Arc VI - Truthkeepers

Chapter 80 - About a Book

To say we were happy to be out of the undercity was something of an understatement. I felt like a fish moments from the frypan who slips out of a window back into the sea.

Sure, we’d lost a priceless library full of treasured books, but I’ve never been much for books. And sure, we burned our clothes and spent the next week recovering and taking bath after bath to get the smell off our skin, but I needed new threads anyway.

And sure, the low-laying cloud of smoke that choked the city from Barrowdown to the Skylark Terraces was our fault. And sure, Miss Trundi was absolutely certain we’d had something to do with it. But it’s not like she could prove anything. All that smoke seemed to drift up from cracks all over the middle and lower city. And while shit rolls down hill, smoke blows up, and for once the nobles were walking around with perfumed kerchiefs stuffed up their noses just like those of us in the lower city when the heavy rains cause the sewers to backflow.

Undercity charters were already adjusting routes through the undercity because the smoke had made some paths accessible and forced new monsters into areas they’d never been seen before. Not the impact I’d planned to have. That library would smolder for weeks, if not months. All that meant adventurers were spending coin on things besides delving equipment, which meant drinks, fights, and fine company. The Mop was busier than ever, and bets rolled out, collections rolled in, and for once, everyone was too busy to kill us.

For a while, I was able to simply fix a few fights (including two more for Annalisa that surprisingly passed without a catastrophe) and do a few readings, making sure the Barrow Knave was visible in the downs, and not suspiciously absent in the forty-eight hour period prior to the entire city getting smoked out. Quinnith, my knave-bonded former classmate had also come to see me and I’d brought him into the operation as another fixer. But all things are too good to last, and I had a future to plan for. So, books in hand, I made my way up to Hawkley’s shop on the outskirts of the upper city.

This time I took Annalisa with me and made the mistake of leaving with her before sunset.

“Dragons above,” I swore, holding my hand against the glare. Annalisa beamed up at me. And I don’t mean she smiled—though, she did that, too. Ever since I’d summoned the Heiress of Dragons, Annalisa had taken to polishing her horns to a damn-near mirror shine, and she was a menace. People on the street stumbled and crossed to avoid meeting us head on, and I’d heard of at least two ships that had accidentally run aground following a phantom lighthouse conspicuously further east than the one at Sungate.

If anyone really wanted to track us, all they had to do was follow the sunspot traveling through the downs by the flashes every time the sunset caught her horns.

“Darcent, if you’re going to have a guard, she obviously has to look at least as strong as whatever otherworldly spirits you invoke.”

“And your takeaway from that encounter was shiny horns?” I asked.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Besides that, I think we already looked somewhat similar,” said Annalisa, pouting. She brought her tail around and flipped the tip back and forth. “Although, you usually prefer them with a little more rudder in the stern, right?”

I looked down at the devilborn girl through a gap in my fingers. Yes, she and the heiress both had horns. And that was where the similarities ended. Lady Arkelai had been tall, slender, suave, fashionable, and with an alien beauty that could almost pass for human without those horns.

Annalisa was, well...

“Where did you even get something that bright?”

“I just borrowed some of that polish you had on your desk.”

I stopped, hands pressed to my temple. Of course she had used my expensive #2 varnish.

Annalisa was Annalisa. She was not any of those words that you could use to describe the heiress. But you could never tell her that. The short, wide-hipped well-muscled button-nosed devilborn had more in common with a blue horned tree frog than she did with the daughter of a legendary dragon. Whatever. If causing middle-city drovers to drive up on the curb of the cobbles and tip their carts over made Annalisa happy? Who was I to stand in the path of her satisfaction. Hell, at least all she needed to win her next fight was limelight pointed in her general direction.

This time, when we walked into Hawkley’s, the first thing I saw was my own work. Six cast-off cards that I’d blemished, sitting under a blue candleflame that set the mooncap ink alight against the black pine. Annalisa studied them stoicly, hand to her chin and one eye closed.

“Hmm. Hmm….” she shrugged. “I give up. I can’t tell why these ones weren’t good enough.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said. “Timing. mostly. A premature stain that seeped into the wood or dried too quickly to fill a runnel.”

I picked up a card and noticed the price marker for the black fjord pine had been scratched out and marked up twice. I smiled. Hawkley had certainly gotten the better end of that trade.

“You know, you could probably make a living as an artist or something,” said Annalisa. She picked up the lovers arcana from another display stand. “For Madam Peaks, if nowhere else.”

“Just what every artist wants to hear,” I said.

Hawkley chose that moment to bustle out of the back, calling greetings, but stopped when he saw me and smiled nice and wide.

“Ah, Darcent, lad! I must be blessed, getting you in here more’n once a term. how’s your new deck treating?”

“It fairs,” I said, taking the old shopkeep’s wrist. He turned to my partner. “Ye gods, and this one needs no introduction! Annalisa of Dunnemarshe! I saw yer fight last turn.” he jabbed twice in the air. “What’re you doing with this lout?”

“I’m her pre-fight reader,” I said, shrugging. “Gotta make scratch somehow. Speaking of, I’ve got a bit of a sensitive sell. Can we talk in the back?”

Hawkley looked askance and glanced at the other patrons in his shop. “This is a reputable store, kid. I’m not taking hot merchandise.”

I waved my hands. “Nothing like that, just something I’d rather keep away from prying eyes. Books I need translated, and maybe a trinket or two I picked up on a delve that could use an appraisal.”

Hawkley tilted his head. “Always thought you had sense enough to keep out of the undercity, young Darcent.” he looked at Annalisa. “Did you put him up to this business, young miss?”

“I certainly did!” said Annalisa, beaming. “An elf wanted us to collect fertilizer for him but we lost it all in a fight and then we burned down—”

“Burned down the rest of our rations getting back to the surface,” I said, hemming and hawing. Annalisa’s brows drew together in confusion and I gave her a look.

“Right,” she said. “We weren’t even near the western middle city, were we?”

Hawkley sputtered and flattened his hands in a voices down kinda gesture as he looked about to make sure no one else had heard. Annalisa’s normal speaking voice tends to not so much worm its way into your ear as simply wrestle your eardrums into a submission. “Maybe just come to the back afore you both have bounties on your heads.”

“Oh, we already do!” smiled Annalisa.