Servants and Followers (The Legends of Arria, Volume 2) (8 page)

Morton gasped. “But
I’m over forty years old
!
”

“
And you’re not a man
just yet. Did you think age would make a difference about that?”
Smidge laughed. “You’ve got to take the steps towards it!” He
cried.

Morton turned around
and ran out of the inn before tears threatened to fall out of his
eyes, right in front of Smidge
;
that would be a worse
embarrassment than what he faced now. He was a man, after all, no
matter what Smidge had to say about it. Even Nisa would have to
agree with him, someday.

Smidge turned around, and looked down
at Brigga. “How are you doing down there?” He asked her with a
smile.

“
Just fine.” Brigga
said in a clipped voice, not looking up at him as she continued
scrubbing the floor with a brief pause.

“
You’re looking
beautiful this morning.” Smidge said.

“
What is that
supposed to mean?” She asked, looking up at him.

“
Nothing, just
commenting.” Smidge said, a little offended at her rudeness to him.
“I just think that a nice compliment is something that you deserve,
after all, for all of the hard work that you’ve agreed to do while
your daughter is sick. I wish I had a mother half as considerate as
you. By the way, when will your daughter be back?”

“
A week or so, I
don’t know,” Brigga said. “Nisa is very sick, it could take a while
for her to recover.”

“
Well, give her my
regard,” Smidge said, turning away from her to serve a
customer.

Brigga continued working, but felt a
growing sense of unease inside of her, especially as she thought of
Smidge watching her. Why did she have to accept Nisa’s commitment
to go off and protect those boys Basha and Oaka, working in her
stead as well at the inn? She should have spoken out against Nisa’s
compulsion, and told her that her father should do his own work,
and leave her alone for once.

Brigga
had tried to keep Nisa away from him for the first few years of her
life, hoping that Nisa might be able to live a normal life like the
rest of the townspeople, but once her daughter had started sneaking
off to be with him, Brigga knew that, in a sense, she had lost this
battle,
and that the Old Man
might win over her in the end when it came to their daughter’s
affection and attention. The Old Man, she should never have gotten
involved with him in the first place, even though Nisa had been
born from such a union. She should never have gotten close to the
old storyteller, he just made things more complicated, and he
ruined everything that he touched in her life.

To think that for all
of these years she had bent over backward, allowing Nisa to go off
and do
…
not evil things with her father, but certainly slightly
immoral, watching Basha without his consent
at the very least
. It
was wrong, yet
Nisa
was protecting him, wasn’t she?
What could Brigga have done in the
end to stop all of this from happening? She couldn’t keep Nisa away
from her father, the Old Man had some right to see his daughter,
and Nisa was stubborn, just like her parents, she would have
eventually broken loose from Brigga. As for what they were doing,
apparently there was a pretty good reason for it, when it came to
protecting Basha from evil, but
Brigga
didn’t know what to think
about this whole charade.
What sort of evil things could be trying to harm a boy like
him? And what sort of things was her daughter doing to protect him?
S
o she just tried to protect her daughter,
and covered for her
, even
though she hated it with all of her heart. She wanted Nisa to be
normal.

“
Did you know that
there are flocks of other royal messenger birds at the palace
besides me?” Fato asked from the pommel of Basha’s saddle, which he
took to be his perch when he wasn’t flying. “What do you think of
that?”

“
I’ll tell you what I
think of that, but it might stun the feathers off of you.” Oaka
muttered darkly.

“
I think I may have
seen a couple of small birds, sparrows perhaps, fly in and out of
the mail office next to city council hall several times in the
past. I did not get to see them well enough, or hear them if they
were able to speak like humans. Were those royal messenger birds?”
Basha asked.

“
Most likely.” Fato
nodded. “We don’t deliver too many messages this far north, to Coe
Baba especially, but one or two
…
yes, sparrows probably would be
sent to Coe Baba, especially if the messages were insignificant
enough.” Fato said, glancing at Oaka. “Not many sparrows last too
long in the service, for it is a very dangerous business to a
bird.” Fato added, “We don’t fly in flocks, for one thing, because
of hunters
,
hunters shoot at flocks of birds. And a flock is
only as good as its weakest member, so flocks are generally slow,
with the youngest
…
”

“
And dumbest.” Oaka
said.

“…
and the oldest
members amongst them.” Fato said, glaring at Oaka now. “That is why
you won’t see me flying around in a flock,” Fato said. “I like to
move fast, and I know that my messages are important enough that I
have to keep myself safe.”

“
And I bet you that
you wouldn’t even be accepted into a flock if you wanted to be in
one,” Oaka said.

“
I am a falcon, and a
bird like me gets some of the most important messages because I can
keep myself safe against almost anything, except for some threats
like Black Wolves and humans,” Fato added.

Oaka rolled his eyes.

“
I suppose I
had not gotten close enough
.
” Basha said again to
Fato, trailing off as he rode his horse Talan alongside Oaka on
Joko.

“
It’s all right,
Basha,” Fato said, looking up at him. “I suppose one day you would
have gotten close enough to hear the sparrows speak.”

Oaka had walked off
to bring back the horses from grazing, as Fato and Basha had talked
a bit, and he had wondered if Fato was telling the truth. If he
really was a royal messenger bird, if he really did have such an
important message, if
…
he never did ask any of these
important questions. He thought it was too soon, for one thing, and
he did not want to keep arguing with Basha forever, when they did
have to get going before night fall, because he did not want to
spend any more time near the place where Sir Nickleby was killed.
Especially if the Wolves came back, and
…
ate him at night.

Oaka shuddered. He
had half a mind to go back home at this point, but he was
worried
;
worried about what Sisila, his parents, and the rest of the
town might think if he abandoned Basha after Sir Nickleby was
killed. Even if he told them about Fato, they probably wouldn’t
excuse him
, except for
Sisila, of course. Plus, he was afraid of leaving
Basha alone with this bird if
…
he didn’t know what Fato was
doing. This was an odd situation, and he was determined not to
underestimate the royal messenger bird.

Plus, he did not want to pass by the
place where Sir Nickleby was killed, and he did not want to face
those Black Wolves by himself again if they were still there.

The first night
without the knight
…
they weren’t able to make the 55
miles necessary to reach Coe Anji before nightfall. Their route at
first from Coe Baba had been lined with small farmsteads, but after
awhile, those farmsteads had receded. At night, camping by the side
of the road, especially without the knight, smothered the young men
with forest darkness. Shadows prowled, triggering them to swathe
deep into their blankets as they tried to sleep, and meanwhile Fato
snored high up in the tree.

“
For a little bird,
he can sure make a lot of noise.” Oaka muttered to himself, on
guard duty for the first few hours as they now watched for Black
Wolves. Fears, however, were usually forgotten in daylight, and
there was no sign of the Wolves.

When the group got up
the next morning, Oaka remarked to Basha, “I had hoped to sleep in
a warm bed last night
.
”

“
Oh, you really are
pitiful!” Fato cackled, returning with a rabbit in his talons. “You
can’t even stand to sleep on the ground! Now I see you both need my
help!”

“
What makes you
expert enough to insult us?” Oaka cried. “You’re just a bird! You
probably live in a nest and don’t know anything but this
forest!”

Basha managed to
control the tension between them, but at least Fato was a good
hunter
,
that was one point in his favor, Oaka thought to himself as
he ate a bit of rabbit. Fato tore at the skull, and the other bits
of rabbit that the humans did not want to eat, but the falcon did
not seem to mind so much.

At last, it seemed
that they were getting close to Coe Anji, traveling amongst
caravans of merchants all huddled close together to protect
themselves from petty thieves and bandit gangs, and Basha and Oaka
started getting excited. “Coe Anji, the first town we’ve ever been
to besides our own,” Basha said, smiling, and then sighed. “Sir
Nickleby
…
”

“
Don’t worry, it will
all be okay,” Oaka said, reaching over to pat Basha on the shoulder
from horseback. “We’ll get through this,” He muttered. Sir Nickleby
had warned that Coe Anji was rougher than Coe Baba, but the scene
upon entering the town still surprised Basha and Oaka.

The core of this hamlet was
elbow-to-elbow vendors and stalls. Pedestrians had to get out of
the way of a herd of cattle, riders, and wagons.

The buildings were all made of wood,
not just clapboard siding with a smooth finish, but rough-shod as
well with the bark still clinging upon and engrained into them. The
entire facades of buildings were painted to make the town seem
festive, but the paint was peeling off and fading underneath the
sunlight. The town seemed to be constructed haphazardly, with
random ramshackle huts stacked one on top of another to make the
buildings two to three stories tall. Three stories tall! But these
were narrow and precarious as well, with some buildings leaning
over so much that they had to have joints attached to them outside,
beams stuck into the ground and pitched against the walls.

A rickety leaning city, Oaka thought to
himself; he had noticed the additions that had been made to The
Smiling Stallion inn and other buildings in his hometown over the
centuries, but those looked much smoother compared to the ones in
Coe Anji. In Coe Baba, people constructed with the intent to make
something permanent, and make it fit in with the rest of the town’s
facade, without making it look too new or too old. But the
buildings in Coe Anji looked to be temporary construction solutions
that had just turned permanent by accident, lashed and latched onto
each other through faith and hope with a bit of rope and nails. And
the buildings were so outnumbered by the expanse of tents pitched
in and around the town that Coe Anji looked to be a temporary
place, a market town made for merchants to exchange and barter
goods, services, and money.

Oaka could not
imagine anybody living here. Basha, however, seemed to be taken in
by the facade, fascinated by the muddled, yet jovial atmosphere of
Coe Anji’s market streets. Down several alleyways, however, there
were venues of vicious sport and soiled pleasure
,
sometimes one and the
same, Oaka was half aware of as he turned his head and saw men, but
very few women, coming in and out of the mouth of these alleyways,
laughing, smiling, and joking about as they staggered.

As they passed by a cart selling meats,
Fato, perched on the pommel of Basha’s saddle again, seemed to
smell something that attracted him, and he pushed himself off of
the pommel as he spread his wings wide to start flapping. Basha had
to let go of Talan’s reins for the moment, so that Fato would have
space to move, and the bird flapped his way up above the young
man’s head and soared off when he had wind underneath his wings.
Fato snagged a piece of veal from the cart, but was startled when a
strange little beast, covered in fur yet walking upright, snapped
at him and tried to reach out with tiny fingers to snatch at his
feathers.

The peddler pulling
the cart yelled at the falcon, and the two young men it returned to
when it had dropped its piece of veal. Oaka had to go over and pay
for the veal. As Oaka walked back to the others, Fato complained,
“That monkey
,
I ought to
…
”

“
Fato, just be glad
you got off with nothing more than a scratch,” Basha
said.

“
You humans are
related to monkeys!” Fato accused.

“
I would be glad to
know that I was related to that wise fool of a beast, especially
when he had the good sense to shoo you away!” Oaka said, as he
mounted Joko. “I learn something new everyday. Now where do we
go?”

“
We should look for
an inn,” Basha said, turning his head around. “I
smell
…
what is that smell in the air?”