16 Enemy at the Gates (2/2)

”Yes, that's what she said,” I answered for the nth time. ”The doctors think mom's starting to come around.”

I glanced sideways at Luca and saw the furrowed brow that was way too serious to be on a fourteen-year-old's face. Luca blamed himself for mom's deep dive into mental illness, not that it was really his fault. But the kid felt responsible despite me saying so.

I patted him on the back reassuringly. ”She'll be up and joking about wanting to cut your long hair by the time you get to go home.”

I turned my gaze on Aura who also had a frown on her beautiful face while she listened to Luca's brooding. Her mask was hidden in the satchel she carried. It wouldn't do to wear a golden mask in a city like Sellsword's as it would only attract the wrong crowd.

Aura didn't think my mom was getting better at all. She even admitted to me that she believed mom was getting worse, and she didn't know why.

Even though it wasn't part of our agreement, Aura sent some of the clan healers to help mom recover but all their attempts were nothing more than temporary measures. Mom always devolved back to the catatonic state I'd found her in, and no one, not the human doctors or the fairy healers, could tell us why.

Between the two of them brooding away like that, this side quest wasn't turning out to be the fun field trip I envisioned it would be. The only ones who seemed to enjoy themselves were Varda and Edo who were both enjoying a game of fairy-watching.

Basically, they picked random people in the long line to the city gates and made up stories about them. These stories started out fairly tame, like when Varda pointed at a gruff-looking troll with a wooden cart's ropes hoisted onto his back harness like he was his own pack-horse and said the troll was a trader looking to sell exotic products from the Gemsea. These tall tales eventually got taller and taller, turning into fantastic tales of dragon-slaying errant knights on secret quests or fairy princesses running away from their cruel clan patriarchs who wanted to marry them off to a rival clan's heir.

I had just about rolled my eyes on that last one when Edo pointed to a group of black-hooded people who had just left the city's great iron gates and said they were thieves.

At this point, we were near enough now in the line that we could see the intricate designs pounded on the thirty-foot-tall iron front gates, as well as the stone-cut carvings on the surface of the two canyon walls on either side of the gate. These giant carvings were depictions of human slaves carrying heavy loads under the scrutiny of their fairy masters.

It was certifiably disturbing and an all too familiar sight for me and Luca.

Four people dressed all in black cloaks and hoods were making their way quickly through the exiting crowd and didn't really care that they were roughly pushing the people in line out of their way. Meanwhile, several gongs boomed from inside the gates that sounded suspiciously like they were an alarm of some kind.

”Told you,” Edo said smugly.

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Varda shook her head. ”You're supposed to make their backgrounds up, Edo! Not actually guess who they are...”

I didn't think that was the problem she needed to point out as these four black hooded figures were very close to us now, and a little ways behind them were a small group of armed fairies wearing the orange tabards of the city guard. They were obviously giving chase to the four hooded figures before us.

Edo raised his glaive's steel pole and planted it down hard in front of Aura in a thou-shall-not-pass sort of vibe.

Seeing this giant obstruction, the four hooded figures gave the bare-chested half-ogre a wide birth. And it seemed like they were about to pass us without causing trouble when, with no prompting, Luca jumped in their way with his broadsword raised.

I slapped my forehead in annoyance because I'd forgotten that Luca was such a goody-goody-two-shoes. I may be the one with short hair like Captain America, but Luca lived by the same code as the superhero he idolized.

This meant that I, being the big brother, was always getting into fights to help my saint of a little brother out of whatever trouble he got himself into in the name of fair play. It was exactly the same case now as I drew my falchion from its sheathe and charged forward.