[Flashback] Found Out

[Sondra]

Winter 507 A.V. and Spring 508 A.V.
Beginning at Sea and Ending in Sunberth

"By the gods, girl, you have no heart," the captain's voice had a new dismay as he spoke to Sondra.
"If I hear you're kicking the cripple, proof or no proof, I'll toss you overboard." The orderly captain was running his hand through his hair, pivoting in a tight circle. He had the bearing of a knight and the ruddiness of a fisherman.
"Laviku," the name of his god muttered as an oath. "I don't know what eats you, but it is a bitter thing."

Sondra stood perfectly still, feeling the heat in her ears. She stared at her shoes like there was a pile of mizas on the toes.

Her victim, a ragged man with crippled legs was moaning quietly behind her. He had a wheeze which made the picture all the more pathetic. He moved about on a board with wheels, pulling his tragically shaped body across the deck of the ship with two short walking sticks in his hands. If the boat rocked, he'd hide below deck or lean against the rails. Which was where Sondra found him when she tried to fit in another discrete kick. It was not to be, the man howled loud enough to wake the dead.

The few aghast spectators eventually dispersed, returning to bed, one shaking his head, another clucking her tongue. Sondra stared at the deck, her hands in tight fists.

"You, Konti Witch," the man finally wheezed at her back, "What's your bone with me?"
She heard him thump a walking stick on the deck.
"Heh? What is it?"

Sondra turned around, her expression sharp with hate.
"I've seen your black heart, gimp," she hissed, "Even if these people can't look past your pitiable shape, I do."
The Konti took a few steps toward him, "And I have no pity for you. Whatever started with your legs should have finished the job."

"What? What are you talking about?" The old man's shaggy, sagging eyebrows heightened his expression of innocent confusion.

The Konti spoke through her teeth, "Daniel, Heddy, tiny Leela. Ringing any bells you, son of a bitch?"

Quick as a mask, his protest changed to a leering grin.
"Quite a few."

"We don't just read tea leaves," the Konti spat back.

"So it seems," the man answered smoothly, "But if you could prove anything you saw, you wouldn't be satisfying yourself with errant kicks."

Sondra was shaking from frustration and contempt. Her silence only made the man smile wider.

"How it must goad you. To know and yet be powerless."

His tone became conversational as he continued, pleased with an audience.
"But did you see it all?"

[Sondra]

The Konti turned to leave, but his steady voice kept her

"Their mother was beautiful. I could've tupped her happily for years. I made myself honest-like to get her, swore off the others, even got married with Chevas and all."

Sondra's expression was perfectly still, frozen in cold derision.

"It was a fine life until she started squirting out babies, wretched pink whining things. Touch 'em and they'd howl and spit and shyke. She doted on the first one, Daniel. Forgot me and what I was owed."

He jabbed his thumb into his chest, "'Twas me that sweat for the mizas. What'd she do all day to make her tired? Follow that brat around, clean some houses for pocket money? Nothing like what I had to do."

The gimp's face grew dark and his voice descended to a mumble.
"Her suppers weren't as good and she was up all hours of the night. She had the gall to be angry when I made her tend to me in bed first. Just because it howled louder than me, doesn't give the whelp preference."

Sondra gripped the railing, her knuckles turning blue, a diversion for her rage. Her face was set towards the horizon. She could not speak for fear she would shout or bite, and then none of her vision would be corroborated.

[Sondra]

"Then came Heddy, quieter and less stubborn than her brother, but gods she wanted to be held all the time. Listening to my wife coo at her like the babe had done something grand, instead of sucking the coffers dry. But worse on my pockets was Leela, sickly, that one."

While the man spit on the deck as the child's epithet, Sondra closed her eyes and recalled "sickly" Leela. In the images she fair with dark brown curls and a perfect pink mouth. Heddy was lifting her arms up and clenching her fingers, eager to touch and be held.

"Leela," he went on, "Deprived me of my spending money. My wife would take it from my pockets for her medicines." He shook his head, "Wasn't right, a man with such a crowded house needs diversion. Cards, drink, manly pleasures, I was owed these for what I gave up. No right of hers to take them."

Thumping the deck with his short walking stick, the man made what he thought was a crucial point.
"Spoiled thing was faking, I know it. Just wanted attention. Gods, the babes were like great sucking wounds, taking more and more."

The Konti bowed her head and grit her teeth. It made the man chuckle to cause her pain. White whore had been kicking at him the whole way, let her sting and writhe without aid. Let her listen and carry his "sins".

[Sondra]

"It was the fourth one that done me in. Took my wife with it. She even named that little robber." Here he laughed, "Don't know what, but she did."

He sighed, "So here am I, a hale young man with three little cawing burdens. No wife to take care of what she ought. All her family buried, so none to take them off my hands."

There was a pause, as the old cripple scratched at the stubble on his neck.
"And why should I give them to another? They were mine, wretched as they were. And I couldn't be worried about what they'd become or want of me in the years to come."

He shrugged, "Heddy I drowned while she was washing linen in the river. They found her tangled up in bedclothes downstream. Leela was simple, took the wrong batch of medicine."
Looking up to the Konti, he adopted a look of grief, "I told her none from the blue bottle, I did." A quick, wicked smile followed his performance.

Only now did his brow crinkle, feeling any emotion. His cough was wet and hacking, rattling in his lungs. He sucked in a trebling breath to finish his story.
"Daniel, stubborn Daniel, he saw me coming. Put up a fight and gave me a blow that cost me teeth. I burnt him in the house, and vanished."

Sondra recalled a boy tied with cloth, thrashing on the floor until breathing smoke made him still. A hearth fire had been drawn from its place and strewn across the floor. Black and orange, everything turned black and orange.

[Sondra]

"I bet you think I should've been gnawed to pieces over it," the man smiled widely, finally showing some of the gaps Daniel had made.
"But I can't say it does. It feels good to tell the yarn, though."
He leaned against the rails of the deck, his eyes shutting, peaceful.
"That ominous consequence they tell you about. It never happens. Bad luck has cost me more than sinning has."
With a chuckle he added, "Why my legs even work alright, but it's easier to make a living this way."
His look of triumph sickened Sondra.
"But who are you going to tell? You've only got witch's visions and your dubious word. Shame on you for maligning an old man."

Sondra stood straight from leaning over the rails. It was two bells past midnight, none heard them, nor cared.

"Your sins will find you out," she finally said.

The old man laughed and wheezed, "Doubtful."

[Sondra]

Months passed and K'Sondra Kore the white witch devolved into Sondra. Then the new year. Her furs had been bartered her hair cut and sold. She pretended to read palms for silvers, entertaining market goers in the day and drunks at night with made-up futures.

Passing through Sunberth, she managed the great feat of being one of the last few in the Pig's Foot. It had taken practice and she still could barely tolerate the bilge water they served. Fortitude paid off.
She stayed long enough one night to watch a familiar face stumble in and out. He wheezed and grinned as he gambled and won. One more swallow and she left through the cook's door.

He sang a limerick as he staggered through the streets, inching towards the infamous slag heap.
The earth turned gray and became a multitude of flinty stones. Patches belched smoke and others smoldered. Equally gray ghosts of men patrolled the edges, soot in their whiskers from the rising cloud.

[Sondra]

He stood with a few until they wandered, tired of sharing their flask with him. Sondra stood apart, hiding in oily smoke, letting it take years off her life with each breath. She slipped her hammer from her belt, twisting it in her hands.

They weren't the hands that gripped the railing of the deck season's before. Want had chipped at her, tearing nails and lifting scales. She hid the hammer behind her back and stepped out of the murk.

"Oy!"
The man turned around, startled. He looked her over, confused. Recognition came to him as she swung the hammer into his temple.
He was gaping and crawling over the black gravel, but she followed steadily. Her booted foot stepped on the edges of his coat, pinning him. It was an easy mark, now.

"Still doubtful?" she asked.

Sondra raised the hammer high and let it fall on his skull. He spattered her red and gray with every blow. She had to wipe her face to continue.

At the end, the hammer was hurled deep into the heap, to be cooked with the rest of the garbage and the man was left for the birds and looters.

The Konti shoved her shaking hands into her pockets and headed for the road.