Keeper's Justice
Copyright© 2025 by Charly Young
Chapter 11: Quinn
The troll woman sending dumped Quinn in front of the Fremont Library. A cold, drizzling rain misted him as he walked back to his truck to retrieve his pack and the medical supplies he always assembled for Edie’s Clinic. While he yearned to go back to the warm atmosphere of the girls singing. He regretfully had to dismiss the impulse.
He sighed and turned to go do his job. Three blocks later, his mind now busy with plans, he casually stepped out of Seattle’s fall rain and into the sweltering summer heat of Oldtown’s Northmarket district.
As always, there was a momentary disorientation as a new environment overwhelmed the senses. The mélange of smells and sounds—coal smoke, horse manure, unwashed hominids. The noise—a dwarf blacksmith hammering on a huge black anvil across the lane, backlit by the yellow glow of his forge—the back-and-forth cacophony of beings from squat dwarves to tall half-blood Asrai elves to glaring trolls bargaining at the market stalls and shops. Two massive orcs patrolled the street, keeping suspicious eyes on the mass of half-starved children of all species who darted underfoot of the shouting, haggling beings.
He caught a finger-flashed greeting from two young demi-goblins munching on sweet rolls, no doubt stolen from some baker’s stall.
Quinn grinned and signed back, “Greetings, my friends. I see some coin in your future if you would find the bear-kin Kurt and send him here.”
They nodded eagerly and dashed away.
He walked down the street and as usual dropped off a pack stuffed with medical supplies at Edie’s. Her aides a cheerful pair dwarf sister’s who were busy discussing some scandal. They barely noticed the old human making a delivery for their mistress.
Quinn slipped into a dark, ramshackle pub with a crudely drawn raven on the door. The tavern stank of sweat, stale beer, and fried food. Low ceilings held a sulfurous fog of tobacco smoke from the pipes of a group of ancient dwarves.
“A table, my handsome one?” a four-foot dryad shot him a saucy grin.
“Bless you, Melia. I’ll take the one in the corner,” he replied with a smile. “I will bide a while, so be kind to an old man and send over some stew and a mug of ale. I’m expecting Kurt the Bear-kin.”
“Yes, my master.” She scurried away.
Two tall half-blood Asrai males strutted by his table on the way to the jakes in the back. They eyed him and quickly averted their gaze. His disguise was that of an elderly human woodworker, but they had somehow picked up on his menace.
Quinn chided himself to get his shit together.
“Holy crap, it’s the social worker hisself.” A were-grizzly with a full black beard stood looking at Quinn with a broad smile on his face. The chair creaked alarmingly as he sat down.
“Hey, Kurt. You’re looking good. You got my message, I see.”
“Yeah, the little bastards charged me three pennies for it, too. Greedy little thieves.”
A dwarf woman clad in a leather apron came up to their table. She leaned in and whispered in dvergrish.
“The Vampire wants you to visit.”
“Thank you, Mistress,” Quinn muttered in the same language. He pressed some coppers into her hand.
“Holy shit, you speak dvergrish. How many skills do you have?”
“Misspent youth. How is your mother and them?”
“Hale, hearty, and cunning. Her three sisters from Kodiak are visiting. Trying to marry me off.”
“Thus the reason you’re spending time in Oldtown,” Quinn laughed. “You have your ear to the ground. What is the talk of the marketplaces?”
“Not good. Times are very hard here after the old Dragon’s raging. Northmarket is doing better than most, but even it is still down. Food is short, prices are high; many, many beings are starving. They have been selling their children.”
Kurt looked around and leaned in close. “The slavers are flourishing again. With the Leprechaun gone, I thought we’d seen the last of them. My mother sent me here to see if I can pick up the scent of the Kin that have gone missing.”
“That’s why I’m here. What do you know about Southmarket?”
“Not much. I know that Larissa the Romani runs the place. It’s her private fiefdom.”
“I know of her,” Quinn said.
The human boy, known as Highpockets, rubbed his neck where the slave torc had scraped an open sore.
If he ever thought of “the other world,” it was in dreams. At those times, a girl named Annie visited him in his dreams; each time with a kindness that made him feel guilty. He relished the memory of the dream, though, because kindness was ever in short supply in Oldtown, especially for a lone human boy with no clan to protect him.
Until he had been snatched and sold, he’d been incredibly lucky. Turned out, young Lachlan was a natural at surviving on the streets. Clever, cautious, and cheerful. Everywhere he went, he made allies. He lived his life hour by hour, always in the present moment, always with an eye open for the main chance. He was naturally gregarious and willing to learn from anybody. His time with Mr. Whisker’s band of cutpurses had given him time to adapt. He had mastered the language step by step. The customs of the street had come slower, but they had come. He was too small and awkward on the snatch, but thanks to his quick mind and steady nerve, he was soon in demand as a spotter.
His big break had come as he was munching on a stolen sweet roll while hiding under a boardwalk in front of a greengrocer. He overheard two Gray Goblins talking about one of their clan-sister’s plans to rob Mr. Whiskers. He quickly informed Mr. Whiskers, and the old dwarf had taken steps and foiled the plot. That piece of intelligence got him a month’s worth of food and lodging. That was when he realized information was valuable, so he began to collect it and sell it. Mr. Whiskers had been so pleased that he gifted the boy with a slightly used pair of green leather britches. They were comically too big for him, but he was inordinately proud of them, as only a small boy could be. He wore them almost clinched to his armpits and was forever more gifted with the name Highpockets.
His friend Ninefingers had found his mother’s clan and went off to join them in far-off Southmarket. So Highpockets and the two young half-blood Asrai girls who had rescued him that first day had formed an efficient trio. They had made a connection with a female named Oracle. Her pawn shop was a combination fence and information broker for the guilds and merchants who ran Northmarket. Soon the three were in the marketplace gossip business, earning enough coins to keep them fed and sheltered in Mr. Whisker’s rambling inn.
They also made a nice bit of coin steering customers to Small Meg’s bordello in the red-light neighborhood. The girls there spoiled the three of them and were also an excellent source of gossip tidbits about the comings and goings of their betters.
By the one-year mark, young Lachlan had fully mastered his environment. An impressive feat, considering he couldn’t even speak the language when he arrived. His blue eyes held both the sharp calculation of a survivor. Far older than the rest of him, those eyes never stopped watching, learning, planning his next move in the endless game of urban survival.
A game he was winning until the beauty of his two female partners attracted the attention of the slaver Half-ear and his sister L’eena. Then came a night when he awoke with a knot on his head and a torc around his neck in a slave kennel in the Shambles. The girls were gone.
Six months later
The boy seethed with rebellion. Months of beatings and terrible food in the Tanners Guild Kennels had turned him utterly feral. He no longer noticed the foul smells. He was filthy, flea-bitten and lousy.
The old human who had been kind to him when he was first enslaved was now sick with kennel fever. He would die soon, the boy knew. Humankind did not survive long in this place. Lachlan had done his best to keep the old being warm and fed, but the chills still racked him. He knew the old man had given up and would soon die. He tucked his threadbare blanket around the old guy.
The man whispered, his voice rattling with the phlegm that was filling his lungs. “Listen, boy, you must escape as soon as you can. The Druid searches for you. I’ve made some connections for you. When the time comes, you must make the leap.”
Lachlan shook his head. He’d heard of the Druid, of course; beings whispered his name, lest singing it loud would attract his attention. All he knew of him was that he was one of the god-like beings who ruled Oldtown.
The old man died in the night.
A week later, one of the troll overseers kicked him awake.
“Get you up.”
He marched the boy to the gate. Two huge orc males, their faces and bodies horrifically scarred from the fighting pits in Southmarket, awaited there. They seized him up and dragged him out of the kennel and onto the lane where a shiny black carriage stood. They opened the door and casually threw him in.
He rearranged himself on the seat and looked around, trying his best to contain the terror wrought by this new circumstance.
A tiny hook-nosed human woman sat across from him.
She studied him curiously. “The Druid wants you dead, boy. Why? What did you do to him?”
Lachlan shook his head mutely.
“No matter. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. I’m too busy this day for puzzles. Get the torc off of him.”
The orc coachman grabbed him roughly and ran a controller over his neck. The torc released and fell to the ground.
“Remember, if you survive, you owe Larissa the Romani a debt this day.” She nodded to a dark-haired little girl who sat next to him. “Nessa, take him to the gate in Northmarket and push him across.”
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.