Chapter 40: Felis Catus

Two days and nights passed in the blink of an eye, metaphorically speaking, while I enjoyed the hospitality of the Dead Hand. The accommodations weren’t quite on par with the inn, consisting of an attic room with a single bed, with the rest of the amenities shared between a house of three, but it wasn’t bad either. Fat Man and Little Boy largely avoided me, the latter flinching away, possibly out of fear, while the former was rarely in the house.

“Loading boxes, mostly,” was the reason he gave, when I asked over lunch where he was vanishing, all the time, which made as much sense as anything.

Still, Little Boy proved an adequate cook, preparing simple but hearty dishes of porridge, stews and pies, three times a day. There was no dedicated pet food, as before, but Pumpkin was happy enough sharing a table with us, so I simply fed him the same as the rest of us. I’m no vet, but cats eat just about anything in the wild, so I figured it would be fine. All in all, more than acceptable living conditions for just a few days, particularly when all of it came free of charge. I didn’t see Harvey again during that time, so presumably he was very busy getting the caravan in order, but that simply gave me more time to myself, which I used in a mostly productive manner.

“Fetch!”

Pumpkin stared at me, looking rather unimpressed as the chicken leg sailed off into the distance, but he did eventually paddle off to fetch it, even bringing back a few bones as evidence. This would be a good time to mention that I’d never owned a cat before, and what little experience I had with pets came in a more canine variety. Sadly, Pumpkin wasn’t too keen to play in the same manner, though he did enjoy curling up against me and falling asleep: by now, I was starting to think I’d picked up a rather lazy cat.

[Pumpkin the Cat stored.]

It wasn’t a bother, though, not when I didn’t have to literally carry his weight everywhere. We’d fallen into a good rhythm, where I’d let him out at mealtimes, then he’d stay for as long as it took to get tired and fall asleep, at which point I’d return him to my inventory. This was perhaps not what the System had in mind, when it granted me the trait, but I certainly wasn’t complaining: the alternative was a pet carrier of some kind, and those were universally unwieldy and ugly in equal measure.

Today, unlike the previous two, we’d only had breakfast thus far, though it was already nearly noon. Word had come from Harvey, who’d told the two stooges that the caravan would be leaving today, which was why I was camped out in the front garden, waiting for him to arrive. I’d mostly stayed indoors up until now, just to minimise the chance that someone connected me to a couple recent murders, however minimal the chance might be, but with only hours left on the clock for my time at Allensward, I was willing to take on a greater margin of risk.

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I first noticed the caravan not by sight, or even hearing, but by the tingling of my sinuses. I’d never been the best around straw, it always caused a terrible itch back in the English suburbs, and had been one of the things I’d gladly left behind on my move to London. Now, however, it returned with a vengeance, courtesy of the cargo horse who’d probably been eating it just recently. Turning around, I saw an unknown man wearing a low-brimmed hat and a trenchcoat, directing the horse from the front of his carriage. Just one horse for the lot, surprisingly, despite the carriage extending considerably further back, looking big enough to fit four men and their cargo beneath an expansive tarpaulin cover. It was only the first of many, no less than half a dozen banding together to form the aforementioned caravan, a chain of vehicles grouped loosely together, with even more riders following around on horseback, wearing thick leather with bows strapped to their backs. The flap of the front carriage opened, and Harvey stuck his head out.

“Good, you’re already here. Get inside, and let's move.”

He vanished back inside the tarp, clearing the way for me to climb onboard. The inside of the carriage was much as I’d imagined it: a pair of leather seats, set slightly apart and both facing forward, a lamp on the floor to provide a bit of illumination, and every other space taken up by wooden boxes filled with goods: strawberries, if my nose wasn’t leading me astray. A decent setup, though not quite up to the standards of The Gold State Coach that featured in coronation and jubilee celebrations back in England. Few carriages were, I suspected, but my sample size was too small to make a determination either way.

“You’ll want one of these as well, consider it your signing bonus,” I turned my head just in time to see Harvey toss a bracelet at my head.

[Pumpkin the Cat withdrawn.]

Completely coincidentally, Pumpkin decided to come out to play, grabbed the shiny piece between his teeth as he vaulted off of Harvey’s head, and back into my lap with the grace of an acrobat; only then depositing his acquisition into my waiting hand.

[Blackened Bracelet: Hides your Name and Class when worn.]

“A magic item for free?” I raised my eyebrow at that, because even if my Class could do the same thing innately, everything I’d heard suggested that such items came at a substantial premium.

“These aren’t too hard to come across,” Harvey shrugged, rolling back a sleeve to reveal a similar bracelet around his own arm. “Almost every Infiltrator-type monster will carry one, and they often drop intact upon death. Since the effect gives no direct combat power, it tends to be cheap at auction, too. Keep that on you, alright? The first rule of being an outlaw is to keep your name out of the news.”

Some things remained true across both worlds, I reflected, as I slipped the bracelet on my wrist, even as Harvey yelled orders for the driver to depart.