#but like i could barely see what i was doing with that thread. bodes ill for sewing the panels :

[milkweedman]

Figured i'd embroider the tips since im piecing them on anyway. Im uh. A little out of practice though, it seems.

[janekfan]

Hello! I'm back again with a Witcher prompt for you, if you’re in the mood! You said once that Geralt forgetting Jaskier’s human-ness is your jam, so: five (or however many) times Geralt completely overestimated his human companion’s physical tolerance/abilities, plus one time that he underestimated what Jaskier was capable of when called on. As gen or shippy as you like, but either way I’d like to politely request you go heavy on the kindness, affection, and comfort if you choose to fill it.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26867821/chapters/65555047

Thank you! It is, in fact, my jam :D

Oh, he’s having a right time with this. Jaskier sipped his tea, hot as his sore throat could manage and grimaced at the sharp sting. He thinks I can’t see his smug grin. Last night, Jaskier had gone to sleep after a rough performance with an aching behind his tongue and woken to full fledged agony, and no he wasn’t being dramatic, it hurt, and unable to speak. After finishing his gruff assessment of him, Geralt had prescribed hot tea, plenty of water, and even so magnanimously agreed to stay one more day at the inn and for that, the bard was grateful. The thought of sleeping out in the rough feeling this dreadful inspired many a woeful ballad. If only he could sing them. But his voice was quite and thoroughly gone. Something Geralt found amusing to say the least.

“What a pleasant day this is proving to be, wouldn’t you say, bard?” Jaskier glowered, setting the cup aside and burrowing deeper into the inadequate bedclothes. He was positively freezing, clenching his jaw to avoid chattering his teeth, because while Geralt seemed to be in relative good humor, he could just as easily leave without him. “Ah, I forgot, you can’t.” Petulant, Jaskier stuck out his tongue and twisted up his face, turning away in the bed to curl up in his misery. He’d sleep this off. A good, restful day would clear whatever this was right up.

And of course, with his terrible luck, it didn’t and he woke in the early evening so incredibly thirsty, cursing himself for sleeping throughout the entire day. He downed the cold tea, whimpering and holding his neck at the burn of it, and noticed that Geralt was gone. The flash of fear at being abandoned was tempered by seeing armor and packs by the door, but Jaskier felt very suddenly alone. He longed for something warm to sip but after barely making it to the rough hewn pitcher to pour himself the last bit of water, he decided against a trip down the stairs. He would fall and make an embarrassment of himself and that wouldn’t do. Jaskier was exhausted and aching, a headache making itself at home behind his eyes and the throbbing, pulsing agony in his throat made tears spring to his eyes. Sleep. Sleep would make it all go away, at least for a little while, and he staggered back into bed to will himself to sleep. At least when Geralt came back he’d be warm.

The next morning dawned cheery and bright, the wretch, and Jaskier woke perhaps even worse off than yesterday. But he was met by a cup of medicated tea if the smell was anything to go by, being thrust into his face and Geralt saying he’d be waiting with Roach, but not without one more jab about his lost vocal talents. It was bringing him no end of amusement.

“Take your time.” Ah, that was nice of him and by the looks of things, Jaskier would need a fair bit of it. The weakness in his legs didn’t bode well for a day of travel. He was about to collapse and the day hadn’t even truly started. But he forced himself up, reeling as the room spun sideways, and very carefully limped down the stairs. He offered up a wan smile, trembling under all his layers.

Geralt looked furious.

He’d taken forever, he knew, but he really was trying his best, and as the sun rose high and the chills became worse, Jaskier fell behind. He could hear Roach, Geralt was traveling at a much slower pace than he normally would, and Jaskier would be grateful if he wasn’t focused so hard on the weight of his lute pulling him toward the forest floor. Everything hurt and the tears springing to his eyes almost had time to fall before he remembered himself. Geralt wasn’t a fan of his over emotional displays and without words he wasn’t able to express just how poorly he really was. No cure but to walk on. Stumble on. His weaving steps slowed him further, enough that Roach had been turned back around.

“G--” Like swallowing a blade, and the syllables died on his lips. Oh goddess. He was going to be ill and was, thankfully not all over Roach’s hooves, and the fire of it drove him to hands and knees.

“Jaskier?” The thump of heavy boots hitting the ground was all the warning he got before a rough, blessedly cool palm pressed itself over his forehead. “Alright.” Jaskier could have sobbed as Geralt grabbed his bicep and dragged him, supported him, a little ways down the path. There was enough space here to set up a small camp and Geralt threw down his bedroll, dropping Jaskier on top of it and going about the motions that suggested they’d stay for at least a little while. The bard held his breath, tried to inhale, exhale in a way that didn’t make everything hurt worse and had almost dropped off to sleep when more tea was thrust under his nose. Willow bark and something else. And even if his stomach did feel up to it, the promise of even a modicum of relief was a heady thing, and Jaskier downed the cup even though it was too hot, falling back and curling into the rough wool.

Late afternoon sun lancing across his face woke him up and Jaskier was not well pleased at how sick he still felt. It was unlike him to be laid low like this. He shifted his head, drawing a shaky half breath, and found Geralt tending to the fire. He was so thirsty with no way to tell him and no way to get up. He hadn’t been drinking enough and tried to gesture, nimble fingers uncoordinated and frightened because of it.

“Go back to sleep, Jaskier.” With no other recourse, he did as he was told.

This time, Geralt’s hand on his cheek pulled him up out of the dark place he’d gone. The witcher tutted, levering him up and holding more tea to his lips, only this time Jaskier could barely swallow, the pain was so great, and rather than waiting on him to finish, he pressed the cup into his quaking hands. Jaskier wasn’t sure he could even lift it. So he didn’t. Just watched blearily as Geralt broke camp, tied his lute to the saddle and that was good. Except there was no way he’d be able to stand, he could tell, and the thought prompted the tears to slip silently down his face and off his chin. He was going to be left here to die. Because he was human and weak and useless. Geralt could sell off his instrument for a good price, make up for the time Jaskier wasted slowing him down. The tea dropped from his fingers and he hid his face behind his hands. Geralt didn’t like it when he was emotional. Better to hide it. Better not to see him walk away from him. At least then he could pretend that he hadn’t left him.

“Jaskier?” He risked a glance and wished he hadn’t. Disappointment and frustration. With him. Always with him. He hadn’t meant to get sick. He hadn’t meant to. “You’ll have to hold on.” Hold on? To what? And the answer came moments later when he was hoisted onto Roach’s back like he weighed nothing at all and Geralt mounted in front of him. “Hold on.” Tentative, confused, Jaskier threaded his arms around the witcher’s waist, hugging him for lack of a better term and burying his cheek into a warm shoulder. Hold on. Easy enough. Even he could do that, right?

Apparently not, and Geralt’s gruff demands for him to hold on and stay awake and don’t fall became increasingly intrusive. Jaskier didn’t want to do those things. He wanted to stop moving and sleep, he didn’t even care anymore about how mad his failures were making Geralt. The alternating stripes of trees and beams of sun passed by too quickly, dizzying him and it seemed like everywhere he looked there was more of it and he couldn’t keep up. The speed was too great, he was being shaken from his precarious perch and his arms were so numb he couldn’t feel them where they’d let go of Geralt.

An attenuated moment passed where Jaskier was completely airbourne. He’d fallen from horses before. He knew how to fall. But he couldn’t get anything to work with him, all deadweight and drained. When he hit the ground, the hard impact wasn’t even bad enough to distract from the stoked embers burning up in his throat and he laid there, listening to Roach’s nickering and uneven gait as she turned around. He was cold. He was hot. He was nothing at all and Geralt’s shout of surprise sounded like it had come to him from miles away underwater. Jaskier knew he was being touched, knew he was being lifted, even knew he was being yelled at, but it seemed like it was all happening to someone else. Someone far away from all this. He’d tried. He had. But like always, it hadn’t been good enough.

“Jaskier!” Growling, loud and rough, and he couldn’t open his eyes long enough to see the rage painted there. The light was too bright, blinding and blistering, adding to the fire and the heat and Jaskier wasn’t able to stay conscious even through the witcher’s shouting.

An indeterminate stretch of time passed and Jaskier wouldn’t be able to tell anyone all of what occurred within. It was a haze of hurting and being touched by unfamiliar hands. Maneuvered whether he wanted it to happen or not. Horrible tinctures poured down his throat that made him shed silent tears because he was nothing without his voice and no one would listen to what his body was trying to say. He was helpless, frightened, confused. Glimpses of familiar white hair caused him to weep because he was sorry, so, so sorry that he’d done this, even if he wasn’t completely sure what ‘this’ was. Damp clothes soothed some of the blistering and there were moments in between the suffering where he was sure he’d never again open his eyes.

But he did.

And he felt dreadful. So sick. Still pained and barely able to lift a finger. Gently, as though he might break, a cool flannel swept over his hot face, down his cheek and the warm compress over his throat was adjusted, wafting the strong scent of garlic into the air. He must have made a face because a familiar chuckle rang out somewhere to the left of him.

“Jaskier?” Soft and kind and he did Geralt the courtesy of tipping his face toward him but didn’t remember much after that.

“You should’ve told me.” Jaskier glared weakly, pained, wrung out and still so, so tired, and Geralt had the sense to look shamed. After a strict regimen of teas, potions, and elixirs from the village healer, Jaskier appeared to be on the mend, albeit slowly. The witcher explained, for what was probably the seventh time seeing as he couldn’t hold a thought in his head for longer than a moment when he first began to wake, that he’d succumbed to a blood infection. “I should have noticed sooner." He fussed, tucking the blankets closer around him, smoothing them out and brushing back his sweat-soaked fringe. "Shouldn’t have pushed you so hard.” With an obscene amount of effort, Jaskier patted Geralt’s hand where it now rested on the sheets beside him, letting it linger there, absorbing the warmth.

All forgiven.

Or it would be after a few more days of attentive doting.

[magpiemorality]

I Walked With You, or Heartbreak Hotel

I accidentally wrote a 1k angsty follow up to the previous (also angsty whoops) oneshot about King!Creativity and his younger selves meeting... My bad???? This is a bit long and I'll add a read more to it as soon as I get off mobile!!

Warnings: Angst town baby, neglect, implied abuse, there's a possible blurred line into child abuse if you're particularly sensitive to that.

First | AO3

***

Romulus is getting steadily stronger, but it’s a slow process. The twins frequently tire themselves out by putting all of their energy into bringing him to life, and he has to remind them to slow down; that he will be here for however long it takes him to gain the solidity to walk among them again.

Something shifts in the mindscape, he thinks, because one day only Remus visits, and then Roman starts coming back but later, sometimes not arriving until after his brother has left, filled with some internal conflict that he won’t share with Romulus. The twins have separated again, changing from each other, and that shouldn’t be a surprise- it’s not, they’re adults and individuals after all- but it is slightly sad. They still share the deep, insistent need to bring him back though, clinging to his arms and words whenever they come to visit.

Things come to a head when Remus comes one night, the sort of silent that bodes very ill. Roman hasn’t been in three nights, although Romulus can still feel the flow of energy from him. It just feels further away, like he isn’t venturing as far into the imagination for some reason. But Romulus isn’t quite ready to leave the castle and go searching for him so all he has are worries and theories.

When Remus falls into his arms- and god the kid had been so unbelievably cuddly ever since Roman had stopped showing up with him, poor mite- Romulus frowns and cradles the back of his head for a moment before leading him to the bed.

He tucks Remus in, sitting on the covers beside him to read him the stories of his adventures when he was real, memories he only has thanks to the thread of Patton that adds the third dimension to his form. Romulus has often considered pinging on that thread to see what happens, but that kind of curiosity had been exactly what had got him killed in the first place so he’s understandably reluctant to risk this half life he’s regained for the sake of a little adventure. Not yet, anyway.

When he looks down, Remus is crying, and more importantly- shrinking. Romulus grabs him in a panic, pulling Remus to him as the boy gets gradually smaller. For a minute Romulus worries that he’s just going to keep going until he disappears, and has a horrible thought that this could be to do with him and all the life force he’s leaching from his kids (which they are, they’re his kids, fact be damned), but that flow stays steady and Remus stops shrinking when he looks young enough to be- oh.

He looks the same age they’d been when they’d split apart, somewhere in that delicate age between child and teenager, still sweet and hopeful but starting to understand that the world wasn’t all bright things and wonder.

This Remus peers at him nervously, still wracked with sobs, so he unfreezes and makes himself smile in reassurance.

“Hey kiddo, what’s got into you then? You’re a little, uh, little today huh.”

Remus wipes a hand over his face. Romulus quickly plucks a handkerchief out of thin air without thinking about it and takes over, cleaning the mess from Remus’s cheeks and hand with soft, tender strokes. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”

Remus shakes his head but he wilts under the stern look Romulus gives him. “Everything’s gone wrong,” he says in a small voice. “I don’t wanna go back ever again, I really don’t, please don’t make me...”

With a barely concealed pulse of fury Romulus lifts the boy and gets them both comfortable under the covers. “Okay, okay kid you can stay. This is your home too Remus, you can do what you need to for Thomas from here.”

“Um,” Remus sniffs and his face twists. It’s an ugly look on the young face he’s wearing. “Actually um, I don’t think they’d notice if I stopped. Or like, mind much. No one really likes me?”

That pulse of hot fury is back. “I like you just fine Remus.”

“Yeah but you’re not real-"

“That’s enough.” Remus, who had sat up in his passion, sinks back down with wide eyes. Romulus regrets snapping but that’s not talk he can stand to hear. “I am real. I may not be who I used to be but I am real. Don’t I feel real to you?”

“Yeah,” he gets Remus to admit quietly.

“Great. And I promise you I will always be here for you, little one.”

“I just... I wanna be like you. I wanna be real but not real and do whatever I like and stay here and never go back ever again, so they stop getting mad...”

“Remus, you’re a part of Thomas. That makes you a good person. You-"

Remus had flinched hard and is staring up at him with his mouth slightly parted. It takes a few seconds but then the reason why twigs in Romulus' brain and he melts, cupping the back of Remus’s small head and pulling him impossibly close. “Oh my boy. Did no one ever tell you how good you are?”

The way Remus starts to shake, still staring at him, indicating a strong no to that.

“You’re so good, Remus, so good. You’re the best, you do so good, you’re doing amazing, you’re perfect just as you are, god I love you you’re so wonderful, so fantastic-" As he drips compliments over Remus the boy melts into him, grateful and gasping and finally relaxing in a puddle of hope. “You are so good, my dear. Shh, sleep now, let me watch over you. I’ll keep you here as long as I can, you’ll never be sad again.”

If I had the strength to do it I’d march out of here and rain down righteous fury on everyone who hurt you, he thinks viciously to himself. “Dream incredible things, little one.”

Remus is asleep at last, and Romulus holds him ever tighter. He's so delicate, so precious... He's his now, and Romulus will keep him like the treasure he is.

It was about time someone did after all.

--

Next

[siren-dragon]

1,001 Lucian Nights -- Somnus x F!reader fanfiction (Ch.3)

Hey everyone, here it is at last: chapter 3! I do apologize for the slight delay as I was busy all last week moving (and there is still more work to do @_@) but I finally finished this so you can all enjoy! :)

Also a big shout out to the anon who keeps messaging me, you are so kind with your words of encouragement and @maty-yami who is always there to help when I need it. ^_^

The Citadel of Insomnia was known to be the largest fortification within the entirety of the Crown City, if not all of Lucis herself. And accompanying its vast size were a plethora of servants that hurried down stone and marble corridors to tend to visiting lords and ladies alongside an equally large garrison of glaive warriors who patrolled the grounds. As a result, privacy was a cultivated luxury that was not easily achieved within the royal bastion. However, there was one set of rooms that none in the Citadel dared to traverse into: The Crystal chambers, a room that was split into a small foyer and inner sanctum where the Stone of the Six was held.

None were allowed within the inner sanctum while the Oracle was conversing with an Astral and it was here that you allowed your thoughts to wander in relative privacy as you paced across the crimson carpet of the foyer. It appeared that you managed to make quite an impression during your encounter the previous evening, remembering how lapis-colored irises occasionally drifted toward you. Though truth be told, you were glad to take your leave with Lady Selene when the council had finished as it let you avoid engaging with Somnus so soon. Unfortunately, Fate was a fickle thing and it did not seem to be very considerate of your own feelings. You did not even hear the sound of another’s footsteps as you continued your restless pacing, only to collide with a resisting force that prevented you from walking… a force that took the shape of none other than the Lucian ruler himself.

“King Somnus,” you murmured aloud before quickly bowing respectfully in greeting. “Forgive me, I did not realize you were here. I am afraid Lady Selene must not be disturbed at this time during her prayers. If you wish to speak with her you must wait until-“

“What did you do to me?” He questioned harshly, stepping forward while you reflexively took a step backward.

“Forgive me, your Majesty, but I do not understand what you are inquiring of?” you replied calmly despite the sliver of fear you felt.

“How did you manage to chase the nightmares away? What magic did you use on me?”

“Nothing but my words and wit your Majesty-“

“Do not lie to me, Lady (f/n).” Somnus argued, your obvious surprise at the fact that he had knowledge of your name was overshadowed by the cold and calm fury he was expressing; one that was far more sinister than any explosive outcry of rage could achieve.

“I am sorry sire, but all I did was relay my story to you…nothing more.” You slowly replied, true terror beginning to flood your body at the anger displayed on the young king’s face.

It had seemed your simple fable had left more of an impact upon the king than you were led to believe, despite his displeasure for such fairy-tales. If your audience had consisted of any other individual, you’d have been pleased to hear the success of your spontaneously crafted tale. But this was no mere crowd that eagerly waited on every spoken word in the Bazaar, it was the King of Lucis himself; and if he truly wished to do so the man could order your demise if he felt so inclined.

“Then you shall finish that story of yours tomorrow night, Lady (f/n), or you will regret the day you crossed my path.” Somnus whispered coldly into your ear before spinning on his heel and disappearing down the corridor out of sight.

Though the king had long since left after his intimidating promise, you remained frozen where you stood as if the Glacian herself had paralyzed you with the chill of winter. It was in that moment that you understood Gilgamesh’s concern for the man’s well-being and the magnitude of control his night-terrors exerted upon him. Yet the more pressing matter was that Somnus expected you to finish your fable… and you did not know where to start.

The once over-crowded and animated Cavaugh Bazaar now stood empty with the exception of only an occasional passerby hurrying down the street to avoid the falling rain. You tugged the hood of your cloak tighter around your face to shield yourself from any excess water as you carefully avoid the various puddles in search of your destination. When at last you located a familiar black and crimson-striped tent, you increased the speed of your gait and hurried inside to avoid the unrelenting deluge. “Thank you for meeting with me, Master Sidolfus.”

“The pleasure is all mine Lady (f/n), please have a seat. Tea?”

“Yes, thank you.” You answered politely, accepting the warm ceramic cup, “I suspect this foul weather does not bode well in the case of storytelling.”

“There is no ideal weather for storytelling, my lady; but the rain has thinned out the audience considerably. Hopefully Ramuh shall release his hold upon the region before the day is out. But… what of you Lady (f/n)? As much as I enjoy this visit, I assume this meeting is not merely a social call.”

You sighed, returning your cup onto the small table. “I am afraid not, Master Sidolfus. I wished to ask your advice on story telling…”

And so, you described the situation you had fallen into with your intricate tale, though you made sure to omit certain details; such as who the young lord was that had been charmed by your story. It was only once you concluded your recounting of the previous evening did Sidolfus speak. “I sit in this bazaar telling stories, but if the audience does not like what I am saying, they walk away. But if your audience does not listen…. you could find your very life in jeopardy, Lady (f/n)”

“I…I thought it would be easy but it wasn’t,” you confessed. “I almost lost it before I even got a chance to begin.”

“I told you before, the first moments are the most vital.”

“I did pause at a good point though. With the thieves sneaking into Lestallum to kill Prompto and his household.”

Sidolfus frowned, “sneaking in how? In what?”

“A wagon,” you replied.

“Too ordinary… it has to be something more exotic, more unique. You’re starting your story over, again. You have to hook your audience, again.”

“But… how?”

“I was walking last night past the Great Cathedral on the streets of Altissia, exactly an hour after the sun had vanished below the horizon, when I came face to face…with Death.” Sidolfus whispered softly, his eyes now holding a glassy look; as if he were reliving a distant memory.

“Had he come for you?” you asked eagerly, curious as to the fate of the man before you and his encounter with Death.

Yet the deep laugh-lines on the storyteller’s face became even clearer when Sidolfus smiled at your words. “You see there? You’re hooked.”

The confusion on your face soon vanished as your eyes began to twinkle in delight at the words of advice, causing the small spark of inspiration that flickered and grew within your mind.

====================================================

“Absolutely not,” Gilgamesh answered with a tone of finality.

“Lord Gilgamesh, this was a request made by the king himself. I cannot simply refuse-”

“And I say it is out of the question. While I do not wish to entertain the idea, I cannot ignore the fact that His Majesty is ill and may not be in complete control of his faculties or judgement. If something were to happen, you could be risking your very life Lady (f/n).”

“Regardless of the risks, we must try something.”

Gilgamesh sighed heavily in frustration, “and what say you, Lady Selene?”

The blonde priestess remained so silent throughout the entirety of your disagreement with Gilgamesh, pondering the information you had told both of them. It was only once the silver-haired swordsman called her name did Lady Selene finally speak. “Lord Gilgamesh…I promised to do all in my power to aid His Majesty, be it as Oracle or as a friend of Somnus. If (f/n) stories can grant some solace to Somnus’ trouble mind, perhaps it is best if we allow her to continue.”

“However,” Lady Selene added, turning to face you with a serious expression, looking every inch the divine Oracle, she was. “(f/n)… Lord Gilgamesh is not wrong, you could be putting your life in danger and I do not wish to see my dearest friend harmed. So please answer me truthfully when I say this: are you certain this is the choice you wish to make? We will not force you to do this, despite Somnus' wishes.”

“Yes, your Ladyship. If he is willing to listen to my stories, then maybe they could help his mind heal from the damage those nightmares have caused.”

Gilgamesh narrowed his eyes in suspicion at your words, “you do not sound certain.”

“I am not, but it is better than doing nothing. Please, Lady Selene, trust me.”

“…Very well then, I trust you. But I plead with you to use caution (f/n), often there are doors that cannot be closed once opened.”

Even though you had confidently managed to assuage the uneasy both Lady Selene and Gilgamesh felt, if barely, you had done nothing to tame the slight fear that wracked your body as the sun drifted further below the horizon. When night had finally fallen completely, Gilgamesh was kind enough to escort you to Somnus’ chambers personally; in order to avoid any unnecessary confrontations with the rest of the palace staff. You had at last reached the heavy, oak door you took a deep steadying breath while you nervously twisted a loose thread from your dress. “Lady (f/n),” Gilgamesh spoke, laying a comforting hand upon your shoulder, even if the action did startle you momentarily. “Before we continue, may I have a word?”

You blinked in surprise before giving a nod of acknowledgement to the old warrior. “Of course, Lord Gilgamesh.”                                                                      

“While I do not approve of this peculiar method in regards to the health of the king or the demands he has made… You have my eternal gratitude for undertaking this endeavor.”

“That is kind of you to say.”

“I know I’ve no right to ask anymore of you, but I wish to make a sole request.” You nodded in understanding, gesturing for Gilgamesh to continue, “should any knowledge come to light when you are speaking with Somnus, I beg you to not judge the king too harshly. He is a good man despite his faults and the choices he has made.”

“…I am merely here to continue my stories for the king Lord Gilgamesh, nothing more.”

Relief flashed across the stoic swordsman’s face at your promise of silence, “…thank you.” He bowed to you one final time to in farewell and took his place further from the door, acting as a silent guardian in place of the usual glaives. Slowly you proceeded the short distance toward the wooden door and raised your hand to gently knock three times, only waiting mere moments until a curt voice sounded with a brief “enter.”

“Six give me courage,” you murmured quietly before stepping inside.

Just as it were the previous evening, the light of the braziers around the room and the oil lamps atop the tables bathed the rooms in a warm glow that chased away the evening chill. Leaning against the lavish pillows and plush carpet beside the low table with a goblet of wine held loosely within his left hand was none other than the king himself, his eyes immediately shifting toward you at the sound of the door opening and closing. “Good evening, your Majesty,” you hummed in greeting, proud that your voice did not waver.

“There is nothing good about it.,” Somnus retorted sharply, lazily twisting the goblet within his hand while azure eyes shifted onto you. For a brief moment the two of you remained motionless, his eyes holding a flicker of gold as the firelight reflected in the azure depths that observed your every move like a hawk despite the dark shadows of exhaustion beneath them. “You decided to return after all.”

“Of course. It would have been quite rude of me to refuse a personal summon from my sovereign, your Majesty.”

Despite the stony expression Somnus gave you for your light jab at his less than courteous meeting with you earlier that day, a flash of regret briefly crossed Somnus’ face at the memory before vanishing completely. “I asked for your presence here so that you would finish the story of Prompto and Cindy, so finish it. Tell me; how could a wanted fugitive and his fellow thieves enter a guarded city like Lestallum?”

“You forget you Majesty, a man’s cunning has the power to conquer many things,” you spoke as you took your place opposite of the king. Taking a deep breath in order to relax your pounding heart, you began your tale once more…

=======================================================

“As I was saying beforehand, Verstael brought all of his men to Lestallum in a wagon, to murder Prompto…. but it was no ordinary wagon. For within the stone jars that rested within his cart hid one man from his gang of thieves.”

“So, the stone jars were the disguise for his men…. And exactly how did Verstael explain the stone jars to the city guards?”

“What is this old man?” the guard asked gruffly, eying the old cart and plentiful number of jars in suspicion.

Verstael, who was now leaning upon a walking stick while hiding half his face behind a black cloak, coughed weakly. “Forty jars of lamp oil, for the royal palace sir.”

“Very well then, proceed inside peddler.”

It was then that you heard a sound that caught you off guard; a deep but soft laugh that belonged to Somnus himself. Yet the laugh held a slight roughness toward it, as if the king had not performed the action for some time. “Forty jars of oil, hmm? Well now, that is clever. Obviously Verstael had a black heart… but a very bright brain.”

“He certainly had that alright,” you agreed. “Naturally, Prompto had no idea of what danger he was in. He didn’t tremble… when he should have trembled.”

Cindy swept through the villa’s courtyard to ensure that the doors were sealed shut for the evening, sliding the wooden bar across the main doors and locking them tight. A soft whine quickly caught the young maid’s attention as Pryna lovingly rubbed her head against Cindy’s leg. She smiled at the ivory dog’s display of affection and knelt down to gently run a hand across the hound’s back and through her fur. Yet her happy expression soon faded as Cindy sighed in resignation, “what are we going to do to protect him Pryna? He's a dreamer. With all those schemes for making money, who knows what will happen if he’s not careful.”

Pryna whined softly as she nuzzled against Cindy's hand. She smiled softly, glancing toward sole window where the glow of firelight could be seen, “I suppose we will just have to look out for him. Will you help me Pryna?”

The dog gave an affirming bark, grinning happily which caused Cindy to beam. “Thank you. You are certainly wise beyond your years.”

It was during this time that a large wagon was slowly making its way into the high-class district of Lestallum. The chocobo’s pulling the cart occasionally let loose a cry of exertion only to be silenced by Verstael immediately. Behind the blonde man, a groan could be heard within the cart as the lid from one of the stone jars rose to reveal one of the thief’s men, his face bearing a slightly pained expression from the cramp enclosure of the jar. “Sir, turn left here to Prompto’s house.”

Following the quietly relayed directions, Verstael brought the cart to a halt only a few feet from the villa; quickly ensuring the wagon not be disturbed. “I’ll be back in 2 hours’ time when it’s quiet… then we’ll kill everyone in the house.” He whispered harshly.

“It will be a great pleasure, Chief,” came the muffled reply from one of the stone jars.

“Excuse me Prompto, the cook has made some honeyed tea; I thought you’d like some.” Cindy spoke, placing the tray beside the desk Prompto sat at.

“Hmm? Oh, thank you Cindy. That’ll help keep me awake so I can finish my work.” Prompto grinned, gladly accepting the silver cup while brushing aside some papers scattered upon the desk. “I can’t seem to decide which vendor to invest in with all these offers.”

“Why bother investing in such schemes at all Prompto? You are rich.” Cindy asked, moving to close the curtains for the evening.

The freckled blonde nodded in agreement, “yeah, but that was just pure luck- anyone could have had such fortune occur to them. I want to know for sure that I can make even if I didn’t have a gold cushion to fall back on.”

“You surprise me Prompto, most people wouldn’t give a second thought of their future if they had the amount of gold you did….” Cindy replied, her words trailing off as she looked out the window to see the sight of a large wagon that was parked near the villa’s entrance.

“Well, it never hurts to be prepared; right?.... Cindy?”                              

Hearing her name called caused olive green eyes to shift from the window and to the flash of concern that appeared upon Prompto’s face. “It’s nothing sir, just a little tired is all. Good night Prompto.”

After leaving Prompto to his work once more, Cindy returned to the kitchen with a frown on her face as she addressed the chef and the other servants. “I saw there is a wagon parked outside in the street, do any of you know why?”

“It’s a merchant Miss Cindy, with jars of oil for the palace,” the chef, a middle-aged man called Takka, spoke as he and the rest of the staff continued eating their dinner. “He asked permission to leave his cart there for a few hours when he went for supper.”

“Did you check him closely Takka?” Cindy asked, frowning in remembrance at the memory of the rather strange wagon. It was odd to see a peddler leave his merchandise alone in such a large city as Lestallum, especially if it was a shipment intended for the palace.

“Of course, Miss Cindy. He was a rather rough chap when we spoke, but he did say he did travel from far away so I assumed it was just exhaustion.”

“…Alright then.”

Bidding the rest of the staff a good evening, Cindy proceeded to her small room within the servant’s quarters to prepare for bed. Despite his wealth being from an ill-gotten source, Prompto was a generous man with his new-found fortune and doted on his loyal staff. Though the space would be considered small to some, Cindy was grateful for Prompto’s generosity, it was one of the reasons why she cared for him so deeply.

Removing the scrap of fabric that had tied her hair away from her face, soft but short golden tresses tumbled down against her neck. She reached for the wooden come beside her bed only for the illuminating flame of the oil lamp to dim significantly before vanishing completely. Letting loose a soft curse at the small inconvenience, Cindy rose from her bed and carefully returned to the kitchen where the oil jar stood. Before she could even gather some, Takka stopped her; “there would be no use doing that Miss Cindy, we’re out of oil at the moment. I was intending to go purchase some tomorrow.”

“That won’t help at all,” Cindy sighed softly. “…wait a minute, didn’t you say that merchant had jars of oil? The one with the wagon outside?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Well, why don’t we take a little for the night and we can pay him in the morning.”

Takka shrugged, “I guess he won’t care so long as he gets paid.”

“It is often that such small and insignificant actions, like the dying light of an empty oil lamp, that one’s life can shift unexpectedly…for better or for worse,” you murmured softly as the king remained enamored within your story.

Cindy and Takka soon exited the villa and walked toward the abandoned wagon, ready to open one of the stone jars until the sound of whispers caught both of their ears. Raising a hand to signal Takka to stop, Cindy quietly crept closer to the wagon and listened carefully.

“How long do we have to wait here?” An irritated voice whispered harshly, “I can barely feel my legs.”

“We wait here until the Chief comes back, then the killing starts. So, shut up and be quiet!” Hissed another voice from the jar beside it.

Cindy’s eyes widened in realization and fear at what the two men were speaking of, causing her to quickly hurry back within the villa with Takka in tow and sprint for Prompto’s study. When she entered the room, Prompto smiled and lifted a stack of papers from the table. “Cindy, I think this chocobo farm sounds like a great place to invest in, what do you think?”

“They’ve come Prompto,” she interrupted, a slight panic alit within her eyes.

“What do you mean? Who’s come?” Prompto asked, confusion coloring his face.

“The murderers. The one’s you stole the money from….”

========================================================

When Cindy and Prompto hurried toward the front door, Pryna was awake and growling softly at the entryway as Takka tried to soothe the dog. Laying a calming hand on the dog’s head to cease her growls, Prompto silently opened the front door and glanced outside to see the wagon not twenty feet from their home. Cindy gently tapped Prompto upon the shoulder, raising a finger to her lips when Prompto moved to answer. “I’ve got an idea,” she whispered discreetly, “follow me.”

Together, the three crept closer to the wagon, which was now emitting low moans of agony from the cramped and confined thieves. Takka took his place near the back of the wagon while Cindy and Prompto hurried to the front to uncouple the chocobo’s residing there. As they approached the massive birds, Prompto accidentally tripped on a loose cobble stone, causing him to fall against the wagon and jostle a few jars. The two blonde gasped softly in fear until a soft whisper emitted from the same jar. “Chief? Chief, is that you? Chief?”

“Any moment now, men.” Prompto shot back in a deep voice, wincing silently at the exaggerated manner in which he had accidentally spoken in.

A soft choir of approval echoed from each thief, causing Prompto, Cindy and Takka to breathe a silent sigh of relief at their intact stealth. Hurrying toward the front of the wagon, they quickly removed the harness from each chocobo while Takka untied the rope restraints and lifted the wooden barrier from the opposite end of the cart. Ensuring nothing was amiss, Cindy nodded and together the three tilted the wagon upward, causing every single jar to tumble out of the carriage. Cries of panic echoed alongside the ringing of the rolling jars against cobblestone streets, causing a thunderous chaos of sound that immediately jolting awake every sleeping resident within the area.

As the stone jars came to the end of what seemed like a never-ending incline of the city street, the enormous containers shattered against the walls of shops or homes; scattering the various shards and the thief that once occupied the jar across the road. Each of Verstael’s men tried to desperately climb to their feet, only to quickly collide head-first into one another; their heads swimming in agony from the nausea inducing tumble that robbed them of their senses. Shouts of outrage rang across the streets as guards and residents alike flooded the streets to investigate the obnoxious raucous.

“Hurry, get a hold of them!”

“They’re Verstael’s men, quickly now!”

“You scoundrels!”

Prompto and Cindy soon joined the fray, assisting the city guard in locating the thieves so that none were over looked. However, none noticed the sole figure cloaked in a black cloak that blended with the very shadows themselves. Blue eyes observed the chaotic scene with pure anger before he swiftly disappeared into the night….

“Verstael’s men all hung like ripe fruit. And at last it was all over…well, almost. You see, young Prompto then threw a wondrous party to celebrate the defeat of Verstael’s murderous gang.”

Drapes of the finest linen and silk ribbons were strewn tastefully across the large room while plush rugs and soft pillows surrounded a single stone stage in the center. The scent of fresh fruits and sweets perfumed the air alongside fine meats and vegetables, carried upon the trays of hired servants to tend to the visiting guests. Music was provided by a small collection of instruments, adding a pleasant atmosphere to the uproarious laughter and lively conversations.

“We are here today to celebrate,” Prompto called out, calming down the cheering crowd. “Because with the help of my good friend Cindy, Verstael and his gang have been crushed; never to harm another soul again!”

A loud cheer reverberated around the banquet hall which was soon followed by the clicking of goblets as wine flowed freely from cask to glass. “Hey Prompto, ask if Cindy will dance for you. She is a beautiful dancer!”

Prompto turned to his dear friend in surprise. “Really Cindy? I can’t seem manage a single step,” he laughed, sheepishly rubbing the back of his head.

The green-eyed beauty smiled as she rose from her seat and approached the stone stage, careful not to trip on the fabric of her silk dress. “Don’t worry Prompto, I’ll show you.”

A melodious tempo of drums soon sounded across the room, silencing every conversation as Cindy proceeded to elegantly and lightly danced to the music….

Somnus watched in silent awe as you, having risen from your seat atop of the lavish rug, began to sway and dance similarly to the servant girl within your story. He observed the small yet sly smile upon your lips, how your hands twisted into gentle contours while your hips rolled back in forth in time with a music only the two of you could hear, one that your fable had brought to life.

While Somnus was no stranger to the joys of the flesh, he did not actively seek out such company. Such dalliances were expected of a young boy, but a sovereign was meant to lead his people and be an example to all, to be a strong foundation that would hold against any challenge…to be more than a mere man. Yet as Somnus watched you dance; he couldn’t help but drink in the vision you painted as you continued to dance with a fluidity of movement that begot a subtle grace and beauty. He briefly wondered if it was the story that had managed to soothe him and chase away the nightmares…or the storyteller herself.

As Cindy continued to dance, the pace of the music began to quicken with the beat of the drums. Prompto watched in amazement at the beauty his dear friend showcased, barely noticing as she retrieved the sword off of an attending guest. Cindy raised the steel blade high above her head and began to twirl in graceful circles, the tempo of the music increasing with each beat of the drum. But soon Prompto ceased his clapping as he watched with a confused stare at Cindy’s gradual approach to one patron; the best entertainer in all of Duscae that Prompto had hired from the occasion. He moved to rise and speak until Cindy swung the blade high over her head and thrust the sword into the chest of the visiting entertainer.

Every member of the banquet gasped and cried in alarm, moving to intercept Cindy for her act of murder. Prompto was the first to reach her just as the corpse collapsed onto the ground; only to be caught just in time by another attendee. Prompto was on his feet in an instant, staring in shock at the crime the blonde woman had committed. “Cindy, what have you done?”

Instead of speaking, Cindy simply stepped forward and tugged at the man’s beard, revealing it to be naught but a disguise hiding the identity of none other than Verstael. “I saw…I saw him put the disguise on in the alley and-“

Prompto gave a comforting hug to his dear friend, who buried her face within his chest as he let his hand rub soothing circles against her back. “Oh, what would I do without you…”

==========================================================

“What happened to Prompto and Cindy afterward?” Somnus asked earnestly.

You smiled, “Prompto had what was perhaps the greatest idea of his life… he married Cindy.”

“He wasn’t clever, but he was lucky…. I suppose he needed someone like Cindy to make sure he made the most of his good fortune.”

“Something like that.”

“Yet everyone forgot that it was he who led his brother Loqi to his death. Prompto receives all of the praise and happiness while Loqi rots away to nothing” Somnus spoke coldly.

You frowned, “Loqi choose his own path, just as Prompto choose his. It was not an outcome Prompto was pleased with, one he would have wished to change with all his heart…but he cannot take full responsibility for his brother’s actions.”

“I doubt that severely.”

“Your Majesty, I know you and your own brother did not have the best ending but-“

Somnus’ expression changed in a heartbeat as anger spilled across his face; with him taking hold of your wrist in a fierce grip that caused you to wince in pain briefly. “Do not speak of things you know nothing about! I did all I could for him and still he clung to his idealistic ways!”

“But do you still care for him? He was your brother.” You asked plainly, not in judgement but in sincerity.

“What does it matter?! My brother is long dead and buried,” Somnus growled out in irritation.

You kept a neutral face despite the pain in your wrist, “death doesn’t change one’s feelings.”

“He was a monster!”

“That does not matter, your Majesty. If you love someone enough… you can forgive them of anything.”

Storm-blue eyes instantly met your own (e/c) eyes before Somnus slowly releasing his hold on you. You instantly pulled your hand closer to your body, instinctively shielding your injury to prevent further harm. A look of guilt flashed across his face before it vanished beneath an expression of pure exhaustion, making the king seem far older than his age. “…It is too late for such a mercy as forgiveness.” Somnus whispered, absent-mindedly spinning the obsidian ring that rested on the middle-finger of his right hand.

“It is never too late,” you replied kindly.

[aflyingcontradiction]

My scribblings: Roof Runners

Summary: Josie knew that she would have to leave the orphanage one of these days. But when the mysterious Captain Glass takes her to the mountainside city of Scalbourne, will it spell doom for the young girl or will she find what she has been missing?

Content warning: Some violence, mentions of child abuse, mentions of forced prostitution

Comments appreciated.

There was pandemonium in the girls’ dormitory of the orphanage.

“Did you see them? What did they look like? They’re looking to adopt, right? Right?”

“Oh, no, I’ve got a huge stain on my shirt!”

“Who cares about your shirt, Abbie, I can’t find my hair tie. Where’s my fucking hair tie? I can’t go out there like this! I look like a demon! If I see one of you with my hair tie, I swear I will rip your fucking hair out by the roots!”

“You keep swearing like that and no one’s ever going to adopt you!”

“Oh shut the fuck up.”

Josie was sitting on her bed pulling up her stockings. She didn’t know what bloody Missy was fussing about anyway. None of them were going to be adopted. As long as there were bouncing babies downstairs in the nursery, none of them stood a snowball’s chance in hell. Prospective parents barely ever looked at any of the dormitory kids, not even the little ones with their wide tearful eyes and cute little pigtails, nevermind their own gangly teenage selves. None of them were ever going to have families!

“Oh, I wish I knew what they’re like,” said tiny Aphra, pulling nervously on her skirt. “Do the boys know anything?”

“No idea, go ask them.”

“But we’re not allowed to leave the dormitory!” whined Aphra.

“I’ll go ask,” said Maud and before anyone could stop her she poked her head out of the girls’ dormitory to check that the hallway was clear, then disappeared from the room.

The moment she was out of the door, silence fell. It was as if all the girls were holding their breath. A couple of minutes later the door burst was opened a crack and Maud slipped back through. The frown on her face boded ill.

“What? What is it?” asked Josie.

“It’s a tradeswoman.”

A groan of disappointment ran through the room, punctuated by Missy’s loud “AW BALLS!” She chucked the red hair tie she had only just rediscovered into a corner where one of the little girls quickly picked it up and pocketed it.

“Are you sure?” asked Aphra. “Maybe they’re wrong. Maybe she’s a mum! A mum that works a trade!”

“She’s not a mum. Theo says he heard Matron and her talk about work and debt repayment and stuff. He couldn’t make out any more than that but she said she’s dressed real fancy.”

“Fancy?” Minnie, the oldest of the bunch practically screamed. “Oh no, she’s a madam, isn’t she?”

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” said Abbie. “Maybe she’s just very successful in her trade.”

“But who’s ever heard of a normal tradeswoman who dresses fancy? She’s a madam, I’m telling you.”

Minnie was right to worry. At fifteen, she had already outgrown the awkwardness of the younger girls and she was well overdue for leaving the orphanage.

“I’m not coming downstairs. Tell Matron I’m ill.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Josie snapped. “Matron knows you’re not ill, she’ll drag you downstairs by your ear and sell you off just for making trouble.”

“Oh, Josie, what do I do? Please, could you check? Just have a quick look?”

Josie was surprised nobody had asked her before. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that she had nearly fallen off the window ledge and plummeted to her death the last time she had snuck over to the Matron’s office. But after all, that had only happened once. She’d be more careful this time.

“Be glad I like you,” Josie shouted as she climbed out the window.

The window ledge was barely wide enough for one of Josie’s feet. She had to shuffle carefully along until she reached the gap between the window of the dormitory and the next ledge over. Cautiously, Josie positioned her feet, bent her knees and jumped. With a slight wobble, she landed and quickly threw out her arms to stabilise herself against the wall. A perfect landing! Ha! She’d known she could still do it!

Inch by inch she crept forward, careful not to misplace a foot and lose her balance. Soon she was close enough to the office window to stretch her neck and peek through it.

The Matron wearing her usual grey suit was sitting at her huge oak desk, opposite the visitor, an imposing woman with closely cropped grey hair in what looked like a red uniform embroidered with golden thread. An expensive-looking black cane with a silver-coloured knob on top was leaning against her chair. Theo had been right: Real fancy! But if she was a madam, she was the weirdest-looking madam Josie had ever seen. She looked almost like an army general in those clothes. But the military didn’t recruit in orphanages. And Josie had seen plenty of tradespeople come and drag away a suitable child with them, even a sailor once who had been looking for a cabin boy, but none of them had ever worn a uniform like this. What was she?

As Josie watched the Matron and the visitor talk, she wished she had deaf little Elias with her who could read lips like a champion. But Elias, like all the other kids, would never have dared to climb to the Matron’s office window. Josie pressed her ear to the window, hoping to hear something, anything, through the thick glass. Nothing. Disappointed, she turned her eyes back to the window - and flinched hard enough she very nearly lost her balance. The uniformed woman was staring right at her!

Shit, shit, shit! Josie yanked her head away from the window and raced as fast as she dared back to the girls’ dormitory.

She burst through the open window straight into Minnie’s arms.

“And?”

“Not a madam, but I’m in trouble.”

“Wait, what hap-”

“CHILDREN!” the Matron’s shrill voice echoed through the building.

For a moment, Josie considered running with Minnie’s stupid idea of faking an illness but of course she herself had pointed out that that would come back to bite her in the ass. She had to go down with the others and hope against hope that everything would be fine, that the Matron hadn’t seen her, that the visitor couldn’t recognise her among all the others...

Minutes later the children were lined up by size down in the entrance hall, twenty-one boys on one side, twenty-four girls on the other, while the Matron was advertising their merits. The nursery kids hadn’t been brought into the hall. They were useless to this woman.

“And David here is a very hard worker and very low-maintenance, he never complains. But if you’re looking for a girl, Minnie over here is a very fast runner and …”

“If I may stop you for a moment, ma’am, I believe I already know what I am looking for,” said the visitor.

And to Josie’s horror, she turned and strode straight toward Josie, tapping her cane on the floor with each step. Clack - clack - clack.

“You!”

Josie gulped.

“Oh yes, that is Josephine. She is thirteen now, has been with us since she was six. But don’t worry about her debt, I’m sure she will work it off in no time. A very diligent girl, very obedient, too.”

If she hadn’t been so terrified, Josie would have laughed. Hadn’t the Matron called her a lazy, insubordinate waste of good food just two days ago?

“Can you read, girl?”

“They all can. We provide a very good edu-”

“Hush! I’m talking to the girl.”

The Matron fell silent before she could tell more lies.

“Y-yeah, I can read, ma’am,” Josie stammered before she’d even fully thought it through. Maybe she should have lied and just taken the beating from the Matron later.

“Good. And that’s ‘captain’.”

So maybe she was military? Or a sailor? Josie didn’t really care, she just wanted her to move onto the next person. Sure, the orphanage wasn’t exactly homey, but at least all they made the kids do here was some cleaning and cooking and garden work, the occasional mending of their clothes so they wouldn’t look like scarecrows when the visitors came, nothing all too strenuous. She’d heard of kids worked to death by tradespeople! Besides, she knew what to expect of the Matron and her underlings, how to sneak food out of the kitchen and where to hide it, what punishments there were and how to avoid them, at least some of the time. She didn’t know anything about this “captain”. Silently she prayed that the woman would move on, but she just stared at Josie, letting her eyes wander up and down Josie’s lanky frame.

Finally, she turned to the Matron: “I want her.”

“Oh.” The Matron couldn’t hide her surprise, though she tried to cover it up: “Oh, that is a very good decision, Captain Glass. Josephine. Go grab your things. The rest of you, go play!”

None of them went to play. They would have been punished if they had. Instead, they dispersed to wherever work needed to be done right now - the kitchens, the gardens, the laundry room. Every once in a while one of them patted Josie’s shoulder in passing, muttered a “Good luck” or “You’ll be fine” or even a “Write if you can”, but she knew their heart wasn’t in it. To them she was already gone, just one of the many faces to pass in and out of the orphanage and disappear without a trace.

It took Josie half a minute to grab her things - a tattered coat, a hat, an old brown hair tie. She would have loved to stay in the dormitory, hide under a bed or something, but she knew she was just postponing the inevitable.

With a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, she crept down the stairs, at the bottom of which the Matron and the captain were discussing how to repay her debt to the orphanage.

“I expect she ought to have repaid it all in about seven or eight years, if she’s as hard a worker as you claim,” she heard the captain say.

Seven or eight years of most likely back-breaking work doing - whatever it was this captain needed her to do. And then probably some to repay any debts she would’ve most likely accrued with the captain by that point. Josie had to fight down the impulse to run. Where would she have run to anyway? It wasn’t like she had anywhere to go.

When she reached the bottom of the stairs, the Matron gave her a big hug, the first one she had ever gotten from her: “We will miss you, Josephine. Do us proud.”

Josie didn’t answer.

A couple of minutes later the captain and her were sitting in a coach being driven rapidly away. The orphanage continued to grow smaller and smaller in the distance until they drove around a bend and Josie couldn’t see it anymore.

It wasn’t until now that Josie turned toward Captain Glass. The grey-haired woman was looking out the window on her side and didn’t seem to notice, so Josie didn’t turn away again. Up close she could tell that the embroidery on the captain’s uniform formed three Rs. What did they mean?

“So, Josephine.”

Josie flinched hard as the captain turned to her: “Yes, captain.”

“Have you ever been to Scalbourne?”

Josie considered the question for a moment. She remembered that she had lived in a tiny town, some hours away from the orphanage, before her mother had died. And she didn’t think they had ever visited the mountainside city. Some of the kids at the orphanage had come from there, though, and said you’d never forget the dizzying view of first entering Scalbourne, so Josie would have remembered.

“No, I haven’t.”

“You will join my messenger company there. But I assume you don’t know what that means.”

Josie shook her head, just to be on the safe side. Sure, she knew what messengers were, but judging from Captain Glass’s tone of voice there was more to it.

“No matter. It won’t be easy at the start, but I’m sure with time you will make a perfect fit.”

Josie wasn’t sure whether she was imagining the veiled ‘or else’.

More to herself than to Josie, the captain added: “I’ll have the twins show you the ropes tomorrow morning.”

Silence fell inside the coach, but not in Josie’s mind where thoughts were tumbling wildly over each other. Being a messenger didn’t sound so bad. But then what was ‘it won’t be easy at the start’ all about? What did it mean to be a messenger in Scalbourne? None of the Scalbourne children had ever mentioned anything like that!

Some hours later all the thoughts were blown from Josie’s head. The coach had rounded a bend and there it was. Scalbourne. Josie’s mouth fell open.

Next to the road, a huge rock wall stretched up all the way into the heavens and jutting out of the rock wall, there were buildings - huge ones, tiny ones, some hewn directly into the rock, others sticking out precariously, looking like they were about to fall. Josie couldn’t tell how they were even attached! Then she noticed that below the wide main road, the rock wall continued with more houses, hundreds and hundreds of them. Bridges, ropes and cables of varying sizes were stretched between windows and doors. Booths lit with flickering gas lanterns were being dragged on steel cables slowly up and down the rock sides. Every once in a while they stopped, a gaggle of people got out and another gaggle took the space they had just vacated. In the fading light of dusk they looked like shadows. Josie couldn’t figure out how any of this worked. She had never seen anything like it before.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

Josie turned to the captain. A slight smile was playing around the woman’s lips. Even though the smile disappeared the moment the captain noticed Josie was watching her, it was a relief to know she smiled at all.

“We’re here.”

The carriage had stopped in front of a flight of stone steps leading from the road up to one of the protruding houses balanced in a hollow looking too unstable to be allowed.

Captain Glass stepped out of the carriage. Josie hopped down after her, watched as she dropped some coins into the driver’s waiting hand, then turned to Josie with a: “Come!”

She placed a hand on Josie’s back, making it impossible not to follow her. Not that Josie would have tried. She didn’t fancy her chances as a street kid in an unknown city and if the captain caught her - well, that cane looked like it hurt.

Together they entered the house. Once through the door, Captain Glass lit a couple of oil lamps in the hall, but they didn’t change much: The place still looked dark and oppressive, dusty and tight.

At the end of the hallway there was a door. This was where Josie was being pushed. She could hear commotion behind the door and voices.

“Captain’s coming! Captain’s coming!”

The captain opened the door. The room they now entered was full of hammocks slung at different heights going up from just above the floor to just below the ceiling. Josie tried to see how many there were but the back of the room was almost completely dark. She thought she could see at least twenty, though. A whole lot of kids were standing at attention on either side of the room. The oldest were probably nearly of age, the youngest were maybe seven or eight years old. All of them were wearing red uniforms with three Rs on their chest, but the uniforms looked far less fancy than the captain’s. About as shabby as Josie’s own clothes, really. And the embroidered Rs were of a garish yellow rather than gold.

“Children,” said the captain, but before she could continue, a voice came from one of the top hammocks: “Ooh, are we expanding?”

Then another voice, again from just beneath the ceiling: “Sweet!”

And out of the darkness, jumping from one hammock to the next, came two bouncing demons and landed an arm’s length from Josie, who stumbled backwards.

Closer up, the demons turned out to be a boy and a girl, somewhat older than Josie, both wearing tattered red uniforms, both with shoulder-length black hair pointing in all directions.

“Yes, we are indeed,” the captain said, smiling like everything was perfectly normal. “This is Josephine.”

The boy and the girl looked at Josie, then at each other, and as if they had given each other a sign, they both burst into a silly old love song: “Oooh, Josephiiiine, my heart it aches for youuuuu.”

A couple of other kids joined in the cacophonous rendition, but all fell silent instantly when the captain cleared her throat: “Hem! Hem!”

“Sorry, captain!”

“Josephine, these are Rufus and Rebecca. They’ve been with me longest. They will be showing you the ropes.”

“Why us?” whined the boy.

“‘Cause we’re the best!” the girl answered.

“Oh yeah, I forgot about that,” said the boy, grinning.

A couple of kids behind them groaned or made rude gestures in their general direction, but neither Rufus and Rebecca nor the captain seemed to notice.

“Listen to them and follow their instructions to the letter! I expect to be sending you out on your own runs in a week from now.” She turned back to Rufus and Rebecca: “Go get her a uniform and something to eat before you sleep.”

“Sure thing, captain,” they answered, but Captain Glass was already turning to leave.

A moment later the door closed behind her and any semblance of discipline left the room with her. The uniformed children started scrambling up the sides of the room, where, as Josie just noticed, huge shelves were set up or else they pushed each other out of the way to get to a table at the back where a large pot seemed to contain some soup.

“Think fast!”

Josie grabbed a piece of bread out of the air just before it made contact with her nose. Hungrily, she tore off a bite. She hadn’t had anything to eat that day. It was bone dry but trying to push past the crowd to get at the soup was probably a bad idea. Picking a fight on the first evening seemed unwise, especially when she had no idea how brutal these other kids were nor how severely fighting was punished.

“Nice reflexes!” said Rebecca, who’d thrown the bread. “That’ll be useful.”

It took Josie a moment to realise the older girl was talking about the bread.

“What do you mean?”

Useful for what? Josie still wasn’t quite sure what these messengers did, apart from - well - the obvious.

“Found a uniform!” Rufus had been rummaging through the shelves at the side of the room and was now holding something that looked like it it had more holes than fabric. “You can sew, right? Eh, it’ll probably be fine. Also, we’ve got to do something about that name.”

“Yeah, Jooooosephine,” Rebecca said in a mocking tone. A few people laughed. Josie could feel herself going red. “Seriously, that ’s just not on. That’s prissy!”

“No, I’m Prissy!” a round-faced girl shouted from one of the lower-hanging hammocks. The kids around her giggled.

“How ‘bout Jo,” someone suggested.

“People at the orphanage called me Josie,” Josie pointed out.

“Still prissy,” said Rebecca. “I think we’ll call you Joss.”

Josie grimaced. “I don’t really like…”

But nobody was paying attention, so she fell silent.

“Now where do we stash her, Becks?”

Rebecca - Becks? Really? Their taste in nicknames was awful! - shrugged her shoulders. Josie briefly wondered whether she should suggest a spot on the shelf, given that they were already treating her like an object. But then they might take her at her word and really make her sleep in the shelf. The hammocks looked far more comfortable.

“Prue’s not sharing with anyone yet!” a short boy about Josie’s age said, in between slurping soup.

“True,” responded Rufus. He put his arm on Josie’s shoulder - Josie stopped herself from shrugging it off only because she did not want to offend one of the captain’s favourites - and led her to one of the hammocks slung near the ground.

“Alright, so you’re sharing this hammock and all your tools with Prue who’s on night shift right now. You’ll be switching shifts at the end of the month. We’ll be showing you what you need to know tomorrow morning. Prue’ll be back sometime before dawn and she’ll probably knock you out of bed, so you might want to get some shut-eye before then. But that’s up to you.”

“Except,” Becks took up the thought where her brother had left off, “it’s about to be lights out so if you want to do something besides sleep, you’d best be able to do it quietly and in the dark.”

“I’ll just sleep,” muttered Josie.

She did try, but sleep wouldn’t come. The hammock was just too swingy, her stomach was still growling, the snores of the other children around her were too different from those of the orphanage and above all, the faster she went to sleep, the faster the dreaded morning would come and with it a job she had no clue how to do and no doubt punishment upon punishment until she either learned or died.

Eventually, exhaustion must have overwhelmed Josie because she was fast asleep when she suddenly crashed to the ground.

“Wakey-wakey!”

Before she had even opened her eyes, somebody shoved something into her hands. Through the fog of sleep, she figured out that she was holding a bag, a pair of gloves and what looked like a weirdly-shaped mini-flute. A girl was a hand’s breadth from her face, staring at her.

“Hi, I’m Prue. That’s our stuff and this is my hammock.”

“I’m…”

“Joss.”

Josie cringed.

“Ruff and Becks told me before I woke you up. Can you get off the hammock now, it’s been a long night.”

“Yeah, and it’s going to be a hell of a long day if you’re always this slow! Throw on your uniform and up and at ‘em, Joss. You’ve gotta practice. Captain wants you to know your stuff in a week, remember?” Becks was dragging Josie by the arm.

“Ooh, a week,” said Prue. “That’s harsh. It took me a month to learn my way around the city. The captain wasn’t happy. I still have the scars, wanna see?”

She lifted the side of her uniform to show an ugly, twisted mark, snaking its way all the way up the side of her body. A couple of people laughed dirtily. Josie felt a heave trying to force its way out of her throat and had to swallow hard. It was as she had feared. The captain was a maniac and these kids were as cruel as her.

As quickly as she could, Josie slipped out of her old dress and into the ragged uniform. The trousers were a little too short for her and the arms a little too long, but at least none of the holes were in overly inconvenient places. Maybe tonight she would have time to put a needle to it - if she survived the day.

The moment she was dressed, the twins grabbed her, one by each arm and dragged her out of the door, down the corridor and into the cool morning air.

The sun was only just rising and the city still seemed asleep. Josie wrapped her arms around herself. The torn uniform wasn’t very good at keeping out the early morning chill as the children set off down the road.

Barely any of the lifts were moving and now that Josie was walking the streets on foot, she quickly figured out how they worked: Inside small recesses cut at the base of the mountain there were large wheels, some manned with mules, some with horses, who were slowly, painstakingly turning them to raise and lower the booths. For a moment Josie was glad that she wasn’t one of those horses, at least, but that only lasted until a whiff of something delicious reached her nose and she realised with dismay that she would have to work all day on an empty stomach.

Josie had never considered herself an open book, but clearly she was to the twins. Ruff took one look at her and asked: “You hungry?”

“Of course she’s bloody hungry, you idiot, she barely got any food last night,” chided Becks, then turned to Josie. “You’ve gotta learn to be fast and ruthless at dinner, Joss. The captain makes sure there’s enough for everyone but some people are just greedy pigs.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” said Josie, “but can you not call me ‘Joss’?”

Ruff rolled his eyes, said “Just hold on a sec” and in the blink of an eye he had scrambled up a nearby rope and popped into the building from which, as Josie quickly realised, the delicious fragrance had been coming. A minute later he popped back out with a freshly baked soft bread roll and dropped it into Josie’s hands.

“Erm … thanks …” said Josie, surprised. “You really didn’t need to …”

“Don’t thank me, I just don’t want you getting all woozy and losing your balance. You’re from an orphanage so the captain’s probably got to pay back your debt no matter what happens to you, right? She’d be pissed if we let you fall to your death before you’ve worked any of it off. We can pop by the market later before it closes down and get you an apple or something.”

Josie had just taken a bite of the bread roll and her panicked question of “Wait, fall to my death?” came out a bit muffled and with more gross bits of wet dough than she would have liked.

“Well, yeah, can happen if you don’t watch yourself while you’re climbing.”

Josie quickly swallowed the rest of the bread roll: “So we’re not using the lifts?”

Both Ruff and Becks burst into laughter.

“Oh, Joss, sweet child, do we look like we’re made of money?” asked Becks.

They most certainly did not in their old tattered uniforms with their hair that looked like it hadn’t seen water or a brush in months.

“The lifts are expensive. And they’re slow. The Red Roof Runners aren’t the only messengers in Scalbourne. There’s the Blackthorne Messengers and the Hopping Frogs and …”

“... and a whole lot of other pest that will be getting all our tips if we don’t get a move on, sis.” Ruff interrupted Becks. Becks nodded.

Meanwhile, Josie was looking up and down the steep mountain face with all its bridges and roofs and booths and ropes and cables and realised for the first time why Captain Glass had come straight for her at the orphanage. Oh, if this job killed her, she would come back from the grave just to haunt Minnie!

“You’d better put those gloves on, Joss, unless you’re tired of the skin on your hands.”

“It’s Josie,” she said quietly as she pulled on her gloves, but the twins didn’t listen. Instead, Becks pushed her to the side of the road, toward the mountain wall.

“Watch!”

And like a spider she scuttled up until she had reached the bridges that led to the doors of the first houses. Ruff looked expectantly at Josie, but when she didn’t move, he copied his sister.

“Get a move on, Joss!”

“Josie!” she muttered, as she looked at the steep cliff face.

Josie slowly followed them, finding hand and footholds in the rock itself or else on the windows of the houses at the street level. She had always thought she was good at climbing. After all, she had been the only kid in the orphanage who had ever climbed from the dormitory all the way onto the roof and back down again, without being caught, just to show she could. And she’d only been nine years old back then. But now it took her ages to reach Becks and Ruff who were both looking rather impatient.

“At this rate we won’t even be breaking even today,” sighed Ruff as he pulled Joss onto the bridge. “I sure as hell hope you’ll get faster soon. Now look.”

He pointed at a little box with a flag on top hanging on a window.

“If the flag is up, there’s something inside for us.”

He climbed up to the window to grab the letter from the box.

“We get paid by the recipient,” he pointed at the address on the envelope, “when we deliver the letter. Letters are our biggest business in the neighbourhoods all the way up” he pointed up at the sky “and down” he pointed down at the abyss.

Josie followed his finger with her eyes and felt, for the first time in her life, actively glad she didn’t know what vertigo felt like. Holy shit, that gorge was deep. You couldn’t even make out the bottom from where they were standing.

“That’s where all the rich bastards live. They can afford the lifts, you know, and it’s quieter on the outskirts. Less smelly, too, the horse shit in the street gets real bad in summer,” explained Becks.

“But around here,” continued Ruff seamlessly, “a lot of people don’t know how to write or they just plain don’t want to, so what we do…” He put his own weird whistle to his lips and blew. A shrill sound made Josie’s hands fly to her ears. Seconds later, a handful of windows were thrown open, the nearest one just a narrow rope bridge from where they were standing.

Ruff balanced along the bridge, his arms outstretched, until he had reached the window.

An old woman was leaning out the window, shouting at Ruff: “HEY! YOU’RE LATE TODAY!”

“Yeah, sorry, Grandmother, we’ve got a rookie to train,” Ruff shouted back, waving his hand at Josie. Apparently the woman was a little deaf.

“The Bluecoats have been past but they didn’t even whistle.” The woman sounded like this was the most impertinent thing she could possibly imagine.

“Well, the Roof Runners will always have your back, Grandmother,” said Ruff, taking a rather impressively deep bow on the rickety rope bridge. Unconsciously, Josie copied him, trying to figure out if she could have kept her balance. She caught herself mid-bow and quickly straightened up, embarrassed. She expected Becks to be standing next to her laughing, but in fact, the older girl had climbed to another open window.

“What message can we deliver for you today?”

Feeling thoroughly out of place, Josie looked around. A young man was standing in the door of a house further up, clearly waiting for the messengers to reach him. He saw her looking at him and waved. Ruff and Becks were still busy but the man was waving ever more insistently. There was nothing for it. With a quick glance practiced by years of sneaking from the girls’ to the boys’ dormitory via the windows and hiding valuables behind the ivy on the orphanage facade, Josie quickly found a path. She hoped that there weren’t any obscure rules about not using a specific house as climbing aid!

She started making her way up. Really, it was almost like climbing the orphanage facade, except here, instead of the ivy, there were the occasional ropes hanging down from bridges and very rickety ladders. Eventually, she reached the man’s front door and breathed a sigh of relief.

“What message can we deliver for you today?” Josie asked, copying Ruff. She briefly considered bowing, but then that man looked barely any less ragged than she did, not to mention that she would have felt rather silly, losing her balance in a bow after climbing all the way up here without any mishaps.

“Well, first of all,” said the man, a rather grumpy expression on his face, “you can tell your boss to get some faster messengers, I’ve been up here waving at you for ages.”

“I… I’m sorry … It’s my first…”

“Never mind sorry, are you going to take my message or not?”

“Uh - wha - yes, of course, sir!”

“Well, listen closely then! You go tell Lucas Littlefield up in Heaven’s Yard that he’s not above paying his bloody debts and if I don’t get my money soon I’ll be coming up there in person and I’ll shove a fucking poker up his arrogant ass. Understood?”

Josie had to bite back a giggle. She was glad Missy had gotten her used to swearing or she might have been appalled at his choice of words.  

“Yes, sir. Lucas Littlefield in Heaven’s Yard needs to pay his debts as soon as possible.”

“Don’t forget the poker!”

“No, sir, I shan’t.”

“You’d better not! And stop grinning! Cheeky girl!”

The man slammed the door in her face. Josie hoped she wasn’t supposed to get payment from this grouch. She regretted not asking whether the recipient also paid for verbal messages.

“Oh, hey, showing initiative! I like it!”

Josie jumped and came down dangerously close to the edge of the bridge she was standing on. She let out a scream, her arms windmilling wildly, but Becks had already grabbed her by the collar.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got you. So, what’s the message?”

“Erm…”

“If you’ve forgotten it, you’re knocking at his door and asking him to repeat!” threatened Ruff.

“No, no, I haven’t. Lukas Littlefield in Heaven’s Yard needs to pay his debts.”

“To whom?”

“Erm, that guy,” Josie said, pointing at the now-closed door. “Obviously.”

“Well, Mister Littlefield might have a whole bunch of debts, you going to tell him ‘That guy in that house a bunch of levels above the main street wants your money’?”

“Oh, no, I should have asked for the name, shouldn’t I?”

Any pride Josie had felt about taking her first message was fading fast. She now felt very stupid and more than a little nervous. They weren’t going to make her go back and ask the guy for his name, were they?

Becks laughed: “Well, no worries, eventually you’ll know most people, at least the ones down here. That guy’s name is Lidgett, by the way, and if he’s going to send us all the way up to Heaven’s bloody Yard he should’ve at least had the decency to pay the lift fee for us.”

“We weren’t even planning to go up that far today,” grumbled Ruff.

But up that far they went - by the time they reached Heaven’s Yard it was late in the afternoon and Josie had already learned plenty about her new trade: How much to charge for what kind of message. How to ride along on lift cables when the liftmen weren’t looking to speed up your journey. How you always had to get your money before delivering your message or else some arseholes were going to cheat you. How you never ever used the whistle in the neighbourhoods at the city’s outskirts or the rich ponces living there would call the watchmen on you for disturbing the peace, but how you could totally use the whistle at night in the poorer neighbourhoods - you just risked receiving as many rotten apples and buckets of cold water to the head as messages. How, if you met other messengers on the mountain, you could tell what company they were from by their uniforms and that all the companies - with the exception of the Red Roof Runners, of course - had their weaknesses, but regardless, lobbing mud or rotten fruit at the competition while hiding behind a house was always acceptable.

Josie had learned the names of so many streets and neighbourhoods that she was sure she would never remember them all, especially with the threat of punishment from the captain muddling her brain. She also had the most horrible muscle cramps of her life and for a moment she considered spending some of the money she had earned on taking a lift back down to the main street. But Becks and Ruff were probably going to report her to Captain Glass and then the captain was going to take that cane to her back - Josie decided she would just have to bear the aching muscles and climb down the way she had come up when they were done.

Their last stop before they would journey back to the headquarters was Lukas Littlefield’s mansion in Heaven’s Yard. This area of town was very different from the others. There were no rickety rope bridges and loose cables here. Everything looked so sturdy and wide you could have marched an army across it. The houses here were by far the most jaw-dropping thing Josie had ever laid her eyes on. There they hovered, twice, three times, even four times larger than the orphanage, stable in mountain hollows clearly made specifically for that purpose, jutting out just enough to give the inhabitants an amazing view of the world below them, giant windows letting the sunlight stream into the outward-facing rooms. How on earth had they even constructed these monstrosities? And how many people had lost their lives while doing so? Those houses were probably responsible for a fair number of orphans!

The twins made Josie deliver the message to Lukas Littlefield herself. She pulled the cord on the front door, making a loud bell ring. A moment later a man in a fancy black suit opened the door.

He gave Josie a look of complete and utter disdain: “What do you want?”

“Are you Lukas Littlefield?”

The man raised an eyebrow: “Am I ... ? No, of course I am not Mister Littlefield!”

“But this is his house, right? Because I’ve got a message for him.”

The man rolled his eyes: “Of course this is his house, what else would it be? His garden shed?”

Josie was just about to give the man a cheeky answer when she saw Ruff and Becks from the corner of her eyes giving her hand signals to hurry up.

“Can you take the message for him then?”  she asked.

“Of course I can, silly girl. I am his butler.” He emphasised that last word like he expected it to mean anything to Josie.

“Who is it from?”

“Money first!”

The man shut the door in Josie’s face. For a moment, she wondered whether she should ring the bell again, when he returned and, with a loud “Ugh” dropped a few coins into her hand.

“Now, what is it? I do not have all day. Some of us have busy schedules.”

Josie put on her fanciest airs, the way the children at the orphanage had done when they had mimicked Matron and her visitors behind their backs, cleared her throat and said:

“Mister Lidgett from Stanhope Falls requests that Mister Littlefield pay his debts and would like to let him know that, should he fail to do so, he will introduce a poker to Mister Littlefield’s behind.”

The butler gave her a look of complete shock and disgust and with another “Ugh” he slammed the door in her face, this time for good.

The moment the door was shut, Becks and Ruff burst into laughter.

“What?” asked Josie, somewhat offended. Yes, she had been a bit clumsy, but it was only her first day after all!

“Introduce a poker to his behind! Holy shit! I don’t know where you get that stuff, but it’s hilarious!” shrieked Becks.

“Yeah, it was amazing! You didn’t look like the type to know how to put on airs, though. Did they send you to school at that orphanage of yours or what?” Ruff asked

Josie shrugged. She’d barely had a handful of lessons at the orphanage, not enough to count as ‘school’.

“How much did he give you anyway?” Becks grabbed Josie’s hand rather roughly and counted the coins. “Oh, the bastard! He didn’t even tip and us coming all the way up here! I hope he gets pokered before his boss does!”

Becks looked so outraged that Josie couldn’t help herself: She started giggling. Becks shot her a very bemused glance. Then, to Josie’s great surprise, she too started laughing and soon Ruff joined in as well.

The journey down was a lot less painful than Josie would have expected. Her arms and legs were burning up, her stomach was practically devouring itself and they still had a bunch of messages to deliver, but Becks and Ruff, rather than just pointing out the names of the neighbourhoods, had started to tell Josie silly stories about their inhabitants and every once in a while Ruff whispered: “Introduce a poker” and all three of them started giggling again.

Near the main street they met a couple of their fellow Roof Runners carrying bags of produce from the market. Their mouths were smeared with what was clearly cherry juice.

Josie’s stomach was rumbling but she didn’t dare ask. Fortunately, Becks and Ruff had no such compunctions.

“Oi! Share and share alike!”

Next thing she knew, Josie had a handful of cherries shoved in her face by Becks. They were by far the sweetest and juiciest fruit she had ever eaten in her life.

The first week with the Red Roof Runners passed at incredible speed. The next day, the twins introduced Josie to Tranquil Greens, the Greens for short, the bottom-most neighbourhood in Scalbourne. It was as stunning as Heaven’s Yard, but in an entirely different way. The houses here were slightly less ridiculously-sized. To make up for it, the inhabitants had their own little lift system going from each house down to the very bottom of the gorge which was, as Josie now saw, filled with gorgeous sculpted gardens, lush forests and orchards full of fruit ready for the picking.

The inhabitants, however, seemed no nicer than those of Heaven’s Yard. Josie got insults lobbed at her on two separate occasions just for wanting to have her money before delivering a letter. The inhabitants of the inner city, on the other hand, were usually dirty and sweaty from work and didn’t have much time to talk, but only very few of them were as grouchy as Mister Lidgett had been. Most of them greeted the children with a smile and they generally tipped more than the rich folk - “Which,” Becks had explained in an undertone as they had left a house at the Greens after delivering a wedding invitation, “is why we charge more from those ponces in the first place, but don’t let the captain know!”

Some of the inhabitants of the inner city even seemed to regard the Roof Runners as their own kids. More than once now, a concerned Mum or Dad had dropped half a smoked sausage into Josie’s hand together with the tip or had sent a shy toddler her way with a bag of snacks: “Mummy says this is for you.”  

On her fourth day of work, Josie had delivered some good news - “The butcher was wondering if your grandson wanted to become his apprentice” - to an old woman. She had accepted the message and, instead of a tip, had given Josie a horrified glance and an “Oh dearie me!”

The next day, Josie was woken up at dawn when something large and soft was dropped on her face. She sputtered awake with a start.

“W-what?”

“Granny Cobb says you looked cold and told me to give you this ‘cause it will get much colder soon. She also said I need to tell the captain to take better care of you, ‘cause you look fragile, but I sure as hell am not going to do that! Pah! Fragile!”

The large, soft thing turned out to be a woolen scarf knitted with red and yellow yarn, matching Josie’s uniform almost perfectly. Josie made a mental note to deliver any messages from Granny Cobb with particular speed in the future.

On the fifth day, however, Josie very nearly lost her beautiful new scarf in an insidious sneak attack. They had just left the shack of Ezekiel Hedgecock, a wannabe scholar who had handed them a pile of letters that would probably take them all day to deliver but earn them enough to make up for it. Suddenly, from the corner of her eye, Josie saw a flash of green and next thing she knew, a small hand had ripped her bag with the letters from her shoulder and her scarf from her neck, nearly choking her in the process.

Josie crashed to her knees and skidded across the bridge she was on, feeling the burn of the wood scrape open her skin.

“OI! FUCKING THIEVES!” screamed Ruff.

“LET’S GET THEM!” yelled Becks.

Josie sprang to her feet and followed the twins. Far ahead of them, two girls in bright green uniforms were sliding down a rope, cackling loudly. Immediately, the three Runners set off in hot pursuit, sliding down the same rope, racing after the thieving brats with all that their legs could give. Josie soon caught up with the twins and even overtook them, but the thieves were still far ahead, now descending to the next lower level.

“We’ll never catch them!” shouted Becks.

Josie looked around in desperation.

“HEY!” she shouted.

She had spotted something the twins behind her had not: The thieves were stuck! There were only two ways for them to go: Up on a lift booth or across the rope bridge right below where Josie was standing now. And the next lift booth was at least a minute away!

Later that day when the other kids questioned her, Josie could not remember ever actually deciding to jump. She just did. She launched herself from where she stood and landed, to her own surprise, on her two feet, right in front the surprised Frog girls.

With a speed she herself had not known she possessed, Josie made a wild grab for the bag. The girl holding it dodged and instead, Josie’s hand closed on her blond ponytail. She yanked hard.

“LET GO!” the girl shrieked.

Her friend lobbed herself at Josie. She felt a fist connect with her face. There was scratching, kicking, hair pulling, fists and legs were flying, but Josie, despite being outnumbered, gave as good as she got.

When she felt the girls being dragged off her, she was scratched and bruised all over but the pain in her knuckles told her she had landed a few punches herself. Through one eye - the other was rapidly swelling shut - Josie saw the twins holding one flailing, bruised and bloodied girl each. The girls were about half the twins’ size so their flailing and screaming was pretty useless.

A couple of windows around them burst open, revealing curious onlookers, but when they realised what they were hearing was just a squabble between two competing messenger gangs, they quickly went back to their own business.

“So, thought you could nick our letters, did you?”

“LET GO!”

“Hell no, I’m not letting you go just yet. You’re going to give us back our property and you’re going to apologise and then you can go.”

The answer Ruff got was not an apology but a two-voiced “FUCK YOU!”

“Well, if that’s how you want to play it, we can just grab your bags and consider that your apology,” Becks suggested, in a light tone, and immediately made a grab for the leather backpack now hanging on only one strap from the shoulder of her prisoner, who yelped a panicked “NO!”

“That’s half a day’s work in there! You can’t do that!”

“Oh, can’t we?”

“We’ll tell Palethorpe!”

“And what? Get your thieving little arses whipped raw for losing him money?”

“You’ll be in big trouble!”

“From whom? Palethorpe? Pull the other one, it’s got bells on! He tries to mess with us, he’ll end up with the Captain’s cane up his arse and he knows it! He won’t come after us, he’ll take it out on you. Now…”

Becks continued to slowly slip the backpack of the girl’s shoulder.

“Okay! Okay! Stop! We’re sorry!”

“And you won’t try that shit again?”

“No, no, we’re never going to try to steal from you again! Promise!”

“Alright then. Joss, go grab your stuff.”

“It’s Jo - oh, never mind.”

Josie slowly got to her feet, still a little wobbly, and made a grab for her bag and her scarf. The moment she had them safely in hand, the twins set the girls down. They ran as fast as they could with not a glance back at the victors of this fight.

“You gotta feel sorry for them,” said Becks, looking after them. “Palethorpe’s a bully. He doesn’t feed them if they don’t earn enough. The captain thinks he’s a sadistic little shithead.”

Josie had a hard time imagining that the straight-laced woman had used those exact words.

“Man, you were amazing, though, Joss! The way you just threw yourself down on that rope bridge, all…” Ruff gave a battle cry that Josie was sure had never come out of her mouth at all. “Completely batshit nuts, mind, that bridge was wobbly as shit, you could’ve been thrown off and broken your neck. Still, pretty impressive! You’re not half as prissy as I thought you were.”

Josie should have been glad that the captain’s favourites seemed to like her more by the day, but a nauseous pressure was settling on her chest and stomach now.

“What?” asked Ruff, clearly confused by Josie’s expression.

“If they’ll be starved now…”

“Oh, don’t even go down that road, Joss,” said Becks, “if we start giving our work to all the messengers who have less amazing bosses, we’ll be the ones starving soon because we’re out of food money! They’ll be fine. Palethorpe hasn’t killed any of his workers yet.”

“But…”

“Listen, Joss, they can always make a run for it if it gets too bad. Now let’s get you to Granny Cobb, she’ll know how to fix that eye of yours fast. We’ve got work to do!”

By the next day, Josie herself was considering making a run for it. That morning, Captain Glass had entered their dormitory just as the day shift had been dragging themselves out of their hammocks. She had come straight for Josie.

“Josephine.”

“Yes, captain?” Josie had answered, bleary-eyed.

“When you get back from work tonight, meet me in my office. I want to know if you’ve been making progress.”

Josie barely managed to work that day, to the great annoyance of Ruff and Becks. She kept dropping mail, forgetting messages and having to go back to ask again, confusing people’s names.

Finally, when she forgot to charge a Heaven’s Yarder for a letter, Ruff burst out: “For fuck’s sake, Joss, what is wrong with you today? Get your act together!”

But Josie couldn’t. She tried to recall all she had learned in the past days, tried to remember all the names of people and places, but they kept slipping through the cracks in her mind - cracks, that, oddly enough, had the exact shape of that huge scar on Prue’s side.

That evening when they returned and approached the door, Josie very nearly scampered. But the twins were standing on either side of her like guards and she had seen how fast they could run.

“Well, good luck,” said Becks as they stood in front of the office door. Ruff gave her a brief pat on the shoulder, then the twins disappeared in the dim hallway.

With a trembling hand, Josie knocked on the door.

“Come in.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Josie opened the door. Captain Glass’s office was much better lit than the entire rest of the building. It made Josie’s eyes water. She blinked furiously, hoping that it didn’t look too much like she was crying - even though she felt like doing just that.

The captain was sitting at a huge oak desk, looking, as usual, intimidating. Stacks of paper were piling up on one side of the desk. As Josie approached, she could see row and rows of numbers, something that looked like a work schedule soon to be nailed to the dormitory door, and a half-finished letter, written in red ink and a curlicued script.

The captain seemed to be halfway through some paperwork and had barely looked up at Josie, who was now standing in front of the oak desk waiting for the inevitable. She tried to recall as many of the city streets as she could but the sound of her own heartbeat was drowning out all useful thought.

Finally, after what felt like a lifetime, the captain looked up: “Ah, Josephine. Sit!”

Josie dropped heavily onto the upholstered chair on the other side of the desk.

“The twins told me you got in a fight yesterday?”

“I’m sorry, captain,” said Josie.

“Oh, no need to apologise. I am well aware these things are unavoidable sometimes. How is your eye?”

“Better, captain. Gran - erm - Madam Cobb gave me some ointment.”

“Ah, Granny Cobb, wonderful woman. Now,” the captain rose from her chair. Josie suddenly felt incredibly small. “To business.”

She stepped out from behind her desk and opened a large, plain cabinet nearby. Josie couldn’t help but gawp: The cabinet doors had revealed a small-scale, vertical model of Scalbourne in intricate detail, reaching from the bottom of the cabinet where tiny resin trees and gardens represented the Greens to the accurately-decorated mansions up in Heaven’s Yard, at the top of the cabinet. The model even had a system of lifts that, if Josie wasn’t entirely mistaken, looked like it actually worked.

Josie looked up from the model to see the captain smiling.

“You seem impressed, Josephine.”

Unsure of what to say, Josie just nodded.

“Why, thank you,” said the captain, laughter in her voice. “It took me over a year to finish this, but it’s a good tool to teach you children.”

At those words, Josie suddenly remembered why she was here. Her stomach dropped so suddenly that she only barely caught what the captain said next.

“I’m going to name a place and you’ll point it out on the map. Let’s start with something easy. Gregor’s Gate. … Josephine?”

“Y-yes, of course, captain. Erm, Gregor’s Gate…” Josie lifted a trembling hand to point at the street that she thought may be the right one. It was up in Heaven’s Yard and had an actual gate, but there were multiple gates in Heaven’s Yard and she wasn’t at all sure anymore whether Gregor’s Gate was the black one with the metal worked into roses or the bronze-coloured one with the large cat on top - or maybe it was neither?

Josie flinched hard when the captain moved. She expected the cane to come down on her hand any moment now. But Captain Glass had merely shifted slightly.

“Good,” she said. “Now Dullard’s Pit.”

Josie found that, too, and Upper and Lower Goat Bridge, but things started to go downhill when Captain Glass asked her about Goldenrose. Wasn’t that down in the Greens? No, that was another rose-themed place, for sure! Goldenrose was in the inner city. But what if she had misremembered?

The captain was tapping an impatient rhythm with her cane on the floor now and it made Josie lose any remaining semblance of focus. A sour taste of bile was spreading in her mouth and always, always that scar on Prue’s skin popped back into her head.

Finally, Captain Glass sighed: “Well, it seems this is the best we’re going to get today. I was really hoping for more, Josephine.”

“I’m sorry! I can do better! I swear!” Tears were pooling in Josie’s eyes now and she was only too glad that the captain had turned away. She’d probably just think Josie was trying to get her pity and would get even more pissed off.

“I certainly hope you can. But I’m sure you understand that I have to make sure, so…”

Josie was close to fainting as she waited for her sentence. She’d taken plenty of beatings, but never anything that had left scars like Prue’s. She saw herself lying on the hammock, bleeding, crying, the other kids doing nothing but laugh like they did at Prue.

“I expect you in my office first thing after each shift for practice until I’m confident that you know your way around.”

“Wait, what?”

“Is there a problem?” the captain said, in a harsh tone.

“No, no, of course not, captain. I’ll be here! I’ll do better next time around!”

“Good. Dismissed.”

Josie ran rather than walked out of the office door.

“WOAH!”

She had very nearly collided with a gaggle of eavesdroppers, including the twins, a bunch of other dayshift kids in their undershirts with bowls of stew in their hands and half the night shift on their way out.

“How’d it go?” asked Becks and Ruff in unison.

“Went okay, but she wants me back every night until I know my way around properly.”

A groan of disappointment ran around the crowd.

“Aw, bummer. You’ll be missing supper every night!” said a lanky boy whose name, Josie thought, was Isaac.

“Not if you don’t eat three times your share, she won’t,” said Becks.

“I’m a growing boy! I need the food!”

“You’re a greedy pig is what you are!”

While Becks and Isaac were squabbling, Ruff laid a comforting hand on Josie’s shoulder.

“Sorry ‘bout this, we’ll make sure to save some food for you, even if we have to kick Isaac’s arse for it. Besides, in a week or so you’ll probably have it all down perfectly. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

“Never mind beating myself up!” Josie burst out. “I’m glad the captain didn’t!”

Ruff raised his eyebrows with a confused “Huh?”

“I can handle missing supper sometimes. I’m just glad she didn’t beat me bloody, like Prue!”

Several people around them snorted, as Prue’s jaw dropped open, making her look like a fish on land - an extremely offended fish.

She rounded on the day shift kids, hands on her hips, looking suddenly much more threatening than her small frame should have allowed.

“Are you telling me you never told her I was joking?”

“Erm…”

Becks and Isaac had stopped arguing and now both looked rather abashed, while Ruff said, in a low voice: “We just kinda thought she knew.”

Prue took a deep breath and in a loud burst, released a storm of anger over the heads of the day shift kids: “And how on earth was she supposed to? She’s only just gotten here! You don’t know if shit like that happened back where she came from, you bunch of stupid twats!”

Josie flinched as Prue turned to her, but when she spoke, it was in a tone of deep exasperation rather than anger: “Those scars I showed you, they’re not from the Captain. A couple years ago, I lost my balance and crashed onto a lift cable. They get ridiculously hot in summer, so I got some serious burns. I probably wouldn’t have made it without the Captain, you know. She spent about half a year’s profits on getting me a good doctor. I wouldn’t have made that stupid joke if I’d thought you’d take me seriously! I just thought someone,” Prue glared at the day shift kids, “would let you know the Captain doesn’t do stuff like that. Other messenger kings, maybe, but not Captain Glass. Ever!”

“I do wonder what it is that I never do!”

The entire crowd flinched hard. A huge glob of Isaac’s stew slopped over the side of his bowl and onto the floor.

“Because if it is ‘Telling you to stop lazing around and go do your work’’, you are deeply mistaken.” The Captain’s voice stayed surprisingly pleasant, though she was giving the crowd a very irritated look.

“Already gone!” squeaked Prue and tore out of the building at break-neck pace, followed by the rest of the night shift.

Ruff had been right: A week of practicing with the captain every night and Josie could have pointed out every street of the city in her sleep - even the ones she hadn’t personally been to. Captain Glass drilled her hard. Frequently, Josie wouldn’t return to her hammock until everyone else was already fast asleep. But true to their promise, a bowl of stew waited for her there. It was usually cold and not enough to fill her up, but the other Runners didn’t let her starve.

During the days, Josie was now sent out on her own. As she soon discovered, this didn’t really mean spending all day jumping across roofs and scrambling up cables all on her lonesome. Sure, the messengers started out in different neighbourhoods, but by midday more often than not they would run across each other, give messages and letters to far-off neighbourhoods to people going there anyway, trade rumours and funny stories and occasionally share a treat they had gotten in place of a tip or bought with a bit of money skimmed off the top of their day’s earnings. Josie didn’t dare do that, though. Captain Glass didn’t beat her messengers, they all assured her, but who knew? She might yet make an exception for a girl who was still deep in debt and already stealing her money.

Some weeks after Josie started going out on her own, she checked the work schedule on the wall one evening and was surprised to find that her name wasn’t on it. Had the captain made a mistake? But then, didn’t everyone always go on about how persnickety Captain Glass was about her work schedules, how she was the best messenger king in the city because she knew how to get the most out of her messengers without running them ragged - and Josie had only just stopped practicing with her every night. It seemed almost impossible that Captain Glass could have just forgotten her. But then, why wasn’t she on the schedule? Had she not worked enough? Was Captain Glass going to sell her on to someone worse? Or maybe just cut her losses and kick her out? What was she going to do then?

Swallowing down the rising panic, Josie called out: “Erm, Ruff? Becks?”

“Huh?”

“Can you come have a look at this? I’m not on here...”

“On where?” said Ruff, poking his head out of his hammock. His face looked like he’d been half-asleep. “Oh, on there! ‘Course you’re not, it’s your day off tomorrow.”

“Oh sweet, mine too,” said little Gertie, who was swinging on her hammock near the twins. “I can show you the parts of town that you never get to see when you’re working! It’ll be fun. See, if you walk down the main road…”

Gertie was talking a mile a minute, but Josie wasn’t taking any of it in.

“Wait, day off? We have days off?”

“Just when we switch from day shift to night shift. Look at the schedule, you’re on night shift starting from the day after tomorrow, I bet,” Becks called down from her own hammock.

“Yeah, the captain wants us to sleep, so we can get used to the new schedule,” said Gertie, briefly interrupting her talk on the manifold sights of Scalbourne. “But that’s a waste of a day if you ask me.”

“Yeah, and she knows it, too! Betcha she’ll give you your pay for the month tomorrow morning so you can enjoy yourself.”

“Erm, Becks - I’m up to here,” Josie pointed to her nose, “in debt. I won’t be getting paid for a decade and then some!”

“Eh, you’ll see.”

And in unison, the twins’ heads disappeared in their hammocks. Josie stood there for a moment, listening to Gertie prattling on, then, without another word, she went to bed.

“Hey! Wake up!”

“Urgh, I’ll get up in a moment, Prue.”

“Not Prue!”

Josie slowly opened her eyes. She felt like she hadn’t slept at all. She’d been tossing and turning for hours, which, given that she was sleeping in a hammock, was a rather uncomfortable experience.

Her gaze slowly focused on her surroundings and found a small face, barely inches from her own, sporting a wide grin.

“HOLY SHIT!”

Josie scrambled backwards, lost her balance on the hammock and with a painful bump, landed on the hard floor.

Rubbing her aching behind, she glared at Gertie, who was still grinning and looking a little less than sane for it: “What on earth did you do that for?”

“Sh! Nobody’s up yet!”

“Yeah, we are now!” answered a disgruntled voice from one of the upper hammocks.

“Go back to sleep, it’s early!”

“Urgh! Shut up!”

“Wait, you woke me up early?”

“Well, yeah, duh! It’s our day off! We want to enjoy every bit of it! Get dressed!”

Josie dragged herself up, into her clothes and out of the door, feeling like she had never enjoyed herself less in her life. Meanwhile, Gertie was prattling on endlessly about their plans for the day.

“... and Isaac and Jack are off, too, but Isaac’s already gone because he wants to be at the market before it opens and Jack told me to fuck off when I tried to wake him up.”

“I didn’t know that was an option,” muttered Josie, but Gertie didn’t seem to hear her.

“Oh yeah, before I forget. The captain said to give you this!”

Gertie pushed a bag into Josie’s hand. Josie, still half asleep and very confused, pulled out a small handful of coins. Her mouth fell open.

Gertie must have misunderstood the surprised look on her face: “Yeah, it’s not much, I know, but you can make it last quite a while. They’ve got some really good, cheap stuff at the hidden market, too! And if you’re lucky, you can win some...”

“Hidden market?”

Josie immediately wished she hadn’t asked, as Gertie grabbed her hand and - with a surprising strength for such a tiny girl - dragged the still snoozy Josie through the main street. Even though the sun hadn’t risen yet, Scalbourne was slowly waking. Merchants were hurrying through the streets with their wares to set up shop at the market. Horses and donkeys were starting their day’s work in the cubby holes by the side of the street, making the lifts shudder awake. Carriages were trundling along the side of the road, spitting out passengers who looked like all they wanted was a night’s sleep in a bed that didn’t move. And if Josie wasn’t entirely mistaken, they had just passed a huddle of night shifters dragging themselves back home. But before Josie could even wave at them, Gertie had pulled her on. Soon, the little girl had dragged Josie further than she had ever gone along the main road and Josie, whose arm felt like it was about to fall off, had had about enough. She dug in her heels.

“Joss! Come on! Hurry!” Gertie yanked at her arm.

“No! I’m tired, I’m about to switch shifts, I don’t want to spend all day being dragged around the city. I’m going back. Let go!”

Gertie dropped Josie’s arm and turned to her with a face that made Josie feel like she had just personally murdered the girl’s entire family.

“Are you sure? We’re almost there! Look! Up there!”

All Josie could see was more road.

“At least let me show you!”

Gertie sounded like she was about to burst into tears.

“Alright, alright, but when you’ve shown me, I’m going back to my hammock to sleep.”

Gertie literally jumped with joy: “Sweet!”

To Josie’s great surprise, when the little girl set off again, she only ran along the street until she had reached the next lift wheel, then disappeared in the hole.

“HEY! WAIT!”

Josie rushed after her, but skidded to a halt when she found herself facing a stern-looking mule driver holding up a hand.

“Hold on there, password!”

“Erm, password?” Josie asked, confused. “My friend just ran in here and…”

“Password or fuck off.”

A little voice echoed from behind the muscular man: “She really is my friend and password’s Horseshoe!”

“Humph,” said the mule driver and stepped aside, pulling his mule, revealing a tunnel in the mountain wall and Gertie’s flushed face in the lamplight.

“Wow,” was all Josie could say when they broke free of the narrow tunnel and emerged into a brightly lit mountain chamber filled with dozens of people, huddled together in small groups or else guarding wares set up in front of them on little tables or blankets. It looked like there was an entire network of tunnels in the Scalbourne mountain that Josie had never even heard about.

“I know, right? I didn’t even know this was here for months after I first came to Scalbourne. You’ve got to know people who know people, you know and if you’re new... Ooh, look at that necklace!”

Gertie had turned around mid-sentence to stare, open-mouthed, at a beautiful necklace with a heart shimmering in vivid green dangling at its end.

“How much is that?” she asked the young man who was sitting, cross-legged, behind the blanket of jewellery.

He mumbled something that made Gertie sigh: “That’s a year’s worth of pay, come on, you can’t be serious!”

In response, the man mumbled something that sounded vaguely like an insult. Gertie turned around, arms crossed, lips pushed forward in a comical pout.

“We never get anything nice!”

“Maybe if your standards were lower…”

But Gertie wasn’t even listening. Nor was she pouting anymore. She had spotted a group of children and teenagers playing a dice game in a corner. Their bags and whistles clearly showed they were messengers, but none of them were wearing red.

With a wide smile, she approached the group: “Hey, can I join?”

“Got any cash?” asked the oldest-looking girl, who was wrapped in a blue cloak.

Gertie showed them a handful of coins.

“Sit then.”

Josie grabbed Gertie by the shoulder: “Wait, what are you doing? They’re the competition…”

“Who cares? It doesn’t matter. We’re not at work.” Her tone was so contemptuous that she may as well have added ‘duh’. “So you coming?”

And gamble away all the money she had only just gotten? No way!

“Nah, I’ll have a look around.”

“Suit yourself,” said Gertie, turning to the other children, but then turned to Josie once more and, as an afterthought, added: “Oh, you should go to the stall over there. The yellow one. Their ale is amazing! You can wait for me there!”

Josie walked away pretending to check out the stalls, but if anyone had asked her what she was looking at, she couldn’t have told them. Now that the first surprise was fading away, she had quickly realised that something wasn’t quite right here. Why weren’t all these beautiful things being sold at the market out on the main road where everyone could see them? And was she imagining things or did everyone look incredibly shifty down here? Also, she hadn’t seen a single watchman since she had entered the hidden market and they were usually everywhere, infesting the city like rats, glaring at the messengers every time they passed.

And here she was, in the midst of a bunch of fences, thieves and Lord only know what else, casually carrying a bag of more money than she had ever held before in her life and looking so thoroughly out of place that she may as well have ‘designated victim’ tattooed on her forehead. She quickly dismissed Gertie’s suggestion; she’d never had any ale and starting right here would be the height of foolishness.

With a quick look around her, she stuffed her money bag into her uniform. Hopefully nobody had seen her! Then again, it wasn’t a lot of money. Nobody would hurt her over that little bit, would they? But then, there were plenty of messengers from other companies around, including Palethorpe’s lot. Somebody might do something desperate and she’d never be heard of again!

Josie decided to get the hell out before that happened, but when she turned to walk back to the entrance, she found that in her panic she had gotten completely turned around. She wasn’t even near the market anymore. Instead, she had walked along a side tunnel that looked a bit like the one through which Gertie and her had entered, but wasn’t.

She turned around and ran back to where she thought the market was. But maybe she had missed a turn-off or maybe this entire bloody tunnel system had been created specifically to confuse her. Whatever was going on here, she couldn’t find her way back to the market. Even after what felt like minutes of running, she was still in an entirely deserted tunnel.

More annoyed than panicked now, Josie leaned against the tunnel wall and let herself slide to the floor with a long “Fuck.”

There went her only day off. Sure, someone was going to come by. Eventually. They had to. The market had been teeming with people. If nothing else, Gertie would eventually notice she was gone. But by then it may well be night and not only had Josie not enjoyed herself, she had also not slept nor eaten a bite today. Her stomach was growling loud enough to make her head hurt.

“Oh, shut up,” she muttered, as she let her head drop onto her folded arms. It immediately shot up again. There! She’d heard voices right nearby! Finally!

She got up and listened carefully. Suddenly, one of the voices grew louder and angrier. It echoed around the tunnel, making it difficult to figure out where it was coming from and even more difficult to hear what it was saying, but from the tone of it, Josie didn’t want to meet its owner. Still, she had to get out of here sometime!

Slowly, Josie shuffled along in the direction in which the voice was strongest. As she got closer, she started to hear another voice, lower, smaller, pleading. Soon, she could understand some words:

“... tried but there’s always watchmen up there! And he’s not like the others! He actually cares about his money! He’s probably keeping private guards and…”

There was a squeal of pain, followed by a growl: “I don’t give a shit. You get that money for me if it’s the very last thing you do! Fucking stab him in his sleep if you must!”

“O-okay, boss.”

Out of an alcove near Josie shot a green arrow and, without so much as stopping to acknowledge her presence, it disappeared down a narrow tunnel that Josie hadn’t even spotted before. She was just about to follow the small, green-clad figure when, to her horror, a much larger figure stepped out of the alcove and this one very much did acknowledge that she was there.

“Oi!” shouted the man in the shabby green uniform. Josie instinctively made a step back. Her mind was reeling. Judging by his uniform this man could only be the infamous Palethorpe. Not only did he look about as terrifying as she had imagined him, not only was he carrying a horse whip, not only was he glaring daggers - no, full-sized swords - at her, no, she had also just heard him plan a crime.

“What are you doing here? Why’re you eavesdropping?”

“Nothing. I mean, I wasn’t eavesdropping at all, sir. Just got lost.”

“How much did you hear?”

“Of what?” Josie asked, trying to sound clueless, but even as the words left her mouth, she realised she sounded anything but convincing.

Palethorpe glared at her, letting his eyes wander slowly up and down her, clearly trying to determine whether she was telling the truth. Suddenly, without warning, his hand shot forward. Josie only just managed to jump back and avoid his grasp.

She tore down the tunnel where the Frog had disappeared as fast as her legs could carry her. Behind her she heard Palethorpe’s heavy steps. Her heart was beating so fast she wished it could do the running in place of her legs, which felt like they were about to cramp. Any second now her lungs would give out. Any second now he’d catch up with her.

But Josie’s legs and lungs weren’t those of the pale orphanage girl anymore who spent most of her days washing dishes and darning socks. They were a messenger’s legs, a Scalbourne kid’s lungs, shaped from weeks of jumping across dangerous chasms and climbing up swinging ropes. Without Josie noticing, Palethorpe had fallen behind.

And then, finally, finally, Josie burst out of the tunnel and right into the bustling market. In desperation she screamed: “GERTIE!” not caring that people were staring at her.

For a moment nothing happened, then the little girl popped out from behind a stall of beautiful fabrics and thread, wrapped in a bright purple shawl that clashed horribly with her uniform.

“What are you screaming for?”

“We’ve got to go!”

“Go where?”

From the corner of her eye, Josie saw a green blur burst out of a tunnel.

“GO!”

She grabbed Gertie by the hand and without heeding either the little girl’s nor the fabric merchant’s screams of protest she dragged Gertie straight across the silks, through the crowd, past the mule driver and out onto the street.

“Hold on! Stop! You’re ripping my arm off! JOSS! STOP!” Gertie dug her heels in.

“No, we need to get back home!”

“What the hell is the matter with you?”

Josie looked over her shoulder. Palethorpe was nowhere in sight. But this was no time for dawdling. Sure, he’d have trouble getting through the crowd as fast as they had, what with the size of him, but any moment now he could burst out of that tunnel. Maybe he wouldn’t go after them in broad daylight. But Josie wouldn’t have bet on that. Besides, he had a gang of desperate messengers at his beck and call who could jump Josie at any moment and who would bat an eye at a squabble between two messenger gangs?

“I’ll tell you while we’re walking!” she said, and tugged on Gertie’s arm once more.

Gertie gave a long-suffering sigh and mumbled something that sounded like “... going alone next time.”

As they were walking, Josie started to explain. Every few minutes she would look over her shoulder but Palethorpe was still nowhere to be seen. By the time she had finished her story, the Roof Runner headquarters were almost in sight.

“... so you see why we had to get out of here! We’ve got to tell the captain! Preferably before I get murdered! So please! Hurry!”

But instead of hurrying, Gertie stopped: “Oh, that’s bad. That’s really bad.” Her one free hand began pulling threads out of her new shawl.

“No, really?” Josie said, barely holding back her anger. “COME ON!”

“No, the thing is - we can’t tell the captain!”

“Why on earth not?”

“Because she doesn’t like us going to the hidden market. She thinks it’s - well - dangerous.”

Josie’s jaw dropped. “And you are telling me this now?”

“She was really pissed off last time she found out I’d gone there.”

Gertie now looked downright terrified. Josie imagined what Captain Glass would be like when she was truly pissed off. She couldn’t imagine the captain shouting threats. Not like Palethorpe. But Josie found even the captain’s mild disappointment scary, so she understood very well why Gertie didn’t want to make her angry. But then...

“Then why did you go?”

“Well, it’s fun, isn’t it? There’s always cool stuff you can’t get at the normal market and there’s always people to play dice games with. And they sell us ale there! If I try to buy ale at any other place in town they kick me out!”

Gertie was pouting again.

“Well, I wouldn’t have to tell the captain where it happened…”

“She’d know.”

“Or that you told me about the hidden market. I could just say I didn’t know we weren’t supposed to go there.”

She’d most likely get punished anyway, but whatever the captain held in store for her must be better than being murdered by Palethorpe.

But Gertie folded her hands in a begging gesture: “Please, please, please don’t tell her. Pleeeease! She’ll know it was me who told you about the hidden market. I’m the only one who still goes there!”

Josie had half a mind to backhand Gertie into a nearby carriage. But the girl was looking at her like a kicked puppy and she felt evil even thinking it.

Gertie grabbed her by the sleeve: “Pleeeeease! Pretty please! You can have what’s left of my pay! And I’ll fix your uniform for you!”

“I can do that myself!”

“Please, please don’t tell her! She’ll rip my head off!”

“Alright! Alright!” Josie peeled Gertie’s hand off her sleeve. “I won’t tell her.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank…”

“Don’t bloody thank me. Tell me what I’m supposed to do about Palethorpe.”

He still hadn’t turned up but Josie could see a huddle of green figures in the distance. She pulled Gertie inside.

In the semi-darkness of the hallway, she turned to the little girl: “So… you were about to tell me how I avoid being murdered without telling Captain Glass.”

“I don’t really know,” Gertie was playing with her shawl again. The bottom was already completely frayed. “But maybe he doesn’t actually want to kill you. I mean, he didn’t follow you all the way here, did he? And it’s not like you actually heard that much. You couldn’t send the watchmen after him if you wanted to!”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t know that!”

“I’m sure he won’t want to hurt you in front of witnesses. Just stay around people all the time and you’ll be fine.”

“Oh yes, that’s great, why didn’t I think about that before? I’ll just stay around people all the time. On the freaking night shift. Thanks, Gertie!”

The first week on the night shift was pure terror for Josie. She tried to tag along with other Roof Runners but of course that meant she was neglecting her own sections of town, so the night shift kids she clung to had to share their money with her. It didn’t take more than a few days before the captain summoned her to her office and, without ever getting up or raising her voice, chewed her out.

Captain Glass’s ice-cold “Do - your - job” still ringing in her ears with unspoken threat, Josie got up in the mid-afternoon the next day to run to the market and used all the money she had to buy herself a knife.

With nerves as frayed as Gertie’s shawl she went out that night, keeping one hand on her knife at all times. She didn’t make a lot of money and very nearly fell off a bridge twice while looking over her shoulder, but she survived to see the sunrise. The same thing happened the night after. And the night after that.

After a couple of weeks without a glimpse of Palethorpe or any of his people, Josie began to relax. He wasn’t after her after all. He couldn’t be or she’d be dead already.

In the meantime, the whole city was gossipping about the break-in in Heaven’s Yard. It seemed the thieves had somehow managed to get into one of the mansions and had left with as many diamonds and pearls as they could carry. Apparently a guard had been knocked out and was still recovering, but to Josie’s relief nobody had actually been killed.

When the day shift kids had first brought the news with them, Josie had briefly considered telling them that she knew who was behind it. But if the gossip spread to any other messenger gangs and from there to Palethorpe, as it was likely to, she would be utterly screwed. It was a small miracle that Gertie hadn’t blabbed yet, anyway.

A few days after the break-in, the twins finally joined the night shift, too, driving Palethorpe from Josie’s mind once and for all.

“What do you mean you don’t like the night shift?”

“Yeah! How can you not? Messenger races! There’s one tonight!”

“What?” Josie asked, shooting an utterly confused glance at Becks who was practically bouncing as she squealed “You need to join in!”

“Wait, nobody has told you about messenger races? Gertie?”

The little girl shrugged her shoulders: “Why should I care about your bloody races. I never win anyway. Not all of us have legs like a bloody wheel horse! Besides, the captain doesn’t like the races. They’re dangerous and keep us from our work.”

Josie glared at Gertie in disbelief. The little girl responded by sticking her tongue out. Fortunately nobody else noticed.

“Isaac?”

“Have you seen Joss go? If we let her race, nobody else will ever win again! Except maybe you guys!”

There was a mutter of agreement among the night shift crowd.

“Oh, you are a lot of selfish twats!” said Ruff, rolling his eyes.

“We’ll show you tonight. Meet us at the Blue Church at two, alright?”

The twins’ excitement was infectious. That night, Josie worked harder than ever to get as much work done as she could before two. She’d thought it would be no problem. By midnight only the tradespeople and a few particularly debauched nobles whose days seemed to begin at dusk would still be sending messages anyway.

But she hadn’t counted on Ezekiel Hedgecock and a fellow scholar down by Cow’s Tread exchanging messages about a new theory of the universe all bloody night. Josie very nearly missed the bells telling her it was now two in the morning and by the time she had made her way back up from Cow’s Tread for the third time that night, it was well past two.

She arrived at the Blue Church covered in sweat and panting. Looking around her, she saw, in the light of their lamps, a gaggle of messengers of all ages from little kids tinier than Gertie to tall men and women in their early twenties. The latter were all clad in black, marking them out as part of Blackthorne’s gang, the only one who employed messengers that old. But it seemed they, too, were interested in what was happening tonight. In fact, there seemed to be representatives from every single messenger gang. With great surprise, Josie spotted the two Frog girls with whom she had gotten into a scrap standing just feet from Ruff and Becks, chatting, apparently calmly, with Isaac.

“There she is!” shouted Becks as she spotted Josie. “Told you she’d show up.”

“Great!” replied one of the black-clad older messengers, sounding not at all pleased. “Can we start now? Some of us still have work to do.”

Josie sidled up to the twins: “So, how does this work?”

“Easy. We all put money in a bag, Tom here,” Ruff pointed at the annoyed messenger, “takes the money down to the main road to the Northern Gate and then whoever gets there first gets the whole bag.”

“Oh. Well, I’m actually a bit tired…”

“Aw, come on,” howled Ruff. “We made them wait for you and you’re not even going to race?”

“I just spent half the night helping along scholarly progress with my feet, I’m not going to be very fast,” whispered Josie, so only the twins could hear her.

“You don’t have to be fast if you just find a clever route, you know. Now cough up!” Becks held out her hand, wiggling her fingertips.

“I don’t have any money either.”

The twins sighed in unison.

“Well, do you have anything else valuable?”

“I’ve got my knife,” Josie said, pulling it, “but I don’t really want…”

Before she could finish her sentence, Ruff had grabbed it and tossed it into Tom’s waiting bag.

“Hey! I still need that!”

“Well, it’s in the bag now, so if you want it back, you’ll just have to win,” said Ruff.

Josie gave him a suspicious glance: “Why are you so keen on making me race anyway.”

“‘Cause they’ve been bragging about how fast their new girl is all bloody night,” sighed Tom. “And I told them to stop lying. Now, oh amazing one, are you going to compete or are you just going to keep us all waiting all night.”

He gave her a disdainful look. Apparently seeing her in the flesh made him absolutely certain that the twins were full of shit. His condescending half-smile made Josie bristle. She barely even felt the weakness in her limbs anymore.

“Yeah, I’m competing. Of course I’m competing!”

They lined up on the street in front of the Blue Church, a wide and stable bridge that could carry them all and fit the thirteen racers side by side. Each of them was carrying a lamp to light their way. Muscles tense and teeth clenched, Josie was waiting between a Blackthorne guy and a Frog girl for Tom’s signal from below.

There! For a split second, the light of a lone lamp down on the main street had turned into a fireball, easily visible from the Blue Church.

Josie’s legs seemed to move without her input. Within seconds she had outstripped most of the other racers. She was level with the twins and the only people ahead of them were a Blackthorne with ridiculously long legs, one of the Frog girls who had beaten her up and a lone Bluecoat girl. Josie was sure she could have overtaken all of them easily if her legs hadn’t been through so much already. As it was, she stood no chance.

But there! In the light of her lamp she spotted a loose rope on a bridge above hanging just right. If she jumped and managed to grab it, she could swing over a gap way too long to jump over. It was the perfect short-cut. While running, she managed to slide the lamp’s handle up to her elbow. She jumped. She grabbed. She slipped. The rope felt rough even through her gloves but she reached the other side of the gap with ease, breaking into a run the moment her feet hit solid ground.

For a moment Josie was ahead of everyone. She felt the wind rush through her hair, heard the fast drumbeat of her feet mixed with that of her heart. It was like there was nothing and no one in this world left but her. Not even loneliness. This was freedom!

The illusion was rudely shattered when the Frog girl dropped from a ledge right in front of her. She sprang immediately from a crouch back into a run. The fall had barely even slowed her down.

Swearing loudly, Josie set off after her. They had reached the poorer parts of town now where the bridges were wobbly and full of holes. Josie had very nearly twisted her ankle here a fair number of times but now she was practically flying across, reaching for ropes and lift cables, jumping from one road to another, scrambling down facades of houses without even thinking  - Josie had never before realised how natural all of this had become to her.

But noticing that she didn’t need to think about it made her think about it and suddenly, her strides were no longer quite the right length, her hands missed spots she could have easily grabbed before and she had to stop to reach them. The Frog girl was pulling ahead. She was already below her now, getting ever closer to the main road.

In a desperate attempt to catch up, Josie took a deep breath and jumped over the edge of the bridge she was standing on.

The moment her feet left the ground, she realised this had been a really bad idea. The distance between this bridge and the roof of the house below was far too great and the wobbling of the bridge had thrown off her jump. She wouldn’t land right! She barely had time to panic before slamming into the roof, shoulder first, rolling off the roof and hitting a bridge below. Pain spread like lightning from Josie’s elbow through the rest of her body. She couldn’t get up! She could barely breathe! A single thought made it through the haze of pain: At least this bridge was stable!

Then, to Josie’s horror, something else also made it through the haze: A familiar voice, very surprised and very pleased.

“That’s her. Lisney, that’s the girl!”

Somebody grabbed Josie round the middle, threw her over their shoulder and ran.

When they dropped her, she hit the hard floor of what she soon realised had to be one of the tunnels deep inside the mountain.

She found herself looking up at two tall, burly men. One of them was Palethorpe, who was looking down at her with a smug, triumphant smile. The other one had to be Lisney who, judging by his yellow uniform, was the master of the Yellowtails. He looked far more anxious than smug. In Palethorpe’s hand, a long knife glinted dangerously in the lamplight.

Josie tried to get up, but the fall seemed to have damaged her right leg. With a squeal of pain, she sank back to the ground.

“Well, well, well, the eavesdropper!” With each word, Palethorpe took a step towards Josie, who was frantically scrambling back until finally her back hit a wall. Palethorpe towered over her, clearly enjoying her fear.

“Listen,” Josie squeaked. Her voice didn’t seem to be working as it should. “I didn’t tell anyone what I heard. You’d know if I had! I’m never going to either! I didn’t even hear that much in the first place! If you just let me go…”

“And why would I do that?”

“Please, you can trust me! I promise I won’t tell anyone!”

“Or I could just kill you and be sure you won’t tell anyone.”

“The watchmen will be after you!”

Both men burst out laughing. The noise echoed off the tunnel walls.

“What, for a messenger kid?” chuckled Palethorpe, when he had finally calmed down enough to speak. “Nobody will care you’re gone.”

Josie swallowed. He was right. Nobody would care. She would disappear from the midst of the Red Roof Runners just like she had disappeared from the orphanage and a few days later they would all forget she had ever existed. Her fellow Runners, no matter how decent they were to her now, would go on just fine without her. Captain Glass would go pick up some other kid to replace her. She might be a bit annoyed at having to train that kid from scratch again but within a few weeks everything would be back to normal. Except Josie would be dead. Without a family to remember her, why had she even for a moment thought anybody would.

When Palethorpe came at her with the knife, Josie barely even tried to get away. She rolled over once and felt the burn of the knife entering her arm. She heard herself scream over Lisney’s awkward declaration of “Alright, you just get on with it, I’ll be over here just making sure nobody can get in.”

It was odd. Even though she was in more pain than ever before in her life, even though she knew she was about to die, Josie felt like laughing at Lisney’s incredibly blatant excuse.

As Palethorpe brought his heavy weight down on her chest to pin her in place, just as he was about to bring the knife down on her throat, Josie wondered idly if the Frog girl would end up winning the race. Maybe she could use the money and her knife to buy herself a week or two of survival away from Palethorpe. She could leave Scalbourne, find some nice farm on the outskirts, make a new life for herself. Maybe she would look back one day and remember the former owner of that knife, even for just one second. It was a nice dream.

Josie closed her eyes. Any moment now, Palethorpe would cut her throat and it would all be over. Hopefully it wouldn’t hurt too much.

But just as Palethorpe brought the knife down, there was a commotion outside. Instead of in her throat, the knife buried itself deep in Josie’s shoulder. She screamed. Her eyes popped open. Through a blur of agony, she saw Palethorpe had turned toward the entrance. He made a grab for the knife in Josie’s shoulder, but before he even reached it, his hand dropped limply to his side. His mouth and eyes widened in surprise and agony, he made a gurgling sound, then fell to the ground in a heap.

Behind him stood a red-clad woman holding a thin sword covered in blood. She glowered down at the dead Palethorpe. Josie wondered for a split second who had conjured a demon of pure fury up from hell. Then she recognised the woman.

“C-cap…”

“Quiet, Josephine,” said Captain Glass, sounding just like always, like she was telling a rowdy messenger to go to bed and leave her alone. Like she hadn’t just killed a man. Was this real? Josie wasn’t sure. Everything was so blurry now. Maybe the pain was making her imagine things. Maybe she was already dead and this was a spirit coming to take her soul to the afterlife, in the guise of the one person whose orders she would be sure to follow without question. That must be it because no way had the Captain, who could buy someone like Josie anytime she wished, just risked her life to save her. Hadn’t Palethorpe said...

Josie’s lids felt so heavy now, she could barely keep them open. The pain was still there, but she barely had the energy to feel it. The last thing she felt were strong arms, picking her off the tunnel floor.

“Hey, I think she moved!”

“Joss! Wake up!”

Who was Joss? And whose voices were those? She recognised them from somewhere.

“Joss! Josephine! JOSIE! COME ON!”

Oh right, ‘Joss’ - that was her, wasn’t it? She would never get used to that nickname. And those were the voices of Ruff and Becks. And was that Prue back there? She wasn’t dead then? Or were all of them dead, too?

When Josie heard her name, she tried to open her eyes, but her lids were like lead. She tried to tell whoever was shouting ‘Josie’ that she was awake, but her tongue didn’t obey her either. Exhausted she sank back into a deep sleep.

When she woke up again, she found she could open her eyes now. The moment she did, she was greeted with the sight of an unfamiliar, small room, which was currently holding an unreasonable number of red-clad figures.

A groan escaped Josie’s mouth.

Immediately, she was surrounded by as many people as could fit around her bed, all babbling at once so she couldn’t make out a single word. It was giving her a headache.

Fortunately one voice rose above the din, coming to her rescue: “Children! Back off and give Josephine some space! She has been through a lot.”

The noise slowly faded to a pleasant murmur. It reminded Josie of the trees down in the Greens when the wind blew through their leaves.

“Wha-” Josie started, but noticed her voice was all weak from lack of use. She cleared her throat and tried again: “What happened?”

“I reached you just in time to save you from Palethorpe.” The Captain spat the name like an insult. “Fortunately he’s been dealt with.”

“But how did you know…”

The twins shoved their way to Josie’s bedside.

“We were right behind you, you see, but then you were suddenly gone,” started Ruff.

“So we thought you’d just found a really good short-cut,” continued Becks.

“But we got to the main road,” said Ruff at the same time as Becks said “We met Mary.”

They turned to each other going: “You tell it then if you know better!”

“You can both be quiet,” said the captain calmly, making them shut up in an instant.

“What happened, Josephine, is that I was having a perfectly calm night, when I was suddenly accosted, in my bed, by an entire battalion of messengers telling me you had gotten injured in a race and then been dragged off by Palethorpe and Lisney,” the Captain looked around the room. The Runners whose gaze she met squirmed guiltily. Josie, too, would have squirmed, but she could barely move.

“I’m sorry,” she muttered.

“You should be. You all should be. I do not make up rules for the sake of it. If I tell you not to do something, I have my reasons. And at the very least I would have hoped you all had the sense to tell me if you encountered any danger.”

As she said these words, she turned to Gertie, who turned as red as the uniform she was wearing and quickly hid behind the twins.

“Your foolishness may well have caused your death, Josephine. If it hadn’t been for Mary here,” the Captain pointed behind her, where Josie now saw a small green figure among all the reds and recognised the girl who’d beaten her in the race, “telling me where Palethorpe’s hideout was, you would have. As it was, I came only just in time.”

“It was amazing,” Isaac burst out. “The Captain just marched in there and bashed Lisney over the head with her cane and then when she saw Palethorpe, she pulled a sword out of it and POW!” Isaac mimicked the captain stabbing Josie’s would-be murderer.

“That is quite enough, Isaac,” said Captain Glass, but there was a hint of amusement in her voice. It faded fast, however, when she looked down at Josie: “I wish I could have avoided that.”

“I’m sorry,” said Josie again.

“You’ve been punished quite enough,” answered the captain. “You are a mess, Josephine. It will take weeks for your injuries to heal.”

Josie only realised now that her one arm was in a thick cast, while lengths of bandage were wrapped around the other. A dull, throbbing ache was coursing through her body.

With a jolt, Josie realised, she wouldn’t be able to work. She wouldn’t be able to earn her keep! And surely whoever had stitched her up would demand a fortune! What was she going to do?

But the captain seemed to read her thoughts off her face: “You are very fortunate. The cuts did not damage anything that couldn’t be fixed. You’ll have a few scars to show for it, nothing more. You broke an ankle and your elbow, but the doctor says the injuries are not complicated. Once they heal, you will be as good as new. Until then you will just have to rest. I intend to pay the doctor’s fee out of your fellows’ wages, of course. They share the responsibility for this.”

To Josie’s surprise, not a single person complained about this announcement. Even Isaac looked only a little grumpy.

“I will also make sure to schedule someone as a nursemaid at all times once the doctor says you can be moved.”

“Ooh, ooh, can I be first?” piped up Prue.

“No, me!” Gertie yelled. “I can take care of her. I’ll make her chicken soup! Well, if someone else buys the chicken. I don’t have the cash.”

A few people chuckled.

“When can she leave anyway? Did the doctor say?”

“Yeah, when can we take Josie home?” asked Becks. Josie noticed with surprise that she hadn’t called her ‘Joss’.

“The doctor said he wants to keep her here for another day or two, then we can take her home with us.”

The crowd behind the captain cheered so loudly that the doctor popped his head in the door: “Please, Captain Glass, keep your people quiet. I have patients who need rest!”

“Quiet, children.”

“Did you hear, Josie?” Ruff asked, bending down so he could whisper in her ear. “You’re going home in a day or two!”

“Sure I heard, I broke my limbs, not my ears,” Josie croaked, but she was smiling. She was alive. And she was going home.

[janekfan]

How about this witcher prompt: Jaskier suffers a throat infection resulting in not being able to talk. Geralt thinks it's a blessing. Then Jaskier develops a sepsis

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26867821/chapters/65555047

Sorry that took so long! But here we go and I hope you like it! It ended up becoming chapter one of a larger project :3

Oh, he’s having a right time with this. Jaskier sipped his tea, hot as his sore throat could manage and grimaced at the sharp sting. He thinks I can’t see his smug grin. Last night, Jaskier had gone to sleep after a rough performance with an aching behind his tongue and woken to full fledged agony, and no he wasn’t being dramatic, it hurt, and unable to speak. After finishing his gruff assessment of him, Geralt had prescribed hot tea, plenty of water, and even so magnanimously agreed to stay one more day at the inn and for that, the bard was grateful. The thought of sleeping out in the rough feeling this dreadful inspired many a woeful ballad. If only he could sing them. But his voice was quite and thoroughly gone. Something Geralt found amusing to say the least.

“What a pleasant day this is proving to be, wouldn’t you say, bard?” Jaskier glowered, setting the cup aside and burrowing deeper into the inadequate bedclothes. He was positively freezing, clenching his jaw to avoid chattering his teeth, because while Geralt seemed to be in relative good humor, he could just as easily leave without him. “Ah, I forgot, you can’t.” Petulant, Jaskier stuck out his tongue and twisted up his face, turning away in the bed to curl up in his misery. He’d sleep this off. A good, restful day would clear whatever this was right up.

And of course, with his terrible luck, it didn’t and he woke in the early evening so incredibly thirsty, cursing himself for sleeping throughout the entire day. He downed the cold tea, whimpering and holding his neck at the burn of it, and noticed that Geralt was gone. The flash of fear at being abandoned was tempered by seeing armor and packs by the door, but Jaskier felt very suddenly alone. He longed for something warm to sip but after barely making it to the rough hewn pitcher to pour himself the last bit of water, he decided against a trip down the stairs. He would fall and make an embarrassment of himself and that wouldn’t do. Jaskier was exhausted and aching, a headache making itself at home behind his eyes and the throbbing, pulsing agony in his throat made tears spring to his eyes. Sleep. Sleep would make it all go away, at least for a little while, and he staggered back into bed to will himself to sleep. At least when Geralt came back he’d be warm.

The next morning dawned cheery and bright, the wretch, and Jaskier woke perhaps even worse off than yesterday. But he was met by a cup of medicated tea if the smell was anything to go by, being thrust into his face and Geralt saying he’d be waiting with Roach, but not without one more jab about his lost vocal talents. It was bringing him no end of amusement.

“Take your time.” Ah, that was nice of him and by the looks of things, Jaskier would need a fair bit of it. The weakness in his legs didn’t bode well for a day of travel. He was about to collapse and the day hadn’t even truly started. But he forced himself up, reeling as the room spun sideways, and very carefully limped down the stairs. He offered up a wan smile, trembling under all his layers.

Geralt looked furious.

He’d taken forever, he knew, but he really was trying his best, and as the sun rose high and the chills became worse, Jaskier fell behind. He could hear Roach, Geralt was traveling at a much slower pace than he normally would, and Jaskier would be grateful if he wasn’t focused so hard on the weight of his lute pulling him toward the forest floor. Everything hurt and the tears springing to his eyes almost had time to fall before he remembered himself. Geralt wasn’t a fan of his over emotional displays and without words he wasn’t able to express just how poorly he really was. No cure but to walk on. Stumble on. His weaving steps slowed him further, enough that Roach had been turned back around.

“G--” Like swallowing a blade, and the syllables died on his lips. Oh goddess. He was going to be ill and was, thankfully not all over Roach’s hooves, and the fire of it drove him to hands and knees.

“Jaskier?” The thump of heavy boots hitting the ground was all the warning he got before a rough, blessedly cool palm pressed itself over his forehead. “Alright.” Jaskier could have sobbed as Geralt grabbed his bicep and dragged him, supported him, a little ways down the path. There was enough space here to set up a small camp and Geralt threw down his bedroll, dropping Jaskier on top of it and going about the motions that suggested they’d stay for at least a little while. The bard held his breath, tried to inhale, exhale in a way that didn’t make everything hurt worse and had almost dropped off to sleep when more tea was thrust under his nose. Willow bark and something else. And even if his stomach did feel up to it, the promise of even a modicum of relief was a heady thing, and Jaskier downed the cup even though it was too hot, falling back and curling into the rough wool.

Late afternoon sun lancing across his face woke him up and Jaskier was not well pleased at how sick he still felt. It was unlike him to be laid low like this. He shifted his head, drawing a shaky half breath, and found Geralt tending to the fire. He was so thirsty with no way to tell him and no way to get up. He hadn’t been drinking enough and tried to gesture, nimble fingers uncoordinated and frightened because of it.

“Go back to sleep, Jaskier.” With no other recourse, he did as he was told.

This time, Geralt’s hand on his cheek pulled him up out of the dark place he’d gone. The witcher tutted, levering him up and holding more tea to his lips, only this time Jaskier could barely swallow, the pain was so great, and rather than waiting on him to finish, he pressed the cup into his quaking hands. Jaskier wasn’t sure he could even lift it. So he didn’t. Just watched blearily as Geralt broke camp, tied his lute to the saddle and that was good. Except there was no way he’d be able to stand, he could tell, and the thought prompted the tears to slip silently down his face and off his chin. He was going to be left here to die. Because he was human and weak and useless. Geralt could sell off his instrument for a good price, make up for the time Jaskier wasted slowing him down. The tea dropped from his fingers and he hid his face behind his hands. Geralt didn’t like it when he was emotional. Better to hide it. Better not to see him walk away from him. At least then he could pretend that he hadn’t left him.

“Jaskier?” He risked a glance and wished he hadn’t. Disappointment and frustration. With him. Always with him. He hadn’t meant to get sick. He hadn’t meant to. “You’ll have to hold on.” Hold on? To what? And the answer came moments later when he was hoisted onto Roach’s back like he weighed nothing at all and Geralt mounted in front of him. “Hold on.” Tentative, confused, Jaskier threaded his arms around the witcher’s waist, hugging him for lack of a better term and burying his cheek into a warm shoulder. Hold on. Easy enough. Even he could do that, right?

Apparently not, and Geralt’s gruff demands for him to hold on and stay awake and don’t fall became increasingly intrusive. Jaskier didn’t want to do those things. He wanted to stop moving and sleep, he didn’t even care anymore about how mad his failures were making Geralt. The alternating stripes of trees and beams of sun passed by too quickly, dizzying him and it seemed like everywhere he looked there was more of it and he couldn’t keep up. The speed was too great, he was being shaken from his precarious perch and his arms were so numb he couldn’t feel them where they’d let go of Geralt.

An attenuated moment passed where Jaskier was completely airbourne. He’d fallen from horses before. He knew how to fall. But he couldn’t get anything to work with him, all deadweight and drained. When he hit the ground, the hard impact wasn’t even bad enough to distract from the stoked embers burning up in his throat and he laid there, listening to Roach’s nickering and uneven gait as she turned around. He was cold. He was hot. He was nothing at all and Geralt’s shout of surprise sounded like it had come to him from miles away underwater. Jaskier knew he was being touched, knew he was being lifted, even knew he was being yelled at, but it seemed like it was all happening to someone else. Someone far away from all this. He’d tried. He had. But like always, it hadn’t been good enough.

“Jaskier!” Growling, loud and rough, and he couldn’t open his eyes long enough to see the rage painted there. The light was too bright, blinding and blistering, adding to the fire and the heat and Jaskier wasn’t able to stay conscious even through the witcher’s shouting.

An indeterminate stretch of time passed and Jaskier wouldn’t be able to tell anyone all of what occurred within. It was a haze of hurting and being touched by unfamiliar hands. Maneuvered whether he wanted it to happen or not. Horrible tinctures poured down his throat that made him shed silent tears because he was nothing without his voice and no one would listen to what his body was trying to say. He was helpless, frightened, confused. Glimpses of familiar white hair caused him to weep because he was sorry, so, so sorry that he’d done this, even if he wasn’t completely sure what ‘this’ was. Damp clothes soothed some of the blistering and there were moments in between the suffering where he was sure he’d never again open his eyes.

But he did.

And he felt dreadful. So sick. Still pained and barely able to lift a finger. Gently, as though he might break, a cool flannel swept over his hot face, down his cheek and the warm compress over his throat was adjusted, wafting the strong scent of garlic into the air. He must have made a face because a familiar chuckle rang out somewhere to the left of him.

“Jaskier?” Soft and kind and he did Geralt the courtesy of tipping his face toward him but didn’t remember much after that.

“You should’ve told me.” Jaskier glared weakly, pained, wrung out and still so, so tired, and Geralt had the sense to look shamed. After a strict regimen of teas, potions, and elixirs from the village healer, Jaskier appeared to be on the mend, albeit slowly. The witcher explained, for what was probably the seventh time seeing as he couldn’t hold a thought in his head for longer than a moment when he first began to wake, that he’d succumbed to a blood infection. “I should have noticed sooner." He fussed, tucking the blankets closer around him, smoothing them out and brushing back his sweat-soaked fringe. "Shouldn’t have pushed you so hard.” With an obscene amount of effort, Jaskier patted Geralt’s hand where it now rested on the sheets beside him, letting it linger there, absorbing the warmth.

All forgiven.

Or it would be after a few more days of attentive doting.