Kali laughed softly. “Good point. And I sure as hell don’t wanna reach in there.”
When they first regrouped next to Bella, Puk had thought Kali would be pissed about killing the cordol, but her mood was lighter than he anticipated. Perhaps she was still high on the adrenaline of the fight and it hadn’t fully hit her yet. Or maybe his method of killing had been too stupid and comical for her to even be mad about it.
Whatever the case, he ran to the cordol’s corpse. The sand burned his bare foot with every touch.
The cordol had died on its stomach, so it was easy enough to yank the dagger out of its head. In one hand he held the dagger, and in the other was his near-empty glass vial of water.
Puk kneeled down by the cordol’s mouth, setting the dagger aside in the sand. After casting a surreptitious glance at Kali, who was busy re-fastening their belongings to Bella, he poured out the remainder of his water on the other side of the cordol’s head, out of Kali’s view if she so happened to look his way.
He then held open the animal’s mouth with one hand and reached the bottle in with the other. He dragged the lip of the bottle across the enormous pink tongue, and across the gums, and everywhere else he could, gathering as much saliva in the vial as he could muster.
All the while, he kept one eyestalk focused on Kali. Her back was still turned to him, so he removed the jar from the cordol’s mouth and grinned at the clear liquid sloshing around inside.
It had worked.
After giving Gael all of his fire-spit, he wasn’t sure what he’d do, but now he had his own supply of cordol saliva. He didn’t have the first clue as to how the saliva was usually distilled and turned into powder, but that was neither here nor there.
Surely it’d still be good if he drank it straight.
That was an experiment for later. He corked the vial and set it next to the dagger, then reached back inside the animal, searching blindly for his damned boot.
It took some amount of effort to reach far enough and find it, then even more to tug it free, but finally the boot was back in his possession. He wiped it along the red worm’s leathery skin to dry it off, then slipped his foot back into it with some apprehension.
With the dagger and bottle of saliva in hand, looking no different than the water previously stored inside, he wandered back over to the ladies, who appeared ready to depart.
Puk handed Kali the dagger, and she took it with thanks. After storing it, she helped him up onto Bella then mounted the ayote herself.
“Where to?” he asked her.
She looked up at the sun, judging its position in the sky.
“Y’know, I think we can make it,” she said.
“To Restick?”
“To Restick.”
CHAPTER IX
SURELY AN EXTREMELY BAD IDEA
It was not often that Puk had a reason to visit Restick. His trips to Herrilock were infrequent enough, and when he did make the voyage across the gulf he always ported in Rus Rahl, to the west, after departing from the southwestern coast of Atlua near his hometown.
Still, he was somewhat familiar with the city. Its layout was just as varied and eclectic as its denizens were. People from all over called Restick their home. It was the largest port city in the country as well as a popular tourist destination, and there were countless cases of individuals coming to visit only to uproot their entire lives and make a new home there. Humans, centripts, faifs, jeorns—even some rocyans and qarms, in spite of their general distaste for the climate. The only underrepresented race were the ujaths, but they tended to stick to themselves anyway, opting to remain in the darker corners of the world.
Kali and Puk arrived at the city arches as the sun was beginning to set. Bella was finally running out of energy, panting gleefully as Kali slowed her near the Ribroad’s end.
The path led to two final, gigantic bones piercing the sky, curving toward each other with a gleaming white sign carved of bone that read RESTICK hanging between them. On either side of the two bones were long stretches of white wall standing around one story high. Seroo’s bones had initially stretched all the way to the coast, but long ago centript builders had deconstructed them into bricks with which to fashion a perimeter wall to enclose the city.
Along the western wall was a stable. Puk asked, after removing his arms from Kali’s waist, “We gonna check Bella in?”
She sounded unsure in her answer. “I guess so,” she said. “I really wanted to avoid the cost of a mount, but I suppose stabling is much cheaper than renting and stabling. We have no idea yet where this little job is gonna require us to go next, right?”
“Right.”
“So we might need her again if we wanna be quick about it. I screwed up before estimating our travel times, and we have no idea where we’re headed next, so…it’s possible we could get stuck out in the cold if we walk. The added expense is probably worthwhile. We can let her go when we’re finished.”
Puk chortled. “Why’s that? Why not keep her? The way I see it, you lucked into a free ayote.”
“We didn’t ‘luck into it,’ we stole her,” Kali corrected him. “And besides, Bella here is a great girl, but I’ve got my eye on an ayote already, and he’s back in Seroo’s Eye.”
Puk rolled his eyes behind her back. He never understood others’ affinity for their mounts. A pet dog, sure. Or even a cat, though their fur did not exactly agree with his perpetually slimy skin. But horses and ayotes seemed more utilitarian to him, not really animals to forge an emotional connection to. One ayote was the same as any other.
They rode Bella over to the stable, where a gruff, obese man with a ragged beard huffed a greeting to them. He stared at them expectantly as they slid off the ayote’s back and stepped forward.
Both Kali and Puk remained silent, waiting for the interaction to begin.
Eventually, the man grunted, “Yeah?”
Kali wasn’t sure how to react. Neither was Puk, so he let her take the lead.
“We…want to stable our ayote?” she ventured, as if that might not be the correct answer.
The man huffed again, losing more patience with them. “Yeah,” he said again, though this time with an inflection that said no shit in between the lines. “How many nights?”
That was a question neither of them actually knew the answer to. Kali looked to Puk for help, but he shrugged. He had no idea how long they would be stuck in Myrisih. Of course he hoped the errand wouldn’t take long, but the city’s docking schedule was highly irregular, and it might result in them being stuck there for an extra day or two after concluding their business.
So Kali answered, “Indefinitely.”
The man grinned at this. An answer he liked to hear. He could probably already hear the crescents jangling in his pockets.
Kali completed the sign-in process while Puk waited by the entry arches, kicking up sand onto the Ribroad. He could visualize the person they were there to see, an associate of Pillbug’s, but he was having trouble remembering the man’s name.
The guy was a centript who Puk had only met one other time, but they had hit it off pretty well. It was a long night of boozing and ingesting substances. A typical night out with Pillbug in the flashy city of Rus Rahl.
Part of the reason his memory was so hazy (aside from how drunk he’d been that night) was due to a painful craving he felt for some fire-spit.
The drug didn’t contain any addictive properties, but he knew a good hit of it would relax him right about now, and it was driving him insane knowing that he possessed some that he couldn’t ingest. His mind refused to be separated from the bottle knocking around in the backpack strapped over his shoulders. Hopefully the centript he was looking for knew someone with the expertise to refine it.
With Bella stabled, Kali returned to Puk’s side and asked, “Where to next? Where does your friend hang out?”
He had to shrug. “Can’t remember the damn guy’s name. He’s a centript, though, so I’d think to look in Nyek Hollow.”
In his few trips to the city, Puk had never entered Nyek Hollow. It was an exclusively centript neighborhood on the eastern side of town, with rows of buildings constructed of adobe, the way they preferred their hives. Everywhere else in the city was mostly built of wood and stone, which was a rarity in Herrilock, so the Hollow clearly stood out.
She raised her eyebrows. “I thought you knew someone here,” she said accusatorily. “I only agreed to this because—”
“Look, I know someone,” he cut her off. “It’s just been a while since I’ve seen him and I don’t remember his name. That’s all. Don’t you forget people’s names?”
“Not people I claim to be friends with, no.”
“Did I say he was a friend?”
“Yes.”
“Well, shit.”
Kali sighed. “So you think he’s in the Hollow?”
Puk shrugged again. “That’s my best guess. That’s where all the centripts here live, ain’t it?”
She nodded. “It’s a labyrinth, though. I don’t know how you expect to find him in there, especially without a name. It’s not like we can go door-to-door asking centripts ‘Hey, have you seen a centript?’”
It was a valid point. He had no rebuttal.
He wracked his brain for the damn centript’s name. Pillbug had introduced the two of them, explaining that they’d met years earlier when Pillbug was traveling back home to Rus Rahl. The guy stopped Pillbug on the road to rob him, but did a terrible job of it, and they ended up becoming thieving buddies and made a career of robbing people on the road from Toralas to Rus Rahl for a year. Not the most savory introduction to somebody.
Suddenly it came to him.
“Zenib!” he blurted out. “Guy’s name is Zenib. He works for some crew that steals from the warehouses by the docks. Or at least he did when I met him.” As he said it, an idea came to mind. “How about you search the Hollow, and I’ll check out the docks? Sun’s goin’ down soon, so he might be setting up down there to steal a barrel of pickles or whatever the hell people steal these days.”
“No,” Kali said.
“Okay, not pickles. What do people steal?”
“I meant no to your suggestion.”
“Fine, I’ll take the Hollow and you can go see the ocean.” If he could slip away for just a little while, he might be able to procure some powdered spit before they had to regroup.
“Nah,” she said again.
This was troubling.
She went on, “I wanna meet this friend of yours. Scope him out for myself.”
Puk knew he couldn’t really argue with that, so he dropped the subject and suggested they try searching the Hollow first.
They passed underneath the white bone arches and entered the city proper. It was bustling, as always. There was never any downtime in Restick.
There were always ships docking at the city’s numerous ports, tourists coming to visit the beach or arts district, merchants in the market square or hobbling down back alleys peddling their wares. Puk was hard-pressed to imagine anybody finding a second to relax here.
Directly ahead of the entryway was the main market square, enclosed on all sides by lines of shops selling mostly inessential items. Restick’s market was another of its famous qualities and attractions for visitors. The items sold there were mostly all high quality, and were shipped in from various regions around the world that Puk couldn’t even dream of visiting in his lifetime. Naturally there were goods from Atlua and Gillus, but also countries on other continents such as Vareda and Mayazai.
The two of them veered right, ignoring the infamous market, heading down a cobbled street lined with brick houses on one side and one of the city’s two schools on the other.
The eastern side of the city contained fewer homes and establishments than the west end, which was largely considered the affluent side of town. Instead, most of the east end was home to Nyek Hollow, with its towering adobe buildings and confusing, intricate streets interweaving together. When the city was first established, its inhabitants wanted to do away with the massive bones that were cutting through the middle of their land. They hired the help of centripts, who were adept builders and could easily cut through the bone with their incisors. The centripts that migrated to the newly-founded city made camp in the area and began the long, arduous process of cutting down all the bones and crafting them into the walls that now protected the city. Their campground grew as the centripts settled in and it eventually became Nyek Hollow, which was now the home of those workers’ descendants.
They passed by a carved wooden sign welcoming them to Nyek Hollow in both Commonspeak and Carsuak, and then they were entombed in the clay labyrinth.
Puk tried to recall if Zenib had mentioned anything about where he lived on the single night they hung out, but nothing came to mind. All he remembered about the man was that he could drink gin as if it was water and absolutely adored stealing things from hapless individuals.
Maybe I don’t keep the best company, Puk considered, following Kali down an alleyway darkened by looming buildings on either side.
A little ways ahead there was a centript attached to the side of the lefthand building, latching on to the adobe structure with the many legs (arms?) of her lower half while her upper body curved outward and worked on hanging a sign above a window.
“Hello!” Kali called to the woman.
Her crimson head whipped around to peer at them from above. She grumbled something in Carsuak that Puk couldn’t understand, then asked, “What want?” The words came out laboriously and in a heavy accent. She probably kept to the Hollow most of the time and had no use for other language.
Puk was about to answer until he saw Kali start to formulate a response. He could tell she was working through something in her head before she spoke.
“Qumatsk Zenib?” she asked with trepidation. Unsure of her words.
The woman on the side of the building appeared just as surprised as Puk that Kali had crafted a sentence in Carsuak. She replied, “Blots, kumatsk ceu. Hihtsh.” She then returned to hammering her sign into the building, and Kali resumed walking down the alley.
Puk didn’t know much, but he knew that “blots” meant “no.” He hurried up alongside Kali and said, “I didn’t know you could speak Carsuak that well.” He recalled barging in on her studying a book on the subject, but still, he was impressed. Even knowing only a few words of the complicated language was possibly a bigger achievement than anything he’d done with his life.
“I only know a little, and I’m rusty,” said Kali. “My sister’s way better at it.”
“Who cares about her?” Puk scoffed. “Being able to speak it at all is a hell of an accomplishment.”
The hint of a smile graced her face. “Thanks,” she said.
They turned the corner and something Zenib had said suddenly struck him. It wasn’t much of a clue, but it was something to go off.
“Zenib lives near the docks,” he told Kali. He remembered the man bragging about how one of the docks was only a couple minutes’ walk from his home, which made his job a lot easier. The city had three major docks, along with a few smaller piers, but there was only one that could be considered close to the Hollow.
Armed with this minor knowledge, they turned left down the next street to head toward the northern edge of the Hollow. The neighborhood didn’t extend all the way to the docks, but it was likely that Zenib lived somewhere on one of the outermost streets.
“I know I said this mockingly before, but do we need to just…go knocking on doors asking about him until we find him?” Kali asked now that they had at least narrowed down the street.
Puk shrugged. It was as good an idea as any.
She took the initiative again, given that she had a rudimentary understanding of the residents’ language. They had no luck with the first few houses, and it was much to their surprise that the fifth house they tried belonged to a rocyan.
“Hello?” said the man timidly, only openin
g his door a crack. He wore thick-rimmed glasses atop his long, furry canine snout. “Is something the matter?”
“No, everything’s fine,” Kali assured the nervous man. “We’re just looking for someone. Do you know if a man named Zenib lives on this street?”
The rocyan raised his eyebrows and glanced back and forth between Kali and Puk. From the look on his face, he clearly had run-ins with Zenib in the past, and he was trying to work out why this innocent-looking faif woman and tiny qarm were involved with the scoundrel.
Finally, he said, “Yes, I know of Zenib. Why? What’s the matter? I thought we were square.” He looked as if he were about to slam the door in their face, anxiously clacking his claws on the wood.
“Nothing’s wrong!” Kali said again. “Honest. We’ve just got some business to handle with him but we’re not sure where he is. Do you know?”
The man was still apprehensive about the two people standing on his doorstep. But he said, “He lives three houses down. You’re not going to mention my name, are you?”
“We don’t know your name,” Puk chimed in.
The man shut his door without another word.
Kali turned around with a brightened look on her face. She followed Puk to the door three houses down, where he took a deep breath before knocking.
Spit and Song (Ustlian Tales Book 2) Page 20