A Way With Words - Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The streets of the Merchants' Row of the grand extradimensional city Oromikalis stretched on for miles, full of merchants from many different worlds and planes, selling a variety of wares matched few other places in any universe. In addition to the permanent shops and businesses in towering buildings of peeling, dull-brown wood and dark-gray brick, the streets themselves were lined with merchants' stalls selling all manner of trinkets, clothing, food and other merchandise. Some were the professionals, proudly flying the official banner of one of the city's two dozen sanctioned merchant houses; many more were independents, a varied and usually shabby assortment of people calling out about selling things "below house rates" or promising merchandise that "the heads of the houses don't want you to buy!" Above them, the bright and faintly multicolored sky of the Oromi demiplane swirled and shifted lazily like a thin film of oil atop gently moving water.

Kale Trenigull's boots moved briskly over the smooth, pale gray stone of the streets as he walked quickly past the stalls, trying to ignore the increasing throng of vendors. He was fit and slender, with light brown hair that was just starting to grow out, and a handsome face with high, dimpled cheeks, a slender nose, and full lips that made his common smirks and chuckles at once infuriating and contagious. His dark green eyes were inviting and disarming, when they weren't rolling upwards. Despite his attempts to dress down in a simple gray button-up shirt and plain tan trousers, the cleanliness, good repair, and perfect fit of his clothing gave him away as the sort of man who had drab, practical clothing tailor-made and replaced frequently.

Kale was an enchanter in the service of the Adelcot Guardians, and today was the last full day of his regular pass before he was expected to report back at Fortress Adelcot tomorrow. A scant few days ago, he had been an integral part in the capture of over a dozen high-ranking members of the Overhands, a human trafficking group who had figured Oromikalis was vast enough that they could snatch a suspected thirty people off the streets in the past few months without raising attention, and sell them outside the city as slaves.

Kale hadn't needed to use his enchantment magic to make new friends among suspected Overhand members and win their trust. He always had a way with words, and as it always did, that got his foot in the door. He had joined the Overhand ranks and, as a new member, distinguished himself by 'capturing' two valuable, healthy people within as many days. Naturally, those two people had been Adelcot Guardians: a powerful psionicist and a warrior specializing in barehanded combat, whose bindings had been conveniently loose. The ensuing mayhem when the local Overhand commander arrived to personally inspect the wares and reward Kale's captives had been truly impressive. The Adelcot Guardians had emerged victorious thanks to the element of surprise and Kale's own significant magical prowess, the mission a success beyond all reasonable expectations.

But in the days following this triumph, there were spell components to buy and errands to run, and then it would be time for Kale to go back, collect his pay, and get back to work. After a day in the markets, he had most of his shopping done, but at the cost of his anonymity as well as his coin. By the end of the day, word was starting to spread in the Oromikalis markets that Kale was an active wizard with money to burn. They were correct, of course, but that didn't mean that he had any desire to buy their junk. It did, however, mean that he needed to finish up and get off the streets, lest he be a tempting target for the Overhands' retaliation if one of their agents found him and put the pieces together.

Kale made his final purchase of a few obscure spell components at a market stall, and when he turned away, he nearly bumped into a thin, bespectacled man with a long, flowing tan robe, which he opened at once to show that the inside was full of short magicians' wands strapped to the lining. "Sir!" the man said. "You look like a man who could use some of these previously owned wands! Small and concealable! They still hold most of their charges, but I sell them at a bare fraction of the cost!"

Kale shook his head. "The last time a man opened his robe to me like that, the wand he was showing was longer than those." He turned away, leaving the wand seller staring in gobsmacked silence, and made it exactly five steps before a matronly woman in a headscarf and kitchen apron cut him off.

"Why hello there," the woman said. "Good sir, I'm only a common housewife, and I-"

"Damn it all," Kale said with a grimace. "And here I was smitten with your beauty and just about to ask if you were single. Well, never mind that; I won't be a party to adultery." He stepped to go past her.

She stepped in front of him, undeterred. "You misunderstand, sir!" she said. "I'm only a simple housewife, but I've discovered how to heal even severe injuries quickly with one weird trick!" She beamed at him with a smile. "Clerics hate me!"

Kale snorted. "Don't you recognize me as a serving high priest of Alzyr, Lord of the Red Sun?" he said. "Indeed, you've grossly offended my fierce and intolerant faith. Would you be good enough to run to the local temple and confess your heresy? I'm a bit busy, or I'd report you myself."

This time, Kale was able to push past the woman, but more merchants converged, and every few steps he was turning down an increasingly desperate vendor intent on hawking whatever trinkets he or she had to peddle.

"You look like a wizard with discerning taste in staves-" one began.

"Appearances deceive," Kale told him, pushing past with a shoulder. "I've been using the broken handle of a mop for years and I'm quite happy with it, thank you."

A dwarf crowded into him belly-first. "Our nutritious field rations will keep for three months or more-" he started.

"And even longer outside the stomach, I'm sure." Kale dodged to the side.

"Perhaps you know a warrior who needs one of these fine enchanted swords-" a woman at a weapons rack said.

"In fact, I do," Kale told her, "Gloriana Marcel of Fortress Adelcot needs one desperately, either between her ears or between her breasts, whichever is most convenient."

"These amulets are a guaranteed deterrent against thieves-" announced another man.

"They obviously don't-" Kale started with another sharp reply at his lips, but then he became aware of his money pouch being pulled from his waist. His hand flew down to his side, grabbing for it, but too late; it was already gone. The simmering irritation that had been building in Kale at the persistent street vendors at once became searing fury. This day at the market had been nerve-wracking enough, and though the loss of the money itself was not a terrible setback for a man of his wealth, the indignity of the theft of the coin pouch cracked his patience irreparably.

"Stop!!" Kale shouted abruptly. "My money pouch has just been stolen, and I can't buy any of your junk any longer! So shut up and back off, you miserable swindlers!"

The crowd froze, stunned by his outburst, and many of them took a few cautious steps back as they realized that they were no longer looking at a wealthy, spending wizard, but a robbed, furious one. Even through his anger, Kale was impressed by the moment of utter silence that filled the streets, and he made a mental note to try this one in the future, even when it wasn't true. But of more immediate concern was the missing money pouch, and he scanned the crowd frantically, trying to catch sight of a fleeing thief.

"You should have bought one of my amulets!" the last speaker said cheerily.

Kale whirled and drove a fist into the amulet vendor's face with such force that the poor man abruptly found the opportunity to measure his own length upon the street. But as he lowered his hand again, he caught a glimpse of a head with dark brown hair bobbing between shoulders as a person ducked and weaved, and then nothing. The merchants started up again:

"Magical charms against detection!" one merchant announced. "Perfect for losing pursuit in a crowd!"

"Potions of haste!" shouted another. "Just the thing for a hasty escape!"

"Enchanted jackets and vests!" a third called out. "Conceal anything from a coin purse to a... um, money pouch!"

Kale had the fleeting thought that, if his magical specialization in enchantment had not barred him from most destructive evocation spells such as fireball, he might have felt the temptation to make an impulsive choice with tragic consequences for the assembled merchants. Instead, he kept his temper confined to an enraged bellow as he charged after the glimpse he had caught of the thief, offering the points of his elbows to anyone who stood in his way.

He got out of the immediate crowd just in time to see a shape dressed in shabby brown duck into an alley between two looming apartment towers made of crumbling stone. Wasting no time, he ran into the same alley in pursuit. At the alley's end was a garden wall of smooth white stone about eight feet tall, much nicer than the apartments that framed it. Kale saw the slender form of the thief sprint to the end and leap at the wall, taking hold of its upper ledge and preparing to vault over it. Kale closed the distance at a full run and, as the thief started to swing a leg over, he cast a grease spell upon the wall.

The thief was identifiable at this range as a thin human woman in a ratty brown cloak, an ugly wool shirt, and stained rough trousers that seemed fitted for a young boy. She yelped as one hand and two feet lost their purchase on the greased wall, leaving her dangling by one arm that, he now saw, ended at a hook on a metal cup at the wrist instead of a hand. The hook was curled around one of the iron points atop the wall, while her other limbs scrambled futilely for purchase on the magically greased stone.

Smiling to himself, Kale casually walked up to her. "I suppose you're stuck," Kale observed aloud. "It looks like you, um... need a hand?" He mentally rebuked himself for being so cruel in his choice of words, even if in his anger he couldn't contain a triumphant grin.

"Fuck you!" the woman shouted back, flailing uselessly at the slick wall.

Kale saw his coin pouch dangling from her belt and helped himself to it as she struggled. "You know, I once had a coin pouch just like this one," he said. "Same smoothed canvas texture, same worn gray color, even the same amount of money in it and everything. Then one day, it was stolen from me about... oh, two minutes ago. But would you believe that in all this time I've never forgotten it?"

"Take it!" the woman shouted, desperation, anguish, and anger warring in her wide-eyed expression. "You win, okay? I'll just go ahead and starve tonight. Again!"

"Oh, you're hungry?" Kale said. "Not to tell you your job or anything, but you should've robbed the ogre with the deep-fried candied larva stand down the block. The one who's obviously nearly blind and smells the coins you give him to tell what they are? I don't keep any food in my coin pouch, you see. That seems to be a common misconception among hungry pickpockets."

"So I got greedy!" the woman said. "You seemed to have enough, I thought maybe if I took your money, I wouldn't have to steal anything else for a few weeks. Look, I'm sorry!" She gave up struggling to climb and shouted "Hook release!" The hook and its metal cup came loose from her arm, and she fell awkwardly on her butt on the dirty floor of the alley.

Kale got his first good look at the woman as she stood up. She was young and lean, with straight, dark brown hair. Her eyes were a matching dark brown, darting to and fro with keen alertness, her nose thin, curved, and hawklike, her face spotted with freckles and bearing the beginning traces of the lines one acquired in a hard life of poverty. As she stood, her body was obviously thin to the point of being scrawny. She met his studious gaze with a scowl, then leapt up and snatched her hook off of the top of the wall.

"Impressive," Kale said, eyeing the hook. "It has a magic command to take if off and put it on?"

"Yes," the woman said crossly. "Quite impressive. Such an improvement over that useless hand I used to have." She rolled her eyes and pressed the metal cup to her wrist stump and commanded, "Hook attach."

"So you, um, really are in rather tough circumstances, aren't you?" Kale said, his voice now a little softer. His irritation at losing his money pouch was fading now that he had safely recovered it, and in its place sympathy for this unfortunate-seeming thief rose in the back of his throat. He grimaced and tried to swallow it down again.

"No, I live like a princess back home in my abandoned shipping crate," she said sarcastically. "Look, save me whatever smart-assed comment you were winding up to this time, and just let me slink away and go hungry in peace, all right?"

Kale looked down the alley. "I think we'll need to talk to them about that first." He pointed to a trio of armored warriors wearing the colors of the Oromikalis Guards approaching them.

The woman gave a strangled gasping cry when she saw them, and her face was stretched with panic when she turned back to him. "N-no, please! You can't!" she exclaimed. "I can't survive if they take my other hand!"

Kale shifted uncomfortably. "Yes, that would have been good to consider before you stole from me, wouldn't it?" He managed to project a hard and merciless tone that he was not at all feeling. In spite of everything, his suppressed conscience was gnawing at him, and he made a face and set his jaw.

The woman went tense, looked back and forth as if considering which way to run, then moaned in despair and brought the point of her hook up to her own neck, cringing. "No!" she said in a cracking voice. "I won't let them!"

Just as she started to press in, Kale caught her wrist and pulled it away. "Stop!" he said, surprised at his own vehemence. "I'll talk to-" But then he stopped, for the guards were upon them with questioning glares.

"What's going on here?" the guard in front said. He was precisely the sort of broad-shouldered, thick-necked, square-jawed, humorless man in his thirties who thrived as a law enforcer in this city. "You the man who shouted about his coin pouch being stolen on the street back there?"

"I am, officer," Kale said, "and I owe you a profound apology for wasting your time. It turns out that it's right here!" He patted the pouch at his side and offered a sheepish laugh. "Believe me, I feel dumb."

"Yeah?" the guard said. "Who's she?"

"Her?" Kale gestures to the woman and raised an eyebrow. "Oh, that's just my..." And he finished "girlfriend," just as the woman blurted, "Sister!"

The guard paused for a second, and his scowl deepened. "Well, which is it? Your girlfriend or your sister?" he asked. "Or are you a real special case and the answer's 'both'?"

Kale fixed the woman with his severest 'stop helping me' glare, then gave the guard a disarming smile. "This is my girlfriend... Sister Luligail Adamsworth, a priestess down at the Temple of the Most Holy Anointed Hand of God. That's what we were trying to tell you, and we just got all jumbled up when speaking."

"Yeah?" the guard replied, unconvinced. "Why's she dressed like a common street rat, then?"

"She took a vow of poverty," Kale said, and he smiled and lowered his voice. "But if you want to know the truth, I'm not fond of the look myself. Surely, God won't mind if you go pick up a nicer outfit for our date tonight, will He, honey?" He pulled out five coins and pressed them into the woman's hand, fixing her with an adoring smile. On an impulse, he leaned forward and gave her a little kiss on the lips, and she was cunning enough to lean into it and then feign a shy smile afterwards.

"I don't know," one of the other guards said, rubbing his chin, "I really doubt this guy would just kiss some filthy thief off the streets. Seems like he's telling the truth."

"Don't be a fool," the lead guard said, scowling at the other guard like he was a complete idiot. "This whole thing smells rotten to me. What about her hand?"

"Youthful indiscretion," Kale said with a dismissive wave. "She stole something once, and paid her debt to society. Why do you think she joined the clergy and took her vow? She was moved to atone for her past life of sin!"

"And did she just try to cut her own throat with her hook as we were approaching?" the guard pressed.

Kale rolled his eyes. "You caught us during a lovers' quarrel, I'm afraid," he said, and then he rolled his eyes. "Women, you know? They can be so fucking dramatic when they don't get their way." He drank in her annoyed glare with a smirk and a quick waggle of his eyebrows.

"A former thief turned into a priestess sworn to an oath of poverty," the lead guard said flatly. "And a man of your obvious stature is dating her."

"I have my reasons," Kale said. "Remember, after all, it's a vow of poverty, not a vow of chastity." He grinned knowingly at the guard as he pulled her close with an arm around the waist, and she was savvy enough to sigh happily and entwine herself with him.

An enraged, ruddy hue crept in behind the naturally dark tan of the lead guard's skin. He raised a finger, opened his mouth to object, and then closed it again. His teeth clenched, and Kale could nearly imagine that he saw steam coming from his nostrils.

"So... are you arresting us, or are we free to go?" Kale gave the woman's waist a squeeze again and offered an apologetic, disarming grin at the man.

"The fine for summoning the guards under false pretenses," the head guard said through clenched teeth, "is ten silver ducats."

Kale drew two golden eagles from his coin pouch and handed them over with a smile. "Take double that amount, sir," he said, "in consideration of my sincere gratitude for your pleasance and good grace."

The guard looked at the money in his hand, then back at Kale and the woman. Then back at the money, and back at Kale and the woman. His jaw set even harder, as he was if displeased that he now apparently lacked any legitimate reason to be displeased with them. "Best that you do nothing more that calls the attention of the guard any time soon, friend," he growled. "You'll find we have long memories." He turned to leave, and the others followed.

"And such deeply cherished memories they will always be," Kale said with with mock wistfulness. He was pretty sure that a parting jab would anger them further and might risk trouble, but in his annoyance he couldn't resist pressing his luck. "You have a good day now, gentlemen. My fondest thanks for your quick response."

The guard growled, cocked a fist, and started to turn back to them, but thought better of it and kept walking. Kale watched them round the corner, then allowed himself to let out his breath and crack a relieved smile. The woman was staring at him, beaming.

"I'm honestly amazed," the woman breathed, grinning ear to ear. "You have got to be the greatest bullshit artist in the multiverse!"

"No, I'm really not," Kale said with a dismissive wave. "I just fool everyone into thinking that I am." Privately, he was mostly relieved that no enchantment spells were needed to get out of this one. That would not have been fun to explain to his superiors. It paid to have a way with words.

The woman scowled and swatted him in the arm with her intact hand. "Well, you truly are the biggest smart-ass I've ever met." But her scowl formed into a smile again nearly as soon as the words left her mouth.

Kale shrugged. "I'll admit to that much, I suppose," he said. Something about her smile, her honest joy and relief, proved quite infectious, threatening to crawl unbidden past his guard. Before it could make him share in her happiness, it made him uncomfortable, and he decided to leave with the tip of an imaginary hat. "Good day to you now, my lady." He offered a bow and started to turn away.

"And what kind of a name is Luligail Adamsworth?" she asked, giggling as she started after him. "It sounds so... made up, like some old biddy in a cheap children's book! I can't believe he bought it!"

Kale stopped and rolled his eyes. "I suppose your real name is so much better, then," he said.

"I'm Hannah," the woman said.

"Oh," Kale said flatly. "How nice for you." He turned to go again.

"And yours?" Hannah asked, moving to catch him again, her smile unfading.

"Kale," he told her after a moment of hesitation.

"Kale?" Hannah asked, laughing. "Like the leafy greens?"

"Yes, exactly like the leafy greens," Kale said wearily. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to be on my way. I'm late for a visit with my dear old Aunt Luligail." He turned to leave again.

"Wait," Hannah said, and she held out her hand with his money in it, with visible reluctance. "I should... give this back. I guess."

Kale shook his head. "No, you shouldn't," he said.

Hannah looked down at the coins. "But... this is gold," she said, with an expression of disbelief. "It's more money than you paid the guard to leave us alone."

"No, they're only chocolate wrapped in foil," Kale said, looking away to escape the intensity of her shining eyes. "You said you were hungry, after all."

"So... you were sincere, earlier," Hannah said softly. "It's... hard to tell, with you. And I don't even know what to say. Th-thank you..." She shifted her weight, bristling with intense energy, and then suddenly leapt on him. Her lips clumsily found his, and before Kale knew himself he had swept her up in his arms and was kissing her. Unlike before, this was no simple peck on the lips. Their mouths were open, enfolding one another's lips, and their tongues met, tracing over one another.

Hannah pulled away and he stared at her, shocked into silence. She looked back at him with a wide, blushing grin. An uncertain hesitancy hung between them thickly, and then she turned and darted up the alley, back out to the street, moving as though her feet were light enough to skip across clouds. Kale watched her go, feeling a peculiar sensation of loss in the pit of his stomach, and told himself that he was merely annoyed at watching two of his golden eagles leave with the guards, and five more leave with Hannah, the thief who had robbed him to begin with.

The alternative was too unsettling to think about right now.

Continued in Chapter 2...

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