by Brian Keller
Cooper didn’t know when his talents would manifest and couldn’t know if any affinity he gained could compete with the Dregs boy’s earth Talent, and he also knew he couldn’t wait long enough to find out. The boy displayed formidable capability and demonstrated the effectiveness of his control of it. Cooper assumed the boy had directed his attention onto Cecil since Cooper had escaped his grasp. It would require some solid planning for Cooper to handle this. Fortunately, Chesim’s evening stories and his own imagination had given him a few ideas.
While moving from chair to chair around the house, Cooper noticed some small collections of discarded fishing items, many of them bent or knotted beyond any semblance of usefulness. That evening Cooper asked Faril about the items. Faril told him, “I’ll likely never get around to fixing any of that mess but it seems wasteful to simply throw them away.”. Cooper asked if he could see what he thought he could salvage and Faril was pleased to grant his permission. Remali even seemed pleased, maybe simply because someone might be removing some clutter from her house.
By noon the following day, Cooper had salvaged two metal leader lines, one line a little shorter than six feet and the other just over ten feet in length, a bent, barbed spike from a gaff hook and a handful of strong-looking but twisted fish hooks. He asked Remali if Faril owned a set of pliers. He was told he would likely have to go to a smithy to find someone with pliers, so Cooper accepted that his projects would have to wait until he was well enough to walk around. He bundled the fish hooks in a scrap of cloth and tied it up with a short length of fishing line.
After a week, Cooper was sitting up and getting to the privy without assistance and he started taking short walks outside, stating that the sunshine would do him good. The air was gaining more of a chill, but it was still pleasant while the sun was high. The fact that the sea was just a couple blocks away helped keep the temperature from reaching extremes but in winter the wind at night coming off the water could rip the warmth from your bones.
He knew he needed to return to his House soon, or he’d never be let back in. The main advantage he had was that he was one of Skaiven’s ‘earners’. With his sudden disappearance, Skaiven would assume he’d been arrested or killed. While he wouldn’t be mourned, he would be missed. He would certainly have some explaining to do to be allowed back without having to pay dues for his ‘lost time’. Skaiven still had to pay tribute after all. Cooper just needed a little more time to heal. He’d be foolish to return too soon. In his current state, he’d be unlikely to survive one of Skaiven’s memorable beatings.
A few days later, Cooper found a smithy near enough to walk to without straining too much, and the aging smith seemed amused to listen to Cooper describe the specifications of what he wanted the smith to do with his salvaged items. Before Cooper had finished, the amused look was replaced with something between suspicion and respect. They came to an agreement on price and Cooper paid half up front once he got the assurance that he could pick up his completed order in two days.
He used those two days to regain some ability to move. He pushed far enough to feel spasms and twinges and let the pain guide how much he exerted himself. He’d seen others healing after a beating and those that just curled up to avoid the pain often stayed that way. He asked Faril and Chesim to hang some old, discarded netting from the side of the roof and had started climbing for a few minutes, if he could tolerate it, several times daily. He started off very conservatively. Every time he reached up with his left arm he felt spasms were his ribs had been broken. Trying to pull himself upward was even worse, even if he supported most of his weight with his legs, but by the time two days had passed he was able to slowly climb up to the edge of the roof. He couldn’t bear to pull himself up onto the roof yet but he accepted his progress with grim satisfaction.
On the second day, the old smith displayed his handiwork with pride. The materials Cooper had provided were cheap, rusting scraps but now to Cooper they looked like treasure. The old fish hooks had been twisted and welded together to form many four pointed, roughly triangular shapes so that no matter how they set, one point would always be directed straight up. Cooper had heard that these items were called caltrops and he knew how effective these would be, having recently stepped on a few shards of glass. The smith had made nearly twenty caltrops from the scraps Cooper had provided. The bent, rusty gaff hook spike had been straightened and polished until it gleamed with a dull sheen. The smith had welded the shorter leader wire to the blunt end of the spike. The unattached end of the leader wire was formed into a loop big enough to stick his hand through and the loop had been wrapped tightly with thin leather strips. It would take some practice, but Cooper planned to teach himself to throw the spike with enough force to pierce cowhide. The longer metal leader wire had been fashioned to have a loop at each end big enough to stick his thumb through it. The smile on Cooper’s face as he paid the smith and collected his new prizes made the smith feel more than just a little uncomfortable. He had fashioned crude blades before for people who had dark intentions so that was nothing new. Maybe it was the boy’s dark eyes that made him pause, and maybe it was simply a breeze coming through the open window that had given him a chill. No, he had watched other customers pick up their blades and could sense their anger and knew what fueled them. This boy gave off nothing and the smith couldn’t sense any anger or rage. This was something else.
That evening Cooper tried to give Faril most of what remained of his savings. After paying the healer and the smith he only had two silver and one copper. Faril wouldn’t accept anything, stating that the family still owed Cooper a debt for saving Eva earlier in the year. Cooper had shrugged. ‘What else could he have done?’, he wondered. Before going to bed, Cooper divided the caltrops into two pouches of ten each and then bundled all his new weapons together. In the morning he would put them into the cart before all the fish were put into it.
The following morning in the Trade Quarter, Cooper helped set up the cart, retrieved his bundle and made his way through the throngs of customers. He was trying to regain what he had come to feel as his Flow. He was intent on finding a suitable location to put his plans in motion but that didn’t stop him from noticing a dangling pouch and finding the right moment to relieve its proper owner of that burden. As he slipped away between two vendor stalls, Cooper spotted a space between two single story, stucco buildings. The buildings were about four feet apart making it an easy, but mostly unused walkway. A few empty crates and piles of rubbish made this passage suitable for his plans and Cooper went to work to set the stage. A little less than twenty minutes later, Cooper emerged from the alley and wiped his hands on his trousers. He didn’t know what he’d gotten on his hands while grubbing around and the smell of it told him he probably didn’t want to know. He double checked how he had stashed his items on his belt and rejoined the crowd. He now flowed through the press of people, but now with a completely different purpose in mind. As Cooper moved south towards the College, and the Dregs, he slowed his pace and became more watchful. A hand on his shoulder forced him to turn and Cooper was face to face with one of the Dregs boys. Cooper had rehearsed his movements in his mind over and over again, but in the end his reaction was more instinctive. He reached both hands for the boy’s face, one hand going for an ear and the other trying to blind him. The boy drew his head back reflexively and as he backed away he exclaimed, “What is all over your hands?! You smell like rotting filth!” The boy dropped into a defensive stance and he called out, “Egil! Over here!”. Cooper felt a sinking feeling in his gut. This was not going as he’d planned. He had counted on being able to improve his odds at least by one before being spotted. The gaff hook appeared in his hand almost like magic and a look of disbelief froze the features of the Dregs boy’s face. Cooper launched the spike with the underhand throw he’d been practicing and caught the boy just above the waist as he’d started to turn away. The spike sunk in smoothly and the barb caught enough flesh that Cooper almost wrenched his wrist pulling on th
e leader line to retrieve it. The boy screamed and fell to the ground. The crowd quickly turned to look and reacted as expected. They drew back to leave Cooper in the center of the circle they formed. Cooper ducked his head and bolted back the way he’d come, not even looking around to see if either of the other boys had responded to the injured boy’s call. He knew that the guards didn’t care much about boys beating each other up in the street, but this wasn’t just a beating. Cooper wasn’t sure how the guards would react to this. He needed to be somewhere else quickly. He coiled up the leader line as he ran but couldn’t risk slowing down enough to stow it properly so he just kept it in his hand as he quickly weaved through the crowd. He could hear some sounds of disturbance behind him but didn’t take his eyes off his route to look if it was the Dregs boys or a guard. After running for a block he figured it had to be a Dregs boy, the guard would’ve shouted something by now and the only sounds he could hear were sounds of outrage from people that were being shoved and jostled. One more street to go and he’d need to locate his alley. He could feel his mending ribs protesting, they had not healed enough for this kind of exertion but Cooper had to keep running. The pain was better than getting caught. The seconds seemed to stretch longer as he ran and the individuals in the crowd started to blur and very soon Cooper reached his alley. He paused for a moment, just long enough to look over his shoulder, and realized he had left his pursuer further behind than he’d thought. As he waited for the pursuing Dregs boy he took a couple deep breaths and immediately regretted it. His ribs were not ready for full, deep breaths yet. He felt his vision start to narrow and darken a bit and he felt fear that he might collapse. He would surely be killed if he was caught now. He locked eyes with the Dregs boy. He was not the leader, not Egil, and Cooper forced himself to move quickly through the alley selecting where he put his feet but staying at least a half dozen steps ahead of his prey. ‘His prey’. Cooper allowed himself a slight smile as he visualized how this boy would react in the next few moments when he realized he had been led here. Cooper skirted along one edge of the alley, ran up a stack of crates he had placed there and hopped down on the other side. He had scattered one pouch full of caltrops in the empty space between the crates and the neighboring building. The Dregs boy saw what Cooper had done and realization dawned on him as he spotted a couple of the caltrop’s sharpened points gleaming in the sunlight and he ran up onto the crates just as Cooper had. Cooper continued to smile, “perfect!”. While the boy was climbing the crates, he failed to notice a quick furtive movement as Cooper ducked under the pre-positioned leader line. The line spanned the space between the buildings and was strung tight enough to hum if you plucked it, right at Cooper’s eye level. Cooper sprinted a few more steps down the alley and stopped when he heard a surprised gurgle from behind him. The boy hadn’t noticed the thin wire stretched across just at the height of his neck. He hadn’t been running fast enough for the wire to cut his throat, but certainly fast enough to put him flat on his back unable to breathe. Cooper swiftly covered the few steps between them and wrapped the tethered gaff hook line around the boy’s neck and pulled. The boy started to gurgle in panic but that noise cut off immediately as Cooper tightened the line. He could feel his ribs flexing with the effort but he had to ignore it for a few moments longer. He leaned in close and whispered two words, “For Cecil” The boy glanced over at Cooper and in that moment Cooper saw realization in the boy’s eyes and then terror. The Dreg’s boy had seen the darkness in Cooper’s eyes and had felt himself pulled in much deeper. In seconds, the boy’s efforts to clasp the wire became less coordinated and soon after his only movements were a disjointed twitching. Cooper had seen what happened to animals that were brought to the butcher in Batter’s Field and remarked to himself that those animals had moved the same way as they were dying. Cooper held tight for another minute and then unwrapped the wire and, as he listened to make sure no one was calling to alert the guards, he coiled it up and replaced it on his belt. He searched the newly dead boy for any valuables and found nothing more than a thin, sharpened sliver of metal with laces wrapped around one end to form a handle. It was almost useless but still it made no sense to discard it. He rolled the body over to the side and restacked the crates over top of him. He gathered his caltrops and replaced them in their pouch and retrieved his long wire from where it was hanging between the buildings. He stood back, smoothed over a couple footprints, brushed the worst of the filth from the knees of his trousers and turned away. He then walked for a few minutes, leaned against the side of a building and retched. This movement brought fresh twinges of pain from his ribs but somehow it just wasn’t so painful at this moment. He had a newly acquired pouch from earlier in the morning and he had a name…. Egil.
Chapter 3
He wasn’t sure how it was going to work out, but he knew he had to return to the House. This early in the day, it was unlikely that anyone would be there aside from Skaiven and this suited Cooper’s purposes. He crossed the North Bridge with the guards barely even glancing at him. They didn’t care who was going north into the Waterfront District. Merchants contributed to their pay to keep undesirables from coming into the Trade Quarter. Guards were posted on both bridges since either could be used to cross, regardless of the ‘encouraged direction of travel’. After all, if someone wanted to gain entry to the Trade Quarter to steal something, walking south across the North Bridge would hardly give them pause. He stopped only long enough to dig a hole near the back of an overgrown yard of an abandoned and collapsed house. He buried his bundle of weapons and covered the fresh earth with dead grass and leaves so it looked like every other spot in the yard.
He walked straight into the House. He’d normally skirt around the fringes to get a sense of what he was walking into before approaching. There had never been any problems, but any time Cooper had watched Skaiven return to the House he’d seen him do the same thing. Giving it a bit of thought, it made sense. Today he just felt differently about things, too much had happened in the last few days. “Hello!”, he called out as he entered the doorway. He heard the sound of a chair scraping across the floor in the neighboring room, Skaiven’s room. No kid wanted to be called into that room since the only reason for being in there was to be beaten. He heard Skaiven’s voice call out, “Cooper?! Is that you? Where have you been you good-for-nothing whelp?!” Skaiven was probably in his early fifties but looked much older. His stringy, white hair draped down from the sides of his head over his ears and collar but nothing crested over the top of his head. The bald top of his head was covered with dark spots, bigger than anything that could reasonably called freckles. His cheeks filled with pock marks and crevices that could never really be completely clean shaven and a twisted, bulbous nose that had been broken more times than most people had stubbed a toe. His eyes were a pale blue and seemingly empty of any emotion. ‘Flat eyes’ is how Cooper had overheard people describing this feature of his House Father. Skaiven came through the doorway and closed the distance between them with a speed that belied his appearance. Cooper already knew that Skaiven had a Fire Manifestation. It granted him more than just speed. Both Earth and Fire, if either Manifested with any significance, they often brought with them some sadistic tendencies. It’s possible that other elements did as well, but Cooper didn’t have enough knowledge of those to know for sure. He knew his mother had an affinity for Water but he couldn’t recall any times when he saw her display any Talent, so he’d always assumed her affinity was fairly weak. Skaiven, it seemed, had received his full ration of sadistic charms, though Cooper never knew of an instance of Skaiven losing control. Seeing his House Father in his current state, he wondered if he was about to witness such an occasion. He absolutely reeked of stale wine and possibly a hint of vomit. As put his face right in front of Cooper’s, the boy caught himself trying to hold his breath.