Niamh's reaction - many a weary traveller had been ambushed by tempting them into either stopping to help or stopping to loot. I jumped off the wagon, Ewan as well, and my damp dress was once again soaked with the pouring rain. Half the items from the wagon had washed down the mountainside already, what hadn't was stuck in the mud. Mostly pottery and earthenware, some of it in pieces. The only thing of value, a set of silver cutlery, I slid deep in my bag when no one was looking.
When we were back on the road, it wasn't long before it became too dark to continue. "Suppose we ought to make camp," said Niamh. "Meat and hardtack should to last the trip unless one of you cares to cook."
I didn't have anything to cook with. "Maybe there are some berries around," I said instead, and started examining the underbrush in the small off-road clearing that we had settled in. I had barely started when I heard a noise on the path - hooves squelching through the mud - and looked up to see a monk riding a donkey in the same direction we'd been travelling.
"Did you see..." I turned to Niamh. "Do you think that was the same monk we saw on the road earlier?"
