X: Silence
"Pigs' feet. Delicious. They're a lot like children's feet, actually." - Luka, The Tiger's Wife, Téa Obreht
Ceri, the innkeeper's daughter, would take charge of the bar on market days in Haeye-on-the-Water. Market days were usually the quietest, for reasons she didn't bother to consider. Perhaps the people of Haeye were more aware of how starved and skeletal their purses were once their strings had been prised firmly open. Perhaps the travellers through Haeye preferred to remain firmly sober so close to the Spine. Ceri wouldn't know – she was more interested in the person than the people. If it was Dai, the southbank butcher, whose purse which was lacking, and his frail, jittering wife muttered a few stray words of gossip about lean times and people wanting bread not pork loins, whilst scratching furiously at her neckscarf that hid the blackened scars of a starving man – now Ceri was interested. She would lean across the polished bartop on her pointy elbows, listening intently to whispers and rumour. It was exhilarating! – of course, she was usually caught, and the attempt to flash an empty chest where billowing buxom may have filled given a few years (if she were lucky) usually made the men roll their eyes as opposed to loosen their tongues as they supposedly did at the sight of a beautiful woman. Her quick-tongued father called it being dense.
This, lamentably, was probably the reason Ceri, wide-eyed and curly-haired Ceri, the girl with the permanent expression of a frightened doe startled by the sudden arrival of a blazing blue dragon egg in a tranquil forest, would guard the front on Market day. The few souls that haunted the bar would ask for simple ales, toss a few pennies extra into the tin, and hunch gloomily in a torn armchair, stuffing bursting from the seams. Sulking, Ceri would call it, as she scrubbed ferociously at the worktop. Haeye was not the happiest town at the best of times and she did not like to be reminded of it. She longed for a mysterious, intriguing, and possibly devilishly handsome traveller to sweep into the inn, and whisper a few incredible stories of distant lands and worlds far and wide across fine wine – just about somewhere where the skies weren't grey and overcast, and the sheep weren't gaunt with plague. This was completely unrealistic. Rosalyn knew this, and didn't care.
At this moment, a mysterious, intriguing, although not particularly handsome stranger with a mane of greying hair stumbled into the inn. A twinkling smile graced the girl's face – she had heard of this particular stranger.
"Excuse me sir, can I help you?"
The response was silence.
"Excuse me," Ceri repeated, "Do you perhaps go by the name of Jude?" She bit her lip. "I mean, I've heard of you before – well, heard you being gossiped about, townsfolk are awful gossips – and you seem to match the description everyone places on you..."
The response was silence.
"I mean, I've heard you travel through town on odd occasion – usually only ever to visit Wombat, which people consider very strange and very unusual itself, so if you aren't, I mean, I never heard Jude to ever visit a tavern, he don't drink we think – a rare enough thing in itself, y'know – so sorry if I've mistaken... "
The response was silence.
"Do you work for the Empire?"
Ceri regretted the words blurting out from her mouth, spluttering so bluntly. They dropped like a stone and lay there, the weight hanging in the air. The man did not respond to them at all.
It was what everyone in town's thinking. Jude's a spy, Jude's a hired crook, Jude's a messenger. And I just spat in his face about it.
"Should I pour you something at any rate...? Just some beer?"
She answered her own question by doing so. She watched the man, perched uneasily on a barstool, his expression dreary-eyed, almost desolate – then again, it could just be blankness, Ceri was never good with faces – slurping his beer almost violently, chugging it down like a witches' brew, a vile medicine. He looked like he was going to choke. But he didn't.
This didn't look like Jude. What she had heard of the man was someone blank-faced, stony-eyed – but behind that animated enough, good-natured enough, a little quirky and often lost in thought despite the masks. This man wasn't lost in thought. He was simply lost.
The man finished his drink, panting aloud.
"How many do ye need?" It seemed to be a need kind of situation, not a want one.
Evidently it was the right question. He answered:
"Enough to carry me off my feet."
The voice – Jude's voice, she corrected herself mentally: he ain't an animal – seemed heavily obscured, hastily thrown together, an almost ominous mix of things. The man himself sounded nearly terrified by it, by how monstrous it sounded, the sound of his own words foreign to him. A quick magician with the powers of a maestro and the specialisation in cloaking magics would have immediately recognised exactly who this man pretending to be Jude was – the son of Morzan – and how stupidly, how sloppily the disguise had been put together, as if Morzanspawn had been waiting to be found this time around, visiting somewhere so public and almost parading his true identity, that as the devil's son incarnate. But since when was a magician like that ever common?
Ceri was no magician. It just sounded slightly creepy to her. It didn't quell her fascination, though, as she watched the man drown himself in alcohol until the sky had been burnt to a crisp, black as charcoal, and it was midnight.
A/N: And I am back! Expect a longer chapter tomorrow or Tuesday - if in the unlikely situation there isn't one, it won't be for a week, I'm afraid. I'm heading up to Scotland on Tuesday and will be there a week at most. After which, I am free until school starts until September, where I plan to really get cracking on with this fic. I spent most of Spain writing this and two other chapters (yes, two), which need heavy edits before they go out to the world. Ceri is a Welsh name by the way, as is Dai (I would have called him Daffyd, but I think that's too obvious), and Lloyd... and there is a real town by the name of Hay :P. It's just nothing like Haeye - it's far richer and prettier, and not a product of the impoverished Welsh mining valleys. Although Hay is known for its bookshops: which is why Murtagh goes to Haeye in the first place, no? Books.
Onto reviews:
Squidcats: Heh, I dislike using Chekov's guns myself, as they usually are tackily done - but this box will go onto do a little more character development. As for who ran the war... I actually didn't think of that one! The war itself only really launched at the Battle of the Burning Plains: it wasn't even Guerilla warfare prior to that, so knowing Galbatorix, the position probably jumped person to person very rapidly - basically, whoever he felt would make an entertaining job of it, chosen on a whim, and most likely thrown out a few months later for incompetence after Galbatorix tired of them. Durza was most likely the last until Murtagh came into view. Morzan would have definitely ran it all were he still alive, though. I'm also really glad that you're enjoying this as well, and I'm also glad that it comes across as what it is - a slightly disturbing fairytale. That's sort of what I'm aiming for.
Restrained Freedom: I'm glad last chapter wasn't as confusing for you. It's probably my favourite so far ^_^.