Esmiralda and her companions, the Optimist Monk Broo Fang Tane and Seymuhr Skullsquasher were enjoying a brief respite outside the walls of Veral Ski, the largest city in the land of Korrin. Soon, they must visit with the queen and tell her of the demise of their colleague.
Mallyn bent down, bucket and sponge in hand, and started to sop up the blood.
"We really should just paint the floors red," she called to us. With a snorting chuckle she added, softer: "And the walls and the windows and the ceiling, perhaps the door..."
Broo Fang Tane smiled slightly at the attempt at humor. "I coul....d help," he said.
"There you go," I was relieved that his good humor was returning. So, I think, was everyone else who had witnessed the rather lop-sided fight. "Don't think of it as a talent for slaughter, but redecorating!"
"Either way, you'll never want for work," Seymuhr put in.
"I must admit, you do have a propensity to attract unwanted attention," I said after another mouthful of spiderfat soup. Indeed, I had been in three taverns with Tane and seen more than a dozen men dead or maimed because of it. "Is that what first took you to the Temple of the Sun?"
The Temple of the Sun, in far-off Nicaria, was where pilgrims went to learn the Way of the Optimist, and the fighting skills required to spread good cheer during these troubled times. Korrin was often a silly place, but it was a dark place, too, and anyone who tried to cheer someone else up had to know how to defend him or herself.
"I do not know," Tane said. "I was to....o...youn...g to understand much a...bout that place and i...t's teachings."
"Oh? I'm afraid I do not understand. I thought most boys who joined the order sought it out when they were of age. Is that not the case?"
"It is, usual...ly," Tane said. "But not for........................me."
In his slow, halting way, Tane told us of how his father had led him into the snow-slickened slopes of the Jagged Peaks and wept with joy when he found the temple gates. He remembered his father's heavy fist pounding on him and then not much else. When he looked up, his father was already walking away.
"Oh. He just left you there?"
Tane nodded. Mallyn had scooted near the table, her pink sponge working furiously at a thick blood stain.
I could only imagine how frightened Tane must have felt, and confused. I shook my head in wonder. It was no wonder Korrin was such a dark and silly place when parents took no responsibility for or joy in their offspring.
"With no word at all?"
"Oh, he said one...thing. But it was to the monk who....opened the...gate and...not to...me."
"I hope it was 'thank you,' at least!"
Broo Fang Tane shook his head. "It was: 'Good luck with this one.'"
"Well that's the next best thing," Mallyn said with a snorting chuckle and then, when I shot her an irritated glare, scrubbed the floor with renewed vigor. "I've heard worse," she muttered.
I favored Tane with a sympathetic glance, but the monk was looking down at the table and did not see it. I patted his hand, instead. Seymuhr, his belly full of spiderfat soup, roasted spider flank, spider silk noodles, spider jerky and whipped spider cream, had dozed off.
