by Hugo Huesca
Alder grabbed that vial and placed it on his side of the table. “I’m keeping this one,” he said. “Because I can combo it with my nimble feet.”
“No, you won’t,” Kes chided him. “You want to move faster than the rest of us? You’d leave us behind, and we couldn’t benefit from your magic.” She handed the vial over to Ed. “My fighting style has little use for Agility, but Ed can use it with his improved reflexes.”
While the Bard grumbled to himself, Katalyn pointed at a group of clay balls about the size of big marbles. “Smoke bombs,” she said. “Useful for a getaway.” She withdrew from her pouch a small bunch of shiny slivers made of a porous material, reminiscent of gunpowder. “You pinch the bombs’ tops with one of these to create a spark.”
Each of them grabbed two of the bombs and a pinch of slivers, which were very fragile.
The rest of the items Katalyn described quickly. Chalk sticks, incredibly useful with a bit of creativity; a bag of salt, to safely short-circuit some magical traps; and some empty vials, to store valuable liquids.
After she was done, Ed and Kes put the items back into the belts.
“You should dump those,” Katalyn said. “The belts, I mean. It’s obvious who you got them from, and it’ll get you in trouble. I know a guy that can make similar belts on the cheap, so next time you come to Undercity, head to the Folly and the barkeep will have them in store for you.”
“Thanks,” Ed said. “That’s nice of you.”
Katalyn snorted and grabbed three of the vyfaras she had previously left on the table. “Cheap isn’t the same as free, after all.”
Then she pointed at Ed’s new green cape. “That was Karmich’s, wasn’t it?” She gestured at him to hand it over so she could take a better look. She studied the fabric closely. “He had it enchanted—the asshole. He always claimed to be broke whenever we played deckers. Let’s see…” Her fingers flew across the seams, which were sewn with silver thread. “Should be somewhere around here…” Her fingers stopped when she reached the button around the cape’s neck. She pushed, and for a brief instant, Ed could swear he saw the air around the cape ripple before it went back to normal.
“What’s the enchantment for?” asked Alder with wide eyes. “Will it make Ed invisible? Can he fly with it? Teleport around shadows? What?”
Katalyn chuckled and shook the cape around. The fabric made no sound. “It’s for sneaking,” she explained. “Absorbs all sounds coming from the wearer, for up to an hour per day. Karmich carried it around because he wears studded leather armor, which is noisier than the lighter version.” She handed the cape back to Ed.
“Ah.” Alder couldn’t hide the disappointment from his voice. “I was hoping for invisibility. That always makes for the best stories.”
“If any of us could afford that kind of magic item,” said Katalyn, “we’d be fat and retired in Elaitra.”
Once identifying the loot was over and done with, the four of them kept a comfortable silence as they each finished their drinks and enjoyed the warmth of the fireplace.
It’d be easy to live like this, Ed thought with a sudden pang of nostalgia. His eyebrows rose. What was he nostalgic about?
This is what being an adventurer feels like, he realized. Sitting in taverns, splitting the loot of our recent victories, drinking and gossiping until late at night, warming ourselves next to the fire until we’re ready for the next adventure… It was the kind of stuff he had lived vicariously via videogames and tabletop games all of his life. Sure, fighting for his life in the slick causeway hadn’t been enjoyable in the least, but now, with the fireplace crackling, and a cold mug in his hand… It was hard to remember what he had been all so upset about.
I’m nostalgic because this could’ve been my fate, he decided. If any other being beside Kharon had come to me that day after Ryan’s office, I could’ve been an adventurer.
It was so easy to imagine. Kes would’ve been the tank, Alder would’ve handled the buffs, Lavy was the mage, and Katalyn was obviously the Thief. Ed’s place would’ve been right in the middle of the group—a mixture between fighter and mage, ready to fill any weakness that sprang in the battle formation. They would’ve traveled all across Ivalis, meeting strange people, surviving dangers, growing in power and riches, coming upon arcane secrets, and all those other wonderful things that adventurers did.
Ed chuckled and shook his head to clear his mind of daydreams. Ah, nothing to it, he thought. His gaze met Kes and Alder’s, and he could’ve sworn they were thinking the same as he was. He was probably projecting, though.
The grass is always greener on the other side, he decided. How many adventurers would’ve given their right arm for the powers he had been bestowed? Or to have a place they could call home? He was sure that, if he ever talked to an adventurer, they would point out the many hardships in their lives that he couldn’t even imagine. Maybe they’d look at the Haunt’s heated walls during wintertime and envy those. Maybe they’d envy the companionship. His Haunt, after all, had never been empty. Wouldn’t ever be, as long as he had a say about it.
He patted his legs to help with circulation. “Well, that’s enough resting for the day,” he said. His voice jerked everyone out of their own private contemplations. “What are we going to do about Andreena’s beer?”
Katalyn smirked and set aside her ale. The fire and the alcohol had given her nose and cheeks a kind of shine that made her look downright lovely. “Ah, time for business, then? Very well.” She leaned forward on her chair and lowered her voice, forcing the other three to inch forward, too, making a sort of impromptu conspiracy circle. “I’ll introduce you to my good friend Oscor…”
THE WAREHOUSES next to the docks were a series of wide and low buildings made of brick and limestone. The salt in the air made their paint flake and fall in several spots.
The streets surrounding the warehouses meshed well with the flaked aspect of the buildings. They were dirty, unpaved, covered in mud mixed with snow, and the few carriages that crossed them had the drivers spur the horses so that they’d remain here as short a time as possible.
Katalyn brought them to a sort of tour around the warehouse district, because she wanted to make sure they weren’t being followed by Pris or the other members of the Guild. They started close to the docks, where the smell of fish was overpowering, and small mountains of silver herrings rose in mats next to fishing boats painted in bright colors. A small army of sailors and dock workers either loaded barrels of fish into nearby carts or took merchandise out of other carts and hauled it next to the bigger merchant ships that splattered the horizon next to the wooden structures of the dock. About half of the dock’s population was humans or elves, and the other half was a mixture of races Ed hadn’t met before, but which were nonetheless recognizable: minotaurs, dwarfs, gnomes, a couple old kaftars with graying fur, and even a formic covered in blue and gold chains.
Some ships had their cargo loaded on board by complex machinery made out of pulleys, loaded weights, and wooden and iron scaffolding. It reminded Ed of trebuchets, although their function was more like that of Earth’s cranes.
The amount of carts and carriage traffic was staggering. Katalyn had rented a cart of her own so they could move the beer barrels, and it would’ve been almost impossible to distinguish it from the dozens—maybe even hundreds—of similar carts that made their way along the overloaded roads. The almost skeletal donkey that pulled the cart had had its legs covered with cloth in case it had to deal with snow, but the roads were kept free of it by virtue of the sheer amount of traffic and the groups of sailors hauling snow into the waters below, never giving the snowflakes enough time to bunch up.
As he moved among the carts, the sailors, and the workers, Ed distinguished a third kind of person. They had to be spellcasters, because they wore yellow tunics under their orange coats and had cowled capes covering half their faces. Their chests were loaded with heavy golden chains. Heavy rings with rubies and emeralds decorated their hands, and some of them carri
ed staffs almost twice as long as themselves. Most of the staffs were carved out of wood, but a couple were marble and had crystal orbs at the tip, glinting red and blue in the sunlight.
“Diviners,” Katalyn told him. “They work for His Majesty’s Treasury, checking that no one is smuggling anything into the city.” She pulled the donkey’s reins to lead the cart away from the main street and onto one of the minor ones that intersected it. “We better keep our distance—we don’t want any of their detection spells triggering by accident because we got too close.”
One of the Diviners sniffed the air with a suspicious scowl. Ed and the others hurried to get out of sight.
The side streets were populated by taverns and whorehouses, and packs of sailors roamed their streets, many too drunk to walk straight. Ed glanced at the sky above. It was sunset.
Along with the sailors were the prostitutes. Their faces were caked with thick make-up, and their figures were accentuated by tight bodices. A few of them sparkled, like tiny fireworks were going off all the time around their heads. Kes explained that they wore earrings enchanted with minor illusion spells. Armed with that knowledge, Ed identified many other spells. One woman was dressed as a dryad and her skirt created a constant stream of mist that gave her a mystical air. Another, judging from the way the air rippled around her, was using some kind of Charisma-enhancing aura—some passerby stopped in front of her, mesmerized, and had to be dragged by his better-Spirited friends. He saw many fake pointed ears, elven-like, and even a blond girl with fake feathered wings lazily threading behind her back. That sight earned a couple choice names and obscene gestures from Kes, which the girl ignored with surprising dignity.
Not everything involved whores or booze. Hustlers dressed in tunics and fake gold clogged up the foot traffic by performing magical tricks around small tables. Ed had no idea if he was witnessing real magic or the other, more mundane kind. A man with a battered top hat launched a flurry of doves out of his sleeve, and the birds flew circles around the delighted crowd. A little kid used the chance to cut the purse of a distracted sailor and disappear into the crowd. Ed kept close tabs on his belt after that.
A priest of a minor Light deity threatened fire and brimstone to everyone close enough to hear. The man was bald and dressed in sackcloth, but he stood over his barrel as if he were a King chiding his subjects. As they passed, he called Alder a sinner and a fornicator, much to Alder’s confusion.
Two rival Bards tried to steal the other’s audiences by raising the complexity of their performances. From the sound of it, they were improvising the lyrics of their songs, and it involved the rival Bard and either a group of horned spiders, or having a batblin for a mother. Both crowds were slowly merging into a very pleased one, and they goaded the Bards along into a paroxysm of musical genius.
Herbalists and Witch Doctors—either real or fake, there was no way to tell—announced elixirs that could simulate love, vitalize a limp dick, heal syphilis, and allow the consumers to evade taxes. Many men and women approached them and left with crystal vials whose function they were very careful not to reveal.
Three sailors fought outside a tavern. One of them stabbed another with a small knife in the belly, then ran for an alley before the third man could catch him. A roaming attorney walked briskly over to the man bleeding in the curb and handed him his calling card as the Watch ran their way, shouldering their way through the bystanders.
Ed was a bit surprised by the Watch showing up at all. He had expected them not to be anywhere nearby. They wore half-plate emblazoned with a golden lion that Alder identified as Heiliges’ coat of arms. Half of the watchmen’s bodies were covered by a sort of red cape, threaded with gold, that was probably very impressive when clean, but most were baked in grime and mud and probably worse—the street was littered with horse dung. They wore leather skirts reinforced with mail, similar to a Roman centurion, but with steel-tipped boots instead of sandals.
“This goes on every day?” Ed asked after he had to reject the advances of a woman in her fifties disguised as an elven Queen. He had to turn down the advances of the elven King afterward.
“Each week,” Kes said, still grumpy from her encounter with the woman disguised as an avian. “The sailors have a couple days of leave after they’re done loading their ships, so they spend most of their pay here. At the end of the leave, they’re out of money and must take another six-month contract with the same ship they left, and so on for the rest of their lives, until they die from some sickness that got through their resist disease.” She said so with disgust, but a tremor in her lip revealed a certain fondness. Ed noticed that a few of the roaming groups were soldiers and mercenaries.
Next to their cart, a Ranger made a trained monkey vault across a series of obstacles, pirouette across the air like it had wings, and land in front of Katalyn. The monkey offered her a blue flower. She laughed and accepted it, and gave the monkey a couple of small rings, of the kind that the villages of Starevos used instead of coins. The monkey returned to its Ranger and tossed the loot into a worn-out boot. The blue flower ended up in Katalyn’s hair.
“Alright,” said Katalyn as she led them to yet another side street, “try to look poor, will you?” She covered her hair with her cowl, so Ed did the same. Alder glanced about nervously and hid his small coin purse inside his shirt.
Every side street had smaller, unpaved roads, like they were traversing a giant’s arteries and flowing through smaller veins at every turn. Soon the roads were barely big enough for their cart to fit.
The passersby changed too, a subtle change that Ed didn’t notice until the crimson colors of sunset changed into the purples of early nighttime. The costumed working gals became older and ragged, with cold, calculating eyes that followed the group as they passed. Then the costumes disappeared altogether, replaced by rough sackcloth or tattered linen.
The happy, drunk sailors were replaced by a rougher sort, grim-faced. Most hid their faces under their hoods and walked the shadows, avoiding the moonlight like it was poison.
Men and women covered head-to-toe in furred coats stood at each corner, warming their hands over improvised fires. Under their coats, black leather armor gained an evil tint with the firelight, which also lighted brief flashes of daggers curved like fangs and rusty knuckle-dusters hanging from hemp collars. Ed noticed that Kes’ hands never strayed far from her scabbard, although she pretended not to see these new characters.
Rats as big as wolves scurried along dirty alleyways, always remaining in the corner of Ed’s eyes and vanishing when he turned to search for them, leaving only their deformed shadows as they fought with each other over scraps.
A man with a sea of scars crisscrossing his scalp sold vials filled with a black, tar-like substance. He had a small cauldron boiling over a fire in front of him. Another one carried a heavy chain joined to the manacles of three batblins with gray fur in front of him. The sight brought forth a pang of fury in Ed, and his hand hovered over his short sword, but the hostile, almost feral expression of the batblins made him doubt for a second, and then the man and the trio were gone.
“Where are you bringing us?” Kes asked Katalyn, not bothering to hide the distrust in her voice.
“Are you scared?” Katalyn turned, eyebrow raised, and pointed at Ed with nonchalance. “Our friend here belongs to a kind of Dark much worse than anything you may find in the slums.”
“Are they aware of that?” Ed asked, glancing at the black-clad figures around them.
Katalyn winced. “Good point.” She grinned nervously.
The taverns were replaced by homes made of rotting wood planks, or a sort of black clay that made the houses look as if they were melting, or made by the hands of a giant toddler. Their roofs were made out of straw. Some had small dirt gardens, with one or two dead trees growing along crabgrass and dry shrubbery. Men and women as old as mountains sat in front of their doorways, smoking pipes that exuded purple smoke. Their expressions were dead and didn’t react to Ed�
��s group at all.
“Pixie dust,” Katalyn told him, nodding at the small cloud of smoke floating over a wrinkled face and her straw hat. “Nasty shit, very addicting.”
Ed could’ve sworn he had misheard. “Pixie dust? You mean… the stuff that makes you fly if you have happy thoughts?”
“It makes you feel as if you could fly,” Katalyn said. “Makes you feel as if you were a kid again, but better. You relive your childhood, except it isn’t exactly your childhood. The colors are brighter, the memories are more vivid. It brings your mind to a world that’s much better than the real one and leaves you there. Every time you smoke the dust, the real world dims a bit more. The food tastes a bit more like ash each time, and you feel less and less. Eventually, the addicts are little different from vegetables.” She made a stabbing motion with her arm. “You could prod their guts with a hot iron, and they wouldn’t realize.”
“Why is it called pixie dust?” Alder asked.
“It was introduced in Undercity by foreign sailors from Akathun,” Katalyn said. “People hunt pixies there. They drain them, leave the bodies to dry, and grind them into dust.” She shivered and took a long swig out of a flask she had hanging on her belt. “It’s selling like crazy, despite the Watch’s efforts to eradicate it. The Thieves Guild is having a hard time dealing with the Akathunians distributing it.”
“Killing fairies? What a bunch of scumbags,” muttered Kes. She looked eager to give the Akathunians a piece of her mind.
Ed’s imagination produced an image of a pixie—the kind that starred in movies for little girls back on Earth—having her lifeless body slowly crushed inside a mortar. He shuddered. Katalyn handed him her flask, which he accepted gratefully.
The black-clad figures around almost every corner—the Akathunians themselves—watched with gray, merciless eyes.
Soon afterward, Ed’s group arrived at a wide house, windowless, whose planks were almost falling apart. It was encircled by a small fence, and a road of cobblestones reached toward a door made of wood and reinforced with rusty iron.