Yan regained consciousness like an overboard [Sailor] fighting to keep his head above water. It took him at least twenty to minutes to realise he was back on a bed of hay. Another ten minutes and he was questioning if the last few days had even happened or if he’d hallucinated it all. Like one of those dreams that feel real enough to make you think it’s the weekend when it’s only Thursday.
After five more minutes, when the Sun managed to fight its way through the slightly less dense (he was further away from Blackmarket than he was used to) smog, Yan realised he wasn’t in bed at all.
In fact, his extremities began making their extreme discomfort quite apparent to him.
His eyes reluctantly acquiesced to his demands, and Yan finally realised he was lying face down in the small yard of the Watch House. He groaned and rolled over. He had until the midday bells before he had to even worry about work.
Work.
Yan was barely keeping up with his own life. Somehow, he had managed to find a job before he’d left home. A part of him thought he’d have to find another [Blacksmith] and apprentice under them until he could afford a place of his own and then live out his days—
Yan sighed. At the end of the day, or more specifically the beginning of the day in his current situation, Yan was just feeling grateful. Even as he was having the first hangover of his life and the contents of his stomach were banging on the door of his oesophagus, demanding entry… Yan smiled to himself. Hopefully he’d find more than just a regular existence.
“Uuuuuughhhhhhhh. Oh good gods above.”
His moment of reflection was ruined; he remembered exactly how he got here now.
“Yan? Yan!” Hendrik groaned out from somewhere behind him. “You alive Yan?”
Yan shed a tear for all the rest he was going to miss out on, and replied.
“What, Hendrik?”
He got no reply.
“Hendrik?”
Again, no reply.
Yan took his time getting to his feet. Even from the other side of the city, Yan could hear the distant cacophony of Blackmarket. In his current state he felt only a little guilty about not living so close to it all anymore. He squinted against the Sun, as it finished its emergence over the Eastern mountains.
His bed had been a pile of straw training dummies on one side of the Watch House yard. The problem with that is it meant that Hendrik’s voice had come from the other side of the seven-foot brick wall that lined the yard.
Yan considered the wall for a good few seconds before giving up on climbing over it. He focused on putting one foot in front of the other until he was by the front of the Watch House, rubbing his eyes.
Instead of the carts being loaded with metals and coal, here they were full of meat, produce, herbs and spices, rolls of cloth, and even one with a tired looking group of [Adventurers]. Probably looking for somewhere to rest after a long night, he assumed. Everyone went about their business with hardly any shouting or conversation, conserving their energies for another long day.
Yan enjoyed the brief moment of people-watching before he remembered he had a hungover Hendrik to take care of.
The building next the Watch House was a small pie shop. Right on the corner of two main roads, it probably made so much money that the owner didn’t know what to do with it. That much was obvious however, because she was the only [Shopkeeper] (outside of the Meadows) that had a shop which looked like it had a fight with a ballista and lost.
Crumbling stone walls covered in vines had been reinforced with thick beams. The single storey building looked like it had was slowly deflating. Yan knew from experience that it was exactly these types of shops that sold the best wares; the owners only spent money where it mattered.
Thankfully said owner was nowhere to be seen, the shutters closed, and the door barred shut. Yan doubted he would have been able to make up an excuse better than ‘Watch business’ anyway. He sidled down the other side of the wall, which opened up to a tiny allotment.
A small shed in the corner looked exactly like the shop, except in its case the thin wooden frame was slightly mossy and was being held up by a thick [Sergeant]. Yan poked at it with his foot.
“Hendrik?” he whispered. “Hey, Hendrik?”
The poke became a prod. The prod became a nudge, the nudge became a jab. Yan was about to punt Hendrik’s head through the side of the shed when he responded.
“Hnghh?”
“You okay Hendrik?”
“Schrupper.”
“You what?”
“Suppa.”
Yan screwed his face a little. Suppa was a hot drink that dwarfs took down into mines. To the best of Yan’s knowledge, it was basically the unidentifiable sludge at the bottom of a stew mixed with the cheapest, most watered-down stamina potion you could find. Yan had sneaked a taste from a friend of Caiwal’s once as a child and nearly thrown up.
“You want suppa?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled, slowly re-joining the land of the living. “Here. Food too. Riverside, not Fiveways.”
“Right,” replied Yan, accepting the handful of dollar coins and pocket lint from Hendrik. “Fiveways would be cheaper though.”
“Exactly,” Hendrik said as he arranged himself sluggishly. Somehow, he managed to get his ass out of the brisk air and positioned himself so that he was leaning against the shed instead of reaching first base with it. He rested the helmet that had been on a nearby cabbage over his head and was back to snoring in no time.
Yan shook his head and made his way back to the main road. He moved along the edges of the slowly increasing flow of people, stopping just short of Sentinel’s Square. Even though it wasn’t his money, he eyed a few shops that were tending to people’s morning hunger until he found one that was advertising prices that were just expensive instead of eye-wateringly overpriced.
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Annoyingly it was at this time that his stomach, having experienced the mouth-watering smells of the markets changed its mind and decided that, in point of fact, it needed filling instead of emptying. The bakery he’d decided on hadn’t had any tea made, so Yan felt like crying when he handed over ten dollars for two cups of suppa and two savoury pasties.
He bit back more than a few curses as he slowly made his way back to the Watch House, narrowly avoiding having his foot run over by some muppet who was half asleep behind the reins.
Hendrik had wondered off, leaving the shed to wobble precariously under its own weight. Thankfully the past ten minutes had served to sober Yan up enough for him to realise that he was probably just back at the Watch House.
Sure enough, Hendrik was around the back. He was sat at one of the benches that had served as bleachers for the impromptu crowd yesterday. Yan silently placed the food and drinks between them after sitting down, and they both dug in.
Yan was loathe to admit it, but the pasties were really good. He was savouring flavours he had never tried before. Hendrik huffed out a small chuckle to himself as Yan let out a small groan of appreciation.
He inhaled the whole thing in a matter of minutes, and then instantly regretted it. He had nothing to wash the taste of suppa out now.
Hendrik got up and let out a small squeal as he stretched. He took a sip of suppa, savouring it as if it was a fine wine. As if he did this kind of thing every day, Hendrik expertly rolled out a small cigarette while intermittently taking bites of his pasty.
“Right,” he said after taking a long drag, the cigarette bouncing as it was held in the corner of his mouth. “So, Viktor is going to come down later and get started with teaching you.”
“Eh? I thought I was going to be, y’know, learning on the job kind of thing.”
“Don’t be stupid,” said Hendrik, somehow eating the pasty, having a sip of his drink, and smoking all at the same time. “You need to know the rules. Just because Emery got a bit excited and let you go out on patrol with Terry doesn’t mean you’re ready.”
“And anyway,” he continued, “Just think of it like being efficient. All this training means you’ll Level much quicker.”
“The lads at Caiwal’s always said that doing hard stuff, like earning you Levels makes you Level quicker.”
“Nah,” he said, waving off Yan’s thoughts and pointing at his pasty. “Take the [Baker] that made this. You think he’s like, Level 30, just because he trial-and-errored his way to making decent food? No. The guy learnt how to cook, how to bake, and then used that to make his own food. It’s like me teaching you how to fight and then sending you into a dungeon, instead of me just bringing you half-dead monsters and telling you to make the killing blow.”
He tried taking a drag of his cigarette, saw it had gone out, and kissed his teeth before pulling out some matches and relighting it. Yan digested the information while Hendrik finished off ménage -ing his trois.
“That does make sense, to be honest. I guess apprenticing wouldn’t be a thing otherwise.”
“Don’t worry kid,” said Hendrik, “Just listen to Uncle Hendrik and you’ll get along just fine. Now hurry up and finish your suppa so you grow big and strong.”
The only reason Yan did as he was told was because he had to pay so much for it. Well, not him per se, but the point still stood. A lifetime of getting your money’s worth didn’t fall at the first cup of suppa.
Yan finished his cup and spat onto the ground in a feeble attempt to get the aftertaste out of his mouth. Hendrik on the other hand tried to smoke the little stub of cigarette he had left before giving up and grinding it under his heel.
“Any plans before work?”
“Huh?” Yan was a little stumped. “Uh, to be honest Hendrik, I’ve never really had that much free time the last few years.”
“Are you kidding me?” he asked incredulously. “You’re a Blackmarket boy, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Right. There’s literally more of you rats than there are things to do over there. What did you used to do all day?”
“Just help out, pretty much,” Yan explained. “Either I’d be helping Caiwal at the forge, helping the rest of the lads with whatever they needed, or whenever I could find the time for it, I’d just make my own little stuff.”
“Oh yeah, you mentioned that to Emery and the Captain didn’t you? Let’s have a look at that stuff then.”
“Why?”
“Got anything better to do?”
----------------------------------------
Hendrik made himself at home by sitting at the head of the small bed in Yan’s room. The only saving grace to the room were the large windows that let light flood in. A spare uniform hung off the back of the door and the few clothes he had taken with him from Caiwal’s were still in a canvas sack at the foot of his bed.
Yan picked up the smaller pouch next to it and awkwardly handed it to Hendrik.
“Just so you know, it’s not much, just stuff I used to make when I was bored” said Yan, rubbing the back of his neck. “Most of them are basically puzzles that I made for the younger lads at Caiwal’s. You know, keep them busy, that kind of thing.”
Yan stopped his verbal diarrhoea long enough to notice that Hendrik wasn’t even listening. The man was the most focused he had ever seen him. His brows were furrowed, and all hint of his characteristic good humour had left his face.
He pulled the two twisted bits of metal apart with a triumphant laugh.
“Hah! The way you brought it up earlier, you made it sound like you were some kind of genius at the forge! That was pitifully easy, kid.”
“Hendrik,” said Yan drily, “I made that for the youngest kids at Caiwal’s.”
“…Shut up. Gimme the hardest one you’ve got.”
Yan took the pouch back off Hendrik and poked around inside until he found the puzzle he was looking for.”
It was made of a dozen identical pieces of metal. Each about an inch wide and three inches long, with slots cut into them at various different depths. Of course, Yan knew that, but to Hendrik it looked like a squashed cube of metal, with so many holes that it looked like it would fall apart but never did. The light that shone into the small room seemed to bounce off of each of the bronze pieces, reflecting until it almost looked like the puzzle exuded a small light of itself.
“Gimme.”
Yan obliged, smiling to himself as Hendrik turned the puzzle over and over in his hands. Every time he did, the puzzle clinked half a dozen times as each piece stopped the other from falling free.
He waited patiently for the first few minutes. Yan had seen Caiwal and friends ponder over it for many nights before finally giving up; he assumed that Hendrik would just give up in frustration.
“[Sergeant]?” he tried.
“Hendrik?”
“…Dik?”
His partner’s steely resolve didn’t falter. In fact, Hendrik looked so furiously concentrated that Yan thought better of interrupting him and left him to it. Instead, he decided to try and make his new home a bit more… habitable.