While they rode, she explained to him the system travelers used to navigate the unchanging landscape. There were spires erected all throughout the Gogol Desert, each with their own different markings and colors to indicate which route they were on as well as the cardinal directions. The side of a spire painted lavender indicated south, so that was the color for which they kept a lookout.
He asked who originally built the constructs, and she confessed she wasn’t sure; it was easy to assume centripts built them, as they had most of the architecture throughout the country, but they were also not known to be travelers and therefore wouldn’t have a ton of use for them, so perhaps not.
It was a long day, and Puk had foolishly exhausted his supply of water with half the voyage ahead of them. When they mercifully arrived at the outpost, he burst through the door and practically affixed his eager mouth to the water spigot inside while Kali stabled the ayote.
“Anything else?” the bartender asked once Puk finished downing a second glass of water.
“Another fill-up, and a second glass,” he said. He knew the drinks were free, but more water would really hit the spot for now.
With the glasses in hand, he found an empty table and hunkered down to wait for Kali. She sauntered in a few minutes later, brushing dust off her thin, white cotton clothing. Her boots thudded against the ground as she walked over to the table.
“Thanks,” she said, taking the proffered glass. She had been more conservative with her own supply throughout the day, so he’d known she would be thirsty. She promptly gulped down a healthy portion.
The two sat in silence for a couple minutes, worn out by their day of travel. While they hydrated themselves, Puk noticed the bartender speaking to another employee and pointing at their table. The employee scurried out of the room.
Wonder what that’s about, he thought, suddenly paranoid about Brinn Natalja’s influence and reach. Had they been found out already? After only a single day?
“Employees are chattin’ about us,” he whispered to Kali, keeping his cool.
“What?” she mumbled, her eyelids droopy.
He subtly pointed one eyestalk at the bar behind him. “Bartender just told someone we’re here. They ran off to fetch someone or something.”
“You’re sure?”
“They were talking and pointing at us as soon as you sat down.”
Kali furrowed her brow in thought, then asked, “What did they look like?”
“Skinny little guy, absurd mustache—”
Before he could go on, she smirked and said, “I think—”
“Ahem.”
She was interrupted by the mustachioed man’s return, who stood alongside a rocyan with a tuft of longer hair at the end of his snout, akin to a moustache. The two men were dressed in crisp, tan uniforms of the outpost and looked like bizarre, parallel versions of each other.
“Ma’am,” the rocyan said, his voice high yet raspy.
There was a pause while Kali waited for him to continue, but he simply stood staring at her alongside his cohort, so she said, “Yes?”
“We gladly welcome you to our outpost, but we wanted to check in with you and ensure that there will not be any…incidents like your last visit.”
“If no one tries to rob me this time, it should be an uneventful visit,” Kali said with a sarcastically pleasant smile.
“Of course,” the rocyan said with a curt bow. “Enjoy your stay.” With that, he and the other man, who appeared much more irritated by her presence, shuffled away. The latter returned to the bar and resumed gossiping with the bartender.
Puk had trained one of his stalks on the mustachioed man and rotated it back to face Kali, letting out a soft laugh. “The hell was that about?” he asked. “It sounds like a juicy story. I like the juice. Give me the juice, I’m a thirsty boy.” It was a relief that Natalja had in fact not tracked them down.
“I was here a little over a week ago,” Kali explained. “Some asshole was talking to me, knew I was traveling alone, and I guess figured I was some helpless, defenseless girl. It’s an assumption lots of people tend to have about me.”
He could sort of understand why thugs would make that assumption. Every faif that Puk ever met was thin as a twig. He rested his hands on his paunch.
She went on. “Anyway, in the middle of the night he broke into my room to rob me. Honestly, if he’d been successful, he wouldn’t have gotten much.”
“But from the sound of it, he was not successful.”
“Not quite. His arm got to meet that dagger of mine.”
Puk laughed.
“It was a mess,” she chuckled.
“That’s pretty juicy, but not as juicy as I expected,” Puk said. “Did you stab him in the dick, by chance?”
Kali shook her head. Unfortunate.
“Oh well. The arm is a pretty good stabbing place as it is. At least now we’ve got solid proof that you can take someone in a fight.”
Kali scoffed. “Was there any doubt before?” she asked, feigning offense.
Puk scoffed as well. “We’ve been in two fights together and you fucked up both! I had to deal with Thom myself while you were off bleedin’ in a pool or whatever, and I had to kill the cordol, too!”
“Hey, I didn’t want to hurt the cordol at all, I was holding back. But regardless, the cordol was a team effort.”
“I distinctly remember it being my boot that choked it and subsequently caused it to stop being alive.”
“Is that a story you’re proud of? Is that one you plan on telling all the other hunters gathered around the bar late at night?”
“Yeah, it is!” he boasted. “They’re out there killin’ shit with their guns and their bows and their swords—bastard swords, probably, which are even bigger and cooler than a normal sword in spite of the dumb name—but how many of ’em can say they killed a vicious beast with nothing but footwear?”
“Probably very few,” she conceded.
“‘Few’ implies more than zero,” he said.
Kali slurped down some more water then asked, “Do you really think you’re the first person in the world to kill a monster with a boot?”
“Yes.”
“Wow. The arrogance.” They laughed. “What would your old troupe members say if you told them of your recent accomplishments?”
He pondered the question for a moment. Everyone in The Rusty Halberd thought of him as a dunce, especially Hin, and with good reason. His greatest ally probably would’ve been Dern, but even he would struggle believing Puk’s stories.
“Well, they all know I’m incompetent,” he started.
“Hence the boot.”
“Chucking the boot was a brilliant tactical maneuver,” he said. Then, “They probably woulda all thought I was making shit up. I know Vick would find it hilarious. He would probably even try to write a skit around it and have me play myself. Or, rather, he’d have me play the cordol that chokes on a shoe, because he’d think the irony was funny even though no one in the audience would pick up on it.”
“I would be amused seeing a boot thrown at your head,” Kali teased. “I’ll gladly buy a ticket to that.”
“You ain’t the only one, I’m sure.”
She then asked, “So Vick was the writer of the group?”
“Mostly,” Puk said before taking a sip of water. “He fancied himself a comedian, but I thought he was kind of a corny dingus. He usually did get some laughs, though, so what do I know?”
“Did he get you to act in skits often? I can’t imagine you acting.”
“Oh, yeah, he made all of us do it,” Puk replied. “Me, Dern, Jit—even Hin, sometimes, when she could be convinced. And what the hell d’you mean you can’t imagine me acting? I put on the performance of a lifetime back there with Thom!”
“Is that when I was unconscious?”
“Yeah, it was. Unfortunately for you. You would’ve been truly moved by it.”
“I’ll have to catch the next show, I guess. There wer
e five of you in the group?”
Puk nodded. “Vick told his own jokes and wrote everyone skits to perform in between their solo acts. I sang. Jit was a juggler, and probably one of the best I’ve seen. I’ve watched my fair share of jugglers set their dumb asses on fire messing up a catch with flaming balls before. Hin was our leader. She organized all the shows, arranged the travel, all that fancy official shit the rest of us couldn’t be bothered to handle, much to her annoyance. She and Dern were the musicians of the troupe. He was great with a flute, and she weren’t bad pluckin’ away at a lute.”
“‘Not bad’? Sounds like you think you could pluck your way through a lute better than her,” Kali said with a glint in her eye. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you refer to yourself as a ‘musician’ from time to time.”
“Hey, I told you I was strictly a singer. But yeah, I’d say I was the better lutist. Is that what they’re called? Lutists?”
“I doubt it,” Kali said. “I wasn’t totally sure you ever played, though.”
“I haven’t in a long time,” he admitted. It had been years since he’d last strummed an instrument. Any skill he once had was surely diminished.
“So you don’t write your own songs or play the lute anymore,” she said. She arched her eyebrows over the rim of her glass as she downed the remainder of her water.
“That sounded like a barb,” Puk said. “A rude barb.”
“Is there any other kind?”
“The lute thing ain’t my fault, at least. I used to play all the time, until mine got smashed up in Lors.”
Kali grinned at this revelation. “Your turn now. Give me the juice.”
“You need a refill first?” he asked, pointing at her empty glass.
“Juice first, then water.”
So he dove into the tale.
“I was living in Lors at the time, probably…ten years ago? Somethin’ like that. While back. I was playing at inns and pubs around town fairly often—usually songs that people already knew, but you would be pleased to know that a few of them were written by me. Puk originals! Anyways, one day—it was the middle of the day, sun’s shining bright, everyone’s out and about on the street—I was walking from my apartment to the market square, where they were throwin’ a small annual shindig called The Honeycomb Festival or something like that, I dunno.
“I’d been hired to play a couple songs during the festivities, along with some other people who I thought were all way better than me, so I was pretty excited to be asked. Felt like an honor, kinda, to be put up alongside them. So I was walking with my lute strapped on my back. It wasn’t nothin’ special, just something I’d picked up at a secondhand shop a couple years before, but it was a good instrument. Sturdy, good tone. I had just strung some fresh strings, so I was feelin’ fancy. Ahead, walking right towards me, was a guy who was infamous in the city. Everyone knew his name was Dallon, and everyone knew he was not blind like he claimed to be. Perfectly avoiding every obstacle and specifically commenting on people’s appearance when he got mad at them were fairly good clues. He’d wander around, telling residents and tourists alike that he was blind and needed help, needed any crescents they could spare. The people who lived there knew it was a scam, but the tourists always fell for it and I’d bet he made a pretty good living off it. I dunno why he did it, if he was just an asshole tryin’ to make a quick crescent or if he was mentally ill or somethin’ and couldn’t hold down a real job, but either way, he approached me.
“He gave me the usual spiel, that he was blind and couldn’t work and needed some assistance in the form of crescents. No one ever confronted him or challenged his claim, and I wasn’t gonna be the first, so I politely told him I didn’t have any money on me. That pissed him off, as it always did when people denied him, so he started yelling at me, calling me a fat little worm, saying I was selfish, stuff like that. I ignored him and tried to slip past, but as I did he grabbed my lute and yanked it off my back, then smashed it on the ground. Over and over, until it was just shards of wood scattered all over the street, yelling about how if I’m not making any money with it then I didn’t need it, right? I mean, he wasn’t totally wrong. I wasn’t makin’ all that much money, but…”
Puk trailed off, eyestalks drooping, remembering the sight of his lute splintered into countless pieces on the dirty cobbled road. The people standing nearby, unmoving, not reacting to anything Dallon was saying or doing. All of them—Puk included—simply watching the man drop the narrow wooden neck of the instrument onto the ground with a light thud, then stomping away in search of a more susceptible mark.
Kali’s face etched into a deep frown at the conclusion of his story. The juice was sour.
“Did anything happen to the guy?” she asked.
“Nah.”
“But he destroyed your property.” The concern in her eyes was genuine. “Shouldn’t the authorities have done something?”
He shrugged.
Kali seemed unsatisfied with the response but moved on and asked, “So you haven’t played since then?”
A shake of the head.
“Any instrument at all?”
Another shake.
“…why not?” Her voice was low.
Puk knew the question was coming. He didn’t have an answer that would satisfy her. It lined up with the rest of his reasoning for how he’d decided to live his life, which he knew she did not find understandable.
But he laid it out for her regardless. “It was discouraging, y’know? It was like looking at my dreams smashed into pieces on the ground. I wouldn’t be able to find another lute in time for the performance, not at a price I could afford, so the day was ruined already. I just went home. Didn’t even attend the festival.”
The explanation sounded even weaker aloud than it had internally.
In truth, the incident was somewhat of a relief, which at the time had flooded him with guilt. He hadn’t quite been failing as a musician, but he was far from making a sustainable income off it, and he knew there was a lot of work that needed to be done for him to reach that point. A lot of effort.
But with his lute destroyed, it was out of his hands. He told himself that, hey, his instrument was gone, so he couldn’t pursue that path anymore. He got to avoid funneling all that money into the endeavor. Got to avoid making that immense effort. And, as a result, he would avoid failing after throwing himself into it. This way, the failure wasn’t his own fault.
Instead, he chose a path of frivolity. Drinks, drugs, whatever fun he could find.
Plenty of people throughout the world lived their lives without pursuing any creative avenue. It would be much less stressful to count himself among their number.
He didn’t want to tell Kali that, though.
It was bad enough being a failure, let alone consciously deciding to take a shortcut to failure.
Thankfully, Kali dropped the subject after that. Maybe she sensed his innate discomfort. She seemed lost in thought herself as she rose a few moments later, asking if he wanted more water. He said sure, and asked for a short glass of Nawan rum if they had any. She smiled and obliged.
While Kali was at the counter, Puk’s thoughts drifted to the near-empty jar of cordol spit nestled snugly in his backpack.
Reminiscing about his destitution in Lors naturally conjured hazy memories of tavern nights with friends that usually resulted in alleyway mornings. Entire nights lost to booze and drugs, whether that meant marshweed or fire-spit or whatever other illicit delights they could get their grubby hands on.
Now, though, his stomach churned at the prospect of such a night. At the idea of drinking that spit. Which he had absurdly found appealing only a few nights before. Puk wasn’t sure if the effects of drinking it raw had put him off the substance entirely, or if it was something else.
When Kali returned to their table a minute later, she appeared to be in much brighter spirits than when she left. After his self-reflection in her absence, Puk was feeling lighter too.
“I wanna hear more stories about Atlua,” she said, sliding a water as well as a stout glass of thick, dark liquid toward him.
Puk grasped the glass of rum and took a swig. It was spicy and sweet, dancing on his tongue and down his throat. He asked, “What kind of stories you wanna hear?”
“Anything,” Kali said. “I wanna know everything that I can about the place. Maybe I’ll finally know more about something than my sister.”
She chuckled, but Puk frowned slightly.
He said, “I feel like that ain’t the first time you’ve brought her up,” he said.
Kali looked perplexed. “What do you mean? My sister? Sure, I’ve probably brought her up plenty of times.”
“Yeah, but I mean like that—like you’re some kind of dumbass and she’s this mighty bastion of knowledge or something.”
She shrugged and said, “Well, Lissia’s a scholar at the Repository. She kind of is a bastion of knowledge. She’s by far the most accomplished Shiar—way more than me, anyhow. She’s up in that tower, wiling away the days working to research for the world, bring people knowledge, blah blah blah, and meanwhile I’m just puttering back and forth across the desert like an idiot…” She trailed off, her voice low and dark.
Puk shook his head. “See, that’s stupid,” he told her. She almost interjected, but he stopped her. “You’re talkin’ like your sister’s the only person to ever do shit in the world, like you’re nothin’. Which is stupid. You’ve accomplished a ton, I know you have. I’ve seen it. You’ve told me about it. You gotta stop acting like she’s the measure of your success or whatever. The shit you’ve done is worthwhile too. Just gotta have a bit more confidence in yourself.”
Spit and Song (Ustlian Tales Book 2) Page 30