6. Speck
It was the instinct which Speck’s foster family had always sneeringly referred to as her “packrat nature” that saved Speck from being crushed and quite possibly killed before she even joined a Guild. There was, Speck reflected later in a quiet corner of the Empath’s Hospital, a lesson to be learned from the incident. Other than the obvious one -- that young Olvi lasses wandering around a new town ought to mind their own business and most definitely NOT engage in verbal banter with drunken Togs.
After leaving Jadewater, Speck had decided to familiarize herself with The Crossing before getting down to business. The map she’d been given was hard to follow and gave her a headache, so she tucked it into the waistband of her trousers and set out to memorize the main thoroughfares. After an hour, she’d located the bank (and opened an account, a thrilling experience despite the clerk who called her “sweetie” and patted her on the head), the tanner’s, the hospital and the general store. Since the sack she’d gotten at the Inn was too large to do her any good, she decided to spend a bit of her startup money to purchase a knapsack.
Having spent all her life in Halfling towns, Speck was unprepared for the difficulty of accomplishing everyday tasks in towns that catered mainly to larger folk. She picked out the knapsack she wanted -- a nice sturdy brown one with side pockets that were perfectly sized to hold a tart or two -- and looked around for a stepladder. And looked. And looked. She was a second away from asking the bored-looking proprieter, having determined that the stepladders weren’t tucked out of sight underneath the lowest shelves, when a hand descended on her collar and yanked her to her feet.
“Ow!” Speck cried, slapping at the hairy Human hand. “Get your hands off me!”
“Looking to snitch something, Olvi?” the man asked with a raised eyebrow.
“I was looking for a stepladder,” Speck said indignantly.
The man immediately burst out laughing. “This ain’t Arthe Dale, dearie. If you want something, just holler and we’ll get it down.”
“You should have stepladders. It’d save you a lot of time,” she said, brushing the dust off her knees...she supposed she had looked somewhat suspicious, crawling around under the shelves like that.
“We used to. They kept getting stolen, so we don’t bother anymore.”
“Well, I want that knapsack,” she said, pointing. “The brown one.”
“Mmhmm. Got your Guild badge?”
“My what?”
“You’re not Guilded, are you, lass?”
“Well, no,” Speck said patiently. “I’ve only just come here.”
“Come back when you’ve joined a Guild or gotten a job. We don’t sell to drifters.”
“But I’m not a drifter! I’m going to live here!”
“Good,” he replied placidly. “Then there’s no hurry to get that knapsack, is there?”
No amount of arguing, foot-stamping or swearing would budge the man. Speck briefly considered going the other route -- batting her eyelashes a bit and maybe even dredging up a tear or two, but she had a pretty good idea of how unconvincing she’d be, so she gave up and stormed out of the shop.
Three giggling women wearing enough jewelry, ribbons and trinkets to fill a merchant’s caravan brushed past Speck and nearly knocked her down. “Pardon ME,” Speck yelled after them, but they were apparently too busy giggling to even hear her. Speck gave the side of the building a good kick in an effort to release frustration, but succeeded only in bruising her toe and increasing her temper. A large stick lying at the side of the road looked sturdier than her feet, so she picked it up and swung it against the shop wall. It made a nice THWACK and Speck immediately felt better.
She didn’t really need the stick, but it seemed a shame to throw it back down after it had performed so nicely, and it gave her something else to carry besides the stupid map. And it was pretty, as sticks went...someone had gone to the trouble of whittling away the loose twigs and cutting off the bark. Ignoring the fact that she looked somewhat silly carrying a stick nearly as tall as she was, Speck set off jauntily down the street, holding the stick in a firm grip and almost hoping someone would bump into her again so she could see how well the stick worked as a weapon.
She didn’t have to hope long; she’d just spotted the armorer’s shop and was walking over for a better look when something slammed into her with enough force to knock her to the ground.
“HEY!” she snarled, leaping to her feet and glaring at a hulking Tog, who’d very nearly stepped on her after knocking her over. “Why don’t you watch where you’re going, idiot!”
The Tog stopped and turned to look down at her. Battle-scarred leathers encased a chest the size of a barrel and arms that made Speck’s stick look like a piece of string. A few faint scars, evidence of some Empath’s too-hasty healing, ran down the side of his leathery green neck, and bloodshot eyes regarded Speck curiously.
“Who you call idiot?” the Tog rumbled.
“You!” Speck said bravely, trying to ignore the faint squeak that had mysteriously crept into her voice. “You knocked me over! Are you blind?”
“You call me idiot?” the Tog asked, his hairless eyebrows crawling up his forehead as if he’d never been so amazed in his life. “Me think you idiot for making Tog angry!”
Speck was inclined to agree on this point, but stubbornness kept her from backing down.
“You owe me an apology.”
“Me no apologize.”
“Oh, so you’re rude as well as stupid,” Speck said.
“Maybe you’d better just move along,” said a Human who’d stopped to watch the exchange. In fact, several people had stopped, including another Tog who was -- impossibly -- even bigger than the first.
“Not til that idiot apologizes to me,” Speck said angrily, thumping her stick against the ground for emphasis and pretending not to notice the wide crack that immediately appeared along its length.
“Make me,” the Tog said, folding his arms across his chest.
“Yeah, make him!” someone called out from the crowd -- how had it turned into a crowd so quickly? she wondered -- and several people laughed.
“Come on, Olvi, show ‘im yer stuff!” a coarse voice shouted, and the laughter increased in volume.
“I just want an apology,” Speck said, backing up a step.
“Me said me no apologize!” the Tog said. “You gonna hit me with your toothpick?”
The last comment earned him a roar of laughter, and he grinned at the crowd.
Speck was gripping the stick so tightly that her fingers felt numb, and she was on the verge of flinging herself at the idiot Tog when another Halfling suddenly popped through the cluster of people and stood in front of Speck.
“Apologize to the lady, Gubo, or you’ll get hit with more than a toothpick,” the Halfling said, slinging a short bow off his shoulder and loading it so quickly that the arrow was a mere blur.
He wasn’t exactly the kind of hero Speck would have envisioned -- he was shorter than she was, for one thing, and judging by the smell that suddenly permeated the air, he hadn’t bothered with a bath in several months. Grimy brown hair curled in tendrils around a pasty and frankly ugly face, but to Speck the halfling was more beautiful even than Serdannio. Well. Almost as beautiful, anyway.
“Stippy!” the Tog -- Gubo, she guessed his name was -- roared. “You thief who steal me gold yesterday! You DEAD, fool!”
Speck had a second or two to reflect that things probably wouldn’t get much worse, when they did with amazing speed. The crowd surged forward as Gubo drew forth his sword, someone began screaming for the guards, someone else screamed a vile invective against Thieves in general and was immediately punched in the face by a well-dressed woman, and then Speck found herself wedged between four or five enormous bodies all trying to move in the same direction. She couldn’t see Gubo or Stippy, but a distinctive TWANG and a subsequent shout of pain indicated that they were nearby.
She tried to shout, but realized to her horror that she was being squeezed so tightly that she literally couldn’t draw a breath. The scaly black tail of a S’kra lashed against her leg and she slapped feebly at it before grabbing it in the hope that its owner might pull her free. Apparently, the owner interpreted this as an attack, and the crushing pressure around Speck eased slightly as one of her crushers was soundly clobbered over the head.
The shouts and screams were so loud that Speck couldn’t tell what anyone was saying. Not that she cared. She was now pressed up against a bulging backpack, and her entire being was focused on trying to grab hold of one of the straps so she could haul herself up. Then the mass of people shifted, and Speck nearly tumbled to the ground before latching on to a leather belt and hanging on for dear life.
Things began to get even fuzzier after that. Black spots danced before Speck’s eyes, and someone’s boot crashed down on her bare foot with enough force to break several toes -- she could hear the bones crack -- and her hand, slippery with sweat, began to lose its grip on the belt, when something hit her in the head. The stick. Someone had pushed the stick aside, inadvertently knocking it against her head. With her last measure of strength, Speck began pushing and prodding at the sea of bodies with the end of her stick. Yelps and curses followed, but slowly the pressure around her eased, until she was able to spot a way out of the crowd. She scrambled under a pair of Elven legs, gasping for air. Someone grabbed the back of her shirt, but Speck brought her stick down with enough force to elicit yet another curse, breaking the stick in two in the process, and then she was free of the seething mass of people and running down the street as fast as her mangled feet could carry her.
In this town, it was definitely advantageous to be a packrat.
She was healed by a wan-looking Elothean Empath whose luxurious blonde hair and elegant clothing contrasted sharply with the scars and wounds that seemed to cover every square inch of her body. The Hospital was packed, and Speck never even learned the woman’s name, nor would the woman accept any sort of tip, waving Speck away with the ghost of a smile before bending over a man with a mangled left arm.
Speck had never been inside an Empath Hospital before, and was shocked at the noise and chaos. Injured people stood or sat literally shoulder to shoulder, and the seemingly tireless Empaths moved about the room in some pre-determined rhythm, sometimes healing a new arrival, sometimes healing a person who’d been sitting there for some time, and stepping around or over the others as if they were so much furniture. Along one wall, three Empaths clustered together discussing methods for bandaging wounds. They cast their self-healing spells so swiftly and unobtrusively that the majority of them seemed to regenerate automatically.
After resting for only a few minutes, Speck clambered to her feet and began making her way to the exit. If she stayed, she’d start screaming; she couldn’t imagine how the Empaths could stay so cheerful and pleasant amidst so much blood, moaning, talking, complaining and endless requests for healing. One man sitting near the door had said “I need my scars healed” so many times that it was starting to sound like a chant, and the whining way in which he said it was starting to give Speck a headache.
She escaped back out into the streets. It was now past noon, and the town was packed. Speck could have wandered happily for hours, drinking in the sights and sounds of so many different people on so many different errands, but she was well aware that she had no place to spend the night. And anyway, she hadn’t come here to gawk like a tourist. If she hadn’t known it already, this morning’s fiasco had shown her just how vulnerable she was. It was time to get started.
It took less than ten minutes to find the person she was looking for. A silver S’kra Mur (she thought it was a male, though she’d known so few S’kra in her life that she couldn’t be sure) leaning against the wall of an Herbalist’s shop was holding a glimmering runestone in one hand and murmuring something under his breath, oblivious to the people shoving past him. At his feet, watching everything with unblinking yellow eyes, sat a fat green lizard.
“Excuse me,” Speck said, putting on her friendliest smile. “Are you a Warrior Mage?”
“Yup,” the S’kra answered without looking at her. “But my familiar’s not for hire. Anyway, he’s too stupid to ever find anyone. He always gets himself lost.”
“I don’t want to hire your familiar; I just need to know where your Guild is located. Could you show me the way?”
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