Lady Rat

One of His Majesty Alastar’s real daughters, Princess Alicia, once ask him to disfigure me. I as a seven-year-old child looked too much like my whore of a mother. At twelve her Highness was too young and ignorant to know the great Estelle, my mother had been a singer, and poet known by all in the literary and musical circles. The woman who named me Janice after her own grandmother and taught me all she could. All she was allowed to teach me.

That request of my facial mutilation was made the day after Estelle died blue-lipped in my child’s arms. Our father refused his favoured daughter’s request. He said it was a waste of a pretty face. He had a soft spot for my mother in her living, but it had never extended to her child. Except for that moment. To him I had been an obstacle over the isolation he forced my mother into. I didn’t expect him to help him and he never did again after that day.

From that day on the hatred Princess Alicia had for me only grew. So did mine, towards the royal family as a whole. She sent me a bag of grey rags as the only thing I could wear and a mask she had some of the youngest of the concubines’ daughters make me. It had a grossly shaped snout, horsehair whiskers, and was made out of mice skins. Our younger sisters were already creative at four and five years of age. They used rabbit skin glue to put it all together. I was not allowed to take it off in front of others, let them see my face. Therefore, I had to sew it back together once the glue was worn out. Along with this costume came a new name. Rat. A rat who heard many things, never spoke. Couldn’t write either. All those who confided into me made sure of it, to keep me from revealing their secrets. There was nothing more that I wanted than to do, than just that. Air out the filthy, disgusting laundry of the capital’s palaces.

Soon most forgot the name my mother had given me. Those who had known me as Janice didn’t use it fearing the wrath of the king’s favourite princess. The queen’s only child. At ten years of age, I was appointed as her punishment barer. It was her gift for entering high society. She had begged King Alastar for it for her last three birthdays. I was already used to the cane by that age. But I didn’t expect this new vitriol from the royal nanny as she punished me for the princess’s antics.

Ten years later, and her Highness was still living at the palace, refusing all marriage proposals claiming she wanted to marry a hero like in fairytales. I was still living in the royal palace donjons with their enslaved entertainers. Covered in scars and bruises, hoping one day I would see her head on a spike. At night I pictured how the scene would look like. It was the only way I could fall asleep in my rotting hammock.

But she didn’t have this problem, she slept well in her feather bed from sundown until noon. In the early morns as she rolled under her duvet, I reached the slums through the sewers near my cell. The barred door wasn’t locked, her Highness Alicia knew I wouldn’t run away only to leave my closest friend to be punished for my flight. Lily, we had grown up together from the age of six. Her cell was next to mine. It was locked until the princess woke. Lily was her jester. She was also made to wear a costume. A colourful patchwork that contrasted with mine, and a ridiculous hat adorned with a stuffed fabric horn and bells. We would spend our evenings playing cards. I had them hidden a bit everywhere. They were stolen from the guest’s playhouse.

She would bid me farewells every time I left through the sewer. As if I would leave her after all the princess’s threats. The main canals were barred off but not the high ones for overflow during the great rains. The street urchins taught me how to be swift and silent-footed like a pick pocket. The older kids showed me how to defend myself and how to wield a knife. They also gave their accounts of what they would hear around the main and side streets. In exchange for all this knowledge, I brought them medicines I had made from the palace’s abandoned herb garden. I showed them how to use the concoctions the way I had learned from one of the temple’s sisters. She visited the donjons once a week for the enslaved folks’ ailments, of the royal’s favourites mostly. They were the ones who required to most attention from a healer. Maybe it was because she had found me bleeding with infected wounds too often that she took pity on me. But I wasn’t the only one in such a state. She told me about the rumours going around the temple.

Another person who would tell me rumours was old Lucius, the king’s gold councillor. He enjoyed having me around as a healer. His joins would swell on rainy days. What he enjoyed even more was to hear himself speak in his stuffy little office covered in old expensive carpets to hide the walls on which he could not afford a new lime wash and paint job done. The state would normally pay for that. Even it was depleted of riches while his majesty rolled in its remains.

“A slave,” he started while I wrapped his left knee in cloth, I had soaked the strips in an infusion of pepper mint, to alleviate the sting from the nettles I had used on him. “A former slave I should say. He’s taken the North and the East.” He glanced at my shaking head swaying side to side. “You’re right. He did not take it himself. Somehow, he won over the counts and convinced them to take over the dukes. And now his army is marching to the capital. Am I missing something?” There was also—, “Oh, yes, and the barbarians in the western steppes who have made peace with the orcs. Now they both raid our villages and burn our crop fields, together.” We were—, “Utterly fucked, aren’t we?”

I wrapped his right blistering knee. His Majesty the king had done nothing to prepare for the impending siege. Only his council had taken action.

“Here’s what you haven’t heard yet little rat.”He coughed. “I was approached by one of his spies. You know who I am talking about? The one proclaimed a hero by anybody who has less than a coin to their name.” Our northeastern threat seemed he had an ally in Lucius. “Oldrek was his name, I think.” It was Oldrak. Rumour on the street was that he was on his way to free the enslaved folk of the capital as he had done in the north and the east. “His army is three days away. He ordered his men not to lay a hand on the slaves of the castle, once raid comes to shove. I am most likely to live, they need the council to have the city function. And I may or may not have been funding the rebellion with the last few gold coins I have to my name. You, on the other hand, do not have a collar under these rags. And you carry Alastar’s fowl blood.” It was not lack of Princess Alicia’s pressures on the king. No matter how much we hated it, we shared his Majesty’s blood. To have me dawn a collar would be an insult to the royal line more than my existence as a bastard. “You better find a way to weasel out of this city before your identity is exposed.”

I took a nettle leaf with my wooden tweezers. It was time to do his wrists. A knock boomed at the door.

“Come in.” The old man made his voice quake more than it did naturally. “If it isn’t Theo.”

“Sir Theodore.” He was corrected. What a knight in his spotless armour and new sword that had never tasted blood other than that of little girls. I could still feel his recent blows to my stomach at legs while he was on duty. He happened to be His Majesty Alastar’s personal guard. Being ordered to hit me was a treat to him. “Out, Rat.” Between us two it was hard to know who had the most disdain for the other. I had the most reasons to. Especially as a bore the bruise he had forced onto me with his feet.

“What are you afraid of? You know she can’t speak. And besides, she is tending to an important task.”

“Our king demands for you in the rose gardens. It’s about his wedding.”

His next concubine had already moved to the rose palace with the rest of them. She must have been distracting him from the imminent threat to his neck.

“His twelfth wedding you mean. Isn’t he concerned it may be interrupted by a siege?”

“His Majesty the king wants his gold councillor to do his job.”

“He will wait after this poor man’s treatment. I will need it journeying through rain like this.”

“His Majesty doesn’t wait.”

I looked between the two. Theodore would have been more than happy to drag him out. Sick prick.

“Well, then little Rat.” The old man patted my shoulder. “We shall go our separate ways.”

I gathered my things and helped him up. I was careful to curtsy them on my way out. My feet had been caned one too many times after forgetting to. Now I was so accustomed to pain it had lost its threat. I still bent the knee from habit.

I needed to get out of the capital. That was the easy part. Taking Lily with me would be complicated. My closest friend was her Highness Alicia’s favoured jester. The princess brought her along everywhere these days. We would have to leave the next morning. Lily was a bad runner, climber, and she was a loud walker. The sewers would be hard for her, but we were too conspicuous to stride out the front doors. Once in the slums, I knew a smuggler who could get us out. If he was still in town.

As I was walking in the rain to the old herb garden for some last-minute trading materials, I heard the capital bells ring in the distance. Then the castle’s rung as well. Forget about three days. The siege was happening now. The hero was knocking on our doors with a battering ram and now was the worst time to have Royal blood. I ran back inside to Princess Alicia’s tearoom where she was entertaining guests with her jesters. I arrived in the hallway as guards were guiding the ladies down the stairs of the living quarters. I caught up to Lily who closed the march with her short steps.

“Good! My rat is here.” Princess Alicia noticed my arrival. She halted the group glancing at Lily’s hand in mine. “If the imp runs, kill it.” One of the guards turned to us with his palm on the pommel of his sword. “Rat, you shall be my cup barer for tonight. Fetch me wine from the cellar and bring it to me in the crypts.”

“Go.” Lily said under her breath keeping her head down.

I knew what she meant. To leave without her. But I couldn’t.

Things were getting from shit to worse. Those liberators might have been given orders that should spare her, there was no way I would trust bloodied warriors in a room full of defenseless damsels. Although most were akin to monsters with their lack of morals. I arrived at the cellar drenched from the rain. The head chef was already raiding it, pointing his cleaver at me as I opened the door.

“Oh, it’s you.” He unsealed some of the king’s cognac to have a big gulp. “Take whatever. While there is still some.”

I carried a short barrel of cherry wine with me, along with a carafe and a few golden goblets. As if the Princess was the kind to share her wine.

The crypts were dreary. The company was worse, aside from Lily, who was dancing for her Highness Alicia. It was one of her attempts at a gigue. Her legs were too short for it. Usually, it had the princesses laughing but they were too occupied praying for their lives with their ladies-in-waiting. Our guests were probably thinking now had been the worst time ever to be visiting.

“Took you long enough.” Princess Alicia looked me up and down with disgust. As if wondering why she wanted to spend her last moments in my presence. “Bring me wine, I’m thirsty.”

I tended to her refreshments until half the barrel was gone and she fell asleep. After that, Lily and I played cards behind a tomb by candlelight.

“You should have left when she gave you the chance.” She squinted at her cards.

I took one from the draw pile. It gave me a full suite.

“Now we’ll both be raped alongside these fine ladies.”

I grabbed the dices.

“You have a hand?”

I nodded.

“Looks like you’re going to fuck me before any of these bloodthirsty warriors get to.”

I showed her one of my daggers hidden in my costume.

“My hero, I hope you know how to use it.”

I rolled the dices. Two fives. I spread out my cards.

“Curse you, I lost again.” She threw her own down.

Yelling, from behind the doors. I blew out our candle. The ladies screamed in terror. With my dagger at hand, I dragged Lily in the darkest corner. She kept her hands on her mouth not to scream as well. A soldier came our way, and I tripped him about to slit his throat when a voice reached us from the doorway ending the chaos.

“The princesses are to be brought to the throne room. Our hero will pick one as his bride.”

“What about the others?” clamoured one of them.

“I was only told about the princesses.”

We couldn’t stay there a second more. I knocked out the struggling man beneath me with a blow behind the head. Hopefully the old gold councillor would be right about the spare order. I dragged Lily from hiding. She was still in shock. I approached the man that had relayed the order. He had a fitting black leather armour, but the pommel of his sword was silver. I really hoped he was high ranked. I showed him Lily’s collar.

“Is this a carnival?” He glanced down from my mask, then her hat, then to her neck. His expression grew serious. “Jeriha?” A young man in similar armour came in the crypts at the call. “Escort the little woman to the mess hall with the others freed by our hero, Oldrak”

“Oldrak!” the soldiers boasted, busy dragging out the ladies he had identified as princesses.

“Lady Rat is a healer.” Lily spoke up breathing deep to keep cool.

She lifted my satchel.

“You are?” he squinted at me. It must have been hard to believe with the costume.

I nodded.

“Wait … a healer with a rat’s mask.” His eyes grew big again. “You’re the saint of the capital.” I had never heard anybody refer to me as such. “You saved some of our informants in the slums.” I practised first aid on a lot of people in the slums. “Our hero was nicked by the king’s guard. He hasn’t requested it, but he needs a healer. All of ours are in the field.”

I clung to Lily.

“She won’t go without me.” She acted as my mouthpiece.

“Fine then, Jeriha, escort them both to the throne room as well.”