Chapter Six: Esselle

Opening service was a nightmare—intermission somehow worse—and I expected post-play service to be roughly the same, if not take the cake.

I was pleasantly surprised.

Were it any other night, I'd ransack the place from now until morning. Thanks to Willow, I already met my quota within the first fifteen minutes.

With enough unmixed wine, she went from coy to coquette. And whilst I tossed honey, bitters, and brandy together for a man who, at most, could spare one glance in my direction, nobs upon nobs showered Willow with affection. Teasing her, laughing with her, offering generous tips to her whilst sizing up the length of her.

I was engrossed in the rounds of folks who'd come and gone, only to fall under Willow's spell. If I didn't know any better, I'd think an archer was hidden in one of the shadowy corners of our foyer, bombarding them all with arrows tipped in the wetness of a love spell.

I wished I could take it all back—all of the curses I'd spat at the girl, even if they were only voiced in my head. For each of her bothersome traits were worth it in exchange for her face. Her distracting charm that urged crowds of nobs—furnished in everything that glistened—to marry at the bar and vie for her attention. Long enough for me to swoop right through and steal from each as I pleased.

My apron—overburdened to the point I was forced to tuck it 'neath the bar-top—had been filled with goods I'd never even thought to steal. Like a pocket watch, coated in gold, encrusted also in turquoise. And a pair of lambskin mittens one of the gentlemen tucked in his belt. I leaned the small of my back against the counter, so giddy with my take.

Business became steady, with guests leaving one by one. Though after curtain call the tavern was no longer exclusive to ticket-holding patrons. Stirring folk from Ristic could come and go as they pleased and use the foyer as a pub. As they did so, the bar would fill at the pace in which it emptied, just with different faces, a whole new crowd of nobs.

And having less than a pouch-full of space left in my apron, I was left staring out into the crowd, reflecting, listening for orders and requests. A young boy near the fireplace tugged at his sister's braid, then ran behind a velvet couch, cowering from her playful wrath. The sight was bittersweet. I found that my body was laced with… envy.

Never had I been so young and careless. Even if I once were the same size, same age—my troubles were never those of chores, or studies, or exile to the cellar for damning lies. There never was a cellar to be banished to at all, nor a bedroom, nor a closet.

The city liked to throw seven burgs on its map, but we all knew there were truly eight. The sewers—my home for seven years—made for a burg of their own, underground, but home to hundreds, nonetheless.

Often I'd dream of the sewers, the smell, the murky tunnels where the only light came through rays seeping 'neath the surface grates and bouncing off of black water. My feet would rip through dropping-charged urine that swelled to the ankles on my way into the markets.

My thieving was the only way for Father and I to hold out.

He taught me well. One might argue better than most maidens, known for shoving their children's noses into books written of subjects my father detested. He'd sooner push me into the Ristic markets, where I'd stick out a thousand paces. A wharf running through Ristic and pilfering all that I could. How the guards loved me...

Remembering the prison carts caused me to shudder, the bruises up and down my biceps from grips that dragged me into them. They weren't the only bruises, but they worsened every day.

It would take hours for those heavy carts to roll me back to Beggar's Row, but Father encouraged it. And I understood that without my thieving, he'd have nothing to trade for food. It made shoving the loot up my too-tight skirts bearable—desperation made it bearable, the blistering rashes that chafed at my thighs.

I shuddered again, watching the braided girl's father lift her into his arms and swing her onto his shoulders. The boy ran through his legs as she taunted him from her place of refuge.

Father would lift me like that. He'd send me back down the loosened grates in Beggar's Row, so together we could traverse the muck back to our reeds and straw he'd laid for sleeping. It's where I'd languish in hunger and wake in withering weakness. It's where I'd suffer in every way I could not yet understand.

But I was only three back then—and four when I learned of my gift. Anyone could see I was a natural pickpocket. Deathly quick and wickedly deceptive, but my gift made me invincible.

Father must have recognized it long before I did. For his requests grew rash—even foolhardy—and one year later consisted of that bloody golden whistle.

It was an heirloom passed through centuries of DuPont blood, worn atop a child that rarely saw the sun. Had I been caught, I would've been hung. Publicly. Instead, my father sold it off in some underhanded deal. He was likely swindled on the piece.

But stealing that whistle… It was the day I learned of my gift to slow time.

It would be days before I could do it again—maybe even weeks. But just as I learned how to tell a nob from a pretender, gold from its fooling cousin, and when to take what from whom, I learned to exercise my magic with less and less restoration between.

These days, I could just about slow the city once or twice every few hours. For a breath or two, sure, but one could do just about anything in such time—surely everything worth anything could be stolen in two breaths.

Though I rarely felt the need to work my magic, for snatching was simple enough as it was. Still, it was comforting to know that if I truly wanted something, it was mine. As long as I steadied my mind and let my instincts take over. All I'd have to do was reach out and take it.

Chester told me that such gifts come with a price. I remembered those words at times like this, where in such a lively place, all I could see were bulges in pockets and values of trinkets.

Only when I tried, could I see two children giggling by a golden hearth.

I thought back to the gunshot—the way it, too, brought me back to those years beneath the city. If only some form of sorcery had a way of wiping my mind clean of the memories. The pain that seemed to follow me and tap my shoulder with every loud burst—or every unpleasant reminder of my frailty.

I was tired of the torment of my past.

But I never seemed to shake the fear that I'd end up like my father. He made enemies living this way and paid the steep price—I paid a price. Sometimes I wondered if I was bound to make the same mistakes.

No—Father was killed for his greed. It was his greed that got him in trouble—not my stealing. For he involved himself with ruffians and began sending me to fetch ridiculous novelties for their approval. If he'd have just stuck to the script, we would have been okay.

If he hadn't been so desperate for that whistle, he would never have suffered that bullet to his back. I wondered if it was retribution. For all he had done.

I reminded myself of that now. I wasn't greedy, and I wasn't my father. Perhaps he'd passed me his nerve, but I received none of that greed, and certainly none of the insecurity that so clearly tortured him.

I would never do the things he did, nor would I make enemies the way he had.

"Hello, Love." My head whirled to the foreign voice—drawling and dripping in baritone charm—its origins hidden from sight behind Willow's towering frame. I remained where I was, all ears, hopeful that this nob had taste.

Or at the very least was adventurous enough to solicit a spirit from the pamphlet, a spirit worthy of my mixing hands and time-to-kill.

"What's a sweet thing like you doing stuck behind a bar?" Ah, the next in line to win Willow's affection. So far he was barely cleverer than the rest.

Willow's voice remained soft, and unlike his, didn't carry over the sound of music, chatter, and clomping feet. But the shrill giggles were new, and to my knowledge, all of the other nobs had yet to make her hike each breath to such a pitch. Whoever this mystery nob was, he was winning. And quite the tease from the sounds of it.

The sound of rustling parchment after infinite flirtation caught my attention again, and a tanned forearm escaped one edge of Willow's shielding frame—long enough for me to spot a juniper-green silky tunic bunched into an elbow crease—and a masculine hand bedizened in silver propping up the pamphlet.

Precisely what I needed, some spirit-mixing to take my mind off things—particularly things I wished to forget.

"What in God's name is a cocktail? Some nip of woven potions? Do they encourage me to dump a pouch of coins upon the glossy floor?" I snorted at his joke, for I too wouldn't put it past an establishment like this to task spells with swindling nobs to spend more gold.

Alas the drinks were simply overpriced, but still… how rather witty for a nob. Willow's response was indistinct, but whatever she said must have eased his mistrust of the pamphlet, for he said, "Then I have no qualms, filly." And he released the parchment, coolly adding, "I'm hardly picky. I've no doubts I'd appreciate anything those hands could mix."

I'll be—he was a tease. Clueless to how wrong he was, but still, I took the words as permission to mix up anything my weary heart desired—deciding on my personal favorite, the House Ablaze cocktail.

For reasons unknown to me, it was poorly-favored amongst the theater's crowds, and so much so that I considered removing it from the pamphlet altogether. Still, I held out, if only for the nob who'd one day come shouldering a thirst for fiery peril. Perhaps it was my lucky night, after all.

I went to work, spilling the inner juices of various Houn peppers into a shaker canteen full of brandy. And from there, I poured the whole of it into a crystal beaker, carved a slit into a wedge of lime with a bar knife, and decorated one with the other. Willow—still giggling up a storm and looming over the nob—took one step to the side, freeing up room for me to set his beaker down atop the marble he slouched his rugged forearms over.

I noticed his back straighten slightly as I took in the sight of him—the tease claiming Willow's attention. It was an eyeful of glistening cocoa and meshing green and brown. It was bronzed skin and effortless style from torso to temple. And eyes one could get lost in—the combination of brown from his shaggy, cropped hair and green of his buttoned tunic.

He was built, but he wasn't bulky. Muscular, but lean. He had the type of face that ladies liked to swoon for—rugged, like the knights in stories and ruffians in plays. Each feature was so perfectly placed—brows, eyes, lips, nose—like the hand of God reached out to mold them so that they might perfectly compliment each other.

He was boyishly handsome. That much, even I'd admit.

Yet somehow it was his hands where my gaze seemed to linger. In all his glory—his hands. For his mitts weren't the glossy sort, nor the kind nobs brandished as proof of their lack for dirty-work. There was dirt—not a lot of it, but just enough—tucked into the beds of his nails.