Sweetness and Blessings

By Charlotte Kersten

Saved from ruin after fleeing from a terrible mistake, Iraluri is grateful for her husband, and that gratitude is equaled only by her dread of disappointing him with more mistakes. Together they fumble through magic once practiced by her fallen people in the hopes of finding the forgotten offerings that will make them rich. As this search continues, a kind stranger on the street and a solitary ghost challenge Iraluri to begin thinking beyond the fear and careful rules that she has lived by for so long. It becomes more and more impossible for Iraluri to ignore wrongs in her world and her life, but what use is this knowledge when acting upon it is so dangerous?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charlotte Kersten
• Release date: Dec 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9798985082609

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Iraluri brushes her fingertips lightly over the array of cloth spread before her, fingers pale against the colors of blood, fern, and smoke. The cloaks are as fine and soft as a dream, and she shivers in delight at the thought of wearing one herself. She imagines how far the fabric likely traveled, all the way from planes unknown. A few precious coins lie in her curled fist. They have not been ceded to her lightly, and she cannot stop squeezing her hand around them every few moments just to reassure herself of their presence with the scrape of metal against her skin. She never knows just how much money they have, but apparently, for this trip to Keld at least, it is enough for a private room in a dosshouse and second-hand cloak.

Now, that one is perfect for standing on a windy cliff’s edge, miss.

She blinks at the elf behind the counter, wondering if she has misheard him. He has a great bristling mustache and the Miz’ri rune for good fortune embroidered on his stained waistcoat, making her wonder at his temerity in announcing his heritage in such a way. The man coughs an apologetic laugh and then tugs at the tip of his ear, pointing to a grey cloak, only slightly ragged at the edges. And this one is just right for riding a black steed through a graveyard at midnight.

She blinks again and feels a tiny smile curve her lips. It is a good day, and goodness always makes her thoughtless. She splays a hand across the red fabric. This one here - for sitting with my hood over my eyes in a tavern corner?

The man grins at her. You’ve got the right of it. So you see, it really comes down to what foul deed is afoot.

Aye, but if I told you, I’m right sure I’d have to cut the tongue from your mouth.

For the sake of a good sale, it seems I'll have to take that risk, eh? So, what are you thinking?

She knows it is most likely too expensive and that she could never be so bold as to wear such a piece of clothing, and yet what could be the harm in simply looking? She points to the cloak of the most vibrant, least faded purple and hopes that the merchant does not know her for the foolish gutter upstart that she is. It would seem that he does not because the friendly smile does not twist or sharpen to a sneer, and he shakes the fabric out and holds it up for her to examine. Purple is a fine color for a woman with your black hair. At least, that’s what I’ve been told to say.

She can’t help but smile again, and the man draws a step closer, holding the cloak up to her shoulders and inclining his head towards the mirror in the corner. Iraluri watches the woman in the reflection. If she unfocuses her eyes, she thinks it could almost be someone beautiful standing there, swathed in the rich fabric. He drapes the cloth around her shoulders and hums while he adjusts it. Forget all my previous suggestions. This one is for sweeping through a marble hallway trailed by ladies in waiting. You agree?

She ventures another glance in the mirror. He would never - I mean, I daren’t -

Oh, it’s a gentleman you’re thinking of, then? I’ve got a cloak spun from azeal, the new fabric of the Seventh Plane, said to swell any man’s heart with tender leanings. It’s got a dreadful burn, so the lady of the house gave it to a maid as passed it to us for some coin. But I do believe azeal is azeal. The shopkeeper laughs again while he says it and lays a hand upon her shoulder and then her arm - and she knows, knows with sickening instinct, that he has just made a terrible mistake. And now the thoughts pour in a deluge as she stands frozen with a smile on her face: how long have they been talking, and how much has she smiled, and can the hand upon her arm be seen from the window? The man continues to chatter on still, oblivious and so, so kind. Why, if you had only told me that you were look-

And then. Then.

Well, what else?

The door crashes open; the merchant silences himself abruptly, his eyes widening in alarm past her shoulder as a hand closes like a vise on her arm and yanks her backward. Of course it is Harlan, and it is all over now, all done, and something worse beginning. "You think I don’t know what you’re doing? What you want? Let me make one thing clear to you. She is mine. Do you comprehend what that means?"

The man is stammering something incomprehensible, ears flat to his head in terror, and Harlan is shouting, shouting so loud. Iraluri wants to bring her hands to her ears to block it out, but she cannot free her arm. Instead, the dread that sleeps inside her body blinks awake and unfurls its heavy tendrils through her, clasping at her throat. Time and sound are distorted, but she sees piles of cloth tumble to the floor, knows that she is being tugged swiftly along in Harlan’s wake through the door and that she stumbles to keep apace. Then he gives her a shake, and with a jolt, she suddenly understands his words again.

"-what you want. Pray tell, do you want me to toss you to those slobbering dogs that you seem to prefer so much and see how you fare as their prey? I can’t say that I would bother to care much at this point."

No, no, no. She has been stupid. It was just her being stupid. It is difficult to know exactly what she says because there is no thinking before the saying of it. The words tumble out in a senseless jumble, choked by her tears. She should not be blubbering because he hates blubbering, but by the time this occurs to her, he has already flung his hands in the air, exasperation and disgust apparent in every line of his body. Stupid again. Always such a sniveling coward. It’s enough to make a man sick.

Sniveling coward that she is, she cannot help but snivel and cower at this. So it is all going just like it always does until it isn't, suddenly. There is a hand on his shoulder, a woman’s voice cutting through his shouting. Iraluri cannot hear what the woman says, but Harlan whirls to face her, lips drawn back in a snarl. Not interested, whore. Begone with you. He turns back to Iraluri, eyes narrowed in fury. One step forward, one hand slammed upon the wall beside her head - and the woman is back, another hand firmly placed on his shoulder, her words louder this time. No, you misunderstand. I’d fancy a chat with your friend.

He turns again, and this time Iraluri can see the woman. All she registers at first is her brown skin and black hair pulled into a bun, but then strange details make their way through the haze in her mind: the smudge left by a scattering of dirt across the left side of her coat, the flash of cufflinks at her wrists. She sees Harlan’s fists curl, shoulders tightening, and all she can think is that this woman will be hurt in her stead. It is not right, not right -

She acts before she can be entirely paralyzed by the dread, by the full horrible import of what she does and what it will mean for her later. She elbows past Harlan to stand in front of the woman, arms outstretched, blocking her from his grasp. No grabbing, shaking, slamming, pushing, choking, none of it for this woman who only tried to help. It is not right, and she hears her own jagged chorus of words: stop, stop, stop.

But, needless to say, he does not stop and pushes her aside so that she tumbles into the muck. She does not see what happens in the next few seconds, but by the time she looks up again, the woman is deflecting Harlan’s next swiping lunge with ease, blocking his arm, twisting it around, and darting backward. And then there is another man in the fray, bulky and red with the sun and only wearing his shirtsleeves, and Harlan seems relieved that he has someone whom he may hit.

Attempting to hit the man is a grave error, though, and Iraluri will later try to piece the next moments together. How does the strange man know exactly where to step, how to turn, dodge, and land his expert flurry of blows? The fight may last for an hour or a minute, but before she can think of screaming for them to stop - though, to be fair, it is not as though that worked just now or has ever worked in her life - Harlan lies panting in a heap at the man’s feet, blood spilling from his mouth to the filthy ground, a hand raised to his eye. Just as Iraluri thinks that she almost wishes a constable would arrive, he jerks to his knees and dives for the man’s legs. The man kicks him in the gut, and he is down again with a strangled cry. Gathered onlookers crow in the background, and this time, Harlan stays down.

He pants and struggles to rise after a bit, though, and the man stares down at him in contempt and spits. Suddenly, Iraluri realizes that the strange woman is making her way towards her. She manages to push herself to her feet and staggers to meet the woman. Are you all right? is what she tries to say, and it comes out in that same messy jumble - speaking is very difficult, but all she can think is that this woman tried to help her and Harlan attacked her for it. She must make sure the stranger is safe, no matter what Harlan will think of it later.

The other woman surveys her intently. I’m just fine, she says. And you?

All she can do is nod and tremble, tremble and nod. Tries to shape her lips into a smile because if she can smile, then the day’s events will fall back onto a well-worn path instead of spinning further and further away from the relative safety of the predictable. The woman holds her hand out in a placating gesture. Never you mind about him. We walk away now, and you never look back.

She cannot imagine wanting such a thing. But even if she was able to, it would not matter because her husband is back on his feet, one hand cupped over his eye as he staggers towards them. And she sees his face, and she is not that great a fool.

I’m f-fine, she stutters through the tightness of her throat, and then she is past the woman and at Harlan’s side. As though her ministrations can do anything to soothe him, as though any of this can be fixed.

They have limped a few steps away when the bulky man returns to block their path, and Iraluri wonders with a new surge of panic how many people will hound them today. How long, incidentally, can one exist in a protracted state of fear before ropes start snapping?

One thing you should understand, my cove. She registers the man’s face for the first time - he has small eyes and a broken nose. He flings his arm in a wide circle; Iraluri sees the cluster of muttering onlookers past the spread of his fingertips. "If I hear of any more trouble of this kind while you are anywhere in this town, I can guarantee you worse than you’ve gotten today. And I will hear of it, you mark my words. He cocks his head and pauses for a moment, gaze intent. Are we clear?"

Harlan says nothing, only spits blood to the stones at the man’s feet.

***

He allows himself to be tended to, then sleeps the afternoon away, then soundly curses her for a fool, then nurses his bruises, then sleeps again at last. She does not sleep but lies curled beside him while pretending that the absence of violence is peace, watching her husband’s ears flutter as he dreams, listening to the tread of footsteps and echoes of voices from the floor above them in the common lodging house. They seem an impossible distance away, and she shuts her eyes on this nightmare of a day and tries to lose herself in stories to match the noises she hears. The odd shuffling-thumping pattern is a young girl dancing, her joy too much for her little body to contain because she has eaten oceanberries, the first planar import she has ever tasted, and tomorrow she is going swimming at the river Hantane a mile's walk outside of Keld. The girl in her story has her sister Immy's heart-shaped face and swinging black braids, and it does her heart good to think of it.

The men’s voices raised in laughter belong to old soldiers who were stationed together in the drear grey mists of the Dreonian outpost in the Fifteenth Plane, their camaraderie the only thing that saved them from the shreds of whispers and seeping madness. She knows little enough of the planes, to be sure, only that the Dreonians are exceptionally clever - or blessed by their god’s intervention, as the Ydurians would insist - at finding ways into the countless other planes of reality, the strange dimensions where magic thrives and the laws of nature work so differently. Some planes contain whole planets with stars and suns of their own; others are tiny worlds compared to the elven home plane of the Elven; yet others still cannot even be described as planets, worlds, or anything so comprehensible.

For hundreds of years now, the Dreonians have found their way to plane after plane, many of which previously had intimate ties to the other countries and peoples of the Elven Plane. Once the Dreonians come, those ties are always sundered one way or another, the planar creatures’ unique systems of magic lost. The Dreonians shape the planes to their will in the name of Ydur’s glory to tame their evil, using that same god’s might to control the creatures that live there and improve them through labor. They do this so that one day their god - and hers, she reminds herself quickly - will open his Plane of Paradise to his chosen people when they have done their duty to him. They bring back strange, lovely spoils and resources, everything from balse to sugar, to help make their country the richest in the world just like they claim and shape so many other peoples and countries of the Elven, too. Sometimes, it seems that the Dreonians are more powerful, more blessed, than any of their fellow elves. But this has little to do with her story, indeed.

She remembers a story that her mother told her to frighten her when she was very little, a Miz’ri tale that has survived in whispers from parents to children though the Dreonians would scorn it and see it forgotten if such a thing was achievable. Indeed, they have tried to erase what they can: immoral tales from an immoral time. Be thankful the age of Miz’rifaezar has ended. Nevertheless, she remembers it. It was about Elszar, a naughty boy who never listened to his mother and wandered through the twisting underground tunnels of Miz’rifaezar until he came to a kingdom of hungry bat people. And weren’t they happy to meet a boy with such chubby cheeks and plump little fingers and toes?

She traces runes against the dirty bedding and murmurs magical words in Miz’ri, wondering if something will happen the next time she speaks them with the balse-withe clutched in her hands and the fingerbone at her feet. Together, she and her husband spent the summer and the harvest doing common labor in the country like they have done each year. Now they have come to Keld to consult with whichever scholars, collectors, and eccentrics will acquiesce to see them regarding their illicit and largely unsuccessful ghostly dealings. After this, they will find somewhere to settle again for the winter; he will watch her fumble with the magic and tell her to do it again. She will do it wrong; he will grow angry. So it will go, on and on.

Sometimes it happens that her stories and mutterings help transport her away from her cares, but tonight the fear is too strong. For every tale she tells herself, there are a dozen bleak conjectures about what will happen next, another dozen silent rehearsals of apologies. Finally, her stories and distractions trickle into drought as her hunger and restlessness grow, and she begins to itch to stretch, to get a drink of water, at best to sit in the chair in the corner and read Immy's primer. But when she moves to get up from the bed, an arm circles her waist and draws her back down. So then she lies there until the buttery light of the sun has been pouring through the shutters for a very long time, trying and failing not to wonder how long it will be until he awakens and what she can possibly expect from him when he does.

Harlan’s breath eventually shifts against the back of her neck; she feels him rise beside her and then groan at the pain of doing so, and she turns to see his injuries in the light of a new day. The ugly, mottled bloom of purple across his face and chest is enough to make her wince in sympathy, but he scowls at her and bats away the hand she raises to his cheek. If you don’t like the sight of your own doing, it’s not my problem, he mutters sourly, and then he reaches past her for a shirt.

She had expected them to leave Keld after eating, but they do neither. This is to say that they do not leave, and she does not eat. This, specifically, has not occurred for a very long time, but the general idea is just as clear as it ever was. Her husband surveys her balefully while he chews, one eye swollen and the other shining with hate. You heard the man. One swallow of bread layered with a glittering spread of jam made from oceanberries of the Fourth Plane, staining his teeth red. No harm’s to come to you while we’re in town, sweetness.'' Cold chicken ripped straight from the bone. Now, who’s to say the food isn’t poisoned? Sausages, glistening with fat. We simply can’t take such a risk, you understand." She understands.

Every moment of the day that follows is taut with expectation and analysis, a perfect maelstrom of cares and contingencies sharpened by the hunger that seems intent on hollowing her insides out. Has his anger excised itself in her privation, or is there yet more to come? What should she say? Who should she look at? If she smiles, is she mocking him? If she frowns, is she unappreciative of all he does? If she offers to help, is it because she thinks him incompetent? If she fails to offer, is she a lazy layabout? If she could only understand the turnings of his mood and mind. So often, they are impenetrable to her, and so it seems that she spends her life teetering dizzily on the knife's edge of each decision. At one point, they walk past the shop where the trouble began yesterday. The shopkeeper pauses in the doorway to watch them, his expression unreadable, but she jerks her gaze away before they can make eye contact. Even with mere eye contact, there are no guarantees on a bad day.

Harlan always downs his drinks like it is some kind of grim and solemn duty, most likely because he once drank much finer drinks than the swill he can afford these days. It seems the duty is more pressing than it has ever been, tonight, and though he only drinks one mug, he draws it out for an excruciatingly long time. She counts individual swallows in the silence that stretches between them - anything to distract her from the hunger that clenches her insides with a desperation she has not known in a long time and the intolerable, crushing weight of his anger. She absorbs every movement as though fervent watching can silently inform her of the right moment to broach the matter of apology. When she can take the condemnation no longer, she lays a hand on his arm and speaks as steadily as she can: Harlan. I didn't mean-

He cuts her off with a sneer and a shake of the head. You didn't mean it? Didn't mean any harm? That’s certainly not how I recall it. Don't tell me - you didn't mean to take my hard-earned coin and flaunt yourself before that merchant swine? You didn't mean to bring shame upon me. You didn't mean to whore yourself, didn't mean to turn our marriage into a mockery of what it should be. You didn't mean to have me humiliated and beaten in the street. You didn’t mean to draw that woman’s attention with your mewling and blubbering. I saw you talking to her without a care in the world while I lay beaten on the ground, no doubt filling her ears with your pitiful nonsense. You didn’t mean that betrayal either, surely. If I had a gold piece for every time you didn't mean something, I'd be a rich, rich man once again.

Each word is a new blow, and she crumbles beneath them. After all, what do her intentions matter when the result is apparent before her eyes in her husband's bruises and swollen face? Her mouth trembles, and she brings a hand to his cheek. He glares and shakes it off. She tries again. You know I love you-

He rolls his eyes and huffs out a breath. I suppose I’ve heard enough about that, and yet I doubt a loving wife would be so glad to see her husband mocked and beaten by some dark elf bitch and a common thug. Enough with the whimpering, now.

So she stops and subsides back into silence to focus her energy upon the task of ignoring the smell of food and not blubbering as he sits beside her and swallows his ale. Her steps wobble walking back down the street to their room, and then he draws her into his arms.

These switches in temper happen suddenly. What he says now is different. It is kind. He knows what she wants, he says, and he will oblige her. He drops a kiss against her neck, her jaw, the corner of her mouth, the base of her ear. She stumbles to feel the press of his hands moving, and all she can do is press her own hand to his cheek and murmur when his lips are not on hers. The pain, isn’t it too-?

It is the stupidest of all conceivable things to imply in this moment, quite possibly, and she realizes her error as his face twists. He pauses in his grasping to survey her steadily through narrowed eyes. "So that’s it. You think me unmanned? You think that woman could do anything to keep me from my wedded right? That low lump of a man?"

She cannot shake her head because he grips her chin with one hand, cannot speak because he kisses her breathless. He answers his own questions, in the end, just as he almost always does,