The Kings Personal Joker (boyxboy)

Chapter One Hundred and Forty Three

[A/N] Some updates just take me a little longer to write than others but better late than never ! This art was made by xxedis. I dig the design for the shirt, love it.

[Elpis's POV]

It had been a long time since I had drunken so much. My heart was filled with discontent and I tried to replace that with a strong bitter ale.

I did not know how to leave, at the very least I would not be able to leave today, and the very worst of it was that I did not want to. I needed to see his face and know he was not hurt. Break the mirage I had created, see the foul smile and gleaming teeth of a man who murders without discretion. Who would see me and my people dead before a word was spoken.

Stories were passed around the table, conflicting and strange, confusing stories about this bloodthirsty ruler, but also these cruel unwanted outsiders who brought inside the walls of Euphranor their bad breeding and propensity for crime. 

Every story hurt my soul and I was compelled to drink a little more amongst the raucous laughter and happy chatter in the ground floor of the brothel where the floor was cobblestone, the chairs and tables wood, damp and sticky, some food being passed around and picked at. An overworked Verna yelling at someone in the background. The incense of the small alter off to the side swimming through the room.

The ladies of the brothel helped us drink, and sometimes joined in, but when you felt the soft little hands grip the stem of your wooden goblet or base of your tankard you knew you would be compelled to drink till it was empty.

I tried to sink my worried into my ale to watch them drown, my shoulders easing with some effort, but the fear remained. 

And to no help was a man called Cup, so named by his friends. A local, married who came here to drink and gamble while his wife worked in the market, his wife who in turn also came here when her husband was off to work.

"They're looking hard for a man." He grumbled.

"Is that the reason they added all them crying rules at the gate?" Tillot asked.

"Should never want to leave so it's never bothered me." The lady he was courting, Achima, grinned as she hugged Tillot's side.

"It'll be a d'saster for the traders." Tillot complained. "Half them outsiders too. They might be a scoundrel lot but they've got uses."

"Uses?" Cup asked. "Bunch of thieves. If we were rid of them we could take up their trade and do it better."

"I don't want to be no fisherman or merchant. Sea's a sure grave for any fools that head there with our bloody allies breaking rules I'll bet."

"They're worse!" Cup agreed. "But now they say some fool's gone and saved a lot of them about to be hung."

"Hung?"

"For rapes and such I'll suppose."

Achima made a face and picked at the roasted chicken on the table.

I listened closely from the next table while at my own they dealt out new pieces and silently ruminated over their own, a woman on either side of me, brushing my hair occasionally when they thought of it. My heart felt tired of my anxiety, the spirits forcing me to swim between the path of depression and tiredness.

Feeling helpless I turned over my pieces and waited quietly, my expression helplessly gloomy.

"This the same one they're looking for?"