“You’re a fool,” Yannoma had told him.
But she didn’t try to stop him. That was probably his favorite thing about Yannoma. She would always tell him exactly what she thought, but she let him make his own choices—he was just not to bring trouble to her door.
He knew she thought he was going to get himself killed trying to meet a Mage Warrior. But wasn’t it equally possible that he wouldn’t? Might it not go completely right instead of completely wrong?
He couldn’t meet his grandfather—who’d started all of this, according to his grandmother. His grandfather was dead. But his uncle was still alive.
Trill liked to think that if he put good energy out into the world, he would get good energy back. Yannoma laughed at him any time he mentioned this, but Trill ignored her. She couldn’t knoweverything, could she?
She’d sighed. “You’re so young.”
He’d shrugged. “I’m twenty-one.”
She’d made a face. “Such a baby. When you’re as old as I am—”
He’d made a theatrical face. “Is that even possible?”
She’d clucked and swatted her arm at him, and he’d danced out of the way, laughing. She’d shaken her head, but her expression was fond.
“I don’t think I ever saw the world the way you do, little one. But be careful. It can hurt you.”
She was living proof of that.
He knew that she thought he didn’t understand that, but he did. His mother would have told him that there were bad things lurking around every corner, that they’d been mistreated and they deserved so much more. Trill chose to see everything as anopportunityjust waiting to be seized.
Trill wasn’t ever going to stay at home and riskstewing in bitterness. He could think of no fate worse than that—and that included what had happened to Yannoma. He wished he was able to help her more. He ensured that she was fed, and his coin helped keep a roof over their heads, but it wasn’t the same as being whole.
“Do try not to die,” she’d told him.
Trill had given her a hug, and she’d hugged him back for a moment before she’d shoved him off and told him to go do his dumb thing if he was determined to do so.
He was so determined!
He’d lost his chance to ever see his grandfather; he wasn’t going to lose his chance to see his uncle, too, even if Yannoma said Royal City was the most dangerous place that he could ever go.
It was huge, Trill would give it that. He would have liked to stay outside amidst nature, but it was getting cold, and there wasn’t nearly as much nature in a city this size. It was all houses and buildings and cobblestones and people and animals and… He’d never seen anything quite like it.
Yannoma should really have told him how ugly the city was, and he might have had second thoughts about the whole thing. He wasn’t sure what to make of a city that was this large. There were so many people. On the one hand, this was freeing. It couldn’t have been easier for Trill to feed. He was practically full just from walking around! There were simply so many people, and enough of them admired someone they saw around them. The cumulative wisps of arousal kept him well fed.
But Trill didn’t just need to feed. Thankfully, Yannoma had taught him well. He knew the best ways to look appealing and a bit helpless so that someone would take him home for the night. She’d always told him that there was one easy way to earn money and stay fed when you were irresistibly attractive. People paid for their pleasures, whether it was up front or because they were willing to take care of you.
Houses of pleasure were the best place to do this, if you wanted to be sure of getting paid and staying safe. But Yannoma had said she didn’t know anyone in Royal City anymore because anyone with brains steered clear of it. It was the home base of the Mage Warriors and the Warriors, and that made it the most likely city for carnalions and their children to die in.
Trill didn’t want to attract the wrong kind of attention, so he played it simple, found a pub, and then found a nice man whowanted to take him home. There was always a nice man, at least for the night. Usually, all it took was a bashful admission that he was new to the city and hoping to enjoyeverythingin it. It meant it was often a new place each night, but Trill didn’t mind that. Sometimes, someone enjoyed themselves enough to keep him for a few days.
Trill wasn’t sure how long he was going to be here, but he was beginning to understand that his goal might be harder to achieve than he’d originally thought.
The castle drawbridge was down during the day, but it was always guarded with multiple Warriors, and from the look of it, strangers were questioned. Trill was smart enough to not simply announce the reason he’d come, and although he was not nearly as cautious as Yannoma, he could hear her in the back of his mind telling him to at least, for the love of all the elements,not walk into the castle where all the Mage Warriors who want to put us to death live.
So Trill spent a fair bit of time walkingbythe castle, walkingaroundthe castle, and looking at the Warriors who guarded the castle. (They wereso pretty. He loved looking at all those muscles and seeing how fit they were. It was a joy.)
One night, he was even able to follow a bunch of them to the pub they frequented.
See, Yannoma?He hadnotgone into the castle! Yes, all right, he’d instead gone to the highest concentration of Warriors that he could find outside of the castle, but there was still no drawbridge that could suddenly trap him inside. That was him showing some common sense, wasn’t it?
He didn’t see anyone who looked like he might be his uncle Cormal. His mother had had a drawing of her father. The only reason it hadn’t been destroyed was because she seemed to like to yell at it when she’d had too much to drink, but Trill had made sure to memorize it. He couldn’t be exactly certain abouthis uncle, but he hoped he would be able to recognize him once he saw him.
Trill sat as close as he dared to the Warriors and watched them drinking and dancing, trying to soak up everything about them. Could he risk a question?
