5. Orphium
Chapter 5
Orphium
“ Y ou won again, Hertrude! Such wonderful luck you have. You would be very popular among the fae.”
For various reasons , I thought, holding my smile.
The old woman laughed breathlessly, patting me on the back of my hand. “Oh, you really are too sweet for your own good, Mr. Orphium. I’ve always had a knack for games of chance.” She clasped her hands together and pulled herself up, straightening the bend in her spine. “I made a killing playing the shell game with all the sailor boys in Whiteport, you know? Back in my youth.”
I wagged my finger in her face, grinning. “Oh, I can only imagine that the sailors enjoyed playing many other kinds of games with you, Hertrude.”
She blushed bright red and tittered with delight. “Oh, Mr. Orphium! You’re too much.”
“Your well-earned reward,” I said, holding out my hand and parting my fingers to offer her a gold coin.
“And here, my wager, as promised,” she replied, pressing a shabby old button into the palm of my hand. She bit into the edge of her coin, testing for authenticity, revealing a mouth full of missing teeth. “I don’t know what you’re getting out of this, Mr. Orphium, but it’s not often we get such generous visitors in Barrowdeep.”
I shrugged and gave her a grin. “Why, I get a deep sense of fulfillment from knowing that I’ve offered so much entertainment to the lovely people of your humble hamlet. Enjoy your glittering prize, dear Hertrude. You won it fair and square.”
She puffed up her chest. “Why, so I did, didn’t I?”
Humans were so easy sometimes. I clapped my hands once, making the old woman jump in surprise. I parted them again to reveal that her old button was gone. Hertrude clapped her hands and laughed again.
“Mr. Orphium! You really are quite marvelous. It’s normally so dreary around here. I hope you'll think of visiting us again soon.”
I made a grand, sweeping bow. “Your wish is my command, Hertrude of Barrowdeep. I only meant to stay one night, but it looks like Orphium’s Emporium will be in town a little while longer.”
She grinned her toothless grin, eyes twinkling with the promise of more gold. Then she scuttled off, joining the masses of other townsfolk who no doubt felt as if they’d swindled me out of my wealth. If they only knew.
I almost felt sorry for swindling them instead. Almost.
Oh, there I went again, using the wrong words to describe my profession. Why did I always feel the need to belittle the value of my work? I wasn’t swindling anyone. I was offering amusement, entertainment, a diversion from the drudgery of their little peasant lives.
The townsfolk seemed to have had their fill of admiring my illusions and playing my games for the morning. I hopped back into my caravan, then flicked the old button like a coin. It landed in a nondescript jar on my shelf, something that might have held pickled vegetables at one point, but that now contained all the odds and ends the people of Barrowdeep had brought me.
Bits and bobs. Trinkets. Knick-knacks. So much human detritus.
A simple trick of prestidigitation. Hertrude’s button didn’t disappear, but was quite literally hidden up my sleeve. A mundane method, too, some quick sleight of hand that did not require any expenditure of my arcane essence. Humans could be so easy sometimes.
I did exhaust a portion of my energies performing my flashier tricks, however. The fireworks, the doves, the colorful chicks — those didn’t come for free. But the price of paying for magic was worth it if it meant I could siphon all these delicious dreams and memories.
“To save for later,” I whispered, holding my hand above the mouth of an empty bottle, sighing as golden wisps cascaded from my palm and into the vessel.
Within moments it had filled enough to glow as bright as the rest of the flasks and phials on my shelves. I picked it up and placed it among them, narrowing my eyes as I watched the swirling mists for Hertrude’s memories .
The mists tumbled, dissolved, then reformed again, pulsing and roiling until they made familiar shapes. There was Hertrude as a child, an age ago, playing with a cloth dolly. A favorite toy, stitched for her by her mother. Or was it her sister? Not that it mattered. Both were gone, now.
Shrouded in the mists of memory the button gleamed like it was bright and new, a precious bit of dark, polished wood, one of the cloth dolly’s eyes. Did Hertrude know that the button she gave me had been part of such a beloved keepsake? Did she care?
I blinked hard and turned away. It stung me, sometimes, thinking how the absence of their dreams and remembrances might leave them as hollow as I felt on the inside. And then I remembered that it didn’t matter in the end. Someone was always taking something, the way the Wyrding Queen had taken something from me.
“You’re not fooling anyone. You know that, don’t you?”
A flash of anger stabbed through my chest. Such bold words, and from such a familiar voice, too. I took a slow, steadying breath and rearranged my features into a friendly smile. I turned around to face my accuser.
There he stood blocking the back door of my caravan, one hand gripping the edge of the threshold. His fingers dug into the wood, muscles in his forearm taut, hard as iron. Under the lightweight material of his shirt, it was clear that the rest of his torso was just as tightly sculpted.
“Shovel man,” I said sweetly. “How kind of you to pay me a visit. Unfortunately, I must inform you that Orphium’s Emporium is closed for the day.”
A muscle twitched in his face at the sound of the name I’d given him, the one he clearly hated so much. There was a ferocity in his stare, something meant to frighten and intimidate.
But not to me. Instead I found him alluring. I could only focus on his smolder, his eyes so dark and yet so bright, a pair of glowing embers. Where was this fury coming from, this anger, this heat? Why did it draw me in so?
“I haven’t come to play your little games,” he said, his eyes darkening even more.
Still I didn’t allow the smile to fall from my face. My eyes trailed down to his other hand, where he wielded his beloved shovel and one very encumbered wicker basket.
“Oh? Then you’ve come to bring me a lovely little lunch, have you? Shall we have a picnic out in the town square, shovel man?”
A reddish blush crept up past his collar, flowering up to his neck, his cheeks. Did it come from anger or embarrassment? It didn’t matter. He looked even handsomer like this. Flustered.
I wondered if this was how he might look with a fever, how sweaty he might seem if he were to engage in other, especially strenuous activities. Like shoveling. Like fighting. Like —
“This is just my shopping,” he stammered, throwing aside the quaint little checkered cloth that covered the basket, revealing some potatoes, mushrooms, fruit. “I didn’t come here for pleasantries. You heard what I said. You’re not fooling anyone.”
I blinked once, slow, deliberate. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
His brow furrowed, his knuckles whitening as he tightened his fist. Angrier and angrier. I bit the inside of my cheek, stifling my curiosity, my arousal.
“These games you’re playing with the townsfolk — I know you’re up to something.” He gestured around my cabin at all the glowing bottles. “Just tricks. Only illusions and glamor, all your flashy birds and bubbles. I know about your wild magics, the wiles and whimsies of the fae. Orphium of the Dawning Court, indeed.”
Hearing him say my name sent a shiver down my spine, even if that last part had sounded so much like an accusation. I cocked an eyebrow and grinned.
“Do you doubt me, sir? Do I not seem like a fine fit for the Court of Dawn? It’s where I hailed from, after all. I can’t help where I was born.”
“It doesn’t make sense. There’s a coldness about you, closer to the Court of Dusk. No. Not that dark. The Twilight Court. The fae of the Dawning Court are brighter. More genuine. I can tell that you’re empty on the inside, that — ”
He stopped before he even saw my smile growing wider. Perhaps he wasn’t wrong. The man certainly knew a thing or two about my kind. And now I knew a thing or two about him.
“Is that common knowledge around Barrowdeep?” I asked, a lilt in my voice. “All this talk of the fae courts, I mean. Strange, how no one else has thought to question nor discuss my origins. Even your priest, as learned as he is, seems to know precious little about my people. Where did you read so much about the fae?”
His mouth snapped shut. I widened my eyes and held back my laughter. He was so easy. Humans always thought they were so smart.
“Ah. So you know how to read as well. You’re an educated man. I wonder where you received your tutelage. You aren’t just a shovel attached to a strong arm, are you?”
“Stop it,” he growled, his voice thick with warning. “All I know is that your games are far more sinister than you’re letting on. Collecting bits of thread, broken crockery, paying our people in gold — why so generous? All of this comes with a price. I don’t know what it is, but I intend to find out.”
“Allow me to say this very clearly so you can fully understand me, shovel man.”
“Leoric,” he growled.
“Right, right. Leoric.” I folded my hands as if in prayer, my fingers steepled together. “You sound positively delusional.”
He flinched. Exactly as I’d hoped. I carried on, refusing to let him get another word in.
“Not that I take any offense, mind you. This has nothing to do with me. I can see that you’re struggling with your own difficulties. Have you checked with the local apothecary? Or perhaps Father Whiston can inspect you for signs of supernatural illness. Demonic possession, you see. More of it going around, I hear.”
Leoric bared his teeth, setting one foot into my caravan, entering where he wasn’t invited. “Now you listen here, Orphium.”
“No,” I snarled, launching halfway through the cabin to meet him at the door. “You listen to me, human. You can snivel and sneer all you like. Don’t think I don’t see you skulking in the shadows, watching my every move. Think what you will of me and what I do. I am here to bring laughter and light. Can you say the same?”
The lines in his face deepened as he frowned. For a moment, Leoric seemed older. His foot left my caravan, the sole of his boot crunching on earth as he stood back on solid ground. He thumped the butt of his shovel against the earth, glowering so hard I thought his very gaze would set my hair on fire.
“You and your flowery words. Pah. I came to Barrowdeep for the same reason that you did — to find a clean bed, to fill an empty stomach. But I stayed to protect these people. With my life, if need be.”
I narrowed my eyes. “And your shovel.”
He turned away with a grimace. “And my shovel. You claim to know so much about the undead blight that’s gripped these lands, and yet you act so surprised over my weapon of choice.”
I rolled my eyes, drawn into this stupid conversation despite myself. Before I knew it I had leapt out of my caravan, joining Leoric on the ground, in the plaza. I clicked my fingers. He jumped with a start as the back door of my caravan snapped shut. I smirked.
“Now that?” I said, thumbing over my shoulder. “ That is a weapon. Of course I know about the undead. Wagon here has crushed its fair share of the waken dead, the ones that walk on unsteady legs, forgetting that they weren’t meant to be alive.”
Leoric struck his shovel against the ground once more, this time stomping his foot in accompaniment. “My shovel works just fine for lopping their heads off. Good for burying them in the ground, too.”
“And yet they rise,” I said, “and keep on walking.” I noticed that my legs had taken over, and I kept on walking myself, alongside this man and his shovel.
“So Father Whiston has told you,” Leoric said, the friendliest he’d been to me so far, keeping his eyes dead ahead of him instead of glaring me down.
“As much as I need to be told,” I replied. “An infestation of ghouls in your town. Not enough people in your little village to investigate what lies beneath the graveyard.”
Leoric grunted. “Tunnels, I said. I’ve always said. There has to be a way for them to keep coming into Barrowdeep, and yet — hey. No. What are you doing?”
“Whatever do you mean?” I blinked at him innocently, concealing an entire meat pie in the palm of my hand. A small one, yes, but it would be enough to tide me over.
He scowled. “I don’t know how you snuck that from my basket, but here. Give it back.”
Before Leoric could swipe it away, I took a bite out of the pie, relishing its flavor as well as the look of sudden outrage on his face.
“I thought you knew so much about the fae and our wild magic,” I said, debasing myself as I gloated over a mouthful of delicious meat pie. It was worth making the shovel man even angrier than before. “Do you want it back now?”
“Keep it,” he said, eyeing me with disgust. Or was that intrigue? Wishful thinking on my part, perhaps.
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic, shovel man. Here. For your trouble.”
I flicked my thumb. A glittering golden coin tumbled out of thin air, caught easily in his grasp. He squinted at it in annoyance.
“This isn’t even real gold, is it?”
“Preposterous. You should get your eyes checked.” Stretching my arms out, I yawned and sauntered away from him, heading back to my caravan. “I told you, Leoric. Go see the apothecary. Or the priest. Cure what ails you, human. Rid yourself of affliction.”
He shook his fist. “You are my affliction, Orphium.”
I bit into my pilfered pie, winked, and watched as he turned crimson. Oh, how I loved it when he said my name.