Time seemed to drag like a stream of water turned sludge. Cut looked at the man before her; round belly, drink-hazed eyes and a face only a mother could love. Toothpick looked back at her like he’d just witnessed an execution.
Cut’s gut churned, burned, and then he spoke.
“See!” Toothpick called out. “I told you, she’s not here!” Cut heard footsteps behind him and he threw his gaze against the window, as if attempting to push her towards it by sheer force of will alone. He didn’t need to.
She was moving for it; Ethi was already ahead of her. Smart girl. Cut got to the window, threw herself out of it, planted her back against the wall and kept her head low. Ethi did the same.
The creaking of wood told her when the others stepped into her room.There were three of them, all men Cut reckoned, the floorboard’s groaning told her they weighed as much if nothing else. She tucked Leech close to her chest, hand over his mouth.
“Where’s the girl then?” A man asked. Cut didn’t recognise the voice, it held a hollowness to it that she was all too familiar with her however. There were fighters; her, and there were killers; him.
“Said it before and I’ll say it again,” Toothpick growled. “I don’t know where the bitch is.” She hadn’t heard Toothpick scared before, she had now. “But I do know Cut wouldn’t be dull enough to go to her apartment knowing the kind of heat she’s racked up. Only a proper simpleton would do that.” He scrambled, “damn right, only a proper simpleton indeed.”
Even now, you’re still a Cunt, Cut thought.
“Fred, light the lamp,” The killer ordered and a flickering orange glow bled out from the room. The man walked and the wood creaked with him. There was a silence, and then he spoke. “Droppings, cat droppings, but no cat,” Cut’s heart sank.
“Guess I was wrong then,” Toothpick blurted out, the bastard never was a good liar.
“Where’s the girl?” Cut heard him repeat.
“I said, I don’t kn-” Something hit him and Toothpick’s body met the floor with a loud thump, coughing and wheezing.“We’ll fix that,” The killer commanded. “Start with his fingers.”
“No.Wait!” There was a struggle, a crunch, and Cut heard something snap. Toothpick cried out. His screams stabbed into her, clawing at the air as if his spirit was trying to flee the flesh.
I did this, Cut realised. Toothpick didn’t deserve this, he didn’t deserve this and Cut had done it to him. Someone nudged her out of her mind, and Cut turned to see Ethi.
The girl was white as a sheet, even beneath the foreign tint to her skin. Cut couldn’t blame her, doubtless her own face was just as pale. “We need to move,” Ethi said shakily.
Did they? Cut heard another snap, felt it run through her, and found herself thinking, weighing things. Three men with just her would be unthinkable, but she had a mystic by her side, and the element of surprise. If she opened with her spark, put one down before the fighting could truly start, it would be two against two, with one on her side bringing all the power of a Haven Goddess into the fray.
Or it could be Cut and Ethi against two men, plus however many they had stashed in waiting outside the room. Or Cut and Ethi against two mystics. The Eksha had sent these cunts, and the Eksha could afford much more than killers of her weight class. “We do,” Cut replied after her thoughts came to their grinding, miserable conclusion. It tortured her to know how powerless she was, but better to be tortured than killed.
She listened once more to the screams of her friend and pulled her feet into motion. Toothpick cared for her, his cries attested to that, but no one cared for her that much. He would give in eventually, and when that happened their chances of getting off the island would be that much narrower.
They had to get to the docks now.
***
Isla hated the docks.
They smelt like fish, for one thing. More than enough to damn a place. Peasant’s food, fish. Sharp in taste, simple in flavour and quick to rot. Mirrors of the fishermen themselves. The fact that those very same fishermen were now being crowded by half again so many empty-eyed tourists only worsened things.
Merchants, most of them. All money and no blood- polar opposites of Isla, and more arrogant than any other breed on Mirandis. They were perhaps the most loathsome commoners of all.
She did her best to withstand the crowd as it jostled and bustled about. She wondered, briefly, whether there might be fellow nobles among the swarm of animals now stampeding around. Then dismissed the thought.
There would be special docks for individuals of actual import, places a woman could walk without someone breathing directly into their eye hole and ideally, if she were really lucky, not be groped by men whose wives were too busy to keep them behaved.
Isla had expected to find Lachlan in his shop, not outside it. She quickly found out why.
A short, round, red-faced man seemed to be on the verge of tearing his lungs with the effort of their use.
“I EXPECTED THIS TO BE A PROPER ESTABLISHMENT!”
“And what makes you think it isn’t?” Lachlan asked, sounding rather bored of the conversation.
“DO PROPER ESTABLISHMENTS SELL DEFECTIVE WEAPONS?”
“No-”
“THEN WHY DID YOUR PISTOL DO THIS TO MY HAND!” The short man raised it, and Isla winced at the gorey display. A bloody bandage wrapped around his palm, or at least what was left of it. If it had fingers before the event, it certainly didn’t now.
Lachlan raised an eyebrow, seemingly in thought now. He hummed. “My pistol did that?”
The man seemed somewhat mollified at the display of concern. “Yes, yes, your pistol that I bought not a day removed from now, did this, yes, yes.” His cheeks danced as he spoke, great bulbous sacks bouncing around with every syllable.“Where is it then?” Lachlan asked, pointedly.
“Where is it? Where is it?!” The man sounded hysterical now. “Well maybe I’d be able to provide you with the gun you sold me if it didn’t FUCKING EXPLODE IN MY HAND.”
Lachlan shook his head disappointedly. “A shame, it seems it can’t be inspected then, we’ll call it a no fault situation, and that’s me being generous. You did come in here bad mouthing my business after all.”
“You-” The man whispered, “You charlton, you criminal, you treacherous snake!” He reached for his pocket and stopped. Mistake only half-made.Lachlan’s pistol was already levelled at the man’s head, eyes full of venom. “Not the best of ideas,” he suggested. The fat man was silent now, beads of sweat running down his flabby skin. “What do you think? This one’s gonna explode or nah?”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“I- I… believe I may have been mistaken in my recollection of where I purchased the defective firearm,” The man hastily corrected, the threat of a barrel jogging his memory. It always amazed Isla, that whites could move at all, so lacking a spine.
“I guessed as much little man,” Lachlan nodded and with a gesture the man was pacing away on shaken legs.
Lachlan looked quite pleased with himself after that.
“You look quite pleased with yourself after that,” Isla observed, feeling no particular cause for dishonesty.
Lachlan nearly jumped at her voice, turning to her and sighing with exasperation. “And here she is, the woman of my dreams, sent by the Goddess to break my heart one more time. I knew I was having too good a day.”
“Oh come on, don’t be like that, Lach.” Isla grinned.
“Stop that,” He waved his hand as if shielding his eyes. “Stop using your feminine woes upon me, bastards, bastards all of you.”
Isla laughed and heard him nearly do the same. He always knew how to remind her why she liked him.
“Come on then, tell me what it is you want,” He said then gestured to the small building that was his shop. “Ideally away from prying eyes.”
Isla followed Lachlan as he entered it. “And why couldn’t this just be for a chat?”
He stiffened somewhat at that and turned his back to her, pretending to inspect one of the many guns that hung on his wall. It was a wheellock, that one, but not self-spanning. His was a poor business. “You’ve made it rather clear that you don’t just have chats with people like me, Isla.”You say, as if my ambition wasn’t what drew you to me in the first place.
He was always also so quick to remind her why things couldn’t last between them. She wouldn’t let her frustration show however, it would be counterproductive to getting what she wanted from him.
“A lot of time has passed since then,” She noted. “And a lot of things have changed.”
Lachlan perked up at that, face turning to hers ever so briefly before looking back at his gun. “Oh yeah, like what?”
“I got an offer, a job that will make me a noble again.”
Lachlan’s shoulders sagged. “You never get tired of chasing those dreams do you?”
You mean protecting what’s left of my family’s legacy?
She tossed aside the annoyance that festered within her.
“They’re not dreams Lachlan… they’re goals,” She explained softly, for such ridgid creatures, it had surprised Isla to learn how effective a gentle hand could be on men.
“And how exactly do you plan on achieving said goals?” He asked.
“A Lady, one from the Great Empire,” She said after a moment of hesitation to let him think she considered not telling him. It would make the value of her honesty much more significant in his eyes.
Lachlan paused, body turned ridgid. “Their kind are dangerous, Isla…” He breathed, concern seeping into his voice.
“And powerful,” Isla countered, grinning, she placed a hand on his. “Lach, this is what I’ve been searching for for as long as I can remember.”
She pulled out her necklace from within her shirt. Isla had taken to calling it a necklace but it wasn’t, the only thing she had left to remember her family was a cloth looped into a ring.
The ring itself was what mattered; It was black as night with golden cracks running along its form like a desert floor. On its face was the Yelagin crest, a charging lusomorph.
It was the last of its kind, and in that, she and the ring were connected.
Isla sighed. “Perhaps, I might finally find peace when this is all over, a reason to lay back and relax.”
It was a lie, and Isla knew it. She would need to focus on being a noble of worth upon becoming one, enhancing her position. Lachlan didn’t need to hear that however, so she didn’t tell him. He’d be taken care of. Isla knew, she wouldn’t have her Lachlan stuck selling shit weapons to unsuspecting tourists just to get by. That should be enough. Isla told herself.Lachlan shook his head, the way he always did when arguing with himself. She knew it had come to an end when he groaned. “Okay then, who are we killing and when?” He snatched up a canvas sack as he spoke, stuffing it with pistols and longarms.
“No one,” Isla grinned. “We just have to get a thing from a target?”
Lachlan didn’t stop adding weapons to his bag. “Who and where?”
“Don’t know yet.”
He paused. “You don’t know?” He asked incredulously.
“I don’t know yet,” Isla corrected. “I should be getting the details soon, you know how the Haves are, all secretive and such.”
Lachlan simply grunted in the way men did and shut his bag. “And what do we do in the meantime. Scratch our cunts?”
Isla chuckled. “In the meantime, we try to get some help, hire some heavies maybe,” she began. “Be a dear and have someone spread the word.”
Lachlan nodded. “How much?”
“Couple of moons.”
Lachlan raised an eyebrow. “Do you have that kind of money to throw around?”
Isla winced. “I was hoping you would-”
“Fuck that,” He snorted.
“Fine,” She said, hearing the sharpness in her voice. Isla fished around in her pocket and grimaced. “Three orbits,” Fuck you too God.
“Who’s gonna take on a mercenary job for three orbits?”
“I don’t fucking know,” She snapped and clearly sensing her patience wearing thin, Lachlan found his way to the door.
“Fine, I’ll get a lad to spread the word.”
Three orbits, three fucking orbits. Barely two hours in and the cracks were already beginning to form in her plans. They could be going up against a former war mystic, or someone who ate war mystics for breakfast, and all she had to spare was three orbits.
She would need a miracle, Isla knew, but the goddess didn’t look too fondly at those. In fact, Isla seemed a lodestone for just the opposite.