Cultivating Ink 4

Alaric's heart hammered in his chest as his fingers tightened around the glowing stone. A warmth spread through his body, like he was holding the very concept of warmth in his hand.

Unfortunately, he could see that he was already too late. The people was looking at him like the way the gang members had been looking to a rich drunk that stumbled into the wrong street. Absentmindedly, he noticed the tiny rock throbbed the same way, following his heartbeat.

That miracle wasn’t enough to deal with the covetous gaze of the people that filled the marketplace, their earlier kindness replaced by a covetous desire.

It might have surprised Alaric if he was truly a young scholar from a rich family. But he was a slum rat, and he had seen best friends killing each other for a piece of bread at the worst of the winter. And, the weight of their stares was intense.

He thought about throwing the rock away, but he had a feeling that, even throwing it away wouldn’t solve his problem. It might have, if he was a scholar from a well-off family like he tried to convince them. That way, he could just offer the rock to the city lord through the guards, and earn their protection that way.

But, with his identity, the only thing he would get was a quick death, and that was if he was lucky.

"Hey, you there!" a gruff voice called out as he walked. Alaric recognized him. It was the first merchant he had painted, this time surrounded by two gruff man that looked like bodyguards. They didn’t have swords, but the clubs they carried was deadly enough against him.

“Oh, you’re here to help me? Thank you, kind master,” Alaric said as he started walking toward them after grabbing his brush and his ink. While doing that, he also grabbed a stone from the ground.

The old man looked surprised, before a vicious smirk spread to his face. “Of course, I owe you one,” he said.

“Here it is,” Alaric said even as he pressed the stone he picked from the ground to his hand. “I don’t think I can afford carrying it, old master,” he said. The moment he did that, he turned and rushed away.

“Hey, catch him. It’s a fake,” the old man growled, but it was too late. Walking toward him also brought Alaric to the low wall that he had been eyeing as a potential escape route. One of the bodyguards rushed toward him, but he flung the ink to his face, which gave him just enough to arrive at the low wall.

He heaved himself up expertly — climbing was one of the most critical survival skills for an undersized orphan living in slums. The second bodyguard caught up, but Alaric smashed his feet to his fingers, preventing him from chasing him.

Beneath him, the marketplace exploded in movement. “Here it is, don’t follow me,” Alaric shouted, but instead of throwing the glowing rock, he threw an ordinary one. It clunked against the roof at the other side.

It was a bluff. Alaric still had the glowing rock in hand, mostly out of preservation. He knew that, if he got caught, having the rock with him gave him a chance to survive. A small one, but it was better than nothing.

As he ran away, the chaos in the marketplace turned into a stampede. Some of the people tried to edge away, able to resist their greed — mercy or fear, Alaric didn’t know, of particularly care at this moment — while the others rushed for their target. However, some were determined to follow him while the others believed the bait he had thrown, pressing against each other to find a path.

Alaric jumped up on a roof, then ducked down some awnings as he threw himself down, cutting a path toward the walls.

He knew exactly where he was going thanks to the mental map of the area, having long anticipated that his disguises would end up in such a way. Though, he had always assumed that it was because his identity was revealed, and not because of the misguided kindness of a noble.

Soon, Alaric was on an abandoned alley, filled with broken crates and empty barrels. He vaunted over one, and ducked under another, until he reached to a broken wall he had been searching. He scuttled under it, and pulled one of the crates to hide himself.

“Now, let’s get rid of the disguise,” he muttered even as he pulled the scholar robe fast enough to rip its complicated bindings. However, he didn’t care. He had a feeling that he could never use that disguise again.

Once it was done, and he was wearing ordinary clothes once more, he found himself facing a more dangerous question. “To throw you away, or keep you,” he muttered even as he grabbed his brush. The smart thing was to leave it here, along with the stone. As he erased the fake stubble from his face that he added to look himself older, they were the two item that could be used to identify him.

But, what would he do without both. The silver he had was enough to buy a brush, but actually finding a store that would sell him one without his disguise was much harder. In the end, he decided not to leave his brush behind.

As for the glowing stone, he had mixed feelings. He was more ambivalent about it despite its clear value, mostly because he could never sell it. He was tempted to leave it here for his searchers to find, but the one that discovered it would inevitably hide its presence and let the search continue.

But what if he could … it might be the ticket out from the slums. His one chance.

“Worth the risk,” he finally mumbled as he wrapped it. He learned long ago that, he didn’t have the luxury of doing the smart thing every single time. Sometimes, risks were inevitable.

He carefully wrapped both, then added another wrap to keep them tight against his chest. Then, he grabbed some dirt and rubbed them against his head, and added a few touches around his eyes to highlight his youth.

Hopefully, robes or not, everyone would be looking for a man in mid-twenties. Then, he followed the tunnel and popped in the other side. After he patted down, he climbed the roof … and did something extremely risky.

He went toward the search parties.

It was a risky bluff, but he didn’t want to risk anyone noticing him while he was running away from the search, especially when the rest of the city had been gathering toward the area.

As he did so, he could see people shouting desperately, confusion and greed battling.

"Where did he disappear?” one of them snarled.

"Spread out! He can't have gotten far," another shouted.

“Who are you to order us —” another replied, and just as things were about to spread, the city appeared.

“Everyone, stop. Anyone that moves without being searched, will be sent to prison —”

Alaric realized that the value of the stone even more than he realized to mobile the guards in such a great numbers. But, he couldn’t afford to get searched.

“They are trying to rob us, run!” Alaric shouted, keeping his voice low even as he ducked down. Such a bluff was supposed to be useless, but Alaric was betting that poodle living in the slums and poor merchants weren’t the only ones that had interactions with the guards.

And, in the middle of the summer, all it would take was one spark to burn a forest. As a true riot exploded around him, Alaric once again took the roofs, running as fast as he could go while crouching enough to keep himself hidden, directly toward the walls of the city.

He moved swiftly, jumping over several gaps before he slid down on a sloped roof, rushing toward one of the gates. He had spent years watching the guards, avoiding a confrontation with them that took the lives of many other orphans — sometimes caught stealing, sometimes just by being on the wrong place.

And, those years of observation told him that, their greed was stronger than their discipline, enough to leave the gates free in the hopes of being the one that found that rock.

He ran through the maze of abandoned buildings, a puzzle that he was intensely familiar, going in and out to pick the fastest path. Until, he emerged on a quiet street, near the gate he first sneaked in.

With that, he walked closer to the wall, his slouched shoulders making him even younger than he was, and walked out while doing his best to stay concealed. “Perfect,” he muttered even as he passed through the gates, abandoned just like he expected.

But, just because he was out of the walls didn’t mean he was free. He couldn’t just run away or he would reveal himself. Instead, he moved away from the gate, sticking to the walls. He also took a discarded crate he saw near the wall.

Once he was fifty paces away, he split from the walls, he raised the crate, and started walking toward the gate openly but slowly. He didn’t need to wait for long, as soon, the other people from the slums started rushing toward the gate, hoping to understand the reason for the commotion.

Alaric mixed with them easily, and dropped the crate, and started looking for a familiar face. He saw Lucian, a fellow orphan that Alaric could call … well, a friend was an exaggeration among the orphans, but a cooperative rival was a better way to define. “What’s going on?” he asked as he approached him.

“No idea. But, it looks like a riot,” Lucian replied, quick to lose interest at him.

Alaric sighed, but just as he was about to relax, he felt like someone was watching him. The same feeling that he had while painting, when he had drawn that huge tree. He ignored the desire to look up.

He wasn’t ready to meet with the gaze of the old man again.