Variants of Shade : Shadows and Shade Alternate Universes

End : Bedroom

ѕнα∂є

My insides twist as I try to process my options. Once the two guards turn the corner, I'm alone. The big stone wall around the outside of the yard blocks most of the view, just me, three large pig sties with low timber fences, a collection of big fat white pigs, chickens free-ranging everywhere, and a long whitewashed and neatly-thatched building at the back. This isn't so much a farm, I guess, because there's not enough livestock here to keep a whole castle eating. This is more like the garbage disposal. Scraps and leftovers litter the mud to confirm my theory. It's the kind of thing both the chickens and the pigs live on, and I'm sure a castle has a whole lot of waste.

Which shouldn't be my problem.

Where the bralls did a castle come from, anyway!

I march over to the fence, around a pig that's up to my damn waist, and climb out of the mud. Though, in truth, there's just as much soaked into my clothes now as there is on the ground.

Since there's no one in sight, I beeline for the building. My boots even have mud in them, and they're squelching and squishing as I walk.

Which fuels my temper. Hot and molten from my tense jaw to my curled fists.

I need directions back to the Manor, and I need them now.

The door's closed, so I push it open slowly, ready to back up and leave if I see anyone that screams trouble. But I don't. The building is empty. Wherever the servants are they're off doing it together.

The room is long, narrow, and filled with clusters of bunks separated by seating areas. It's clean, and each bunk has a single pillow and a gray blanket, made in a mostly similar fashion. Too clean.

Too well organized.

I wander down the row of bunks, some of which belong to my particular guys, but I can't tell for sure which. There is only one spot where the bunks are arranged in a set of four beds – against the very back wall. I move around the four beds inspecting the items left on them. A book on one of the bottom bunks, three juggling balls on the top. The next top bunk has six distinctly different types of daggers, and I run my fingers over each. The last bed in the collection is bare except for a single apple, and, without thinking, I pick it up and take a large bite.

I could just run off into the trees and hope to find someone who can give me directions. But I'm not a running-off-blindly type of person.

I am a revenge type of person though.

I pace back through the room, but seriously don't know the four assholes who dragged me here well enough to tell if any of them would like reading, or juggling, or weapons – actually, pretty sure Four, Killian – either name works for him – is a weapons kind of guy.

I'm all the way back through the building and stepping out into the daylight and still thinking about how to make them suffer just a little bit.

Or a lot. I'm good with a lot.

Nearby a pig snorts, getting my attention and making me smile.

Muddy pigs in beds?

But there's twenty or more beds in there. Not sure twenty pigs once placed in beds are going to even stay where I put them long enough to be found. Plus, there's no hope I can get any of these big-mamma pigs into those top bunks. These things aren't cute and petite. They're like cows with their legs cut short.

But I'm not a quitter, and with a dangerously excited bounce in my step, I drag a wheelbarrow into the path, then a crate, and a bucket. The bucket probably isn't going to stop a pig from going in the wrong direction, but I can try.