Berylis: Crimson Prophecy Novella

By Derrick Hall

Separated from her tribe and family, sold into slavery, and mistreated, fourteen-year-old Berylis exists alone in a city of thousands. If that means stealing in order to eat, where's the harm in that? The aristocrats that she targets will hardly miss a few measly coins. She only takes what she needs.
That was until her fence leaked information on what could be the take of a lifetime–the taxes of every merchant in the central market. Lightly guarded and openly transported, it seems too easy to ignore.
But nothing has ever been easy for Berylis, and nothing that seems easy actually is. Relentlessly pursued, she soon finds herself to be a fugitive, wanted not only for theft but for murder.
It seems that nothing could go worse when a mysterious wizard enters her life with an offer that makes her rich beyond imagining and sets her life on a completely new course.
A course that will test her resolve and her principles.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Derrick Hall
• Release date: Apr 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223658054

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Derrick Hall

Berylis

A Crimson Prophecy Novella

Copyright © 2023 by Derrick Hall

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Derrick Hall asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Derrick Hall has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Contents

I. THIEVES & BEGGARS

Liberated Goods

Unfortunate Younglings

Fence

Executioner’s March

Sweet & Sour

A Proposition

II. SPIES & CONSORTS

Perspective

Tiny Food

New Boots

Tualan

Flower Girl

Farewell

Afterword

About the Author

Also by Derrick Hall

In memory of lost friends, and in honor of new ones.

Not all is as it may seem.

I

Thieves & Beggars

Liberated Goods

Berylis crouched behind a pile of crates that adorned a small dead-end alley and watched her target weave through the crowds that filled the market square. It was early—for her at least, being mid-morning—and she would normally have been sleeping in the attic over the bakery if she hadn’t gotten wind of this job.

Not that she was working for anyone, she worked for herself and no one else. Life was just simpler that way. Not that any respectable employer would hire her; her dark skin made sure of that. If she wasn’t an indenture or slave, no one had use for any of the desert people. The whole situation was just fine with her though. She could only think of one use for them, and that involved separating them from their coins or any shiny trinkets that she could turn into coins.

The guards didn’t like it much, and she definitely stood out—silver hair, matching eyes, and near-black skin in a city full of elves and human aristocrats would do that—but she took a certain perverse pleasure in evading them over and over again as she plied her trade.

It hadn’t always been like this though. When she was young, she could remember wandering the fringes of the desert with her tribe; living in tents, and driving a small herd of goats with the other children. That was until they had wandered a little too close to the sea.

Berylis didn’t remember much of that night, just that she had woken to screams of pain and fear and the sounds of swords clashing outside her family’s tent. Someone had come into her tent and tried to drag her out by her ankle. She tried to fight and smashed a jar over her assailant’s head, only to receive the same treatment and blackout.

She had woken up later in a dank, musty-smelling room surrounded by people whose faces were both familiar and foreign. Some were members of her tribe—she spotted her father a few yards away, bruised and bloody—the rest were from the desert people or elves. All were chained at the wrists and ankles to an iron bar that was bolted through the wooden floor.

It had been a hard time for her. She had been barely ten at the time, but in the next four years of being shuffled about from one high bidder to the next, she had learned to do whatever it took to survive.

Berylis idly rubbed at the scars that ringed her wrists and watched the group of surly-looking guards move from stall to stall, collecting ‘taxes’. It wasn’t an official tax though, and they weren’t guards so much as hired thugs that somehow managed to pass for ‘security’ in Ridstin. Hired thugs that were so used to people scurrying out of the way of their presence that they wouldn’t be expecting her.

This ‘job’ wasn’t so much something she had to do as an opportunity too good to refuse. Her fence -a squat little man with a greasy and often snot-covered mustache that went by Scythe, as though he were sharp and dangerous (he was neither)—had let the collection times slip in front of her two nights ago. He had swindled her out of a pair of gold bracelets, but she let it slide—this time. Soon she would have something worth ten times as much. Twenty times if you went by what Scythe had paid her. For all his sleaze and slimy business practices, he wasn’t a half-bad guy. Not really. No more than she was inherently bad for picking pockets and running cons on the obviously over-rich.

Berylis pulled up the hood on her cloak, wrapped a scarf over her face as she rose from her hiding place, and walked out into the mass of people that was the morning market. She slid through the crowd with practiced ease, going largely unnoticed as she approached the group of mercenaries. There were six of them—armed with swords, and one holding a large, heavy-looking canvas sack—huddled around the last stall before they would have to cross the main thoroughfare to get to the other half of the market. That crossing would be her chance, as it was impossible without being jostled by the press of people heading in every direction at once.

That road bisected not only this market but the city as a whole, running from the sea gate on the eastern end, through the slave markets, warehouse, and commercial districts, splitting to encircle the palace, then continuing to the eastern gate. The whole city was roughly teardrop shaped, with the pointed end laying to the east and protruding out into the harbor where it supported a military fort and lighthouse. The fat end of Ridstin had a set of high stone walls that encircled the palace, and another that formed what used to be the entirety of the formerly circular city. The interior part of that wall was crumbling now and had even been torn down in places to allow for new buildings or streets to pass through—projects which often cannibalized the stone from the walls for their own construction.

The road and the broken stone walls were the keys to her exit strategy, but she first had to steal that bag of coins. Berylis stopped at the next stall and pretended to examine some fruit. Flies buzzed all over it, suggesting a general lack of freshness, but she picked out a large piece of orange fruit that seemed somewhat less rotten than the rest, all the while keeping an eye on the group next door. Soon enough, one of the men shouldered the sack and all six of them started across the thoroughfare with the bag-bearer at the center.

She made a show of putting the fruit back atop the stack while quietly slipping a different piece into her sleeve and walking away.

Beggars can’t be choosers.