Inheritance

Month 2 – Week 1 – Day 1

The Matriarchy – Northern Territories; The Town of Orc’s End

Thieves. The lot of them were bloody thieves and ruffians. Out of wood her sweet arse! There was some awful goblin of a man with boney arms, a ruddy face, and a hooked nose telling her that the funds provided to him by the Matriarch’s representative had run out and that her home couldn’t be completed without fifteen more pieces of gold

“But I don’t have fifteen pieces of gold.” Dara was trying to get it through to this… this… There were not words for what she was feeling toward him right now.

“Aww now miss,” The weasel-thief of indeterminate age, somewhere between a hard-worn twenty-five and a well preserved but unattractive fifty-something, had let his voice take on the knowing tone of one who thinks he has information that will give him the upper hand. “I know that you are the Mistress of whatever new enterprise is being built here.” It was the same tone that men back home used to take with her when trying to get her to admit that she really did have that secret rumored treasure that her parents supposedly left her.

She didn’t want to be here, staying in this inn and pub, and putting up with imbeciles like this. Yet here she was in the smoke-filled room getting ambushed by yet another man about to proposition her. There’d been at least one every night. The dim yellow glow of the sputtering flame cast by the cheap oil burning in the wall sconce lamps was hurting her eyes and men, in general, were starting to cause headaches.

“Be that as it may,” Taking a deep breath she tried not to lose her temper. “I’m not in control of the funds, I have no access to them.” This would be so much simpler if she could use her magic to lift him by the scruff of the neck and put the fear of The Matriarch and her representatives in him. Even though she wasn’t one of her grandmother’s representatives, he did believe that she was one, and the fact that only a mere week and a half’s travel from the capital government officials were being shaken down by lowly con artists needed to be dealt with.

Unfortunately, Dara’s skills hadn’t advanced to that point yet. And hurling him across the room wasn’t going to happen unless his criminal repertoire included something more serious than petty extortion. Unless she was acting in self-defense, it seemed that so far, she was only able to move smaller things. Though she was able to do this truly impressive yet harmless thing which made her hair move about as if there was a wind when there was none and make a slight…brightness in the air around her.

Both skills she felt every witch should have in spades, but something that she had spent the better part of a month practicing every night when she needed encouragement after failing at everything else she had tried. Her troublemaking foreman seemed determined to get something from her for his troubles though as he upped his game by placing an understanding hand over the back of hers.

“Listen. Maybe a crowded pub isn’t the place to discuss your financial problems.” His eyebrows lifted suggestively, and his dry dirty thumb began stroking over the back of her hand and his other hand set down on her knee under the table. Dara’s eyes widened momentarily in surprise and then narrowed as she braced herself for what was coming. “Perhaps you’d be more comfortable talking in private. We could go back up to your room for a few hours…” Oh. He’d gone there. She plastered her best sultry smile on her face and watched the light of excited expectation fill her foreman’s eyes.

“Oh, that wouldn’t do at all.” She let her magic out and made the air a little brighter around her. “I’m assuming by your behavior that you have heard why I was exiled here?” She winked at him and he almost fell out of his chair. That was an effect on men she’d never had before. Perhaps she was getting better control of her powers? More likely he was just drunk and horny. He wet his lips and nodded.

“You were exiled for being unable to keep yourself under control and trying to seduce too many men.” He confessed. “I figured that you’ve been all by your lonesome since you got here and might be missing it a little. I could help you out, you could help me out.” The disgusting little man shrugged like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“No.” The flat note of command came out without her even trying and the sly smile fell from his face. “I was exiled because I’m a magic wielder who used her magic to defend herself against a man who got angry at me when he made a similar proposition to the one you are making now. Now she concentrated very hard and did that thing which made her hair wave as if in a breeze, snaking around her head as if it were alive in the draft-less and crowded barroom. She brightened that light she’d worked so very hard to conjure.

“Tomorrow,” Dara continued as the expression on her foreman’s face changed from one of disappointment to uncertainty to mildly disturbed. “When you get to my farm tomorrow, you will find that you have already been paid all the money which is necessary to complete your job. And tomorrow evening you will have an entirely different view about how you should deal with Representatives of the Matriarch.”

“Listen here little girl. I was willing to help you but if you are going to play games with me then maybe we’ll need to ask for doub…” That was it. That threat from him was the motivation she needed to access her powers with more strength. Before she had even thought it, her dinner knife picked itself off the table and then plunged itself into the wood beside his arm. It took all of her self-control not to stab him through the arm. He jumped back startled, releasing her hand at the same time. His expression was now startled and fearful.

“Good. I think we understand one another.” With that she stood and left for her room. Thankfully she didn’t start shaking until the door to her rented room was bolted behind her.