“Food,” Marcus said, imparting some urgency into his words. ”Where’s food?”
Rice Street was one of the most well-known streets in the city of Portruss. Politically, it couldn’t compare to Central Plaza, nor any of the banks, statues or offices of state that dotted the north side of the city’s great hill. What Rice Street had was something far more important; food. The street ran the full length of the city from Central Plaza to the Docklands, and along its length a weary traveller could fill their belly with any type of cuisine from across the Mirrorworld that they might have a hankering for. Entrepreneurial would-be chefs flocked to the area, carving out a small section of the street from which they could introduce the unsuspecting city to their next big idea, and shoot for the prize of culinary immortality. Such had been the fate enjoyed by the overworked young chef who spent his every waking hour flitting between two major bakeries, and was one afternoon so utterly exhausted that he thoroughly mucked up the in-house recipe for a jam tart and accidentally served to a particularly open-minded foreign ambassador the pastry that would soon become known as the Portruss Pie. This young man’s named now decorated the walls of both bakeries, each of which claimed to be the home of the Portruss Pie, and whose intense rivalry over the legitimacy of this claim still occasionally exploded into unlicensed street bake-offs fifty years after the fact.
Not all of the stories were successes, of course. Some Rice Street locals would find a niche in history for completely different reasons. Despite years of campaigning, Mr. Ramsbottom had continually failed to convince anyone that his congealed blood ‘puddings’ were a thing that they wanted to eat. His signature foodstuff had, however, found a second life as a handy projectile; people now annually flocked to his stall from all over Eurora to see how many batter puddings they could dislodge from their service stands across the street with a well-aimed blood pudding, and Ramsbottom was these days quite vehement in stating that this had been the plan the whole time. Culinary history might not have been made, but a legend had been written nonetheless.
“So that’s what Rice Street is famous for,” Helm continued, as he walked alongside Marcus down the street in question, “but it’s not the only thing you’ll find here. The whole area is good for shopping, and there are plenty of inns and hostels here too. Not as many as on Main Street, since that’s, you know, the main street, but you’d be surprised how many people arrive in the city more concerned about where their next meal's coming from than where their next bed will be, and Rice Street takes care of those priorities in that order. All told, you could probably spend a week in the city without leaving this street, sleeping in a different bed each night and eating different meals every day. Ah, a Betyoullian stall. Chinese food, Marcus?”
“What?” Marcus asked, as Helm veered off to the side. A valiant effort to absorb what Helm had been telling him had been increasingly sidelined, as they’d walked down Rice Street, by a preoccupation with where all of these delicious smells were coming from. “You have Chinese food here?”
“Not really,” Helm said, as they joined the queue. “We have something not entirely unlike Chinese food. Or, more precisely, your Chinese food is not entirely unlike the food from Betyoullia. It’s all the same food really though, point of view just depends on which world you’re in.”
“Stop saying food,” Marcus said absently, shuffling up to within grabbing distance of the stall’s offerings. Starting with a base of what looked a lot like rice noodles, he carefully layered on top of this a generous helping of what seemed suspiciously akin to crispy beef, before burying that under a pile of what was almost definitely chow mein, and topped the whole thing off with what could only be spring rolls for good measure. Not wishing to underpay, he carefully handed the diminutive lady running the stall one of the fatter gold coins from his satchel, which sent her eyebrows on a one-way trip into her hairline but was accepted without argument. The lady continued to eye him as he went over to the rickety table that Helm had slipped off to procure for them on a nearby wooden decking, an all-purpose eatery area that expanded well into the street. The people of Portruss, it seemed, had a remarkably free-spirited philosophy when it came to the appropriate use for their thoroughfares.
“Where’s Betyoullia?” Marcus asked, after a few minutes of busy silence.
“East,” Helm said, and that was all for the moment, as he wandered back down to the stall and attempted to make the argument that, since Marcus had in fact paid with a sum that totalled a greater value than the stall’s net worth, he was entitled to a second portion. Returning unsuccessfully, he carried on. “Very far east. See, the Mirrorworld’s round just like your Earth – if not as big – and I’m sure you’ll get to hear all of Tec’s theories about that soon enough – and Betyoullia’s about as far away as you can get from here before you start coming back. Funny story behind the name, too. I’d tell it now, but I think we’re about to be robbed.”
“What?” Marcus asked, startled out of wrestling with his chopsticks.
Helm nodded over to the stall, where two burly-looking and noticeably well-armed men were now deep in conversation with its owner. They did not appear to be haggling over the shrimp-to-noodle ratio in the chow mein, which was in itself a surprise as it was shocking. As Marcus looked, the stall’s owner pointed in his direction, and the two men’s ghastly serious expressions turned to regard him with a baleful curiosity.
“Do we run?”
“To where?” Helm sighed. “We might get lost in the crowd, or we – and I mean you, because I am a streetwise city dweller – might fall over, get caught, get robbed anyway and get beaten senseless for good measure. Just sitting here and taking it will probably be the more painless option.”
“Are you actually serious? We’re going to sit here and let them rob us?”
“That’s what I’m going to do, and I recommend you do it too.”
It was at that moment that the two burly men arrived at their table, rendering further argument pointless. The intruders casually pulled up a chair each from a nearby table and joined Marcus and Helm as if they were old friends. The bigger of the two leant close towards Marcus, who after a whiff of the man’s breath found himself suddenly and mysteriously devoid of appetite.
“We hear there’s been a lot of money being flashed around these parts,” the man said companionably.
Marcus glanced at Helm, but the Viaggiatori was busily entrenched in a staring contest with the other intruder. “Where’d you hear that?” he asked.
Suddenly, there was a knife in the other man’s hand. “Look bub,” the man said, “I know you paid for your food with a big fat gold coin, and in my experience where there’s one there’s more. So hand over your wallet, we leave, no-one gets hurt.”
“Except my ego,” Marcus said.
“Time will heal that wound. Come on, wallet.”
Marcus hesitated. A lifetime’s worth of passively letting problems roll over him itched him to give it up; technically, it wasn’t even his money. But that was the way of his memories, the way he had already rejected once today. Swelled with the potency of potential agency, Marcus found that he just couldn’t quite make peace with the idea of letting this halitosical hustler nick his stuff.
The robber drummed his fingers on the table, causing it to wobble dangerously. “Now, I can understand you might have some hesitation, so I’m going to tell you a thing or two to help you make up your mind. See my knife here - of course you do, how could you not? This is the Crust-Slicer 1.3.2. It is essentially a bread knife, albeit one that has been heavily modified to have perfect balance, and an almost-some-might-say magical level of sharpness that makes it one of the most lethal blades you will ever see.” For emphasis, he sliced the pepper pot in half. “Especially considering that, if you don’t play nice, it will most likely be the last blade you ever see. So, good sir, what’ll it be?”
Marcus made up his mind. “Crust-Slicer one-point-three-point-who-cares is very impressive. But I
can match it. See that staff leaning against the wall behind me?” He indicated Death’s scythe, which he had indeed propped up just behind him. It stood there still, blade hidden, oozing malevolence. “That’s my weapon, and it belonged to the Grim Reaper.”
The robber blinked. Then he looked up at the staff. Then, he burst out laughing. Marcus laughed along with him for a moment, and then made his move. With a swift kick he capsized the table in the robber’s face, spraying foodstuffs everywhere and sending Helm and the robber’s companion falling away with a yell. Before anyone could react, Marcus stood up, spun around, grabbed the staff, kept spinning, and came back around again as his assailant rose up from the wreckage like an avenging angel. His knife was in hand, and Marcus realised in the sudden slow motion that he hadn’t been quick enough. The man’s face curled up into a victorious snarl, and he struck forwards with his blade.. but then paused, his expression screwing up into a sneeze, a response to the massive amount of stray ground pepper that was now decorating his face.
Marcus didn’t pause. He swung the staff with malice aforethought.
The sound of a length of wood smashing into the side of the man’s head at speed is not a pleasant one; for all that it was quite a light weapon, the staff certainly made an impact. Marcus watched in light-headed horror as the man sagged, the remains of his face dragged down to the floor by the rest of his suddenly inert form. On the other side of the wreckage that had so recently been a food-filled platter, Helm was casually wiping a knife of his own clean with the tablecloth. He caught Marcus’s eye and grinned. “Lovely chap, I thought, but no peripheral awareness. Too busy trying to outstare me to spot me stabbing him. How about your fella?”
Five minutes later, in an alleyway.
“What happened to just sitting there and letting them rob us?”
“I was waiting for you. I thought it would be interesting to see what you did.”
Marcus leaned heavily against the staff, whilst Helm poked his head out of the end of the alley. There was no-one about. Off in the distance, whistles were being blown. Rice Street was in pandemonium.
“Did you plan this?”
“What, getting robbed? Of course I didn’t. But I thought it would be an interesting opportunity to let you take the lead, to see what you’re really made of when you’re not being all sarcastic like. And hey, that was actually pretty impressive. Nice distraction with the ‘Grim Reaper’s staff’ thing, that was just silly enough to work. You left it quite late, though.”
There was a pause.
“You, Helm, are a lunatic.”
“Just doing my job. Psych profile, remember? You might have forgotten I’m here for a purpose other than being your pet guidebook, but I haven’t.”
Marcus looked at him, leaning on the opposite wall of the alleyway. He felt an irresistible urge to start laughing giddily. He held it in for a moment, then realised he had no reason to do so, and burst out into peals of laughter. After a few seconds, Helm joined in, and they cured their madness with humour.
“So,” Helm asked, between breaths, leaning forward and grasping Marcus’s shoulder to hold himself up, “what now?”
“I think,” Marcus said, wiping his eyes, “it’s time we went and got that drink.”
“Excellent. Anywhere in particular you’d like to go?”
“Yes. I’d like..” Marcus paused to think about it. “I’d like to go somewhere where I can’t play pool because the cues are too busy being used in bar fights and the pool table is on fire. I want to go somewhere where the cocktails don’t have names, only numbers. I want to go somewhere where scantily-clad ladies will gyrate their hips at me in an incredibly distracting way... Know anywhere like that?”
“Of course I don’t,” Helm said, with a giggle that seemed to slip out quite by accident. “I am a respectable member of a respectable organisation. I do not frequent such places. I know nothing about them. I especially don’t know about Ron’s Bar down by the docks, where drinks are a dollar apiece if you arrive early and stay there all night.”
“And the pool table? The gyrating, what of the gyrating?”
“I’m not sure the girls at Ron’s know the word, but they know the move.”
“Will anyone attempt to mug us while we’re there?”
“Almost definitely.”
“Awesome. Let’s go.”
And they went.
9
Several hours later, Marcus found himself newly endowed with a party hat, propping up the eponymous bar of Ron’s Bar. It wasn’t a nice bar; it was too small, for a start. There were also no trays for catching spillage, which was probably a major factor in why the bar appeared to have a several-inch coating of stale beer. Marcus had already made the fatal mistake of putting his glass down on it, and had had to ask for a straw to finish his drink with. Luckily, Ron himself, a very tall, utterly sober and sombrely dressed man, had straws coming out of his ears, although he had deigned to provide Marcus with one from a tub behind the bar instead, citing health and safety reasons.
Marcus felt very much at home. The beer at Ron’s was awful, Helm had informed him as they’d made their way there through the ramshackle streets of Portruss’s industrial district, but that was alright because so were the prices. Marcus had pointed out that this didn’t make much sense, and Helm had agreed. Nonetheless, he had been proven correct, and Marcus had given up on the beer after a few pints, since for all Ron had assured him that it was high quality, Marcus remained adamant that the average pint did not have small civilisations of bacteria floating on top of it. Instead, he’d taken to the cocktail list, which, as promised, had no names, only numbers.
“What’s this one?” he asked Ron, pointing to one near the bottom of the list. Whereas all of the others at least affected dignity in informing the drinker what they were made of, the ingredients listing for number forty-one simply read ‘good luck’.
“That, good sir, is what we call the fortune cookie.”
“Really. What’s in it?”
“It varies, sir. You see, I blindfold myself before preparing it.”
“Ah, right. Maybe I’ll take the one below it instead?”
“Are you sure, sir?” Ron’s eyebrows rose, disappearing into whatever oblivion lay beneath his neat bowler hat.
“What’s wrong with this one?” Marcus asked.
“Now sir, there’s no need to take that tone. My cocktails are quality products. Especially this one, which is guaranteed to knock you out within thirty seconds of finishing it. Still early yet, sir, and as I’m sure you won’t mind me pointing out, you have not yet paid your tab.”
“Excellent. I’ll have one. And one for my friend too.”
Whilst Ron went off to busy himself with his optics, Marcus spun around on his wobbly bar stool, soaking in the sights of the bar and attempting to locate Helm. Over in the corner, the pool table fire had just about been put out, after one of the more enterprising locals had thrown a lawyer on it. Now, the patrons were able to continue beating each other with the cues without any risk to their health. Marcus thought it had been quite clever of Ron to attribute a specific section of the bar to mindless brawling; if it was going to happen anyway, you might as well allow for it. The lack of damaged furniture and blood on the carpets in the rest of the pub just about made up for the fact that the pool table didn’t make a lot of money. But then it had about four holes too many anyway.
On Marcus’s side of the bar were the gambling tables, where the quiet hush was only occasionally broken by someone losing all their money and having a breakdown, before watchful security quietly and pleasantly directed them to Ron’s Loans Service, a small stall set up at the end of the bar. Once again, Marcus had to admire the man’s ingenuity, and be thankful that he had turned his talents towards running a bar rather than world domination.
Marcus finally located Helm in the area of negotiable affection, where the lights were dim and moody and the women wore significantly less clot
hes. He was slumped over the railing that marked the do-not-pass line, attempting to make small talk with a dancing girl who probably couldn’t even hear him over the miscellaneous music the jukebox was playing. Marcus had deliberately sat as far away from the jukebox as possible, and watched it carefully all evening. So far, it had not shown any signs of exploding, but Marcus remained unconvinced. With a quick wave that almost toppled him from his stool, he caught Helm’s attention, and the Viaggiatori dragged himself over to the bar.
“Hiiiiiii Marcus,” the man said, dropping onto the stool next to him and instantly falling off.
“Hiiiiiii Marcus,” he said again, standing up and sitting down more carefully this time.
“How’s it going?” Marcus asked cheerfully.
“S’good. It is. Good. How’re you?”
“Pretty good. I made a big decision, and it helped me resurrect the ghost of the good mood I started the day in, so I’ve been kicking back and enjoying it, having some fun. Drink?” he added, as Ron came back and plonked the two 42’s down onto strategically fossilised beermats before them.
“Yess why not?” Helm made a grab for a glass and missed. “How many did you buy?”
“Two?”
“Then why are there eight?”
Marcus grinned. His plan had so far been a resounding success. Helm’s veneer of distant displeasure had broken down somewhat after their successful escape from the muggers, and the man had agreed to a drink or two in celebration. He was, he’d said at the time, the responsible one here, charged with the task of looking after Marcus and making sure he didn’t run away or anything like that, so he would only be having a couple. With a bit of subtle convincing and a fat gold coin flipped in Ron’s direction to spike the man’s drink, ‘a couple’ had so far turned into half the cocktail list. Marcus had willingly matched him all the way, still completely sober even at this stage. For once, though, that didn’t annoy him. Whilst so very recently he had been working on a serious pursuit of the fabled state of intoxication so that he might forget his troubles, and been sad to constantly fail to find it, today he was making use of his handicap in a positive manner; to out-drink and escape his escort.
Mirrorworld Page 10