In Over His Head Ch 03

Yagaritte, pressed herself against the other side of the door, her forehead resting against the cool wood, one hand up against it. She closed her eyes, sighing. She didn't want to kick him out, didn't want him to go back out into the cold, but... what he had done was wrong, and a gross violation of her privacy, which she took very much seriously. This was PRECISELY why she didn't let anyone in her room ever! Even so... why did her heart ache? Why did it break a little bit more with each step Edovan took as he moved down the hallway, and descended the stairs?

"Oi..." Yagaritte groaned, moving away from the door and flopping onto the bed. What the hell was he thinking? And she, herself, was she mad? She wondered, as she reached for a crystal that had fallen onto the bed. She held it thoughtfully in her hands, turning it over and over. These had been hidden for a reason, you twit! She closed her eyes and let her hand fall to the side, sighing deeply. It were as though all the repressed memories and pains from the last ten years had suddenly crashed over her, crushing her into the bed with their immense weight. She rolled onto her side and squeezed her eyes closed, willing the tears that were threatening to spill out of them to not.

The crystal took her back, almost ten years. It was not a night she was exactly proud of, but neither did it pain her the way most memories did. The actions of that night, anyway. She was younger, then, and much stupider, but she beat herself up over the fact that she let herself get taken advantage of. That she had lowered her defenses and let someone ply her with alcohol, to make her let go of herself when she was usually so good at staying guarded. The scene simply existed to remind her of why she was there, and what she had run away from all those years ago...

It was not a thing she thought of often, and was spoken of even less. Her past, the history of her family, the tumultuous tides that pushed them from one side to the other, splitting them onto opposite sides of morality. Her father, ruthless, cutthroat, ambitious. Yagaritte, kind, caring, loving, if somewhat aloof. And then there was her sister. Born during the short summer months, an exact replica of her father. Physically, certainly. But it wasn't until much, much later that Yagaritte lost her to her father's hand. More or less.

She thought back on her childhood, times when her father would come home late, speaking to her mother in hushed tones, sometimes giving her small packages, or hiding little bundles in his hidden safe that he thought nobody knew about. She always stayed hidden during these moments, terrified of her father's wrath if she were to get caught. Luckily for her, her rogue training had begun at a very young age, and she put her teachings to good use. She was to take over the family business someday... but.

Yagaritte squeezed the crystal in her hand, her knuckles turning white with the force of it. No. She would not fall victim to her own memories. The tears did not fall, the memories would not win. She sat up in bed and threw the crystal across the room, shattering it against the wall. Not that it mattered, her room was trashed, Edovan and Bernadette had seen to that.

* * * *

Edovan rounded the corner of the stairs and ran smack into Margara, who was drying a glass in her hands. "Little mouse," she she greeted him, cool as a cucumber. She smiled, putting the glass down on the nearby counter. Edovan swallowed nervously, wondering what was going to happen now. He'd messed things up beyond belief, and now it was time to accept his punishment. Margara put her arm around his shoulder and directed him to a stool at the bar. "Sit." she demanded.

Edovan sat down without a word.

"Do you know why Yagaritte is so upset with you?" she asked, digging around behind the counter. She procured a small plate and disappeared through the doorway that led to the kitchen, before he'd even had chance to respond to her question. She reappeared with a pastry on the plate, setting it on the counter before Edovan. "You like peach, little mouse?" she asked. He nodded as she busied herself pouring a glass of milk for him.

His mind raced..how could she possibly know?..it had just happened. News sure travels fast in this inn , he thought to himself.

"Why?" was he all he managed to ask, picking the pastry up. Maybe this wasn't going to be as bad as he thought...

"You embarrassed her," Margara said, setting the glass down beside his plate. "She doesn't open herself up often. She doesn't let others into her life, and certainly not into her bedroom," she continued, coming back around the counter to sit at the stool beside him. "But you took a private moment from her life, and you exploited it. You rubbed it in her face, you broke her trust," she said, absently rubbing the counter top with the rag that was sitting there.

Edovan blushed deeply, shamefully. This entire thing had gotten out of hand. He hadn't meant to cause such a ruckus, and he certainly had never meant to hurt Yagaritte's feelings. He sighed. "Will she ever forgive me?" he asked, looking at Margara with tears resting in the corners of his eyes. As crazy as today had been, nothing stung him more than the shame he currently felt.

Margara looked at him, reaching to catch a tear before it fell from his eye. "It's not my place to say whether she will forgive you or not," she said, wiping the tear on her apron.

Edovan looked away from her, looking down at the pastry in his hands. He wanted nothing more in the world to go back in time to fix everything he'd broken. To go back to being warm and secure in Yagaritte's arms, squeezed and snuggled, safe and sound, in her bed. And he didn't blame Bernadette, apparently she really liked his head?. She was just a symptom of the bigger problem- him.

He moved to get up suddenly, putting the pastry, un-eaten, back onto the plate. If he were the problem, he would simply remove himself. '"I..." he stammered. "I... goodbye..." he said, and turned to go. Margara, with expert precision and speed, snapped her arm out and grabbed his wrist, stopping him dead in his tracks.

"Oh no you don't, little mouse. You're not escaping that easily," she said. She said it with such conviction and assuredness that Edovan immediately sat back down, gulping. "Now, you eat your snack, mouse, and while I'm making dinner, we'll discuss how you're going to pay me back for all the damages and lost business you've caused me," she finished, pushing the plate closer to him.

"P-payment?" Edovan squeaked. "I don't ha-"

Margara stopped him mid-sentence with a raised hand. "I said we'll discuss it, now eat."

* * * *

Yagaritte spent the next few hours cleaning her room. That was the only downfall of living a private life, having to do all the housework on your own. She silently cursed her own need for privacy as she crouched down with a little broom and dustpan to clean a spilled bag of sylvan nixad dust. It was ruined now, of course. She dumped it into the growing pile of trash (which, truthfully, consisted in great part of about two dozen smashed illusion crystals), and stood back up straight, cracking her back. She tossed the pan onto her desk, looking around the room with a heavy sigh, thinking of all the work she had ahead of her. Her armor had started to chafe. She slipped out of it down to her sheer shift and carefully placed all the pieces and the leathers on a special table she had specified for exactly that purpose

That's when it caught her eye. Leaning against the wall, beside that table, the red of the jewel on Edovan's staff glinted in the dusty sunlight, as though it were calling out to her. She strode over to it and picked it up, admiring it. She hadn't been able to give it much of a look, as Edovan seemed to have it always by his side. She sat down at her desk with it, running her fingers up and down its length, caressing each rune as she passed it. She nodded in approval, curling her fingers over the top of it. It was beautifully made, and had an air of mystery about it, very much in contrast with its owner.

"Well little mouse, seems I have something of yours now.." she chuckled to herself. "I wonder..." she pondered out loud, still caressing the staff up and down. She tapped the blunt end on the floor between her bare legs. "Solid Nightwood.. " she twirled it in front of her and let the shaft fall back against her crotch, pressing into the flimsy fabric against her skin. "Nice girth..." she continued, her fingers making an "o" shape around the staff as she measured its size. "Mmm... that's good..." she murmured. I bet it's the perfect size..."

She grinned a wicked grin.

"You'll get your staff back... when I'm good and done with it," she said, as she got up from the desk and carried it to the bed with her.

"Lets see how you like it when people play with your things!"

* * * *

Edovan followed Margara into the kitchen, stepping nervously through the doors after her. He hoped she didn't plan to use him as help with making dinner, as he had no idea how to prepare anything but the very meager basics. "Grab that pot," she said, pointing. Edovan dutifully followed her order, bringing the pot over to the counter beside Margara. "And the potatoes. The onions. The carrots. The celery," she continued, pointing here, there, and back again. Edovan scrambled to do as he was told, grabbing vegetables up from various places in the kitchen, sweating at the thought of having to cook.

"Take this," she said, holding a knife out to him. He took it gingerly. He waited for direction. "Well?" Margara asked him. "Do I need to spell it out for you?" she asked with a sigh. Oh boy, this was going to be a trial. Maybe it would be better just to let him go and write her losses off...

"Cut the damn vegetables!" she said in exasperation as Edovan clearly had no idea what he was supposed to be doing. "Aye..." she grumbled under her breath, as she started to mix ingredients together in a bowl to make some sort of dough.

"Mrs...?" Edovan started carefully, as he awkwardly started to chop vegetables. He had no idea what he was doing, but he figured cutting them wrong would lead to less beratement than not cutting them at all.

Margara chuckled. "Mrs. nothing, I'm not married. Not anymore, that bastard. Just call me Margara," she said, kneading the dough expertly on the countertop

"...Margara," Edovan repeated. He looked at the knife in his hand, the carrot he was chopping. He spoke directly to them now. "Why are women so... complicated?" he wondered aloud. One had tried to kill him (twice) and the other probably wanted to.

Margara laughed. "Women?" she asked him, flour puffing out onto her apron and face, into her hair. "The whole three or four of them you know?" she teased him gently. "Aye, women are a mystery, even to me. Secrets, that's the thing," she said, nodding at her own wise words. "All women have secrets, little mouse, If she wants you to know them, she will share them with you. Some things stay hidden for a reason though, and it is nobody's right to know them."

Edovan nodded thoughtfully. And indeed, he did want to know them. He wanted to know them very desperately. To know them, was to know Yagaritte. "Can you tell me about her? About Yagaritte..." He didn't want her secrets from Margara, he just wanted to know more about the mystery woman upstairs, to know anything he could. To be fair, Margara was right, his history with women was abysmal. But even he could tell she was complicated, and there was for more to her than the surface showed.

"Mmm..." Margara murmured softly. She kneaded the dough, then began to pull it apart into smaller bits, rolling each piece into a ball. "She came here when she was only nineteen. Just about your age, I think. She had nothing to her name but the clothes on her back, her twin daggers, and a trinket her mother had given her. She'd been kicked out of her home, rejected by her father," she said, kneading away. She wondered how much the little mouse knew, and how much she could tell him without incurring Yagaritte's anger.

"She came to me to whore, there was nothing else left for her in the world, what did it matter?" she continued, focusing on the task at hand as she spoke. "Of course, that was out of the question. You've seen her... she's a true beauty, but her talents lie in other areas. I put her to work for me, gave her a place to stay, a reason to be..." she trailed off quietly. "Indeed, she's a very hard worker," she added, clearing her throat as she looked down at Edovan, who had stopped chopping vegetables to listen. "Unlike some people."

Edovan blushed and went back to feverishly chopping the celery.

"She's been here ever since," Margara continued as she reached under the counter to pull out a stack of tiny tin pans. She began to press the dough into them, making a crust. "Her parents are gone now," she said. She clucked, shaking her head. "She has no family at all, and nobody to love her but me and our strange little family here at the inn."

Edovan knew the pain of losing family. His pain was both very real and very fresh. But he couldn't risk talking about that, so he he sat and chopped silently. Then he remembered something Yagaritte had said to him after she had first rescued him from the painted lady.

"She said she had a sister..." he trailed off. He remembered the sadness in Yagaritte's eyes as she spoke about her sister.

"We don't talk about her," was all Margara said about that.

And with that, the conversation was over. They worked in silence as Edovan chopped vegetables and Margara put things together to make mini pot pies.

* * * *

After dinner had been prepared and served, Margara sent Mint to retrieve Bernadette, who'd yet to return to the inn. She wasn't naive enough to believe a girl as hardy and resourceful as Bernadette was still out wandering in the snow all but naked, but she needed her back home, there was work to be done.

"And now for you," Margara said, turning to Edovan who had just finished his mini pot pie, and was finally starting to relax some. "Clean that up and meet me in the kitchen," she said, bustling off without waiting for him to reply or complain. She stopped to pet the gray cat on her way, producing a small treat for him from the depths of her skirts. He idly wondered why he hadn't seen Yagaritte all afternoon, and if she were going to come down for dinner...?

Edovan swallowed, but nodded at her backside, gathering up his meager dinner dishes and carrying them to the backside of the bar where the rest of the dishes from patrons waited to be cleaned. He washed his own and set it up to dry, following Margara into the kitchen with heavy trepidation- but also curiosity. The time was finally here, where he would accept his punishment. With grace, he'd hoped. He wanted nothing more to pay Margara back for her kindness, and to prove to everyone how sorry he was for the trouble he'd caused, least of all to Yagaritte.

"This way, little mouse," Margara motioned, stepping down a few uneven rough stone stairs into an adjacent room that appeared to be carved from the earth and stone itself. It was oppressively warm. A large boiler of some kind was steaming under a big metal kettle pot in the middle. The pot was so big he could have bathed in it, but given the amount of steam rising from the dark surface he concluded that might not be a good idea.

Evodan followed her further in, looking around the room curiously as it opened up before him. It was larger than he first expected with multiple small alcoves cut out of the grey stone, each filled with heaps and piles of soiled clothing and cloths. One pile was bedding, another was dresses, a third linens. And, as lizard brain gleefully pointed out, a fourth was a mountain of perfumed and pungent feminine underthings as high as his head.

"Have you ever done the wash before?" Margara asked him.

Edovan shook his head. Not ever.

Margara laughed. "Well, I'm sure you will learn it after the first 10 hours or so," she said, moving him to a small stool by the linen pile that was usually occupied by Mint. "And don't even THINK about using majika!" She looked suddenly very severe. "If you so much as conjure a puff of smoke in my inn again without my express permission, I will personally have you hauled off to the prison mines until you have payed off every single gold coin you owe me!" she added and then smiled again kindly, carefully pushing him to sit.

Margara gently leaned over him and took a towel into her hands, then pushed it between Edovan's. It was a gentle touch, loving, tender. She took the soap up in one hand and showed Edovan how to use it on the stains before everything went into the big kettle in the middle. She walked him through the process of transferring everything that had been treated and turned right side out if necessary into the steaming kettle. How to turn the giant crank that operated the big paddles that moved the clothes. How to operate the lever that drained the kettle, and then how to carefully hold on the metal handles and tip the kettle forward so it would dump its steaming contents on to the stone floor. Then take each item and hang it on lines strung above another boiler on the far side of the room.

It was grueling work. Sweat had already started to bead on his forehead before she even finished instructing him. She told him she'd send someone to check on him in an hour or so and climbed the stairs back up to the tavern.

Everything was too big for him, too heavy for him, or too hot to touch for very long. He singed his fingers, dinged his elbows, bumped his head, and at one point, almost boiled all his skin off by starting to tip the big kettle in its harness before he had emptied it. The safest part was the scrubbing with soap. But after the first 40 items or so, even his hands started to hurt. It got so hot he decided to work without his shirt and jacket and took them and carefully folded them and placed them a small table he found.

He was shirtless, sweat glistening on his back and chest. head down, starting with the soap on the stains of what would be the second load, when he saw a pair of dainty (for a Nord) white stockinged feet appear in front of him. He raised his head, his vision following the sheer white trail of long slender calves up to the lacey tops of shapely thighs, a brief flash of ivory skin at the top of the thigh, and then the bottom hem of a very short matching white lace nighty, that was literally just hanging low enough to cover her intimates from normal angles.

From his vantage point on the stool, about eye level with the tops of her stockings, he could clearly see her almost transparent white lace panties, whose sheerness was only barely concealing her rosebud pink lips. The stockinged woman just stood there. He got the distinct impression she knew that he was looking at her,and where he was looking. Especially when she "winked" at him. Finally, He cleared his throat. "H... hello," he squeaked, somehow knowing that he was already in too deep with this Nord woman, who had a glittering smile pasted on her face, way too wolfish to be taken kindly.

"Hello, little mouse," she said, bending down to speak into his ear, making smacking noises with her painted mouth. "I've some washing that needs done," she continued, tongue flicking out against Edovan's ear. She was all but purring.

"Ye... yes, miss," Edovan said, unable to look up at her chest, which was looming over him, precariously held in place by flimsy satin and thin straps. He held his hands out to take her things that needed washed.

She laughed haughtily, a high pitched aristocratic laugh that pierced the steam billowing around the room, but had none of the warmth that Yagaritte's had. "No, love," she said, straightening up. "They're here..." she said, and with that she lifted her foot and rested it on his knee, her nighty now hiding nothing at all from his view. "Won't you be a dear and help me," she added, her foot sliding now up his thigh.