AllFreeNovel
Share Us
No sooner had I asked than we reached a set of double doors emanating a bright white light.
Inside were three long banquet tables, each covered with a leather runner that rolled slowly and steadily down its length. The mechanism of its movement was readily apparent once I stood in the center of the doorway, where I could see the elf-operated cranks.
“Are those...picnic baskets?” I asked.
Sal plucked one from the end of the line and handed it to me. “For later,” she said.
“I’m not hungry,” I lied. I might have been tempted to bolt down one of the elves if I wasn’t confident they’d give me worms.
“It’s not food.”
Peaking inside, I nearly sliced myself on the razor-sharp dagger secured to the lid. Additional contents included several wooden stakes, a leather sack of black salt, candles, a compass, rope, a small hatched, and a vial of glowing green elixir.
In short, a standard-issue monster-hunting kit.
“They make these for the Order in exchange for living here?” I asked.
“They pay the Order in exchange for living here,” Sal said, resuming her long-legged stride toward a door at the back of the room. “These, they make out of duty.”
“They pay the order for lodgings and put together these baskets for free?”
“Basically.”
“This is wrong,” I said, glancing at all the small, bedraggled faces. “You’re being exploited. You know that, right? The Order is just using you as a source of cheap labor.”
“Don’t bother,” Sal said, but I could scarcely contain my outrage.
“You could walk out of here right now, and there’s not one thing they could do to you.”
“Feck off, she-wolf,” grunted the elf turning the crank nearest me. “I’m union. Three years more years, and I retire in a condo by Candy Lake.”
Sal shot a smug glance over her shoulder. “Coming?”
I huffed out a disgusted sigh and jogged to catch up.
We passed additional rooms where various other groupings of workers assembled a stimying variety of items. Rocking horses, whirligigs, jumping ropes, shoes, boots, parasols, and sweets of all shapes, sizes, and flavors.
At last, we turned down a hallway off the main corridor and climbed three sets of stairs that had my thighs screaming after our extended sprint through the forest. Then, halfway down another long hall, a candle flickered in a wrought iron sconce next to a large wooden door.
Sal slowed in front of it and reached into the pocket of her leather vest to pull out an old brass key. The large lock clicked as it opened. She pushed the door out of the way and stood back, bowing slightly at the waist, and waving a hand in an exaggerated gesture of servitude.
“My lady Katherine, our quarters for the evening.”
The contents were simple.
One brass bathtub. One old tapestry. One ragged brocade chair was seated next to the one window.
One bed.
My gulp was surely audible.
I jumped at the bracing knock on the other side of the large wooden door.
Sal opened it to reveal one of the elves holding the saddlebags that had been strapped to her mount in one hand and my dress slung over the other.
“Thanks, Bernie.” Sal pulled a coin from her leather breaches and flicked it into the air. The elf caught it mid-flip, examining it with beady eyes in the crackling firelight.
“Draw me a bath?” Sal asked, already toeing out of her battered boots.
