Chapter 5: Late Rodrigo

“Why are you awake so early?” Santiago’s accusatory tone swept right over me. My arm flowed familiarly downwards and set my saucier and cup down onto the coffee table. I looked up at him,

“It’s for the best that you spend time alone with Vidal. At least until he gets over his frustration with me.” I leaned back in my chair, holding my right loose-wristed arm at a perfect angle.

“I’m sorry, what?” He gave me an annoyed, confused look.

I ignored him and pressed onward, changing the subject matter to the more prudent, pressing problem, “I followed up on your relationship with The Silver Fawn’s manager.” Santiago immediately scowled and ensured I saw it before he sat down across from me. “He and I worked something out.”

“Why didn’t you warn me, at least? Ask my advice? You know I know him–”

“Well.” I said, cutting him off. “I know you know him well. It really doesn’t matter how well you know anyone, Santiago, when we’re dealing with chattel.”

“So, you manipulated him?” Santiago began to relax, his face lost its tightness and the red flush of his cheeks leaked away as he sipped on a cup of coffee he’d poured for himself.

“A few minutes of attempting to convince him that our relationship was enough to cooperate failed, and so in the interest of time I influenced him. Rodrigo’s clique are using the tavern for protection money under threat of damage or death. Now, we’re their new protectors.”

“What about the owner?” He asked.

“I’m not worried about them. If it comes up I will use the same method to assert my dominance over the establishment, or we can dispatch him and promote your friend… what’s his name? Efrain! Yes, Efrain.”

We were momentarily interrupted by Vidal who finally shuffled in to join us. He wore loose and dusty clothing, without shoes. The unclean attire led up to a soiled face, and baggy eyes. He meandered around the furniture to sit next to Santiago.

“Good morning.” I stated flatly, and passively, without looking at Vidal. Santiago turned to smile at him, but found himself stonewalled as Vidal was staring at the floor. He didn’t reply.

“Returning...” I said, gesturing to Santiago, “...to our immediate future, the awaiting step is figuring out a plan to handle Rodrigo. The likelihood of his retaliating is sure and I reckon it’ll come soon and swiftly.”

“So…” Santiago lifted his right leg over his left, and looked away with a tilted head, slipping into thought. “… Rodrigo centralises his holding down by the west wall. Because he controls the smuggling trade, my understanding is they use the sewers there to move goods in from a drop-off point. At least, basing that assumption off of how we did things.”

“What’s the composition of that district?” I asked.

“Warehouses, small businesses, and factories. I suppose there are a few houses too, but nothing large enough to function as a Haven. We should speak with Efrain about it, he might know someone in that area or have some sense of direction.”

“What leads you to believe he’ll have any ideas about direction or persons?” I figured he was trying to say ‘maybe Efrain followed them,’ but that doesn’t make sense.

“If he lives there’s all I mean… I guess.” Santiago shrugged and finished his coffee.

“Let’s go then. Vidal can stay behind and… wash up.” I lingered on the last two words, speaking down at him, literally and figuratively. My presence over him drew his gaze unto me, and his set of sunken, misfortuned eyes lingered against my own. I didn’t pity him, but I could sense his loathing was diminishing. A subordinate in the making.

Santiago and I left through a side door and slipped between a small mixing of alleys to bypass the public and skip a few annoying, overcrowded intersections.

“We’ll go in the back, the delivery way. There’s a passage via one of the border streets around the bazaar. That way we can avoid attention. It’s just somewhat roundabout to get–” I had started to explain why it would be important to not just waltz in the front door when I was cut off by a bolt of iron skimming the flesh on my forehead before smacking into the wall on my right. The cracking of the crossbow’s string caught my attention just rapidly enough to allow me to avoid what would surely have been instant death.

We were firm in our tracks in the middle of a T-intersection of alleys. About fifty yards to our left, three ruffians hugged crates defensively, aiming down the sights of crossbows, holding us effectively at bolt-point. Santiago spoke up quickly, saying,

“There’s a man wrapped in the shadows just behind them–his eyes, Jack, they’re blue.” Santiago extended his right arm and pointed, loosely.

This couldn’t have been an ambush. Our trek was too spontaneous. I had no intentions of winding up between these houses. Furthermore, these short hours were hardly enough time to plan an ambush. No, we ran into them by chance. This has to be a horrific coincidence.

Two pops. The other grunts discharged their bolts at us. Santiago shunted himself right and I left, occupying the corners of the houses that buttressed this intersection.

“Reload!” The sound of charging footsteps echoed close behind. At the same moment Santiago and I exchanged glances. We could sense a disturbance dancing through the air. The space all around us was dishevelled, like heat at a distance obscuring our normal perception of objects.

This leaking power could be none other than that of one of our kin; an Ascended furious and itching to execute. The two of us bounded backwards and further separated once the foursome returned into view. The trio targeted Santiago with additional shots whilst the obscured one tended directly to me.

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At approximately my height, the blue-eyed man wore all black in tight layers. His hands, exposed, bore razor-like claws that grew right out of his five digits starting at the second knuckle. The fragmentation in my perception, at the level of the air itself, intensified immediately around him, creating a mirage-facade.

His outstretched arms, connected at the wrists, formed a loose cocoon around a coalescence of energy, dark in hue, spotted with purple, that seemed to draw in the distortions on the air. At the same time that the distortions cleared, they intensified. In the wake of returning normalcy came warping physical space. He was manipulating matter.

My rapidly changing environment caused me to trip on my backpedal. I collapsed downwards, expecting ground, but finding freefall. I glanced around as quickly as I could, trying to find myself some footing, but I saw only void of the same constitution as that which he had formed in his hands.

Panic propelled me to flail around and draw my limbs in, spinning to reposition myself towards the tear in the earth above that was quickly growing smaller, closing in on itself. I spat a burst of air out of my palms and feet, which redirected my vessel back upwards with a billowing of kinetic energy.

Within seconds I was back in reality, planted on the soiled gravel road. Having, I assume, expected my demise, the man turned his attention ‘round to Santiago who had slaughtered his three goons and, claiming one of their crossbows, levelled it on our contemporary foe.

Quickly, I rotated right and shot out my right foot, digging into the ground as it moved, to kick up a plume of gravel and dust. The sound and distraction caught the man’s awareness just long enough to permit Santiago a shot, which he took, shooting the bolt at his chest.

Much to our shared surprise, the man’s left hand intercepted the bolt, exchanging it through a tear in space anchored to his palm that redirected it, preserving its energy, back at Santiago. I was reminded of what it felt like to suspect your belly’s dropped out–to undergo that almost literal gut-wrenching, out-of-body horror constituting one of the greatest shocks of your life.

In an instant, every speckle of my matter shared in the anguish of witnessing my belovèd friend grace ruin's cape. It shook my crown. It spasmed every muscle in my body. It blurred every inch of my vision. In a moment, I descended headlong into rage and a tribal preservation–a fight or flight response that soundly chose to fight. So, my fists clenched, and as my obscured gaze collapsed into a sanguine abyss of primaeval recompense, shadows lept.

The sun-cast darkness supporting every object and building came to life, and left its buttressing of the light to join my hands in their formation of fists, plastering onto them, and spreading up to my wrists like gloves. It was from my fingers that the darkness transfigured into razors, bolstering every punch with deadly, sharpened knuckles.

What a sensation it was, that sensation of stepping into a flow of prodigious speed, turning my flurry of blows into a violent, retributional whirlpool. Everything around my bladed fists, all that material unlucky enough to wear their target, was relentlessly, and mercilessly, pulled into the fray until all that remained was a lifeless amalgamation once resembling Rodrigo’s upper third.

Upon finally regaining my senses, I found myself somewhat flustered and drained. I had to catch a nearby wall to prevent myself from falling over, and looking at my right palm revealed the usual calluses and wear being shielded by a fresh coat of blood and gore. The man’s body, eviscerated, and my own was hardly damaged. Did he not expect such a tide of resistance? Did he suspect we’d go down easy? Did he suspect it would be us?

The shadows returning to their rightful place, and a sickening, churning feeling in my liver, and blood, my own blood, trickling down my face from my forehead and through tears in my clothes pulled me away from the questions.

Then, I cried “Santiago!” and ran over to him.

He was hyperventilating and gripping the flesh around his wound. The bolt connected with his skull, above his right eye, and was stopped by the bone. A blessing, no doubt. Hurriedly I tore strips off of my jacket and wrapped Santiago’s head, pleading with him to remain calm and conscious.

“The tavern–the… Silver Fawn.” He spat out, speaking between spikes in immense pain. I could only imagine his suffering.

“Okay, okay.” I agreed with him only because I knew it was closer.

The trek was a meagre two blocks, going the back way, and would risk less exposure given the lack of major roads. We went in the delivery door, and I gently set Santiago against a crate whilst I sprinted to fetch Efrain.

We returned to Santiago within minutes, Efrain bringing along a barback who he claimed was training to be a doctor.

“I cannot stress how much you need to keep quiet about this.” I commanded, pausing only for a few hurried seconds to speak directly to Efrain’s employee. My hand gently touched his chest as I issued the order.

Whether it was the rage leaking off of my aura, or the look in my eyes, compounded by composure moving outside of my control, he weakly replied,

“I shan’t say a thing, Sir.” He sounded like he was on the verge of tears.

I left them to work, remaining in the hallway only after I peeked in long enough to be sure Santiago was still with us.

It was there, beside a dusty end table and a portrait of a muskrat in a suit, that I collapsed into myself, hysterical. Each second of the fight replayed in my head, what seconds that I could recall. How did I let myself fall? Why did I take that route? Why didn’t we bring Vidal?

I couldn’t have anticipated this. I couldn’t have known. I slammed a fist into the floor. I heard the wood crack. Why didn’t I fight harder? Why did I wait so long to use my powers? We should have reacted faster after the first shot missed me.

As I replayed the moments over and over again I reconstructed the face of the Ascended who led the ambush. A tight, angular chin… blue eyes… bushy, almost-unibrow eyebrows. The more I thought of him the clearer his bust became, and with it in mind, an abyss around it, untainted by lingering thoughts, I called out to Mother… ‘Who?’

I could almost feel her grasping me whilst replying. She could feel my pain and saw fit to share in it. With her answer I felt her warmth embracing me. I was safe, at least in this moment.

“Rodrigo.” That alto, wispy, feminine tone. So rare, so perfect.

The first snake is dead. Purely by chance, it had to be a chance. Lest we walked through an ambush intended for someone else?

My reconsideration of the events was interrupted by Efrain, who emerged now wearing a blood-stained apron. Despite his ruined clothes, he did not look upset, but relieved.

“San will be okay.” He said, taking a seat beside me, “But he needs to stay here. He cannot leave until he has healed, I think it’s too risky.”

“Where will he stay?”

“Downstairs. Where he and I–… err… there is a bedroom down there. It’s a secure space, like a little flat. The old owner used it to hide from debt collectors.”

“Is he still conscious?” I wanted to speak with him again.

“No. He found sleep shortly before we finished working on him. It’s for the best, it will speed up his recovery.”

Efrain didn’t know the half of it. I’d have to get Santiago fresh vita if he was to fully recover.

“Thank you, Efrain. Thank you.” I gave him a side-hug, tightly, before speaking again, “I’ll return as soon as I can, but I need to let his men know what’s happened.”

He nodded as I stood, and I dusted off what remained of my clothes before leaving for the guild hall, bearer of tragic news.