Chapter 27: Chapter 27: The Hue & The Cry

Nay woke up to a world of pain.

Her head was pounding, her throat was dry and her entire right arm throbbed with a sharp ache that radiated from her ruined hand to her shoulder.

Her eyes cracked open and dim lantern light stung her sensitive eyes. She moaned and looked at the hand that was the center of her agony. It had been set with splits and at the moment it was covered in bandages.

The image of Mishell’s flanged mace smashing her hand against the cobblestones flashed through her head and she whimpered.

Alric appeared above her and gingerly held a tin cup to her lips, wetting the cracked and dry skin with water. “You’re alright,” Alric said in a soft voice. “You’re safe now.” She sipped the water and the coolness moistened her parched her throat. She began to gulp with greed and water spilled down her chin. “Easy, easy.”

After he had poured her another cup of water and she drank it down, Nay managed to push herself up against the bed’s backboard with her good hand. “How long have I been out?”

“Two days,” Alric said. “You woke up some when Quincy set and bandaged your hand, but after you drank a bottle of dreamwine you passed out again.”

“Gracie?” Nay said, looking around. “Where is Gracie? Is she okay?”

“Gracie is fine,” Alric said. “A little shaken up, but she’s okay. She told us who did this to you.”

“Her face,” Nay said. “They burnt her face. I couldn’t do anything. They were too strong. I should have done something. Something more…”

“The important thing is that you survived,” Alric said. “They caught you by surprise, it’s not your fault.”

Nay wasn’t so sure about that. None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for her. She welcomed, hell, she invited this danger into her life. And she did so without being able to protect herself or her friends. A sense of shame and guilt began to weight her down. “I should have been able to stop them.”

“These people,” Alric said, “are savage. While their father is a cruel and greedy man, his kids have embraced the barbaric nature of some of their predecessors. While you grew up making people happy with your cooking, they grew up fighting and hurting others. Even if you had wanted to stop them, they come from a different world. It’s not your fault.”

That still didn’t sit well with Nay. “Being helpless is no excuse.”

She tried to push herself up but got dizzy. A jolt of pain ran up her arm and she grimaced.

“What are you doing?” Alric said. “You need to rest.”

“But the kitchen –“

“Nom and Gracie have it under control.”

A wave of weakness came over her and she settled into the bed again, not fighting the drowsiness. “Is there medicine…for the pain?”

Alric uncorked a green bottle that contained a red liquid. The label on the side indicated it was dreamwine. “This is from Quincy’s own personal stash,” Alric said. “Dreamwine is hard to find in Stitchdale. You have to get it from one of the cities on the Peninsula.” Then he emptied a packet of white powder into a flagon. He poured a generous amount of dreamwine on top of it and swirled it around. “This is some medicine derived from crushed herbs and the leaf of a plant that grows on the Spineshards that can fight off infection.”

He handed her the flagon and she gulped the wine. She sloshed it around some but her taste buds just interpreted it as sweet, watered down juice.

As she lost consciousness again, she did so while wishing that her sense of taste would return.

/////////

Nay was dreaming about her taco truck back in Los Angeles, Taco the Town, going out of business. They weren’t getting enough customers, the engine broke down and bills piled up where she had to sell the truck. When she was selling the truck, The Steksis appeared and offered her an eternal spot in its bone dolmen and when she opened her eyes, Nom was in her room munching on pumpkin seeds.

“You’re awake!” His stalk lit up a pinkish-yellow color and he waved his protuberances and slithered closer to the edge of her bed.

She wiped sweat off her brow with the back of her good hand. Then she reached over for the tin cup of water and drank. “Who is running the kitchen?” Nay said.

“Oh, dinner service finished a few hours ago,” Nom said. “It’s the middle of the night now.”

“You ran dinner service…by yourself?” Nay said.

“Gracie helped,” Nom said. “Though the servers had to be introduced to me. There was no way I could run the kitchen and remain hidden at the same time. Hilde and Ulla took it surprisingly well. Funnily enough, it was the faun who had the most trouble accepting that a tentacle could talk and cook. Go figure.”

“And it went well?” Nay said.

“There were some hiccups,” Nom said, “but a lot of that stuff got worked out the first night. The next three nights went smoothly, considering how busy we were.”

“You ran the kitchen for three nights?” Nay said, surprised.

“Four, actually.” Nom recounted the shifts in his head and then nodded. “Yep. Used all your recipes, of course.”

Nay didn’t know if she should be relieved or worried if Nom started to gun for her job.

“How’s your hand?” Nom said, looking at the bandages.

“A throbbing nexus of pain and agony,” Nay said. She was scared that it might not work properly again. She wondered what it looked like underneath all the splints and bandages. Right now it was stiff and it throbbed.

“I should have been outside with you,” Nom said, regret in his voice. “They jumped you when you were outnumbered. Bunch of cowards.”

“No,” Nay said. “You were cleaning while I was taking a breather. You couldn’t have known.”

“Is it true that it was the owners of The Two-Headed Trout?”

“Pretty much.”

“They’re not happy people prefer our food more.”

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Nay reached for more of the dreamwine and took a swig.

Nom watched her drink for a moment and reached one of his protuberances into the bowl of nuts and seeds. He munched away, seemingly deep in thought.

When he broke the silence, she was already losing consciousness again. But she heard him say, “So, what are we going to do for revenge?”

/////////

When Nay gained consciousness again, the pounding in her head was finally gone and she felt like she was no longer floating between the real world and the dream world.

Quincy was sitting in a chair next to the bed, reading from a leather-bound book. His over-sized frame looked almost comical. He made the chair look small and his hands made the book seem tiny. When he glanced up and saw her eyes open, he closed the book and said, “There’s my star cook. Finally returned back to the world of the living.”

Nay groaned. “I’m starving.”

Quincy got up and grabbed the tray from the table and walked over and set it on Nay’s lap. There were rock cakes, boiled eggs, fresh moon melon and a kettle of pepper tea. She went for the boiled eggs first, grabbing a finger pinch of salt from the small bowl and sprinkling it over the protein. She bit into one and spent the next minute eating.

“I set your hand as best as I could,” Quincy said. “I have some experience handling broken bones and other wounds. That type of knowledge is useful for adventurers, but usually a group has a designated healer. And I’m no healer.”

“How bad is it?”

“It wasn’t pretty to look at,” Quincy said. “I can tell you that. But I spoke to Martygan and put in a request for one of the Scarwatch healers to pay a visit to Lucerna’s End. They should be here today or tomorrow. When you’re able to use your hand again, it will be because of them and not me. But I set it so they won’t have to break your hand before properly treating you. So I’ve mostly minimized the amount of pain you will experience.”

“That’s better than nothing,” Nay said. She poured herself some tea and sipped on it. “Sorry to inconvenience you like this.”

Quincy sighed and looked at her as a father would to a daughter full of shame. His face softened. “Why would you blame yourself for this? I’m the one who put you in danger.”

“Yeah, but, at the market –“

“I know about you and Wint at the market.”

“You do?”

“Not much happens around my staff without me knowing.”

Nay realized Gracie probably told him. Which made sense. He had to keep eyes on her somehow.

“Look,” Quincy said. “It was only a matter of time before Wint would have struck at us. I just didn’t expect it to be so soon and I didn’t expect him to hurt you. This whole time I thought he would come after me. That’s what I wanted. I’ve been looking for ways to give him a reason to come after me. If he did, then I would be able to defend myself without facing consequences from the law. So, I’m afraid this is all my fault. I was short-sighted and should have foreseen something like this. I should have done more to protect you. Do you forgive me?”

Nay was taken aback by his honesty. He had been using her in a way. Sure, he had given her a place to live and a job in this strange world, but he also had ulterior motives. And now he was expressing his guilt about it. She wasn’t sure how to feel.

But, she nodded anyways. “What’s my recourse against them? Does Lucerna’s End abide by laws or have a justice system or whatever? Like do the twin sheriffs know what happened to me?”

“Well,” Quincy said, “that’s what we need to discuss. I haven’t reported the attack on you because I wanted to tell you what would happen first. I didn’t want to set anything in motion that you wouldn’t want.”

Nay nibbled on another boiled egg. Her body craved the protein after almost a week of withering away, caught between moments of being consciousness and unconsciousness. “That makes sense. Okay. Lay it on me.”

“Lucerna’s End operates on a system that’s kind of a bastardized combination of maugrim military law and the tribal justice of the human clans that lived along Lac Coineascar and Maer Scathan. There’s a Justicar who hears cases and administers justice. Your case, in which you’ve been assaulted, falls under something called Hue and Cry.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you bring attention to Mishell and Krill by telling the sheriffs they attacked you. It’s basically you demanding justice. I and others who are willing to back you up will support you in this claim. Public pressure and outcry will require the Bouldiershield Brothers to arrest Wint’s children. It’s then that one of two things happen.”

“And what are those two things?”

“The Justicar will give you two options. As punishment for the attack, he will either fine them, and they will have to pay the fine. Which, Wint has considerable funds so this will be nothing more than a slap on the wrist for them.”

“And what’s the other option?”

“You can choose to duel one of them to the death.”

Nay just stared at him. “What?”

“They’ll put you in a ring with either Mishell or Krill, and a crowd will watch as you settle your dispute by violence.”

Nay’s head spun. What the fuck? That felt downright medieval and brutal. And although it seemed a fine option for a fighter, there’s no way she could beat one of them in combat.

“I don’t think I like either of those options,” Nay said.

Quincy nodded. “Which is why I wanted to present you with a third option.”

“A third option?”

“We bypass the Hue and the Cry. We don’t tell the sheriffs. And we administer our own brand of justice.”

“I’m listening.”

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