Nogibrella

  He's big. He’s strong. He's invulnerable. - Jeremy. - The Mourneers' report on First Frenzy.

  ^^^

  Nogibrella stood by the bed and stared into the Lord Chancellor's face. In the sleeve of her maid's dress was a table knife. She would catch it on her fingers, only to toss it back into her sleeve again. Even such a small cheese knife could easily slit the throat of a sleeping person. So why was the knife still not in the throat of the slumbering lord?

  The girl herself didn't know the answer to that question. A simple hand movement would complete her life goal, and what would happen next was not important. But for some reason, instead of commanding her hand, images of Slizvert, Drat, Wolves with Merchant, and Gloomeye appeared in her mind.

  For days now, Nogibrella has been spoiling herself with thoughts of killing the Striped Man, doing a nasty job for him. He seriously can't dress himself, how does he run a city? Besides, the Striped Man's face was so peaceful. How can he sleep so sweetly? I have nightmares and he doesn't? Too bad all the gods are dead, no one to blame for such outrageous mistakes.

  After opening his eyes, the Striped Man raised himself on his arms and said with displeasure:

  "Are you standing here watching me sleep again? It's unnerving."

  There was a chain around his neck with a soft brown cube dangling from the end. It was some sort of fruit from the kitchen, carved by Nogibrella. The spy had searched all the lord's possessions on the first day, and this amulet was the only thing the Striped Man never parted with, not even when he slept. It was begging to be stolen! Now the real cube was hidden in Meg's stash.

  "Just doing my job," the girl said innocently, picking up his clothes. "You, sir, should not start the day in such a fluster. Did you, by any chance, have nightmares?" the maid continued, putting the sleeve on his outstretched arm and adding to herself: "I wish, I wish".

  "I was beginning to think my maids' job was to be lazy and avoid me at every opportunity," the lord remarked, ignoring the question.

  "And all you had to do was hire a spy with a vested interest in your destruction," the spy thought, but said aloud: "They just didn't realise how lucky they were to be serving such a great man. After all, you have created our protector against those damned rag-draped crybabies."

  Nogibrella heard the official version of events from the few servants who agreed to talk to her.

  The Striped Man, who was already standing dressed, turned round to her and threw irritably:

  "You have a big mouth, maid," and, having uttered such a profound thought, walked over to the breakfast table with the lid on.

  "Thank you for your phenomenal observation, sir."

  "I mean, maid-" the Lord Chancellor sat down at the table, lifted the lid and immediately made a displeased grimace: "Another bird! The kitchen knows I don't like edible things with inedible things inside. What am I talking about?"

  "My big mouth, sir," the big-mouthed maid reminded him kindly.

  "Ah, yes," the Striped Man began his meal, choosing not to interrupt the lecture. "It's not your ugly big mouth, though it is ugly. But everything else is ugly too, so there is harmony (Nogibrella suppressed a chuckle. What a waste of such fertile ground for really sophisticated bullying). And here's the thing: talk less, for we are surrounded by enemies. But only I expressed it allusorily (metaphorically). In vain, of course, because that allusion (metaphor) disappeared into the void of your little head. It's also an allusion (no, it's also a metaphor, moron)."

  "Are you afraid of spies, sir?" Nogibrella looked around fearfully, searching the room for other spies.

  "I'm not afraid of anything, maid. Remember that!" the lord pointed at her with a bone in his hand. "I am merely reasonably cautious. I might be overheard, and if I am overheard, it will be out of bad intentions. Out of good intentions, no one secretly eavesdrops on people, then they would openly announce their intentions. Here's a nugget of wisdom for you today," the man threw the bone into the bowl and stood up, wiping his hands on a towel. "As soon as you take the dish to the kitchen, go to the tailor and pick up my new robe."

  The maid took the dish (in which she thought he had left just about everything) and asked:

  "But how are your papers, sir?"

  "You shouldn't be doing that at all, maid. That's my job. So today I'll wait until tomorrow for you to sort them out."

  On her first day of service, Nogibrella was caught reading parchments on the Lord Chancellor's desk.

  "You can read?" he wondered.

  "I-I'm trying to learn to read, sir. Here, I saw the letters and couldn't resist," the spy said, viewing her life before her eyes. Take it away! What's all this cheesy rubbish?

  "Well, and what does it say here?" the Lord Chancellor poked at some small scroll.

  "Em. The secret report of the Chancellor Jester. To the hands of the Lord Chancellor only. The lame one sent to you..." Nogibrella stammered and turned cold at the word 'spy'. She was bad at it after all, spies weren't supposed to stammer and turn cold. "Does the Court of Madness have a spy? What a rascality!" thought the Mourneers spy.

  "You don't know the word?" the man began to turn the parchment towards him.

  "An extra projectile!" said the girl quickly.

  "Ugh! What a useless message," the Striped Man said disappointedly, removing his hand from the secret message.

  Nogibrella quickly tucked the dangerous note into a stack of other parchments, but with a corner sticking out. Then she would destroy it. At least some compromise with her newly awakened bloodthirsty tendencies.

  "I can help you, you know, maid," the Lord Chancellor said thoughtfully. "I can let you learn to read from my notes. But you'd have to pay half your wages, and in the evenings you'd have to recite them in your own words. And not a word to anyone. In time of war, we need a stern, strong leader, not a generous do-gooder.

  Just because he's lazy, he gives all the important documents to a girl he doesn't know? That's when Nogibrella realised that the Striped Man was an idiot.

  On her way out of her ‘noble benefactor of learning’, Nogibrella collided with Meg and nearly dropped her plate. Fortunately, the blue light developer's dress took the brunt of the impact. What a self-sacrifice!

  "You're a creature!" Meg declared, examining her noble garment to assess the damage done by the fat.

  “Quite an unusual way to say 'good morning', Meg," Nogibrella looked at the scraps scattered on the floor. She decided to do her duty as a maid and kicked them into the corner behind the door. "Everyone must love you in the morning."

  "Certainly more than you, sod," Ms. Wanna-Be-Sorceress hissed.

  She turned most of the maids against the spy, and they defiantly avoided talking to her, or even jostled her when they could. And on the first morning of her sleepover in the servant girls' shared bedroom, Nogibrella discovered slices of ham in her ears. To avoid such ham (or worse - cheese, for example) surprises, the spy now slept in Lucia Revan's private room.

  At first, Nogibrella didn't even realise what they were doing. But then she found herself laughing. In my life I have seen such bullying, compared to which this bullying is an invitation to have a delicious meal by the fire.

  "I'd love to stay and chat, but I have to go. I am the Lord Chancellor's personal maid, unlike some. I won't stop you from not being the Lord Chancellor's personal maid and doing your morning ritual of futilely trying to talk to him," the Lord Chancellor's personal maid stepped around Meg and walked down the corridor.

  "We're not done with you yet, you wretch!" Meg shouted after her to have the last word.

  On her way, Nogibrella picked up small items from tables and pedestals, leaving the ones she'd taken earlier. It was a compromise with her body, which for some reason (who would understand these bodies?) insisted on stealing things. It was in the girl's nature. One of her earliest memories was of stealing a key, which... which... which...

  Suddenly Nogibrella saw Lucia waving her hand in front of her face.

  "You know, I've been standing here for a while now, watching how long you would stand in the passage with a blank stare. It's gone beyond the limits of any rational explanation. And not really helping me to prove that you're normal," she said.

  "And I thought it would bring me closer to the other maids. Well, standing there with a blank stare, as you say," Nogibrella replied absentmindedly. "No, so it turns out?”

  Lucia tilted her head forward, her braid hanging in the air, but it didn't help to see her face as a whole:

  "They think you're a Lower upstart."

  Nogibrella bit her tongue just in time to avoid asking who the Lowers were. By her own legend, she's lived in this city and should know all its kinks. Spies who say something like ‘Despite my obvious lack of basic knowledge - will you show me the plans?’ don't live long.

  "But now there are no Lowers, no Toppers," Lucia continued, staring at her interlocutor with her braid. "Or rather, there shouldn't be," and then she added a completely strange sentence: "At that time, the Court was an acceptable evil."

  "I must go, Head Maid," Nogibrella said, finally coming out of her daze. "I've already wasted a lot of time standing there with a blank stare. That's fine and all, but I have work to do."

  "Go on, Nogibrella," Lucia stepped back. "And know something they don't: I was from a lower caste myself."

  The girl came into the kitchen in a confused mood. She placed the now almost empty plate and lid on the table and was about to leave when the head cook, Gerta, blocked her way. It was incredibly easy for her to do this - she was not even fat, but a broad woman, and she waddled from side to side. One of the few servants who treated the spy well (so Nogibrella endeavoured to suppress thoughts like, “Does anyone care about the size of the cook? It's like a treasurer wearing a crown and better robes than a king.” No, it was rude to even think such thoughts. Good thing no one would know about them without a mindscope). Too good, even. She seemed to take the girl's thinness as a personal insult.

  "Not without breakfast, Nog! Are you completely out of your mind, you fool? Here," Gerta said, thrusting into the fool's hands a bowl of porridge with slices of meat, a large piece of bread with an even larger piece of cheese on it (so it was more of a bread sandwich made of cheese than a cheese sandwich), and a cup of an aromatic, dark drink. "Eat it all and then you can leave."

  "Um, thank you, Gerta," the girl's sarcasm-free tone always had a false edge to it. When dealing with the cook, it was even somewhat awkward for her to be a spy.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  Having finished breakfast, the girl finally managed to leave the palace. After putting on a common cloak and a shapeless hat, she bumped into Sig, who turned out to be Meg's brother, at the gate. Was this their family tradition? If Gloomy were here, it could be attributed to his false god influence. As it was, it was just a coincidence. But if Gloomy were here...

  "Watch where... You!" the guard said in surprise.

  "Watch where I? I’m - there.. Here, here I go, go, past you, past your empty accusations. The records of my watching myself shall I send you to that pit of creepy crawlies, you live there, don't you?" Nogibrella tried to sidestep the brother as she had his sister, but he grabbed her arm, even her cheese knife fell out in the other.

  "No one in the city knows you or where you live," the pushy guard told her.

  "Well, logically, one thing follows from another," Nogibrella tried to free herself, but Sig held her tight.

  "And you have a stupid name, too. Nogibrella. What does that even mean? It's like it was made up," the hand holder continued.

  "Then again, all names are made up. It wasn't a stone with 'Sig' carved in it that fell on you. Although... That would explain everything," Nogibrella was proud of herself for adding logic to her sarcastic taunts. She must have picked it up from Gloomy.

  "I will expose you, mark my words, so-called Nogibrella."

  "Between investigating the dreaded Mourneers spy and visiting your sister every day, how have you not been sacked from the Guard yet? Do you even show up on your work?"

  The girl got tired of her forcible restraint, and she stealthily put her foot behind Sig's leg, and then sharply smooched the air in front of her. Sig recoiled in surprise (and they always do. It's even a bit offensive), stumbled over her leg, but only fell when the girl pushed him in his chest with the hand he was holding. The hold ended as abruptly as it had begun.

  "Damned Lower!" Sig threw after the fleeing Nogibrella.

  Thanks to Lucia, the spy knew what to say. She turned on her heel as she ran:

  "There are no Lowers now!"

  Since she had completely lost her time, then there was no hurry. "Lateness is like dirt on a skirt - a skirt is considered dirty regardless of the amount of dirt on it," the girl decided philosophically.

  Now she can take a closer look at the city. Yes, one might say, that was her spy duty. Hreb (or at least its upper tiers) was a city of arches (or rather, rounded columns resting against the walls). It is not clear whether they were there to keep the upper tiers from falling down, or simply to adorn the city, but it was impossible not to pass under them after a few minutes of meaningful walking.

  Nogibrella walked through one of the arched tunnels and looked out over the lower city and the battlefield, which kept appearing and disappearing behind pillars. In addition to this view, the morning light of Dayorb poured between the columns, today it was a strange light purple.

  A series of explosions ran across the battlefield. Glowing red snakes whizzed among the transparent bubbles above the crowd at the fairground level. Snowflakes swirled slowly in the crisp air. Nogibrella raked up the thin layer of snow that had yet to be cleared away and scooped up a full bag of earth.

  The view below somehow brought a mixture of calm and bitterness to the girl, as if she had seen it before, not yesterday, but long ago and in a dream. As the gentle breeze touched her skin, bringing the smell of something sweet, tears came to her eyes. She couldn't understand her emotions and mistakenly attributed them to the tension of the past few days. I wish Gloomy and Drat were here. I can't wait to finish this last mission of mine as soon as possible.

  Fireballs from the Mourneers' camp crashed into the lower tiers of Hreb. The city shook. Hm, it wasn't as much fun on this side as it was on the other.

  Nogibrella was making her way through the motley crowd (some people were wearing alm masks today for some reason) when an awkward voice called out to her. Its awkwardness matched well with the body of its owner - Seoman, a lanky boy, a palace servant. Nogibrella didn't know exactly what his position was: he seemed to do everything and excel at nothing. It could be said that he was an errand boy, although he was already past the age of a boy and about Nogibrella's age.

  "Mistress Nogibrella! Good morning! I'm here on business. Oh, and you're probably on business, too. Of course!" the Jack of no trades spoke quickly, trying to say whatever he wanted to say before he would inevitably stop being listened to.

  "Do you want me to interpret the events of this morning as good for me, or do you think that a period of time has the consciousness and can be good or evil, Seoman?" the girl smiled at him.

  They began to make their way through the crowd. At the mention of his name, the guy's face brightened up (is the sound of own name enough for some people to be happy? What happens if you give him money?):

  "You always talk so funny, mistress. Shall we go together then? Or not now, but in the evening. The evening promised live theatre, wind bending and safe fires."

  "Why?" Nogibrella didn't understand.

  "W-well... I, uh, I would kind of... you know, like to... um, spend some time... with you, my lady..." somehow, the guy had increased his awkwardness. It was an impressive achievement.

  "Oh, Seoman, don't be. I know you're offering this out of courtesy. But you know what they say about me at the palace."

  "They are...!" Seoman started, but his companion had already disappeared into the crowd, and he said this to someone's back.

  He wasn't flirting with me, was he? No. Men aren't interested in plain girls who are bad at everything. And I'm cursed too. Definitely not.

  Nogibrella took the lord's clothes and went back to the palace. Of course, the lord yelled at her for being late, but she was able to blame it on the slow tailor. After dinner he went to the top of the palace and she quickly swept the small debris under the bed with her feet, smoothed it out with her hands and threw the dirty clothes into the general pile for washing (later she would steal them when they were hung out to dry).

  Nogibrella then used a secret passage in the Lord Chancellor's room and made her way to a closed part of the library (the whole library was a closed part to her, but this wing was the city's archives, especially closed to others).

  Judging by the amount of dust and the strange little cobwebs (who could weave them here? Tiny palm-sized nephils?), the Lord Chancellor didn't use this passage to the library (and the regular one, for that matter). The girl discovered this passage while exchanging things on the shelves, when the statuette of some big-eyed alm turned out not to be a statuette of a big-eyed alm, but a lever in the shape of a big-eyed alm.

  There were occasional holes in the passage for peeking into other rooms, but the spy wasn't interested in them. All the city's documents passed through her, and there was no point in standing and peeking at the palace's inhabitants in the hope of seeing who knows what. Besides, the first time Nogibrella checked those holes, she saw something that made her wash her eyes, hoping to wash away enough layers of the eyes with that sight.

  Nogibrella, trying not to inhale the perennial dust, lit a strange torch in an elongated glass casing. She grabbed a pile of scrolls and parchments from a nearby cabinet, sat down at a dusty table, and began to read.

  The spy was looking for anything that could harm the Court of Madness. But these were old records that had stopped being kept after the Court had conquered Hreb about ten winters ago. The oldest record said that the madmen had taken the entire elite of the city, including the children, and moved them elsewhere. Then the parchment was ragged with teeth marks. I hope it was delicious for this little alm.

  There was no record of Frenzy, the field of order, or any new earth boxes. What a useless archive this chamber of secrets has! Where are the secrets that change everything?

  But then she found an almost well-preserved scroll with a plan of the palace. After studying it for a few minutes, the spy was able to match it to the real palace. She found the secret passage she had just used, and another in the kitchen. Her torch went out, plunging the room into darkness. It should shine for a few more hours. Wait a minute! What time is it?

  Nogibrella rushed back, tucking the map behind Gloomeye belt girdling her thigh. Until nightfall, she would be forced to perform her duties as a maid as flawlessly as ever, and at night she would have to be locked in Lucia's room, which she would open just before the lord awoke. Otherwise, the secret room in the kitchen could be searched at night.

  It turns out that turning an entire team against yourself can lead to trouble. How could anyone have guessed that?

  ^^^

  The next morning, everything went as usual. Nogibrella sat at the desk reading Hreb's secret reports, and and the Striped Man sat in a chair complaining about a mysterious ill-wisher who had broken into his room and wrinkled and soaked all his clothes just after his personal maid had washed and smoothed them.

  But then the usual morning routine all broke down.

  "What shall I do?"

  Nogibrella raised her head perplexedly and looked around the room. There was no one in it but the lord and her.

  "Are you addressing me, sir?" she asked.

  "Are you a weak minded? Do you think I can reach out to someone else? Through the walls? Just for fun, tell me what to do. With the city and the Mourneers. I'll compare my ingenious decisions with those of mere humans like you, maidservant," the city lord somehow began to take up less space in his chair and looked at his maid gloomily, drumming his fingers with his fingers.

  Nogibrella become confused. She had no ready-made pattern of behaviour for such a situation, and had to make one on the go. Namely, to answer honestly. Not the most well-made template, but! Confusion.

  "I would find a remedy against the Mourneers' remedy against Frenzy, sir," she said.

  "What remedy? He's invincible!" the Lord Chancellor threw irritably.

  "Well, then, there's nothing needs to be done. Unless..."

  "Unless what? Don't make dramatic pauses – they don't suit such a commoner's face," the Striped Man urged her.

  "Oh, sir, I am not versed in all this, in these matters of state and war. I am, as you rightly say, a commoner. But if the blackies want to defeat us, and not our demon, what use is his invincibility to us? It can also be stopped without defeat."

  The lord was lost in thought, and for some reason he was in no hurry to laugh. The pause dragged on, and Boiriann decided to ask:

  "Tell me, aren't you glad you created Frenzy? It's so strong, it must have cost you dearly."

  "The price? Yes... Perhaps that price was..." the Striped Man began to mutter absently, but then he came to himself and rapped out, looking sternly at the maid, "If I hadn't paid that price, we'd all be dead by now. Now go about your business, maid. And forget this conversation, it's not for your mind," the lord even held up his index finger to demonstrate the seriousness of the instruction.

  When Nogibrella left his room to go about her business, she was also thoughtful. For some cause, Meg wasn't at her self-imposed morning post.

  If Striped Man is such an incompetent idiot, how come Hreb has not been conquered yet? Come to think of it, the others here aren't exactly brilliant in their abilities either, especially when it comes to counter-espionage. Sig is the most adequate. But someone has to make all the anti-conquering decisions?

  Her gaze fell on a bald, fat man walking down the corridor towards her, with Lucia at his side. She leaned over and whispered in his ear. "The braid interferes with reading Lucia's lips and emotions," the spy thought for some reason. She couldn't read lips or emotions.

  More meaningful thoughts followed, "And isn't Lucia the head of the maids? Does she also serve this man?" Nogibrella had seen this man before, he was communicating with the Lord Chancellor. Or rather, he was trying to communicate and the lord was trying to avoid him.

  As he approached the girl, the fat man, instead of not noticing her and walking on like a normal noble, stopped and asked Lucia:

  "Is that her? Our lord's personal servant?

  These words alerted Nogibrella. A little too much attention for a mere spy pretending to be a maid.

  "Yes, sir. So Lucia whispered to you about me? And I've just got rid of the fear that all people talk about me when they whisper. Prematurely, it turns out."

  "Ah, she certainly doesn't pay money for words," the man chuckled. His eye was closed. "That's the kind of perky girl I'd like to talk to sometime. But not standing in the corridor, it's for travelling, not for interesting conversations."

  Nogibrella nodded and was about to get away from the suspicious man, but then the head maid told her:

  "Someone has soiled all your spare dresses with mud. Unless your master has given you an urgent errand, you'll have to wash them. And keep an eye on this dress, otherwise you'll have no clothes for work."

  The master never gave her any urgent errands (according to Nogibrella herself), so the spy went to throw her dresses into the laundry pile.

  Meg was waiting for her in the maids' common room. She jumped up abruptly and spilled the contents of her jar onto Nogibrella. The contents turned out to be dirt, which slowly began to creep down her dress.

  "Now that's a really unusual way to say 'good morning,'" said the victim of the attack.

  Meg, who wanted to repeat yesterday's dialogue herself, but changed roles, got angry:

  "You're a creature!" she said after all. Then she threw her jar on the floor and ran out of the room, shouting "Wash the floor after you, you dirty Lower."

  Sighing, Nogibrella used her foot to cover the muddy puddle under someone's bed and went to check Lucia's words in her room. The words were true: all the dresses were smeared with mud. The skirt and shirt she had worn when she had sneaked into city remained untouched. Either Meg hadn't thought to daub them, or she had a small conscience and left the personal items intact.

  The choices were: change into her old clothes (good thing they were black), wear the old clothes while dripping mud on the floor, or wear no clothes at all. And Nogibrella suspected that only one of these choices would not incur Lucia's intense wrath.

  While changing clothes, the spy discovered the forgotten map of the palace under her dress. She walked over to Meg's bed, lifted the floorboard, and was about to hide the parchment in the stash when, with the words ‘I'd like to apologise. I just-’ Meg entered the room. She was carrying a bucket of water and a mop, but they fell from her hands when their owner saw what Nogibrella was doing.

  Meg leapt over the beds and snatched the map from her nemesis.

  "A creature!" she shouted.

  "You're just a creature? Leave me some lines," Nogibrella said, not really believing her own joke. She was stunned. She was a bad spy after all.

  "What is it? And what language is it in?" Meg's face began to turn green somehow. She turned the map towards the spy.

  "What? It's-" Nogibrella saw for herself that the symbols were not in the common language. Do I really know another language? Has the Gloomy infected me? The stun had increased.

  "Why did you try to put this in my hiding place? And what's this?" the greening girl pulled out the cube of the Striped Man. "You're finished. Lucia-"

  The stun has passed. Nogibrella jumped to her feet and swung at her opponent. She tried to defend herself with her hands, but the spy slyly changed the attack to a forehead-to-nose hit. It made a hearty crunch. Even the spy felt sorry for her victim and the waste of such a good crunch on a less important enemy. Every bone in the Striped Man's body would have been better suited to such a crunch.

  Meg dropped her things and clutched at the injured spot. Her nose bent downwards even more and red blood flowed from it. So why was she turning green?

  Nogibrella grabbed her stolen items and ran for the exit. Meg sat down on the floor, looking very green, and said nasally after her:

  "Damn you!"

  Too late.

  Everything is bad. But at least everything bad is still undercover. All Meg has is a broken nose, words against her enemy, and her own stash. I'm still Nogibrella.

  This chapter and the next should have been one, but because of its length it had to be split. It contains the important events of the first part of the work.

  The fact that the order of the characters' chapters are out of order bothers me more than it should. In the second part of the work, Gloomeye should take up most of the chapters.

  In this chapter, I was able to add three references to very important books in the fantasy genre. And prepare one more Meg-related reference. Although it might not be just a reference, but an ommage.