Chapter Text
In the distance, the Grand City of Demacia looms.
It’s bigger and brighter than all the stories say it is, with gleaming gargoyles of petricite lining the battlements and huge statues guarding its gate. Despite the hour is nigh on dusk, people still rush in and out of the city of lights and safe stones. The horse Quinn’s father had gifted her for the journey chomps at the bit between his teeth, oozing the green drool of springtime clover from his jowls. Behind her, the wooden crate holding a small, yet still powerful eagle jostles, and he peeps from within, whistling his worries and fears. At this point in his training, he still wears every provocation on his sleeve, and Quinn knows if she doesn't get into the city soon, the poor bird might hurt himself in his crate. The path leading up to the gate begins to make Quinn feel all the smaller. Valor can sense her doubt; he's screeching and fluttering around in his crate enough to strain the ropes holding down the wooden box, and the horse beneath her responds to the jostling by picking up his head to jig a couple of steps forward, but not fully charge careening towards the city. He is a good horse, Quinn's dad was sure of that, so perhaps should she need another war-trained horse meant for rough terrain like this stocky fellow, she could choose this level-headed gelding.
In through the doors of the city, everything grows louder and more active, with the paths of people hurried further by the darkening light across the sky. She slows her jigging horse to an easy amble, and maintains her skyward gaze. The white stone radiates pink sheen, the clock towers ring to announce the evening hour, but it feels suffocating and terrifyingly cramped despite the path that could hold at least sixteen mounted soldiers abreast. Pinpricks of stars and celestial bodies peek through translucent brushstrokes of clouds. The only thing here still freeing is the sky above her. Even Uwendale wasn't so blockaded.
Quinn dismounts off the main path, and loosens the saddle but not the strappings holding up her belongings, and addresses a soldier on duty.
"Good evening to you, sir," she begins, dipping down her chin out of respect. Her mother's teachings heavy on the mind, she makes a point of formalizing her tongue. "Might there be a place nearby to rest?”
The soldier eyes her warily. "You obviously aren't from around here, are you?"
Quinn thinks it obvious. Her clothes are nothing like the high fashion adorning the people of the city, and in comparison look more akin to rags than even what this guard wore under his doublet. Her wool shirt has kept her warm thus far, with its cowled neck around her throat enough to hide her nose from the winds of springtime air, and her dark auburn hair (wine-dark, her mother had called it) is not tied in a bonnet but with a strand of twine.
"I've been on the road for three days, sir, I just need a place to sleep."
"A country lass if ever I've met one, then," he mutters in response. "Inn's down the road on the left. If I were you, girl, I wouldn't be so mindful of guard. People might think something of it."
Whether other people thought something of her or not, she definitely has words for this. She leads the horse down the road with a furrow in her brow.
"Are people in cities truly so elitist and rude?" she whispers to her equine companion, who, despite all beneficence, has no ability to understand her.
From a young age, her mother had taught her the importance of manners, especially for the nation's men- and women-at-arms. As such, the crass remarks of the guard on post strike her as odd. It was by no means necessary to treat her so, and yet he had.
Quinn pauses at the inn's front stoop, taking a moment to recollect her composure before entering. She'd not been in the city for long, but already she was exhausted, and the sight of the inn was a welcome one. The sign above the door reads "The Startled Hen," and features a chicken out of wood carving with paint, though it looks far more like a cock than a hen, beak parted and crest a-flayed. Warm firelight spills from the windows onto darkening streets, and already the inn's bar within is bustling with evening noise and activity. She leads her horse to the stable, and a hand makes motion to take over her horse.
"I need the crate, please," she requests, and the groom cast a look her way.
Was everything she did so obviously rural?
"What's in the crate, madame?" he asks casually, beginning to unstrap it. He releases it crooked, and the crate in turn releases a heated squawk.
"Please, let me," she insists, taking the obviously-rattled box of bird off his hand.
"What's in the crate?" he repeats, his expression less confused now and far more frightened. His eyes shine with fear, and she hesitates.
"An eagle," she says slowly, gripping the base of the crate. "An azurite."
The stable-hand blinks, jaw falling slightly slack. "Are you joking?"
She shakes her head.
"A real azurite?"
She nods.
"Are you mad? By the Light, they haven't been seen since the days of King Jarvan the second, and you caught one?"
"I didn't really catch one, I nursed it back to health and --"
"Hey Benoit! This girl caught herself an azurite!"
Quinn blushes, beginning to feel the starts of red-hot embarrassment throb through her chest and prickle at the back of her neck. By the light, she just wanted to get inside and check to see if her bird was alright.
"Prove it," snapped the other. "Those are just birds of myth, my pa used to say if you can't go out and see one, it idn't real."
"Can you?" asked the first.
"I mean --" Quinn steps back slightly, her fingers curling into the soft wood of the crate in a subconscious act of protection for her beloved companion.
"Can't even prove it," spat the second. "I wouldn't be surprised if it were a little frosty hawk in there."
"Making all that noise? Didn't you hear it?"
As the pair continued bickering, Quinn sets Valor's crate to the straw, then untacks her mount. They won't stop anytime soon, she thinks grimly. She had never been privileged enough for a groom as it was -- why would the lap of luxury start immediately upon entering the city? She rubs down the gelding's flanks and legs with her own handkerchief and brushes off each hoof with the palm of her hand, then leaves him in only his rope halter for the stable-hands -- as incompetent as they seem -- to blanket and water.
It occurs to her as she steps from the barn with Valor's crate cocked on her hip that she might be wise to lie about Valor, at least until she acquires a position in the army. People would know of her then. With her pack over one shoulder, she slips into the inn and rest the crate on a bar stool.
"One room, please, just one bed. I just need it for a couple of days, till I can get on my feet."
The innkeeper looks her up and down. "Ten gold a night."
Quinn produces her coin purse and counts out ten gold pieces, which she rests on the counter eagerly.
Much slower than her, the innkeep counts them himself, and pockets them, then produces a key. "In the back on the left. It's room number fifteen."
She slips from the busy bar to the quiet back of the inn, where her room is. Upon unlocking, the door swings open with a squeal on its hinges, revealing a dingy room far drabber than many of the homes she'd visited in Uwendale. There is but a bed, a dusty rug, wood floors, and a dresser against one side. Moonlight pours in through a singular window, and the sole fancy feature of the room is a gas lamp on the bedside table with a container of safety matches beside it. Even her parents, having sold horses to the military for years, could never seem to round up the money for a Piltovan gas lamp or the gas to power it. The room itself is slightly cold, but the quilt on the bed seems heavy enough, and her cloak strung over her shoulders still warms her.
“Alright, Val, you gotta be quiet.”
Quinn unlatches the door to the crate, swings open the door, and gently tugs the bird from his comfortable perch within. As soon as he's free, he spreads his wings to their full span, rouses his feathers, and blinks sleepily at his handler, almost a silent thanks to her freeing him. She allows him to sit upon her lap as she picks at his feathers, just to make sure none had been broken, and examined the pads of his feet, to ensure he hadn't cut himself or rubbed himself raw on the trip there. Overall, he seems in fine health, his vibrant blue plumage glossy in the low light of the room, and his eyes still shining with an eagerness unparalleled by any animal she'd laid eyes on. The soft blue and orange down of his belly seemed to have a couple of new pinfeathers coming in to replace his downy baby feathers. Truly, he is maturing into something like an adolescent, past the stage of ungainly wings and pillowy pinions.
She lets him go as soon as she finishes with him, but quickly calls him back to her glove with a chunk of meat from her blood bag. He gulps down a mouse and some raw rabbit left over from the day before that had just began to ferment in the bag, and sips rivulets of water from Quinn's canteen into her open palm. She could have gone to the bar to get a glass for herself, rather than drinking from her hands, but she would have rather stayed in the silence.
On the morrow, she thinks, she will ride to the castle, and ask the king to make her a scout, but she knows it won't be so simple. She will carry Valor the whole way as she rides astride the Selby-branded mount, and stop outside the doors. He will listen. It's hard not to, with the symbol of your nation perched on the speaker's fist.
A brief smile crosses her face.
Quinn washes up her face with her dripping hands, dresses down to her undershirt and trousers, and slips under the quilt. Tomorrow will be a busy day.