Ethi had begun to suspect there was something uniquely horrible about Udrebam that made it smell like shit. Dahgfort had proven her wrong. It was worse than the island, with all the same dull grey walls and buildings that spat black smoke into the once white skies, and somehow double the reek.
An industrial city is what Isla had called it, right before splitting the group off into two. Siobhan, Lachlan and Isla had gone off to the west while she and Cut searched the city's east for the man. There was only a picture and neither of them could draw so they depended on simply asking for a man that matched his description.
It was not an exactly pleasant affair. Ethi had quickly learned that absent hair and brown eyes were not rare features amongst these people, it helped however that he had a nice, crooked nose to distinguish him...From everyone but the boxers, at least.
That did not make people eager to talk to a foreigner however, so Cut did much of the speaking. They asked around at pubs, docks, markets and bridges, and had received their fifitieth ‘Fuck off,’ of the day from a person who didn’t want to get caught up in mercenary business before they decided a break was necessary.
Ethi leaned against the bridge, watching a group of children play a curious game. She couldn’t make out what the rules were but they apparently included sticks, stones and a straw hat.
“Fuck this.” Cut swore. The woman was sitting across from her on the ground with a face that would’ve told Ethi, even had she not been witness, that her morning had been spent being told to fuck off.“We’re not making any progress-” Ethi began. “But-”“No-” Cut spoke through her. “I mean fuck this, we’re looking through this place, looking for Goddess knows who for a bunch of cunts who clearly work for somebody incredibly dangerous. They have their hands full already, let’s get the fuck out of here before that changes.”Ethi shook her head. “We made a deal with them.”Cut frowned, half in confusion, half in rage. “A deal made under duress- You think they didn’t take advantage of the fact that we were about to be killed? Or would you have agreed if there hadn’t been guns and knives chasing you?”It was hard to argue with that, harder still to keep the truth from Cut as she did, but Ethi had to. She owed Isla that much. “Let's just go to the pub over there, arguing will get us nowhere.” She began walking.There were seconds of tense silence and then she heard Cut’s footsteps behind her. Ethi let out a sigh, but the relief was short lived.
“You know, I’ve been wondering…” Cut began, words shaped like a dagger as they pricked against Ethi’s ears. “Why would Isla send the two people who are most likely to cut and run alone together.”
Ethi searched for words, and the mere act of it seemed to have confirmed Cut’s suspicions. The woman measured her with distasfetul resignation. “I don’t really care what sort of deal you two made, just don’t lie to me.”
“Sorry,” Ethi apologised but Cut just set her eyes forwards.
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Ethi assumed there was some explanation for the way Unixian pubs seemed to always be a replica of the others in their area. Perhaps the uniformity bred some sort of allure, a safety, and a sense of security. Perhaps local architects charged less to repeat work they’d already done. It always left her oddly disquieted in any case, and the Dripping Barrel was no different.
Armed with the scent of piss and soured grapes, it welcomed Ethi and Cut with open doors. Eyes latched onto the pair and didn’t let go. Ethi got the most of it, her foreign features raising a hundred silent questions.
She had once thought the Unixians might muster hostility for her visible heritage, and while she was certainly treated differently, it was not malice that met her but curiosity.
The Unixians wanted to know where she was from and what she was doing in their lands. It made conversation easier to start but trust harder to get, and nothing quite exemplified that like her conversation with the patrons of the Dripping Barrel.They would talk to her about the Sieve and Udrebam, but the moment the mention of anything that sounded even vaguely like mercenary business came up their jaws were tight and the warmth in their eyes was cooled as if by an uncomfortable northern breeze. That, Ethi knew, was her cue to find another candidate.
She sat by the bar with a keeper that looked less than pleased at the fact that she wasn’t buying anything. Her eyes were on Cut. The woman was sitting at the far end of the room and doing better than her, though Ethi had a suspicion that was because she wore her trench coat over her breasts.
Earlier in their search she hadn’t, and barely anyone gave her the time of day.
Wood dragged against wood and Ethi turned to see a man take a seat next to her. His face was a forest of hairs, greys speaking of his age and the abundance of blacks telling of the youth that still burned within him. An axe dangled from his belt, a lumberjack perhaps, his thick arms certainly agreed. So the man likely dwelled near the city’s edge, where trees might actually be found. He ordered something Ethi had never heard of and then sent one Ethi’s way. The bartender seemed almost reluctant to serve her but soon there was a jug of something brown and yellow in front of her.
“Thank you,” She smiled even though the scent of alcohol made her sick. Ethi took a sip.
“You don’t need to drink it if it tastes like piss.” mole
It did and she didn’t. “Sorry, I just-”
“What brings you here?” He asked, relieving her with a laugh.“Looking for my brother.” She replied, having repeated the lie so frequently already that it slid from her lips like copper sheets over an ocean current.
“Your brother, aye?” He asked, green eyes peeking through from the shrubs. “Can’t say I’ve seen any that look like your kind around here.”Ethi didn’t know what she thought of being referred to like that, so she pushed the matter aside. “He’s not like me- half brother actually so he looks more like your people,” she explained.The ‘looking for a relative route' had the highest success ratio so far, people were often more eager to help a girl from a far away place in need than a foreigner searching for a local. The labourer was no exception for he leaned into the conversation. “Oh.”
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“Have you seen him?” She said. “Pale skin, brown hair, mole underneath his lip.”
The man’s forehead creased in thought. “Can’t say I have, no.”Ethi wasn’t expecting anything different, in fact she’d begun suspecting that this man simply didn’t exist, or at the very least didn’t exist here. “”That’s fine, I-”
“Sory lassy,” He cut her off suddenly. “Gotta go, think I feel a cramp coming.”“Oh,” Ethi nodded. The man was soon on his way and she found herself alone again, with no progress made and a jug of piss-flavoured liquor in front of her. She could only wish the others were doing better.
Her eyes flowed over to the lumberjack’s stool and settled on the counter in front of him. His jug stood there, barely drunk. Around it were four others, none touched. That didn’t seem right.
Ethi turned to the bartender who was currently mid conversation with another customer. “Excuse me.” He gave her his attention reluctantly and Ethi received it eagerly. “My friend over here, does he usually order this amount?”
Ethi couldn’t imagine there was any question she could have asked that wouldn’t have had the man scowling, but at least he gave her an answer. “Fredrick yeah?” He asked and Ethi knew the question needed no answer. “Yeah, he could always handle his liquor, odd to see him dip without finishing a single jug, but I guess more for you then, you freeloader.”
Ethi didn’t know what face she was making but it had the man looking away from it with an unsettled glint in his eyes. She felt like she was falling, madly. Hands flailing, legs kicking, eyes locked on a rope she’d just let slip her grasp.
She got to her feet, Cut was mid-conversation with a group, Ethi interrupted her. “We need to go now.”The woman’s face flickered from confusion to recognition in an instant and the pair were soon being kissed by Dahgfort’s sun.
“You found him?” Cut asked.
Ethi felt Cut’s words as a distant thing in the back of her head, so focused was she on finding the man in the sea of bodies around them.
Gods, she hated cities, always filled with people rubbing into one another. “I found someone who might know him.”
“Fuck, which way did he go then?”
Ethi didn’t answer, she just turned around, eyes latching onto every face, form and body in the hopes of identifying the man. She couldn’t find him, couldn’t grasp that lost rope and now it was- Axe!.
It was a brief thing, like the spark that starts a flame or the moment before a wave deformed against the shore, but she had seen it. Just a momentary glint of sun on steel. Fleeting, brief, nothing much at all. But enough. She was racing towards him already, feet moving, body darting through the obstacles of flesh and bone. The crowd justled her, so she jostled them back, staying on her feet and holding sight of that image. Cut’s footsteps told of the woman’s pace behind her.
The man turned a corner and Ethi cursed. She considered calling on her magic to quicken her pace but that would be no different than waving a loaded firearm in the air. Contending with some damned proctor. She would just have to handle it like an inept.Ethi reached the corner, turned it and felt the air flood out of her lungs. She looked down, expecting to see a knife buried under her ribs, surprised to find only a fist. It was the labourer’s, not a mortal blow at all, and yet when she willed her body to move the world did instead, and Ethi found herself on the floor.
It was like he had found the stores of her body’s strength and squeezed them empty. She heard herself coughing and puking spit and she rolled on the floor, but so intense was the pain that her actions seemed like the motions of a different person. A person not beget by the crippling fatigue and crawling terror now dancing along her.
A wet warmth spread down her thighs, she’d pissed herself. She didn’t care really, she just wanted to die, it seemed the quickest way to rid her of this torture.She knew Cut was here by the sight of her legs, knew they were fighting from the sound of blows, grunts and swears and the dirt they kicked up to help. She should have been helping but she wasn’t. Fuck, she couldn’t.
The pair were on the ground now, grappling and rolling. They were a storm of tangling limbs. It stopped when Cut had a hold around his neck. The man reached for his axe but it wasn’t by his side anymore so he struggled instead.
Veins bulging against his skin like the body of a serpent, face red like a setting sun, refusing to go silently into the land of dreams. He was sent there either way.
His body slumped, and Cut shoved him to the side. The woman was pulling Ethi up to her feet within moments and the motion threatened to send her food to the mud again. “Are you okay?”
“Absolutely fucking not.”
Cut nodded as if expecting no different of an answer. “Liver shot, glad you’re still kicking at least.”
Ah, so that’s what those feel like. The man was soon dragging himself awake, with groggy eyes and a groan of pain. Ethi knew he wouldn’t be making any sudden movements for a while, Cut had been very precise in which bodyparts to bruise before he woke.
She was the first to speak. “Welcome back.”
He met her with the eyes of a person staring at the woman who’d just choked them into unconsciousness.
Cut seemed nonplussed. “Now before you do anything drastic, know that my friend here is a bug and can use her bug magic when she’s not actively writhing in pain. So unless you’ve got a really confident haymaker coming up I suggest you start doing as we say.”