“How did you get the guards to leave?” Thompson whispered, rubbing his discolored wrists now freed from their shackles.
“I seduced their boss!” Amelia said proudly, and Thompson looked at her while they walked, as if she were crazy.
“Sure, whatever you say.”
Amelia wanted to sulk. It was technically, maybe, in a sense, the truth.
Climbing the stairs leading to the ground floor, Amelia peeked round the steel door, and into the hallway.
“Coast is clear,” she said, finding it strange Thompson seemed hesitant to escape, “is something the matter?”
Thompson looked back over his shoulder. “I’ve a ledger. This place, I could swallow its loss, but I must have that ledger. Without it, forget aiding you find magical fairies, it would take nearly a year to get my affairs in order.”
Resisting the urge to copy Grace and stick her tongue out at the handsome man who thought every word she spoke was a lie, Amelia sarcastically whispered, “Isn’t that a bad idea, keeping all your important stuff in one place?”
Thompson’s mouth fell open into an offended ‘o’.
“That’s why the ledger is being kept in a safe. In a basement. Inside a secret compartment built into the underside of a keg of beer that’s been hidden amongst over a hundred duplicates! I’m not stupid, if there’s one copy of a ledger, it means it’s too risky to have more!”
“O-oh… I’m sorry,” Amelia said, embarrassed over having jumped to conclusions. “Want me to go on ahead by myself? So I don’t see which barrel it’s in?”
Sighing like a man who didn’t know what to do, Thompson stepped away from the stairs, “I can’t even get mad if that’s your follow-up. Sure, go ahead on your own. But if I’m not out in five minutes, cut away any hairbrained thoughts telling you to jump back into this oven of a place, and run home without looking back.”
“Woah, that sounded super gallant,” Amelia said, wondering if this starstruck sensation she was experiencing, was what the capital ladies felt when getting to meet a famous musician.
Sue her. She had read enough fantasy novels to have developed a soft spot for a self-sacrificing hero or two. But then Thompson had to ruin the moment by muttering something before running off that sounded like “Seduction my foot, Vanridge must have taken too many mushrooms.”
Unable to tell if she had misheard, Amelia hurried to exit the building, worried Vanridge’s men might soon return and catch her in the act. Once out, she spotted a bench on the opposite side of the road and decided it would be a good place to begin mentally subtracting three hundred seconds. When that number reached zero, Amelia hiccupped a wine bubble, decided addition was superior to subtracting, and restarted counting until having returned to three hundred.
By then, she had begun to worry. A worry all but confirmed when a noise like a gunshot exploded from the second floor of Thompson’s brokerage.
Cries of alarm began spreading, preluding the crash of a window breaking from which a headless body flew out to land on the street. Its skin as charred black as the billowing smoke beginning to pour from a building set ablaze. Amelia stared with mystified trepidation, at the corpse of Vanridge Dowsinger, who she could only recognize from the fancy shoes on his feet. She didn’t know what to do. Nothing seemed like the right choice. So there Amelia sat without twitching a muscle, unable to look away from the man who should have been living, until Thompson came bolting out of the brokerage like the devil himself were after his heels.
“What’s going on?” Amelia asked, begging to know what could have possibly happened.
“You’re still here?!” Thompson exclaimed, putting down the briefcase he now held to place his hands on either side of Amelia’s face, turning her away from Vanridge’s body.
“No idea what happened, there was a bang, then a whole lot of yelling. Can’t believe the bastard would let himself be done in so easily, but that’s life for you.”
Amelia couldn’t fathom how Thompson could act like he was late for a meeting. “He’s dead!” she said, trying to find any signs of reassurance it wasn’t just her who couldn’t accept such a prominent character from the Historian’s novel might suddenly exit stage left.
“They’ve killed the boss!” came a howl of anger from the brokerage that sent out a rolling wave of heat when it began falling apart.
“Find them! Flay them!” yelled another who kicked open the door for several men; some burned, all wrathful to come streaming out.
“Thompson’s gone missing as well!” shouted a third distinct rabble rouser, which only added more fuel to the flames.
Jolted out of her daze by the tolling of the city’s now ringing fire bell, Amelia realized Thompson had begun escorting her away from the scene.
“Amelia, I understand tragedy can be hard to acknowledge, but I’m going to need you to be brave and get back home as quick as you can. They’re gunning for me by what I’m hearing, so how about we pick up this conversation once we’re both out of harm’s way?”
Amelia didn’t want to leave Thompson alone, but she knew their situation wasn’t good. “I’m much too slow to run, let’s split up” she said, shoving her mother’s ring into his hand, “I’ll head to warn my friend who should still be out shopping, while I need you to inform my estate about what has happened. Our wagon should still be parked near the city square, can you do this for me?”
Thomson gripped the ring in determination. “Blend in. Don’t risk going down alleys. If you were with Vanridge before his death, they might think you’re involved.”
Then Thompson ran off, with a hobble to his steps that made Amelia guilt-ridden for not having noticed how deep his injuries went. Especially when Vanridge’s death had reminded her each character in The Historian’s novel was real. A single wrong turn, and they might end up dead as a doorknob. Meaning she absolutely couldn’t let Thompson get caught. At the very least she needed to help give him a running chance. Regardless of how tough he acted; pluck wouldn’t change the fact Thompson had sat in a cramped cell for who knew how long.
“He went this way!” Amelia yelled, using both hands to try and reverberate her words as loud as she could, “Thompson Brown, he’s heading down Yale Street!”
She could see Vanridge’s men turn. Hear them yelling out to each other so they all might chase as one unit. Leaving Amelia to question what exactly she should do if they decided to question her in passing. Wasn’t drawing attention actually a bad idea? If the city found out she had dealings with crooks, who knew what kind of trouble this mess could potentially cause her father. Her thoughts were in shambles. Thompson’s suggestion to blend in the only thing keeping her from completely losing her calm.
Only there was nowhere that offered concealment. Where once there’d been a mass of bystanders, now most had fled; few wanting to remain anywhere close to a building engulfed in flames. There were still those who cared little for the danger, only they were a minority. Certainly not enough to blend in with at least.
Not knowing whether Vanridge’s men could recognize her from a distance, Amelia tried to increase her running pace as she saw an opportunity, fast approaching. Gasping for breath, she threw caution to the wind and raced to cross just one more street, barely managing to clear it when a fire engine came rip-roaring past; pulled by a pair of horses whose hooves sparked as they gleefully headed towards where the animals knew they should be.
“Make way! Make way!” yelled the driver, leading a convoy of first responders behind him; thick enough to separate Amelia’s line of sight from Vanridge’s men. Giving her a few precious seconds to search again for a good spot to lay low.
Amelia found potential in a nearby storefront. The idea being that, so long as she got off the streets, nobody would know where she’d gone. A smashing solution, if Grace didn’t suddenly open that store’s door from the other side, which led to the two of them crashing into each other.
“Amelia? What’s going on?” Grace asked, the only one of them still standing.
“Princess, I did something stupid!”
“Princess?” Grace said, helping Amelia up, “What the heck are you saying — are you drunk — No, forget it, are you being chased?”
“I believe so. We need to hide,” Amelia said, not caring how desperate her plea sounded, as she began pulling Grace deeper into the store whose only other occupant happened to be an elderly lady who had fallen asleep in her rocker behind the cash register.
“How badly do we need to hide?” Grace asked, when the doorbell rung behind them, noisily announcing the entrance of a trio whose air about them spelt nothing good.
“Yes!” Amelia said, conscience-stricken to be foisting her hope on the princess who hadn’t a clue as to why she needed to avoid the men that began searching the store with a fine-tooth comb, slowly but surely creeping towards them.
Grace asked no further questions. Instead, she took over, firmly grabbing Amelia by the waist to move the smaller woman to a better location. Her left blocked by a shelf. Her right facing a wall. Suddenly, all Amelia could see was the princess’s body.
“Wear this,” Grace said, shifting the sunhat she wore onto Amelia’s head.
Watching Grace shake her hair loose, along with what heaved at eye level, Amelia peaked around the princess’s shoulder, and found one of the three men looking in their direction.
“Now kiss me,” Grace added, leaning in to completely block Amelia’s vision from the man who pointed them out.
“I don’t… I don’t think we need to go that far,” stammered Amelia, finding the woman’s warm breath on her neck enough to involuntarily shiver.
“Relax, we’re only pretending, I won’t use my tongue” shushed Grace, and Amelia could swear the princess’s lips brushed against her left ear, “now, pardon my disrespect, but be a good girl and listen to me until they’ve moved on. You trust me, don’t you?”
Maybe drastic measures were in fact needed. Amelia could hear footsteps, at least two of the men were now walking towards them.
“Do it,” she hissed, and at once, Amelia found herself kissing Grace.
Whose lips tasted like the sweetest of milk chocolate.
“Turn off your magic, it’s making my head spin even worse,” Amelia gasped quietly, coming up for air to ask the princess for mercy.
“It’s a passive effect,” Grace said, moving back in to let her lips tell Amelia to keep quiet.
A good decision, Amelia thought, what with the first of Vanridge’s men now close enough a silhouette had cast itself over the pair. Thinking they would surely be discovered; Amelia closed her eyes. Seeking refuge in how loudly her heart raced, and how warm Grace’s body felt pressed against hers.
“What’s taking so long?” came a yell from the shop’s front.
“Shut up! I’ve got bad eyes, they’re wrong on occasion!” answered a man, who by Amelia’s guess, stood not even a meter away.
As if the two women had become a part of the background, his footsteps began fading. The departure of three men punctuated by the shop’s entrance bell that rang once again when they’d left.
“I think they’re gone,” Grace said, as if satisfied of a job well done on her part.
“That was my first kiss,” Amelia said meekly, touching her lips with the tip of her fingers. Torn between the joy of elusion, and the embarrassment that came with knowing she would never again have the chance to taste her new favorite flavor.
The princess’s powers felt like cheating. No wonder the boys went crazy for more; they had gotten addicted on free handouts! Which was hard to imagine, seeing that the princess’s face began turning white, like she had committed a crime.
“I am so, so sorry,” Grace said sincerely, “I completely forgot compared to me you’ve been raised in a glass bottle.”
Amelia’s brow furrowed. She didn’t quite like how the princess had described her life.
“No matter, it would have had to happen eventually,” Amelia said, searching for something else to say that might distract her from the princess’s puppy dog pout. “Are you all done shopping? she asked, pointing at the basket Grace held by the crook of her arm.
Grace’s hand reactively placed itself on top of the basket’s lid, as if wanting to hide it.
“It’s rather disgraceful,” Grace said, “I even bragged about spending my first paycheck to buy the orphans a wagon’s worth of sweets… But there was just such a good deal I ended up changing my mind!”
“You’re making absolutely no sense.”
Grace’s hand wavered. Finally, she decided to show what she’d bought.
It was meat. A sizable quantity of dried, smoked, and prepared pieces of varying sizes that pungently filled the shop with the scent of a small mountain’s worth of spices and blood. Certainly, there were a few other purchases in the pile, but at a one to nine ratio the meat won out in abundance.
Had the princess been scammed? The smell was bad enough Amelia worried the vendor had tried to cover up the meat’s spoilage. It looked like they were both having a rough day.
“Well… Everyone makes mistakes,” Amelia said, moving near a street-side window to check whether it was safe to go out, “Why don’t we instead send them a barrel of bonbons and some food from my own personal storage?”
Grace tugged Amelia’s sleeve. “You’re not angry, are you?” she asked hesitantly, “Kissing is my go-to move for helping girls escape bad dates at the bar… I swear, if you’re mad, I promise next time I’ll try fighting instead!”
Dumbstruck, Amelia began laughing. She had thought Grace would be the last person to panic, but in the end, even a princess was human.
“It’s fine, I don’t mind,” Amelia said, consoling her friend, “like I said, it would have eventually happened. Rather, I’m glad you were my first since I’ve a feeling my potential fiancée might not want to wait until marriage.”
Not that marrying Gregory Rutherford was something set in stone.
“Now come on,” she added, opening the shop’s door, wanting to hurry back to the town square where Thompson should be. Depending on how quick he’d got there, Heimdall might have already dispatched an escort of knights to bring her back home.
It took Amelia a moment to discover Grace hadn’t followed her outside. The princess, instead, choosing to remain in the doorway where she stared with wide eyes.
“Your fiancée?!” Grace shrieked, racing to catch up and grab Amelia’s arm.
Amelia could only resign herself. She knew that gossipy look, it was the same her maids had whenever they clustered to chatter.
“How did you get the guards to leave?” Thompson whispered, rubbing his discolored wrists now freed from their shackles.
“I seduced their boss!” Amelia said proudly, and Thompson looked at her while they walked, as if she were crazy.
“Sure, whatever you say.”
Amelia wanted to sulk. It was technically, maybe, in a sense, the truth.
Climbing the stairs leading to the ground floor, Amelia peeked round the steel door, and into the hallway.
“Coast is clear,” she said, finding it strange Thompson seemed hesitant to escape, “is something the matter?”
Thompson looked back over his shoulder. “I’ve a ledger. This place, I could swallow its loss, but I must have that ledger. Without it, forget aiding you find magical fairies, it would take nearly a year to get my affairs in order.”
Resisting the urge to copy Grace and stick her tongue out at the handsome man who thought every word she spoke was a lie, Amelia sarcastically whispered, “Isn’t that a bad idea, keeping all your important stuff in one place?”
Thompson’s mouth fell open into an offended ‘o’.
“That’s why the ledger is being kept in a safe. In a basement. Inside a secret compartment built into the underside of a keg of beer that’s been hidden amongst over a hundred duplicates! I’m not stupid, if there’s one copy of a ledger, it means it’s too risky to have more!”
“O-oh… I’m sorry,” Amelia said, embarrassed over having jumped to conclusions. “Want me to go on ahead by myself? So I don’t see which barrel it’s in?”
Sighing like a man who didn’t know what to do, Thompson stepped away from the stairs, “I can’t even get mad if that’s your follow-up. Sure, go ahead on your own. But if I’m not out in five minutes, cut away any hairbrained thoughts telling you to jump back into this oven of a place, and run home without looking back.”
“Woah, that sounded super gallant,” Amelia said, wondering if this starstruck sensation she was experiencing, was what the capital ladies felt when getting to meet a famous musician.
Sue her. She had read enough fantasy novels to have developed a soft spot for a self-sacrificing hero or two. But then Thompson had to ruin the moment by muttering something before running off that sounded like “Seduction my foot, Vanridge must have taken too many mushrooms.”
Unable to tell if she had misheard, Amelia hurried to exit the building, worried Vanridge’s men might soon return and catch her in the act. Once out, she spotted a bench on the opposite side of the road and decided it would be a good place to begin mentally subtracting three hundred seconds. When that number reached zero, Amelia hiccupped a wine bubble, decided addition was superior to subtracting, and restarted counting until having returned to three hundred.
By then, she had begun to worry. A worry all but confirmed when a noise like a gunshot exploded from the second floor of Thompson’s brokerage.
Cries of alarm began spreading, preluding the crash of a window breaking from which a headless body flew out to land on the street. Its skin as charred black as the billowing smoke beginning to pour from a building set ablaze. Amelia stared with mystified trepidation, at the corpse of Vanridge Dowsinger, who she could only recognize from the fancy shoes on his feet. She didn’t know what to do. Nothing seemed like the right choice. So there Amelia sat without twitching a muscle, unable to look away from the man who should have been living, until Thompson came bolting out of the brokerage like the devil himself were after his heels.
“What’s going on?” Amelia asked, begging to know what could have possibly happened.
“You’re still here?!” Thompson exclaimed, putting down the briefcase he now held to place his hands on either side of Amelia’s face, turning her away from Vanridge’s body.
“No idea what happened, there was a bang, then a whole lot of yelling. Can’t believe the bastard would let himself be done in so easily, but that’s life for you.”
Amelia couldn’t fathom how Thompson could act like he was late for a meeting. “He’s dead!” she said, trying to find any signs of reassurance it wasn’t just her who couldn’t accept such a prominent character from the Historian’s novel might suddenly exit stage left.
“They’ve killed the boss!” came a howl of anger from the brokerage that sent out a rolling wave of heat when it began falling apart.
“Find them! Flay them!” yelled another who kicked open the door for several men; some burned, all wrathful to come streaming out.
“Thompson’s gone missing as well!” shouted a third distinct rabble rouser, which only added more fuel to the flames.
Jolted out of her daze by the tolling of the city’s now ringing fire bell, Amelia realized Thompson had begun escorting her away from the scene.
“Amelia, I understand tragedy can be hard to acknowledge, but I’m going to need you to be brave and get back home as quick as you can. They’re gunning for me by what I’m hearing, so how about we pick up this conversation once we’re both out of harm’s way?”
Amelia didn’t want to leave Thompson alone, but she knew their situation wasn’t good. “I’m much too slow to run, let’s split up” she said, shoving her mother’s ring into his hand, “I’ll head to warn my friend who should still be out shopping, while I need you to inform my estate about what has happened. Our wagon should still be parked near the city square, can you do this for me?”
Thomson gripped the ring in determination. “Blend in. Don’t risk going down alleys. If you were with Vanridge before his death, they might think you’re involved.”
Then Thompson ran off, with a hobble to his steps that made Amelia guilt-ridden for not having noticed how deep his injuries went. Especially when Vanridge’s death had reminded her each character in The Historian’s novel was real. A single wrong turn, and they might end up dead as a doorknob. Meaning she absolutely couldn’t let Thompson get caught. At the very least she needed to help give him a running chance. Regardless of how tough he acted; pluck wouldn’t change the fact Thompson had sat in a cramped cell for who knew how long.
“He went this way!” Amelia yelled, using both hands to try and reverberate her words as loud as she could, “Thompson Brown, he’s heading down Yale Street!”
She could see Vanridge’s men turn. Hear them yelling out to each other so they all might chase as one unit. Leaving Amelia to question what exactly she should do if they decided to question her in passing. Wasn’t drawing attention actually a bad idea? If the city found out she had dealings with crooks, who knew what kind of trouble this mess could potentially cause her father. Her thoughts were in shambles. Thompson’s suggestion to blend in the only thing keeping her from completely losing her calm.
Only there was nowhere that offered concealment. Where once there’d been a mass of bystanders, now most had fled; few wanting to remain anywhere close to a building engulfed in flames. There were still those who cared little for the danger, only they were a minority. Certainly not enough to blend in with at least.
Not knowing whether Vanridge’s men could recognize her from a distance, Amelia tried to increase her running pace as she saw an opportunity, fast approaching. Gasping for breath, she threw caution to the wind and raced to cross just one more street, barely managing to clear it when a fire engine came rip-roaring past; pulled by a pair of horses whose hooves sparked as they gleefully headed towards where the animals knew they should be.
“Make way! Make way!” yelled the driver, leading a convoy of first responders behind him; thick enough to separate Amelia’s line of sight from Vanridge’s men. Giving her a few precious seconds to search again for a good spot to lay low.
Amelia found potential in a nearby storefront. The idea being that, so long as she got off the streets, nobody would know where she’d gone. A smashing solution, if Grace didn’t suddenly open that store’s door from the other side, which led to the two of them crashing into each other.
“Amelia? What’s going on?” Grace asked, the only one of them still standing.
“Princess, I did something stupid!”
“Princess?” Grace said, helping Amelia up, “What the heck are you saying — are you drunk — No, forget it, are you being chased?”
“I believe so. We need to hide,” Amelia said, not caring how desperate her plea sounded, as she began pulling Grace deeper into the store whose only other occupant happened to be an elderly lady who had fallen asleep in her rocker behind the cash register.
“How badly do we need to hide?” Grace asked, when the doorbell rung behind them, noisily announcing the entrance of a trio whose air about them spelt nothing good.
“Yes!” Amelia said, conscience-stricken to be foisting her hope on the princess who hadn’t a clue as to why she needed to avoid the men that began searching the store with a fine-tooth comb, slowly but surely creeping towards them.
Grace asked no further questions. Instead, she took over, firmly grabbing Amelia by the waist to move the smaller woman to a better location. Her left blocked by a shelf. Her right facing a wall. Suddenly, all Amelia could see was the princess’s body.
“Wear this,” Grace said, shifting the sunhat she wore onto Amelia’s head.
Watching Grace shake her hair loose, along with what heaved at eye level, Amelia peaked around the princess’s shoulder, and found one of the three men looking in their direction.
“Now kiss me,” Grace added, leaning in to completely block Amelia’s vision from the man who pointed them out.
“I don’t… I don’t think we need to go that far,” stammered Amelia, finding the woman’s warm breath on her neck enough to involuntarily shiver.
“Relax, we’re only pretending, I won’t use my tongue” shushed Grace, and Amelia could swear the princess’s lips brushed against her left ear, “now, pardon my disrespect, but be a good girl and listen to me until they’ve moved on. You trust me, don’t you?”
Maybe drastic measures were in fact needed. Amelia could hear footsteps, at least two of the men were now walking towards them.
“Do it,” she hissed, and at once, Amelia found herself kissing Grace.
Whose lips tasted like the sweetest of milk chocolate.
“Turn off your magic, it’s making my head spin even worse,” Amelia gasped quietly, coming up for air to ask the princess for mercy.
“It’s a passive effect,” Grace said, moving back in to let her lips tell Amelia to keep quiet.
A good decision, Amelia thought, what with the first of Vanridge’s men now close enough a silhouette had cast itself over the pair. Thinking they would surely be discovered; Amelia closed her eyes. Seeking refuge in how loudly her heart raced, and how warm Grace’s body felt pressed against hers.
“What’s taking so long?” came a yell from the shop’s front.
“Shut up! I’ve got bad eyes, they’re wrong on occasion!” answered a man, who by Amelia’s guess, stood not even a meter away.
As if the two women had become a part of the background, his footsteps began fading. The departure of three men punctuated by the shop’s entrance bell that rang once again when they’d left.
“I think they’re gone,” Grace said, as if satisfied of a job well done on her part.
“That was my first kiss,” Amelia said meekly, touching her lips with the tip of her fingers. Torn between the joy of elusion, and the embarrassment that came with knowing she would never again have the chance to taste her new favorite flavor.
The princess’s powers felt like cheating. No wonder the boys went crazy for more; they had gotten addicted on free handouts! Which was hard to imagine, seeing that the princess’s face began turning white, like she had committed a crime.
“I am so, so sorry,” Grace said sincerely, “I completely forgot compared to me you’ve been raised in a glass bottle.”
Amelia’s brow furrowed. She didn’t quite like how the princess had described her life.
“No matter, it would have had to happen eventually,” Amelia said, searching for something else to say that might distract her from the princess’s puppy dog pout. “Are you all done shopping? she asked, pointing at the basket Grace held by the crook of her arm.
Grace’s hand reactively placed itself on top of the basket’s lid, as if wanting to hide it.
“It’s rather disgraceful,” Grace said, “I even bragged about spending my first paycheck to buy the orphans a wagon’s worth of sweets… But there was just such a good deal I ended up changing my mind!”
“You’re making absolutely no sense.”
Grace’s hand wavered. Finally, she decided to show what she’d bought.
It was meat. A sizable quantity of dried, smoked, and prepared pieces of varying sizes that pungently filled the shop with the scent of a small mountain’s worth of spices and blood. Certainly, there were a few other purchases in the pile, but at a one to nine ratio the meat won out in abundance.
Had the princess been scammed? The smell was bad enough Amelia worried the vendor had tried to cover up the meat’s spoilage. It looked like they were both having a rough day.
“Well… Everyone makes mistakes,” Amelia said, moving near a street-side window to check whether it was safe to go out, “Why don’t we instead send them a barrel of bonbons and some food from my own personal storage?”
Grace tugged Amelia’s sleeve. “You’re not angry, are you?” she asked hesitantly, “Kissing is my go-to move for helping girls escape bad dates at the bar… I swear, if you’re mad, I promise next time I’ll try fighting instead!”
Dumbstruck, Amelia began laughing. She had thought Grace would be the last person to panic, but in the end, even a princess was human.
“It’s fine, I don’t mind,” Amelia said, consoling her friend, “like I said, it would have eventually happened. Rather, I’m glad you were my first since I’ve a feeling my potential fiancée might not want to wait until marriage.”
Not that marrying Gregory Rutherford was something set in stone.
“Now come on,” she added, opening the shop’s door, wanting to hurry back to the town square where Thompson should be. Depending on how quick he’d got there, Heimdall might have already dispatched an escort of knights to bring her back home.
It took Amelia a moment to discover Grace hadn’t followed her outside. The princess, instead, choosing to remain in the doorway where she stared with wide eyes.
“Your fiancée?!” Grace shrieked, racing to catch up and grab Amelia’s arm.
Amelia could only resign herself. She knew that gossipy look, it was the same her maids had whenever they clustered to chatter.
