Bloodkin (Jaseth of Jaelshead) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Gina!
    I love her, yeah yeah
    When she gives me that stuff
    I just drink it all up
    I love it when she gives me
    Her wonderful love
    Gina!
     
    When she finished she bowed at the hearty applause, grinning with pleasure. I saw one of the other young locals, Sergeth I think, stand and fill a glass with wine which he took and offered to her with a shy smile. Charlie noticed it too and turned to grin at me, both thumbs up.
    “Well, that’s my good deed for the evening.” He chuckled conspiratorially, then sighed. “Might make up for some of the disappointment in not being selected.”
    By then the crowd, which included more of the travelling merchants by this stage, had noted the lull in the music and were once again clamouring for Charlie’s attention. He told stories and joked and laughed until the wee hours of the morning, when, overcome by exhaustion and wine, the crowd dispersed and we retired gratefully to bed.
     
    I awoke in unfamiliar surroundings to Charlie wrenching open curtains, flooding the room with indecently bright light. The bed, which had seemed so soft and inviting when we finally stumbled to our rooms the night before, now seemed hard as rocks, and my neck and shoulders were painfully stuff. I felt like someone had carved open my stomach and rearranged my insides. I groaned, utterly miserable.
    But Charlie seemed as bright and cheerful as ever as he unlatched the window and pushed it open. I could have punched him.
    “Got any sweet Nea’thi magic stuff to make me feel better? I think I’m a bit hungover.”
    “Hầұeӣ” Charlie corrected before laughing. “Nope! Well, I do, but I’ve got something even better.” He rummaged through his saddlebags then gestured to the door to out adjoining bathroom. “Go get yourself cleaned up and I’ll see what I can do.” I didn’t think
anything
, save hours of blessed unconsciousness, could make me feel better. I hauled myself out of bed and into my discarded clothes.
    “I’m never drinking again,” I muttered, fumbling with the bathroom door.
    Charlie laughed, obnoxiously loud. “We’ll see, kiddo!”
    After relieving my roiling guts I rinsed my face with the cold water in the washbasin and scrubbed out my mouth with the minty paste Charlie swore by. Feeling only slightly less nauseas I went back into the bedroom to find Charlie seated by the window, a curious contraption in his hand. It was a wooden pipe of sorts, a long tube curved delicately away from the large bowl, filled with what looked like dried moss.
    “A moss pipe” Charlie said proudly, holding it out to me. “See, us Nea’thi only discovered the joys of drinking after the Leaving. Not much to ferment, living Underground. But this stuff,” he gestured to a collection of small leather pouches of different colours that he had arranged on the end of the bed, “Hell, we’ve been smoking this for 50,000 years!” I sniffed at the moss in the pipe, it was sweet and grassy and smelt of cloves, or maybe cinnamon. Charlie giggled as I wrinkled my nose. “Our horticulturalists take great pride in the quality of our moss. We’ve developed a number of different varieties from the original psychoactive wild moss we discovered when we went Underground.” He held up the white leather pouch. “This is a very weak variety, developed to alleviate head and body pains, nausea, and to restore appetite while still allowing for clear mental function. A perfect hangover cure!”
    Sweet Lilbecz, why hadn’t I known about this stuff? It could have saved me a lot of grief on the hideous mornings with my tutors after nights when boredom had induced me to filtch a bottle or two from the Manor’s cellars.
    Charlie laughed, as if reading my thoughts. “I have noticed that Humans tend to be a bit wary of Nea’thi customs, especially the further away from the Capitols you get.” He shrugged apologetically at the inference that I was a bit, well, rural.
    “What are the others for?” I asked, pointed to