day is open.”
“That’s it?” Alocar harrumphed. “Very well, thank you.”
“Of course, sir,” she said, skirt swishing around her ankles as she departed. She’d grown into a smart young girl, and he hoped that Meriman – rest his soul – approved of the way that Alocar had taken care of her after Meriman had fallen to pneumonia nearly twenty years ago, further shrinking Alocar’s already small circle. He felt the furrow creasing his brow and made a conscious effort to smooth it, an image of a greying bulldog entering his mind unbidden.
Alocar heaved himself from his chair, startling Lundy. Mouth quirked, he stared at the ground, only the tips of his shoes visible past his stomach. Muscle still resided there, but it hibernated under a layer of fat that had grown with the years. He sighed. His only hope of finding victory against Rupert today would come in the form of his body falling atop the man. Maybe he could suffocate him with his prosperous man’s gut.
A pox on old age and retirement.
The view from the porch, pleasant from his wicker chair, made him tug his mustache when on his feet. Set on a small hill, Alocar’s house overlooked the street where Dradenhurst’s wealthy rubbed posh shoulders, sometimes so vigorously that they afterwards decried their neighbors for injury, baring decadent arms to reveal small bruises, blamed on each other but likely picked up from one of their many mistresses. Early still, the street was nearly barren, a policy enforced by the city guards, arranged in trios and protecting nothing, vastly more useful and needed in the merchants’ part of the city. Street vendors, shops, and the like didn’t appear until farther into Dradenhurst, the better for the precious and easily scandalized eyes of the rich to avoid. As Alocar stood on the porch, absorbing the morning’s quiet, humid air, a Priestess with a shaved head and a light blue dress passed, her shoulders set and her chin tilted slightly upward.
At least somebody has something important to do today.
With a last look at the city before him, he spun a neat one-eighty and strode through the oaken front door into the house. “Josephs!” He waited, ramrod straight as the house’s wooden floors, fitted by Alocar’s own hands, carried the echo to his manservant.
Josephs popped into view. Another that had found refuge with Alocar, the boy’s hair was so blonde as to appear almost colorless, and his were the type of cheeks that were never far from a blush. Loyal to a fault, Alocar appreciated the boy’s spirit, if not always his lack of decorum. “Go find my sparring gear. Rupert is going to be here any minute, and I still owe him for that beating he gave me last week.”
“Yessir! Be right out. If you’d like to go ahead and walk to the back, I’ll have it ready to go by the time you’ve made it.”
“I’ll be there momentarily.”
Josephs nodded his head so violently that Alocar questioned the solidity of its perch, and then ran off. Alocar stayed, studying a painting, revealed by the removal of the blockage that had been Joseph’s gangly frame.
The painting leapt out at Alocar, the figures within it more real than any one person. Commissioned when the world was still big and full of magic, he saw the glow of life that had surrounded both of them. What a woman – the only one that he had ever loved. Even now, deep in the ground, Lanthe’s green eyes stared into his very soul. He could still remember the way her raven’s hair, a tumble of endless ringlets, had settled on his chest when they lay together at night, and how she’d always put a touch too much emphasis on the front of his name, like she was excited just to be able to say it.
He shook his head, reverie broken. Josephs would be at the back by now. He left the painting, eyes straight ahead to avoid the others haunting the walls. Soon, the backyard came into view, one of Alocar’s favorite places in the entire city. A trellis, made from a lightly colored wood that grew near the Idranian River, ran horizontally across the width of the house. Cup-and-Saucer vines, still white in summer’s heat, grew in twists and gnarls down the frame. Morning Glories, their vibrant colors just beginning to dull, lined the squared enclosure, along with other flowers that Bella cultivated, their names known only to her. Alocar wished for a bigger yard, one