Queen in the Mud: Book 2, Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Belshaad was a city of such sprawling size that it could only truly be appreciated from the pinnacle heights of its tallest bordering hillsides. It was only from those hillsides could the vast stretch of ocean be seen past the harbors and their moored ships to the painted sails of landbound vessels on the horizon. The metropolis of Belshaad stretched across a natural valley that broke from the pattern of rolling hillsides and uneven terrain that was so characteristic of this grassy corner of the world. A rich stretch of forest bordered the city’s southern edge, dotting and weaving between the hills.

The predominantly brown and tan buildings shared an unusual aesthetic architectural style, looking very much as though they were carved and hollowed out from gigantic gourds. The curved, pear-shaped and ovaloid buildings stretched up and across the expanse of the urban sprawl, with some even disgorging into the sky like lumpy, amebic towers.

Massive spools of garishly dyed fabrics ran from building to building and shielded the majority of the city’s thoroughfares from the sun. Those fabrics were prevalent across the entirety of Belshaad, making the city look as though a patchwork quilt were running rampant through its shaded streets.

According to one of Thaddius’s long winded lectures, one could tell the wealth of each district from the maintenance of these cloths.

The richest parts of the city flew the most well-kept fabrics above their bordering streets, bright and pristine colors of high quality make and expensive dye. Areas more frequented by common people saw fabrics of tan, brown or cream colors and of varying state and craftsmanship. Although rare in such an opulent city as Belshaad, the impoverished and destitute ghettos and slums either shielded their streets with patchwork rags or, more rarely, with no fabric whatsoever.

The fabrics themselves didn’t seem to serve any real, practical purpose, as the sunlight here was no more harsh than elsewhere. Their real significance was cultural, serving as a microcosm of sociopolitical standing based on economic growth.

Above all of this cloth cartography, a complex maze of rope bridges wove between the upper tiers of each bizarrely shaped building, joining together the upper echelons of the city in an escape from the urban press below the cover of street fabrics.

Occupying the sloping hillsides beyond Belshaad’s gates was a checkerboard of crop fields nearly as diverse in color as the cloth-swathed streets of the city proper. Our caravan had passed by those very same orchards and fields on our way into Belshaad.

We had arrived the night before, and by the time we had found stables for our gurbas and rented warehouse space for our wagons, it was too late to do any real exploring. The warehouseman had helpfully pointed us to a local inn where we’d spent the night.

The inn was nice and a bit of an adventure all on its own. The people here apparently didn’t believe in doors, and divided the doorways between rooms with curtains of colorful fabric. There was a reason why Belshaad was called ‘the city of dyed cloth,’ and I’d wager that whoever was selling all this fabric was making money hand over fist.

My room was warm and cozy, with the flickering glow of a candle sconce for light and a pitcher of fresh water for my convenience. A glass-paned window let in the first rays of morning sunlight, marking this room as being above the cover of street cloth.

After weeks of roughing it on the road, sleeping in an actual bed felt like the height of luxury.

Stretching out my arms, I let out a contented yawn before leisurely getting to my feet. I donned my heavy brown cloak, the only article of clothing that I actually owned, and slung my messenger bag over my shoulder.

Occupying a table in the common room, Thaddius, Sib, and the villagers who had made the trip with us looked up as I came down the stairs.

“Morning,” I said to everyone as I pulled up a seat next to Sib. Sib, for her part, hardly noticed me. Her attention was instead focused on a small herb that she was plucking at with her leather-gloved fingers, placing the contents into a small bowl full of tiny leaves.

Thaddius looked up from a plate of half eaten food and nodded at me. “Morning. It’s good you’re up. Thought I might have to go and drag you out of bed.”

I gave him a sheepish smile in return. “...Alright, so I might have slept in a tiny bit. The bed was too comfy.”

A girl with an apron tied over her brown dress chose that moment to find her way to our table. She looked about sixteen, with dark hair tied into twin braids and a mess of freckles across her face. A pair of black cat ears poked out from her head, and a thin metal collar was clasped around her neck. Slavery was illegal here, so maybe it was a fashion accessory?

“Do you want anything to eat?” The question was addressed to me, but I couldn’t help but notice that she snuck a furtive glance towards Thaddius, her cheeks reddening slightly. The swordsman looked up from his own meal and gave her a polite smile. Her face immediately bloomed into a full blown blush.

A knowing grin found its way to my face. “Sure, what do you--”

“Okay!” She said, immediately turning and fleeing for the kitchen.

I turned to Thaddius, who was shaking his head and chuckling lightly to himself. “She likes you.”

“Yeah. Too young, unfortunately. Cute, though.” He took a swig of something from a tankard and set it back down on the table. “So, our plans for today?”

“Right, so I’m thinking we had best sell off our goods before trying to do any shopping. Some of the stuff on our grocery list might be expensive, so it’d help if we knew how much money we had to work with beforehand.”

“Sure, makes sense. I asked around a little while you were snoozing and got the names of a couple wholesalers who might be willing to do business with us. Don’t know if they’re any good, but it’s a place to start, anyway.”

I shot him a surprised glance. “What, already? You hardly look like you’ve taken a step out of the inn.”

“I haven’t. Asked the serving girl about it. Apparently it’s a pretty common question from foreign traders, and she was… well, she was more than eager to answer my questions.”

“Oh, I’m sure she was,” I said, another sly grin spreading across my face.

“I think it’s the beard,” Thaddius replied, pensive as he stroked his stubbled chin. “Girls go nuts for it.”

“So long as you keep it under control, maybe. I don’t think you’d get the same result if you still had the wild man beard from a couple weeks ago.”

“Oh, they’d probably throw me out for suspected vagrancy if I still had that,” he said, laughing.

Sib uncorked a vial of blue sludge and poured it over the bowl of tiny leaves. They immediately began fizzing, foaming and popping. A burnt, acrid wisp of smoke rose from the frothing concoction.

I glanced at it nervously. “...Is that going to explode?”

She cocked her skull-masked head to the side and considered the question for a disconcertingly long moment before shaking her head.

“Okay. Good.” I stared down at the angrily hissing bowl under Sib’s scrutiny. “What is that, anyway?”

Sib inclined her head to turn one lime green eye towards me. With her hooded cloak buttoned up like that and the canine skull taking the place of her head, she looked like a disturbingly morose version of a medieval plague doctor. “It’s a potent treatment for various bacterial infections in vertebrate species.” Leather gloves creaked as her fingers flicked out the words.

“Antibiotics,” I clarified, my eyes going wide in surprise. “You’re making antibiotics.”

She gave me an odd look, then nodded. “This is one among several medicines I hope to sell today. It’s a little primitive, given the lack of facilities and proper glassware, however.” Sib gave a disparaging glance towards the ugly, gelatinous blob that had since finished its angry spitting and condensed itself into a green sludge. Most of what she made seemed to come in sludge form, now that I thought about it.

She expediently brushed the sickly green goop into a paper parcel, which she tucked away on her person. “I’ve a few other simple remedies to sell as well, and the proceeds will fund my lab equipment.”

“Out of curiosity, what level are you in the alchemy skill?”

Thaddius cleared his throat, glancing up from his breakfast. He was eating some kind of weird blue thing. “Rude to ask people that, Naomi.”

“Sixty-seven,” Sib casually responded, ignoring the swordsman’s comment.

I blinked in surprise. She looked up and met my gaze. “Isn’t that… extremely high?”

“I’ve never met anyone higher.”

Ever since I’d met Sib, I had a hunch that she was special, but I hadn’t expected her to be quite as high level as that. The potential benefits of having a highly skilled alchemist on our side were too promising to pass up, and level sixty-seven? She had to be the person with the highest levels in any one skill out of all the people in our village. Well, except for maybe Briham, who was also something of a mystery. “Let me know if you come up short on funds. I want to make sure you’re well stocked.”

She nodded appreciatively, turning back to her work.

It was a few minutes later that the young waitress came out of the inn’s kitchen with a plate of food in her hands. She stopped at our table and finally seemed to take stock of me, rather than just staring doe-eyed at my companion. The cat-eared teenager looked down at the plate of eggs, meat and a hunk of some kind of blue stuff and then back up to me.

“U-um,” the girl nervously glanced between me and the plate of food. She stammered a little, then erupted into a barrage of apologies. “I -- I’m sorry, I didn’t even think. This must seem so insensitive. I-- I don’t mean to offend you. I’m so sorry!”

“Woah, slow down. What’s wrong?”

“The eggs, they’re from bluebellies.”

“Thaddius? Bluebellies?”

The bearded swordsman sat with his arms crossed and a particularly amused smile on his face. That only seemed to amplify the waitress’s embarrassment as she further shrunk into herself. Thaddius cleared his throat. “They’re a kind of lizard. Common farm animals, kept for their eggs and milk.”

“Oh. Weird.” I looked up at the waitress, who was dancing from foot to foot and looking spectacularly embarrassed with the situation. “It’s fine, I’m a salamander, not a lizard. I’ll give the eggs a shot. Not sure about lizard milk, though. That sounds pretty gross.”

“U-um, don’t eat the cheese then!” The girl was all too happy to clatter the plate down in front of me and flee to the kitchen like a flighty deer.

That blue stuff was supposed to be cheese? Lizard cheese?

~~~

“The cheese was sooo good! And so blue! It was startlingly blue, and startlingly delicious. Who knew lizard milk was so tasty?”

“Naomi, you’ve been going on about that cheese ever since we left the inn,” Thaddius grumped as we forged a path through the market streets.

“I can’t help it! Just think about it, a grilled cheese with that blue stuff? It’d be amazing!”

Thaddius just sighed.

“And what kind of animal makes both eggs and milk? What’s with that? We need to buy some of those lizards to bring home with us.”

Thaddius, walking a couple paces ahead of me, glanced over his shoulder and gave a weary nod. “We can purchase a couple hatchlings before we leave. The adults are a little too large to travel with.”

I quickened my step to catch up with him. Tan cloths suspended over the street shielded this thoroughfare from the sun, billowing gently in the spring breeze. Wooden stalls full of vegetables, fruits and mushrooms lined the street side. A stream of people pushed carts and carried woven baskets and bags along with them. This streetside grocer’s market smelled of rich spices, fragrant herbs and savory smoked meats.

There were even the telltale cat ears or patchy scales of beastkin every here and there, most of which were either loading goods or manning stalls. An uneasy feeling fell over me when I noticed that they were all wearing the same metal collars as the waitress back at the inn.

Thaddius must have noticed too, as he’d grown quiet and wore a complicated expression. We’d both come to the same uncomfortable conclusion at the same time. Illegal to sell, not illegal to own.

I injected some false cheer into my voice. “So, what’s with the serving girl thinking I’d be offended over some farm animal? That was pretty funny, right?”

A little of the tension seemed to drain out of Thaddius as he gave me a sidelong glance, scratching the back of his head awkwardly. “Full blooded beast races, like yourself, are rare in the human realms. You’re a curiosity, something unusual. People don’t know how to behave around you, so they make silly mistakes like that. What happened earlier was just a little harmless confusion.” He tightened his hands into fists, and a little more quietly, said, “If that’s the worst response we get, we can consider ourselves lucky.”

Now that he’d mentioned it, I couldn’t help but notice that there were a number of glances thrown my way as we walked down the market street. Some even openly stared and I found myself unconsciously fussing with the hem of my cloak.

I was suddenly feeling a great deal more self conscious, and Thaddius must have noticed, since he gave me an apologetic look.

“We can go back to the inn if you’re feeling uncomfortable.” Thaddius spoke softly, deftly avoiding the elephant in the room. “The merchants we were going to visit are in the wealthy district. Admittedly, I don’t know if they’ll be as... accepting as the common people.”

I drew a breath and lifted my head, ceasing my uneasy squirming and putting on my practiced air of confidence. Feeling a little embarrassed about my earlier showing of uneasiness, I gave the swordsman at my side an easy grin. “Finally, something that you don’t know?”

The edge of his mouth quirked up into a brave smile and he gave a small nod. “Believe it or not, I’m not actually omniscient.”

We had to ask for directions twice before finding the place we were looking for, nestled deep into rich streets of bright red and velvet purple. It was an opulent building constructed in that lumpy, spheroid architecture and decorated with embroidered tapestries flanking its entrance. A sign, written in regal gold script, identified this building as the ‘Suncrown Trading Company.’

Within minutes of entering, we were roughly thrown out into the street by a pair of burly guards. “Keep your lizard on a leash!” One of them yelled through a hail of spittle.

“I’m a salamander! A salamander!” I shouted over my shoulder while simultaneously holding back Thaddius, who looked furious enough to pull steel on them. Fortunately, I was able to pull him away before someone called the city watch.

That was about what happened with the next two trading companies we visited too. For the second one, we didn’t even make it through the door. A man in the garishly dyed clothing of Belshaad’s nobility had stopped us, gave me one disgusted look, then haughtily said to Thaddius, “You should keep your beast in a collar.”

Once again, I had to drag Thaddius away before someone got hurt.

“You didn’t even do anything!” Thaddius threw up his arms in a livid show of frustration. He was a lot angrier about my mistreatment than I was and hadn’t stopped seething since we’d been thrown out of the first place. “I should have gutted that man where he stood.”

“I’m really glad you didn’t, for the record.”

Thaddius didn’t respond, just continued to glare a hole in the crowd as we walked through another bustling market street. A cloth of mottled cream-white flew overhead, and the people here were dressed in earthier colors than those in the noble districts.

It was a stark enough contrast that I had to wonder if there was some kind of caste system at play here. I only considered that for a moment before I lightly shook my head to clear it. The knowledge that slavery was still present even in this place, where it was supposed to be illegal, had spoiled my appetite for Belshaad’s culture.

“You don’t deserve this,” Thaddius finally said. “Being treated like this, I mean.”

I mustered as reassuring a smile as I could. “Thank you. I mean that. Really, thank you for standing up for me. But I chose to come here, knowing I would be treated poorly. I guess... I just needed to see it for myself.”

He stopped walking and fixed me with a wide-eyed stare. “You wanted this?”

“No. Well, yes, in a way. It’s complicated. I don’t know if I can explain it.”

“Try. Please.”

I drew a deep breath and tried to collect my thoughts. The two of us made a rock in a river of people, flowing on either side of us in a gentle stream of market goers. “Okay, so it’s like this. The whole trading thing? Just an excuse to come down here.”

“Right. I figured that out myself.” Thaddius folded his arms.

“Going on an adventure? I guess that was part of it. It’s exciting seeing new lands, but that isn’t why I really wanted to come here.” I laced my fingers together and looked up, as though searching the street cloths overhead for a way to unify my jumble of thoughts. “I’ve had this… conflict inside me. Peace and war, mercy and ruthlessness. There’s a compelling argument for either side. I err on the side of peace and mercy, but what if war and ruthlessness saves more lives in the long term?”

“The bandits.”

“Yes, but it’s more than that. I’ve been trying to come to a decision, and I wanted to wait until I came here and saw what it was like to decide. This is the safest place you could think of for people like me, but there’s still…” I gestured to my side as a man led away a bruised cat-eared boy in chains through the throng of people passing by us. “This.”

Thaddius grit his teeth and a look like I had just accused him of a profound and unforgivable failure washed over his face. He bowed his head to me. “You put your faith in me and I--”

“No.” I said, and this time I didn’t need to fake the confidence in my voice. “Willful ignorance is tantamount to complacency. This is exactly the place where I need to be and seeing this has made me certain of it. I can’t turn a blind eye to what’s happening down here.”

Thaddius looked up in surprise. Something in my expression made him stand up a little taller. “You want to free them. All of them.”

“Yes,” I started walking, Thaddius following at my side. “I haven’t decided what to do yet. I need to think about it. For now, we’ll sell our furs. It doesn’t matter if we get the best price - sell them to street vendors if we need to. We’re going to buy weapons, armor, bows and arrows. More food than we need. A couple good, fast mounts for the scouts and outriders. Detailed maps of the northern realms.”

Thaddius’s brow furrowed. “That list makes it sound like we’re gearing up for war.”

When I responded, my voice was full of cold resolve. “I’m making it an option.”