After Muckley and others were nowhere to be seen, Tar and Lya sighed in relief. Tar returned the “borrowed” metal bowl to the beggar next to him, and muttered, “Thank you. You saved our lives.” Tar dropped three bronze coins into the metal bowl. “I hope this is enough to repay you.” The muffled snores of the beggar hid the impact sound of the coins from the night.
“What the hell?” Lya growled. “That’s three bronze coins you’re giving him. Three!”
“Let’s wait until it’s morning. We’ll sneak in when…”
“We could’ve had food! Hell, we could’ve stayed in a nice inn for a night with that money! And not here in the cold!”
“We’ll sneak in when people rush to get food in the morning. From what I can tell, there are a lot of people waiting for food so there should be enough of a distraction…”
“Don’t you dare ignore me!” Lya shouted.
The snore which was accompanying them suddenly stopped. Tar gave Lya an alarming look and Lya begrudgingly fell silent. The two of them held their breath. After thirty seconds of utter silence, the snore resumed. The beggar was once again in deep slumber.
Lya sighed. “How much do you have left?”
Tar pulled out the remaining coins in his pocket and showed them to Lya. Two bronze coins.
Lya shook her head. How was that enough? And if they couldn’t save Kyu tomorrow, they would starve! Lya clicked her tongue when she realised she should have stolen some money beforehand. But no worries, because she could just take those three bronze coins back from the metal bowl. As her hand extended to the beggar’s metal bowl, ready to retrieve those coins, Tar grabbed her arm firmly in place.
“No.”
Lya’s eyes widened in shock and exasperation. A gush of hot air rose from her stomach to her throat.
“Let go of me.”
Tar shook his head.
“Let go. We need the money.”
“No.”
“Let me go, little mongrel! I’m taking our money back!”
“Please, Lya. Please” Tar gave Lya a pleading look. “If it weren’t for the metal bowl, we would have looked suspicious. He might’ve saved our lives. These three bronze coins are the least we can repay him.”
“I… I…” Behind her stuttering, she knew Tar was right. Muckley was observant. Just by seeing her eyes, he was suspicious. If they hadn’t had the metal bowl, Muckley would have surely pressed on.
“It’s my money. And I decided to give the money to him.” Tar let Lya’s arm go. “Because it’s the right thing.”
Those words echoed in her head. “The right thing”. Be kind. Be generous. Always pay back a favour. She used to hear about “the right thing”, but not anymore. She did not know how to feel when that dusty phrase resurfaced.
“I don’t get you men! It’s not like I’m murdering people! Or… Or betraying others! Why do you men care so much about this… this… puny pride of yours? ‘The right thing’, ‘the right thing’, ‘the right thing’… Just die if you’re so scared of doing anything but ‘the right thing’!” Lya scratched her head furiously, which made her hair even messier. “You’re so, so, so dumb! Tar, you’re dumb! Stupid! What’s wrong with you and your ‘right thing’? Just die! Go to hell! ‘The right thing’ my ass! If it weren’t for this laughable pride, then Mr Scalp… Mr Scalp…”
There was a tiny quiver in her voice. Without saying another word, Lya curled up into a ball and buried her face in her knees. “What are you looking at? There’s nothing for you to look at. Look away.”
Tar might look composed, but he was disoriented inwardly. One moment she was angry at him, and one moment she looked like she was pouting. Just what was going on with this girl? Wait… She looked like she was about to cry… There was no way, right? With his mouth agape, the chilling wind blew against the back of his throat. Tar wanted to say something, anything, but nothing came out.
A minute passed… Two minutes passed… And then three… The increasing coldness was like a metronome, reminding Tar of the passing time, but still, Tar couldn’t muster up a single word. He merely looked at Lya worriedly.
Lya slowly turned her head toward Tar. Under the moonlight was a girl’s tiny face, and on it were feelings of regret and melancholy. The girl forced a smile. The dimples were deep, like a spell engraved on her cheeks, granting her the power to endure anything.
“Big sis and I were abandoned in the streets. We never knew our parents. I mean, we never cared to know who those pieces of shit are anyway. Maybe out of sheer luck, or maybe ‘God’ is playing a trick on us, we managed to survive on our own, somehow.”
Tar could only wonder what the two sisters did just to survive.
Seeing through Tar, Lya continued. “Begging and stealing, of course. Sorry I’m not in the same moral high ground as you are.” She rolled her eyes when she emphasised the words “moral high ground”. “Eight years ago, in the Great Calamity, we met someone.”
The Great Calamity was the term Eustacians used to denote the war which led to the occupation of East Frey. In the war which lasted for more than half a year, all Tar could remember was the tedious travelling he and his father did, where they finally settled in the Amber Mansion in West Frey.
“After a skirmish in the outskirt of East Frey had just ended, big sis and I went looting the dead bodies. It was snowing quite heavily, and some corpses were already covered in a thin film of snow. As I was searching for items away from my sister, I heard her scream. I immediately turned my head to see what was happening.
“The corpse big sister was trying to loot suddenly jumped up. I got a good look at his face. Its face. It no longer had a human face. It was bloodied, beaten, bruised… Its head twitched uncontrollably as some unintelligible sentences came out from its mouth. A moment later, it realised big sis was next to him and it screamed in terror. I had never heard such… unhuman screeches before. It must have thought my sister was an enemy and swung its axe at her. Of course, I wanted to help, but my knees went weak. I couldn’t move. Right before the axe hit her, I heard a ‘woosh’ sound of something breaking the wind. The axeman froze in place, and dropped its axe. A few seconds later, he collapsed onto the snowy ground, with an arrow right in its eye.
“A muscular man entered my peripheral vision. He held a bow with his left hand, and a strange weapon with his right. We were deathly afraid when he approached us. ‘Has our time finally come?’ I thought. It’s impossible for us to defend against a person like that.
“He strode toward my sister. I thought he was going to do something horrible to her. Maybe if I drew his attention to me, at least big sis could escape, so I screamed as loud as I can. But the man didn’t stop. When Lya was within arm’s reach of him, I realised she was going to die. And then I am going to die. But something unexpected happened. The man crouched down and gave big sis a hug. He carried her gently toward me before hugging us altogether. ‘It’s alright now,’ he softly spoke. ‘I promise you I won’t let anyone hurt you.’” Lya sneaked a glance at Tar. Still stoic as ever.
She continued. “That’s how we met Mr Scalp. Mr Scalp was one of the army generals at that time. He was brave, cool, and strong. Although his army was the smallest one, each and every soldier he led was an elite. They fought with Eustacian pride, especially Mr Scalp, he never faltered when facing danger.” A faint smile appeared on her face, but disappeared almost instantly. “But he had one fatal flaw. He cared too much about ‘the right thing’. That pride was his one weakness.”
