Sunrise greetings. All dished up and nowhere to go. A happy puppy and the Copper Key. Gorbin secrets. A strangely expected visitor.
The next two weeks passed comfortably for the new Sal Fang. He thought the banshee would let him sleep in, but he was sadly mistaken. Early next morning, she howled him awake and when he asked the empty room why there was such screeching, frosty words appeared on the wall: I am compelled to start my day with a good scream.
The end result was that Sal was encouraged to go to sleep went the sun went down because he would certainly be waking up with the sunrise.
Each night, after eating dinner at the Mind & Body Tables, he would help Fabrizio with the cleanup and then hurry home to get to sleep. After his daily morning shriek, he would study GuNakt’s book for several hours, and then make plans for his great reopening. Foot traffic was going to be an issue. As were supplies because he didn’t have any money to buy any actual food to cook.
On a brighter note, every morning, as he read, the friendly ghost rolled a peach to him. It was a simple breakfast, but the quality of the fruit made up for that. He tried to remain positive. He had a lot to be grateful for. He had the building, tables, benches, and the dishes along with tableware. Many of the plates and bowls were cracked, yet to Sal, that added a certain charm. And his silverware, not actually made of silver, was large and old-fashioned. That seemed like a bonus to the former Dark Lord, who liked holding a knife and fork with some weight to them.
Everything needed several good cleanings, and Sal did the first round, and Shivaun took care of the second, third, and fourth. She also reorganized the pots and pans, and even spent some time sharpening the knives on a whetstone. She was very useful, not only with her more substantial hands, but also with the fact that her presence kept the place cold.
That was going to be his main marketing ploy—a cool place to eat, even at noon, so come and try the eggs!
If only he had the eggs to cook. While the market had many egg vendors, their supplier was another one of the Braggadorio families, who had divided up the city. The Feather Pharaoh had cornered the market on both eggs and chickens, and there wasn’t anyone in the city that weren’t forced to deal with him if they wanted a supply of eggs.
Sal figured he wouldn’t be doing a ton of business, at least not a first, so he wasn’t sure he’d had to deal with the Feather Pharaoh at all, nor the Butter King, nor the Pork Poet. He knew where to buy his supplies. He simply didn’t have the money to buy them.
When it came to selling the armor and gear in his cellar, Shivaun was adamantly against it. She’d write on the walls to let them be, and it was clear that she had some sort of connection to them. He also had the idea that one of those bodies had been hers. Which one, it was impossible to say, and she wasn’t forthcoming with information.
In order to keep their peaceful relationship, Sal wasn’t going to push it. He was just grateful that she wasn’t pushing him to talk about his past. For now, they had a good working relationship. He’d make a request for her to clean something, or to organize something, and she would do it without complaint and with only a few words of conversation on the walls.
As for the bodies in the alley, he stayed up late one night to carry them over to the church. He laid them against a side wall and was relieved no one had caught him in the act. That part of town was so very deserted, though on the other side of the church, Tower Road, which had the higher end shops along the path, all the way from the port to the tower itself and to the governor’s mansion nestled into an arm of the mountain. Kenny always did have a good view.
Sal was a bit worried that once Shivaun’s body was burned, she would vanish like early morning mist. And yes, he didn’t like the idea of a basement full of skeletons. There was a good chance the Pontrafax Genetrix would simply add the bones to the crypts below the church. Then, Shivaun could stay with him forever. The idea was soothing. He’d certainly had worse friends.
There was another issue that Sal didn’t know how to solve. For now, he was going to the church well for water. That would prove to be a major issue once they started serving customers. There was a faucet in the kitchen. It didn’t work. They needed a water supply, but the faucet, like the fountain out in the plaza, was dry. It was like Kenny was laughing at him.
One night, while Sal was going home, he saw a triumphant team leaving the tower with much fanfare. One of them, a big doghead warrior in plate mail, raised an oversized key made of bright beaten copper. The doghead had a big meaty sword in a scabbard and he was grinning, tongue dangling. For the proud Hajawan, such an undignified and animal appearance would be unthinkable if he hadn’t been captured up in the moment. He was with other Canus soldiers with furry faces and furry hands. At the time, Sal thought the Copper Key was treasure, but come to find out, it was a key they could use to gain access to the next floor of the tower.
He didn’t have a good working knowledge of how the tower climbing worked, since in the end, he could never be a climber, not with his enforced pacifism. In some ways, he was glad he didn’t have to walk that path. From all accounts, entering the tower meant treasure and power, but it also meant certain death. It was the rare person, indeed, who won any of the keys. It was rather sobering that after a thousand years, no one had reached the top of the tower where supposedly the Deux Coin rested.
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There were plenty of theories about where the coin might be, and some thought it was floating around as just a normal coin, and some idiot had it, but didn’t realize it. There were any number of stories of people across time and history who’d had a coin and didn’t know it until it was too late.
If Sal had to bet, he would’ve wagered that the coin was in general circulation. It was easy to think that it might end up in his till at some point, though Betty had made it clear that he wouldn’t even be able to touch it without dying. That would be ironic if he took money from someone only to wind up dead at the counter. He’d just have to risk that chance. He didn’t think he’d ever have the money to hire help that wasn’t undead.
Speaking of restless spirits, it wasn’t Shivaun who rolled his daily peach breakfast to him. She wrote that she didn’t know who it was, but they seemed nice. The word in question was “seemed” because everyone knew a ghost could turn churlish for any reason at all.
While a fickle specter was a worry, Sal wasn’t going to turn his nose up the peaches. They were his breakfast, snack, and lunch, while he waited for dinner. As he thought, fourteen days of lentils and rye bread still hadn’t grown tiresome. In fact, each night, the food seemed to improve. And on Sundays, when the free meal wasn’t available, Fabrizio would give him an extra loaf of bread, and a crockery of butter, which was so generous.
Much to both of their delight, the Ponti did find a Gorbinish to Yeshin dictionary, and Sal helped him find a book simple enough that Fabrizio could start translating it. It was a Gorbinish book for adolescents, which gave all sorts of advice for both boys and girls alike. It was written in very simple language with some very simple diagrams. One section was sobering. It talked about how the outside world viewed the Gorbin, and how they should conduct themselves. Mostly, it was to act aggressively and savagely, to keep up the myth of the Gorbin being monsters who didn’t have any skin at all, and were in fact, partially dead.
That wasn’t the case. The Gorbin simply had transparent skin, and so their tissues and tendons were visible. That and their large mouths, filled with sharp teeth, made people think they were monsters. Gorbin were generally a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than you’re your normal human. Traditionally, before they’d been recruited for the Dark Lord’s army, they’d lived in underground cities, most of the time organized around natural caverns, but extended through muscle and hammer, to become gorgeous subterranean palaces.
Sal had thought that the Gorbin were rather simple-minded, but that wasn’t the case, obviously. It was carefully crafted cultural persona to keep their secret safe. In fact, the Gorbin were very sophisticated in some surprising ways. And they valued peace, at least the ones who hadn’t fought in his army. This was all so surprising.
Most surprising of all, the Gorbin had done a great of research into their Diagraffs and found ways to improve their powers. That fascinated Sal. To think, he’d had not the slightest clue. It begged the question: Why they didn’t share their findings with him or his lieutenants? To keep such a closely guarded secret only showed their dedication and cultural loyalties, of which he’d had little knowledge of.
Sal could only wonder if he could use that to help him with his own powers. He was starting fresh again, and he didn’t want sorcery for conquering or fighting, but magic in the kitchen would prove so very useful, miraculously so.
He’d already seen the benefits of having a ghost working for him. There were also drawbacks. She would disappear for hours on end, or appear in the middle of the night, ready for work. She said she didn’t get to decide when she appeared and disappeared, that her days and nights couldn’t be tracked in time mortals could understand.
Betty didn’t know what that meant, and Fabrizio, who hadn’t studied very much about ghosts, given his phobia, was ignorant on the subject.
Sal knew only one sorcerer in town, and in this case, it was a sorceress—Kaixo Allakarra. Either her fortunes had improved, or she’d left the island for other adventures. He kept expecting to see her again at the evening meals, but she didn’t reappear. Nor did the four ruffians, though that might be explained by the fact that they worked for the Butter King and not the Pork Poet, and probably wouldn’t want to be caught in the wrong part of town.
Sal was still figuring out the territories of the various Braggadorio bosses, but he knew there were two people that he would eventually encounter. One was the Pontrafax Genetrix, because Fabrizio had admitted he would have to talk to her about the new owner of the cursed café, which wasn’t so cursed anymore. At least that building wasn’t.
The other was the governor, whom no one respected but who had a reputation for being hands-on. Normally, he would send some magistrate to either ask for a deed or to collect taxes from someone taking over an abandoned building in his town. Fabrizio was pretty sure that Ziggy would come himself.
Fabrizio thought so. They would discuss things as they did dishes every night after dinner.
The good deeds paid off, as did Sal’s gratitude and his positive attitude. His Karmic Gauge, increased from orange to yellow, and after the two weeks, he was at 50%, a yellowish-green color.
Sal thought he might be understanding the Karmic Gauge a little more. According to ancient Menold color theory, there were six colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.
If his goal was to get to a hundred percent, that meant at every 16.6%, he would change color. He drew up a quick chart, rounding up.
<<<>>>
1% — 17%: Red
7% — 34%: Orange
34% — 51%: Yellow
51% — 68%: Green
68% — 85%: Blue
85% — 100%: Purple
<<<>>>
He couldn’t be sure his chart was correct, and he didn’t know what would happen once he reached purple, but the process gave him some hope. He had gone from orange to yellow around the 34% mark, which validated his theory a bit. That was all fine and good, but he had to get his diner open. He had to honor his solemn oath. But the thought of cooking even a simple egg made him anxious.
On Monday afternoon, when Sal was about to leave to walk to dinner, Tower City’s governor showed up. He found Craig Clifton Zigglesworth strange in all of the strangest ways.