Chương 61: Urchin

With the urchin slung over my shoulder, I was ready to leave this horrible place. But Eugene kept looking at me with his arms crossed; clearly, he wasn't going to let it go. Eulalie looked at me for a long time, too. I couldn't read her face at all, mostly because, well, she didn't have one. Finally she spoke.

"Let's go." Eugene looked like he was about to say something, but Eulalie held up a hand, and that was that — the matter was closed. The urchin kept punching my back a while longer, but seeing how little it did, he gave up and went limp. We made our way back through the tunnel and crowded together into the rickety wooden elevator. It took forever to rise, but at last it shuddered to a stop, and we stepped out of a little wooden shack into the upper city, dim in the evening light. It was… oh, it was…

an indescribable relief to be out here again! I could breathe — really breathe — as though one more moment down in that smell would have choked the life right out of me. I almost wept, standing there.

"That's it for today," said Eulalie, looking me up and down.

"You can head home. You held up well. Augustin… he was right about you." I said nothing. I was feeling too many things about the day, and most of them weren't good. Her gaze came to rest on the small pile of skin and bone slumped over my shoulder.

"I can appreciate you trying to do good. It's part of the job, after all. With more time you'll come to see the… complexity of it. In time, you'll find the right balance." I nodded. There was criticism buried in there somewhere, I was fairly sure.

"You know how to get home from here?" She asked.

"Yes. It isn't far." You could see the palace from just about everywhere in the city, and my house was fairly close to it, so it was no trouble.

"One last thing," she said, just as I'd started to head off.

"You'll be paid weekly. But you had better have something to be going on with for the first week." She pulled a small purse from her belt and threw it to me. I caught it. It was heavy.

"Take tomorrow off," she said.

"After today, you'll need it. Get to know the town, get your new house in order. You can find a physician, too." A physician for… oh, to look at the boy, and mend his leg?

"Thank you," I said. I was fond of Eulalie. I really was.

"Day after tomorrow. Morning. Be at headquarters," she said, and with that they were gone. I set off home, walking through the quiet streets. I couldn't see the urchin's face, but I felt him turning his head, looking here and there in a kind of frenzy. Was he happy to be up here? Had he ever once left the lower city in his whole life, seen a world that wasn't a cave? Was he in awe? Or in a panic? I couldn't tell. I wasn't in awe. The relief I'd felt was already fading.

And now, looking around, all I could think about was the city below — right here, beneath my very feet. Everything that had happened that day came flooding back, and it overwhelmed me, and the tears ran freely down my face for most of the walk home. I found the house easily enough. I wiped the tears away and let myself into the entrance hall.

"There," I said, setting the urchin down.

"My house. What do you think? A bit big, isn't it? I'm new here myself, if I'm honest." The urchin took a step back, alert, that hateful look darting frantically between me and the door, as if he were weighing his odds of bolting before I could catch him. Then came footsteps.

"Welcome home, Drizella!" Henriette came to greet me brightly — and then her gaze settled on the boy.

"What is this?" she asked, leaning in for a better look.

"Oh — but he's so thin!"

"An urchin," I explained, fumbling for the right words.

"I was down in the lower city, you see, and it was… well, it was bad. And this one looked no better than all those skeletons walking about, so…" Henriette looked at me with a smile.

"That's… so unlike you, Drizella!"

"It… it isn't?" Henriette crouched in front of the frightened boy.

"Hello, little guy," she said warmly.

"What do we call you?" He took a step back and simply looked at Henriette with utter contempt, and didn't say a word. Come on! This was Henriette, she was just a sweet thing. How could anyone look at her like that?!

"That's more or less all he does," I explained.

"Well, we need a name for him," said Henriette, then looked at me.

"If he won't talk, then you name him."

"Truly?" I asked. I didn't have much experience naming people, but how hard could it be? Let's see… oh! I know.

"Ur!" I said happily.

"From now on, that'll be your name."

"Really?" Henriette looked at me, bewildered.

"Because he's an urchin?"

"What? No!" It was totally that. Ur shot me a scowl. Yes — he liked his new name.

"Now that he has a name," I said, "I do believe a bath is in order.. He smells like something that died in a cupboard."

"Hear that?" Henriette asked the boy.

"You stink. Come on, we need to get you—" She reached for his arm; he snapped it away. She reached again, and this time caught his wrist and held it — and that was the end of the negotiation. She hauled him off toward the bathroom, and all he could do was try his best not to go down on that bad leg of his.

"You wouldn't struggle so if you knew we had hot water in here!" she was saying as she pulled.

"It's like being royalty, really!" They disappeared down the hall, and I could hear the scuffle carrying on. Good job, Henriette! Next I went looking for Alexy. It was dinnertime, and it was well past time the urchin had something in him. The strange skeleton was sitting on a couch in the parlor, his head lolled back. Was he… sleeping? Oh, I could never tell with them, could I?

"Hey, Alexy!" I said. The skeleton slowly turned his skull toward me.

"You think you can… you know," I said, "make us some dinner?" Alexy rose slowly to his feet.

"Дерзкая девчонка, смеет мне указывать!" he muttered, and shuffled off to the kitchen to start on the ingredients.

"Make it for three!" I added. Then I went to take a bath myself, which I desperately needed too. And yes — I had two bathrooms now. The bathroom was a magnificent room. A great white tub standing on clawed feet, taps of polished brass shaped like fish, mirrors from floor to ceiling, and lamps enough for a ballroom. Everything gleamed. Everything was warm. It was simply splendid. I lay in the hot water up to my chin and thought about the stream.

When I got out and changed into a clean evening dress, I caught the most wonderful smell drifting up — something like roasted chestnuts, and not at all like roasted chestnuts. In that moment I decided Alexy really was the finest butler there was, for all that he slept on the job and muttered in russian at us.

I got to the kitchen just as Henriette arrived from the other direction, steering ahead of her someone who was still very much skin and bone, but who had become a great deal more like a person — scrubbed pink and clean, swallowed up in nothing but an oversized shirt and a pair of trousers that only just managed to stay on him.

"Look at this fine gentleman," I said, smiling, and turned to Ur.

"There now. Isn't it pleasant to be clean and proper?" Ur lifted his eyes to me, and yes — still contempt. But then he caught the smell in the air, and his eyes went wide, and his gaze locked on the food, his mouth falling open.

"That looks delicious!" Henriette clapped her hands in delight.

"That Alexy is simply brilliant! Alexy had made us some sort of roast bird in a dark sauce, with potatoes and something green, and if it looked that good to me, I could only imagine what it looked like to a starving child. Henriette pushed the confused urchin down into one of the chairs — and this time, I noticed, he hardly resisted at all. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. I started to eat, and, like everything Alexy made, it was simply delightful.

Henriette tucked in happily too. But Ur didn't touch his food. He only stared at it, and I could see him swallowing, over and over.

"You should really try it!" I said to Ur around a mouthful.

"It's really good!" But Ur just looked at the food and did nothing. After a few moments, he got up from his chair.

"What, you think you're done here?" I scoffed at him.

"It's bad manners to leave the table before everyone's finished." Ur just glared at me. Well. Perhaps it was time to show him a little discipline. I rose from my chair and stepped toward him.

"Listen here, you—" Ur slashed at my stomach with a knife. He was startlingly quick. I got my forearm across it by pure instinct, and a long cut opened along it and went red at once. I caught his wrist and twisted the knife out of his hand in one motion. It was the table knife. He had taken it at some point without any of us noticing. I looked at Ur. He glared back, hateful, his free hand curled into a fist, as if we were squaring off for battle. But he made no move to come at me again.

I took the long napkin and wound it around the cut. It wasn't deep — there'd been no real strength behind his strike. I looked at Henriette. Her eyes were wide, and she seemed lost for words. I didn't really know what to do either. So I took a long breath and set Ur's knife back down beside his plate, still red with my blood on it.

"Sit down, now," I told him, and my voice came out cold.

"It's the food you ought to cut with the knife." He looked at me a long moment. The contempt drained slowly out of his face and something confused came in behind it. He sat back down in his chair, his eyes lowered now.

"Now eat," I said. Then he looked back at the food, and something else shifted in his eyes. He started to prod at it with a finger. Then he picked up a piece of the meat in his bare hand and, ever so slowly, brought it to his mouth and took a small bite. Then another. Then another — and then he was cramming his face with all of it, wolfing it down like the starving child he was. The whole time his eyes stayed cast down, never once meeting mine. After he finished, his eyelids began to droop.

They fluttered shut, only for him to snap them open again, glaring at us as he fought a losing battle against exhaustion. Henriette sighed.

"I guess it's bedtime for you," she said. Ur shot her a hateful look, but she snatched him from his chair anyway and hauled him up the stairs to one of our many empty bedrooms. A few moments later she came back down.

"He was asleep the moment he touched the bed," she said, then looked at me, worried.

"How… how's your hand?" I peeled back a bit of the reddened cloth to peek.

"Not that deep," I said.

"Bleeding's stopped. It's nothing, really."

"That was quite a lot," Henriette said, taking a shaky breath.

"Quite a lot."

"I know," I said, suddenly feeling very sad.

"Um…" Henriette hesitated.

"So — tomorrow, and after that. What… what are we going to do with him?"

"I was thinking he could help around the house," I said, not really sure myself.

"There'd be some… er… adjustment, I imagine."

"Adjustment," said Henriette.

"You mean, so he won't steal a knife off the dinner table and stab us?"

"Yes?" I said, feeling lost.

"Oh, it might be very difficult, I know that, all right? But if you'd seen him down there, in the lower city, in that… place." Tears rose up in me all of a sudden. I blinked and wiped at my eyes.

"I simply had to take him. I simply…" Henriette laid a hand on my lap.

"Don't worry," she managed, with a smile.

"I'm sure it'll be fine. You did a good thing — I… I'm proud of you, actually."

"You… you are?"

"Yes," Henriette said, smiling wider.

"You've got a big heart inside that spiteful shell."

"Spiteful shell?"

"Oh, I just remembered!" she said brightly.

"I actually have something for you — wait here!"

"What?" I said. But Henriette was already gone, and in a moment she came back with— I gaped! She was holding a Fifi book! Volume four — The Tulip Smuggler of Holland!

"The first one you ever told me from memory," said Henriette.

"It was hardly fit for my tender age."

"It's still hardly fit!" I threw my arms around her, my foul mood dissolving in an instant. I absolutely loved Henriette.

"So how did you get it?" I asked.

"Wait. You had a whole date with Augustin's handsome nephew! You absolutely must tell me everything!" Henriette coughed.

"It… it wasn't a date at all!" She busied herself with her hair.

"And you haven't even seen him. Why would you assume he was handsome?"

"He's Augustin's nephew," I said.

"So it was a safe bet. Come on — start talking."

"Well, just so you know, he's not my type at all," Henriette said.

"But he was nice enough. He took me all around the town, in broad daylight — it was beautiful! And then there was this coffee shop, absolutely packed with fancy lizard ladies all acting like princesses! But as I sipped my drink, I felt like a lady too. It was… actually quite fun!"

"And… you had a nice talk?" I prompted.

"Yes," she said.

"He told me about his endless training he has to go through — French, mathematics, swordplay, magic — all of which he got out of today, thanks to me, which he was very grateful for. He told me he wants to go into accounting, like his older sister, and that he absolutely loves his maths lessons, but he complained endlessly about the fighting and the magic. It made me laugh — it really ought to be the other way around."

"Still, he sounds decent," I said.

"Yes," she said.

"And then he showed me the library! Oh, you should have seen it — it was absolutely massive!"

"Massive, you said?" I got excited too.

"Yes! And you wouldn't believe it, they've got a whole section of tra— I mean, educational literature. Such as Fifi."

"A Fifi section!" I exclaimed.

"And here I was, afraid there wasn't a single Fifi book in this whole place! We absolutely must buy the entire lot of them!" Then a thought struck me.

"But you didn't have any money, so this was… a gift?"

"Yes," she said, smiling.

"But it isn't anything special. I think Lucien's family is filthy rich, anyhow." Still, if Henriette could have had anything at all, and chose only something to make me happy, well, she really was a sweet thing.

"I think…" I set the purse of advance pay Eulalie had given me down on the table.

"…that we're filthy rich too."

"Are they all gold?" asked Henriette, her eyes going wide at the sight of them as she rummaged through the purse.

"By gosh, there's twenty of them!"

"Yes." I smirked.

"Well, I'm sort of used to gold, since time loopers mostly have no shortage of it, but it is nice. Oh, look, they have a pretty demoness face stamped on them!"

"Say…" Henriette looked at me sharply.

"Out of your salary, do I get a share? I'm sort of your attendant, or house manager, or… something?"

"You're simply Henriette," I said, giving her a funny look.

"But sure. How much would you like?"

"Half," she smiled.

"No," I smiled.

"Twenty percent?" she tried.

"You can have ten."

"Fifteen!"

"Fine." Henriette immediately leaned across the table, grabbed three coins, tossed them in the air, caught them, smirked in satisfaction, and shoved them into her pocket. I narrowed my eyes. Of twenty gold coins, three is… why, if fifty percent is ten coins, and three is a third of ten, but is it a third? Not quite… I counted on my fingers. Henriette looked at me and barked a laugh!

"By gosh, I could have taken any number of coins! You ought to sign up for accounting and math lessons the same as Lucien!"

"Hey!" I said.

"That simply takes a moment!"

"Oh, don't worry," she smirked.

"I won't cheat you. Much."

"Don't be mean!" And to put a stop to her laughing, I grabbed a pillow and swatted her right in the face. She returned the favor, and we fell into a full-fledged battle. When we were done, Henriette was huffing and puffing, red in the face.

"So — tomorrow morning, off to work you go?" she said between breaths.

"Oh, I've got the day off, actually!" I said.

"Eulalie is really nice."

"Yes!" Henriette cheered.

"So it's the library, then!"

"Absolutely," I said. Then I remembered.

"But I also want to ask around for a physician. We need to fix Ur's leg."

"I didn't even think of that," she said.

"Maybe it'll be simple, with all their bone magic!"

"Yes, I hope so too." Tomorrow could be a really nice day, I hoped — because I needed a nice day, very much. Then Henriette yawned, which set me off yawning, and we took ourselves up to bed. The next morning I woke to find myself alone in the bed. I looked at the windows. I think… I'd slept a great deal! Then I heard a girl voice from downstairs. It wasn't Henriette, and it wasn't in Russian. And whatever Ur might sound like, it surely wasn't a girl. I hurriedly changed out of my nightgown and rushed downstairs.

What I saw was a redhead demoness in a pretty dress, her arms wrapped possessively around Henriette. It was Za'rynn! The same demon who, only yesterday, had tried to coax me into letting her torture me!

"Hey, let her go!" I shouted as I descended the stairs.

"Good morning, Drizella," Za'rynn said, smiling at me.

"Oh, but you ought to share — it's only common courtesy."

"Henriette," I said, turning to her, "has she… well, did she do something to you?"

"Not really," said Henriette, with a sort of resigned look.

"She just said she's your best friend, and then started treating me like a doll."

"And can you blame me?" Za'rynn asked.

"You're just the cutest thing." She cooed and pinched Henriette's cheek.

"Ouch!"

"Let her go!" I took Henriette's hand and pulled her nearly free.

"No!" Za'rynn said, grabbing her other hand and pulling back.

"You're pulling my arms off!" Henriette shouted.

"Stop it, you two, or I'll scream!" We let the poor girl go.

"What are you doing here?" I asked Za'rynn, thoroughly annoyed.

"How did you even know where I live?"

"Oh, I know just about everything," she said, sprawling out across the sofa.

"You see, I'd meant to send you a call doll by courier today — but then I remembered you're a cave dweller, clueless about this place." She waved a lazy hand.

"So you'd have no call doll of your own to send back to me, and even if you did, I'll bet you don't know how to kiss them properly. So I gathered I'd have to come here myself."

"And that's the only reason you came, really?" I looked at her, suspicious.

"Well — that," she said, "and I was bored, too. So what have you two got planned for today? You've got the day off, if I'm not mistaken." That demon! She was well informed.

"We thought about going to the library?" said Henriette hesitantly.

"Oh, I wouldn't mind that," said Za'rynn.

"It's been ages since I last visited!" I drew Henriette aside and whispered to her.

"It'll be no fun with her tagging along."

"Why?" Henriette whispered back.

"Isn't she your friend?"

"She's trouble," I whispered.

"A whole heap of it."

"What are you two whispering about?" said Za'rynn, walking over and putting an arm round each of us.

"And don't you worry. I'm quite fun. Come along — we need to go and buy you a call doll in any case."

"I guess…" I said. Then Za'rynn's head turned toward the stairs, and I followed her gaze. It was Ur. He must have just woken up. He was limping down the staircase, looking here and there, thoroughly confused. Then he spotted us, stopped, and glared.

"Ooooh — what is that thing?" Za'rynn's eyes lit up, and she let go of us and hurried toward the urchin.

"W-Wait!" I said, but Za'rynn paid me no mind. Ur took a step back, shooting her a dangerous glare, his fist clenching.

"You picked up a lower city urchin!" she said brightly, circling him and looking him over from every side.

"This must be from yesterday, when you were running my uncle's errands. And what a thin little thing he is. Oh, I'd never have taken you for the chivalrous sort!"

"It's not… that…" I said.

"You're interesting, Drizella." Za'rynn's concluded, "I think Lamb would like you."

"Like I care," I said.

"Now leave off, you're frightening him."

"Frightening him? Despite not being older than eight, he's looking at me like he's ready to slit my throat." She offered Ur a razor-sharp smile.

"Yes, I love his eyes. You picked a good one." Just then Ur stumbled, and Za'rynn's gaze dropped to his bad leg.

"Hmm — let me see that." She took hold of it. Ur tried to pull it free and could not, and she went on turning it about and prodded here and there.

"Ahh!" Ur cried out, in a tiny voice.

"Stop that!" Henriette said.

"You're hurting him!"

"I'm examining him…" Za'rynn murmured, peering and poking.

"I'm almost certain it's a bonearm wound," she said.

"And a nasty one. The old models had short range, but absolutely ruined whatever they hit; the new ones cut clean, and are much easier to heal from."

"I was going to take him to a physician today!" I said.

"Do you know any?" she asked.

"Well… no."

"I didn't think so," she said. Then she reached down, scooped him up, and tucked him under her arm like a rolled-up rug. She strode casually toward the door.

"I know a great physician. Come on, you two! Oh, and we should pick up some clothes that actually fit him, too!" I narrowed my eyes at her. Oh, why did she get to decide what we did today?

"What… about breakfast?" I managed.

"The best food is street food," she announced.

"They've got roasted frogsnail on a stick just down the road!"

"Глупые нахальные девчонки!" came a mutter from the other room.

"Is that your butler?" Za'rynn chuckled.

"He just said we're stupid — did you know?"

"I figured as much." Za'rynn swept out the door, and since she'd made off with my newly adopted urchin, I really had no choice but to follow. Oh, this was supposed to be my fun day! I really, really hoped Za'rynn wouldn't ruin it!