Pick Up Your Pieces

Author's note: Ratings and reviews are welcome! It would be particularly useful to me to know your general impressions of the story and the characters, as well as feedback on it if you have some. Similarly, I feel like my setting is a bit lost in the interim of the writing but I'm not too sure how to fix. Any other suggestions/likes/dislikes would also be extremely useful. Thanks!

UPDATE June 2020: I've decided to pull this off the backburner and plan a short story to get those creative juices flowing again. Hopefully, I should have a story update out by August.

I'm just minding my own business, trying to drink myself blind with glorified horse piss, when this little brat comes out of nowhere and ruins my morning. She's this tiny disgusting thing with a snotty nose and ratty mouse-brown hair, and looks as out a place in a crappy hole-in-the-wall tavern than I do in a ballroom. No idea how she got past the knuckleheads at the door.
And she's just sarthing staring at me. I see it out the corner of my eyes when I down another gulp of beer. There ain't that many people in the Rat's Nest tavern this morning because they're either gone home, kicked out or dead in an alley somewhere. There's Egg-head, who's the barkeep, and he's just counting money and talking about the Pit fights with Monobrow half-teeth, a regular. I know both their real names, but only half the time. Knuckleheads one and two guard the door. One's a beef mountain with a neck the thickness of my thigh and the other's a fatso who somehow never gets stuck in doorways. They're talking 'bout whoring. My fingers itch for my knives, but my left hand--the free one, without the beer--closes on air. Sarthing Gorgoz! I swear I--right, lost that one sticking it up some loser's face two nights ago. Or was that two weeks ago? It's a fog. Don't really care anyway. The fireplace gets tended by Greg the Barkeep's wife. A drunk or dead sack of bones and fat of a man with patchy gray hair's collapsed in a corner. Snores like a pig. Never heard no dead man snore, gotta be drunk. Doesn't exclude dead inside.

Then there's me, the epitome of human refuse and waste, the empty shell of a pathetic excuse for a living being, just trying to drown my ongoing sorry existence in booze. And this sarthing kid's still sarthing starting at me like I grew a tree on my nose. Ignoring her’s not making her go away. Way to throw me off my drinking streak.

“Whatdyaa want?” I snap, finally focusing on the twerp.
The girl flinches, a whole-body jump that makes her take a step back. Pathetic looking and pathetic, that's what it's gonna be? No, no. She looks at me square in the eyes and steps back up to the table and leans in. She doesn't lean in enough to make me punch her halfway to next year.
“You're her?” she says.
“Ain’t a good 'her' and ain't psychic either,” I drawl back.
“Yeah, but you're her,” the girl repeats. Now she just looks like she's expecting me to pull a dove outta my ass. Great. Just sarthing leave me alone, will ye?
“Half the population's a 'her’. Gotta specify what 'her’ you're talking ‘bout.”
“The one they call the Red Death. The assassin who appears, kills, and disappears--and never gets caught?”
I snort. Red Death's a stupid name. What idiot came up with that? Someone who thinks I'm a Tez?
“Well?”
Damned girl definitely thinks I'm gonna pull a scarf out of my ears or something.
“If Red Death's so hard to find, you ain't gonna find them.”
Finally, I see the light leave her eyes when it gets into her thick skull I'm completely useless. Took her long enough.
“Get lost,” I snap. I try chugging my beer but only a drop reaches my tongue. Of all the Twin-cursed--I throw my mug next to her head, aiming off on purpose. The iron container clatters against the floor. No-one in the Rat's Nest reacts, not even the girl, who's taken to stare off into space, gaze empty.
There's something about that gaze. My innards shiver and crackle up, more than I felt in weeks. I know that gaze.
I get up and jump over the table, arms and legs acting all jumbled like puppet limbs. Dumbass me had too much drink. I grab the girl's shoulders.
“Who?”
My fingers dig into thin flesh and hit bone. I'm shaking her. Sarth, sarth, sarth. Breathe. I take a deep breath, release my grip. Mind's a fog, like thinking through wool.
“Who’s the one who hurts you, girl?”
I wait for her to come back from wherever she buried herself in her mind. Finally she focuses back on my face.
“My…”
“Tell me.”
“My… aunt.” She fumbles on herself and pulls out a copper noble. “I got pay--”
“This one way ticket to Gorgoz’s on me.”
I stand from my seat on the table. The ground's acting like it's a sarthing boat or something. Years of practice keeps me straight. Still, can't be doing a sloppy job because I'm drunk.
“Come on, girl. Gotta stop by my place”
“You are the Red Death, then?”
“Dunno. Don’t care. I'm just the one'll kill your aunt. If you check out.”
***
I wake up way after Falsenight feeling like something dead crawled into my mouth while I slept. A miner with a pickaxe is hammering the inside of my skull. Shit. Something touches my arm and next thing I know I got a knife and my sparker pulled on a small ratty kid.

A kid? At my place?

Right, that kid. The one who wants me to kill her abusive aunt. And drunk-me actually brought her here. Sarth, I hate drunk me.

“You're lucky I don't shoot first and ask later,” I mutter, putting my weapons back on my bed. She's blanked out again, so maybe she hears me or maybe she doesn't. “What was that?”
“I'm…” the girl shakes herself. “...good at making things better.”
“Fine. Get rid of my headache, will ya?”
The girl holds out a hand, palm-down like she's done it tons of times. I hold out mine and she puts her hand on mine. Tingling cold rushes up my arm and gives me a sarthing brain freeze, but when she takes her hand away my headache's gone and I can think. I purse my lips. Huh. Fancy Gift she's got there. Wonder if if actually heals or just gets rid of pain. Whatever. It's not really that important.

I get up and get in the shower to stop smelling bad. My place's a small two-room cave I rent in the Gates whenever I'm in Isindar. The bathroom's got running water from one of the hundred or so waterfalls that make the whole district humid and slimy. Not that bad a place, and the water's always sarthing freezing enough to slap you awake for a week. When I'm done, I dress and walk around the main room--where that kid's sitting at the table making shadow-puppets on the walls--putting on my job clothes. That's leatherplate with scatter armor, and my weapon belt. I check my sparker's charge levels and make sure there ain't no damage that'll make it explode fire or something like that and holster it. I check my sword won't explode on me and sheathe it on my back. My knives go two at my hips, one at each thigh and two small ones under my bracers. I'll probably only need one, but I'd be a poor killer if I wasn't prepared to take down a small army.
And now the kid's staring at me again.
“If you're chickening out getting dear old auntie killed, I can hurt her bad and get her thrown in jail instead,” I say, contemplating my reflection in the blade of one of my hip knives. Sarth, that corpse is me? “That bitch’s getting her due either way.”
“She hurts my little brother too,” the girl mumbles, looking at her feet.
“Sarth, girl! You want her buried under six feet of stone and iron or six feet of dirt and shit?” I wave my knife around for emphasis. “Fast and permanent, or slow and maybe not that permanent? Make up your--” I bite back the word 'damned’, “--mind.”
Girl shuffles her crummy bare feet against the stone of the floor. Typical. I roll my eyes and flip my knife into its sheath. “Whatever. We're going.”
I point her to the door. The girl obeys like a beaten-down dog. I lock the door and hook the adstrumitd key on the inside of my satchel, and lead the way through the tunnels of the Nakir to the Pipe. That's how everyone calls the district main cave. I live near the top, so we gotta climb down the walkways to get to the main road that's gonna lead us to Lower Undertown. The Pipe's filled with noise of the hundreds of people trying to buy and sell black-market goods. Overpriced sparkers, BT rifles and transfer blades. Rare poisons. Drugs. Useless bits and bobs like good-luck charms only idiots buy. Booze for people who like liquefying their brains. In the middle of that mix thugs and cutthroats of various gangs. The Red Veils wear red veils. The Shadeknives wear black and gray and act like the sarthing law and order brigade, thief-and-murderer style. The Silver Cocks (it's actually Silver Roosters, but everyone calls them Cocks. I swear on my pathetic existence I'm not making that up) make fools of themselves. And others mill about. Markets are truce zones, so all they're allowed to do is give each other the stink eye. I give everyone the stink eye. That's because I'm an asshole.

I get through the crowd as fast as possible before I snap and stab the next person who shoves past me. Then I got to wait up for the kid, at the crosstunnel going up or to Undertown. And I realize that idiot me's got no clue where to go.

“You never said where dear old autie is,” I say when the girl catches up.
“The… Citadel,” the girl says.

My eyes narrow. Her dirty face is serious. Her dark eyes look at me from under stringy bangs. There aren't any lies on her face.

“The Citadel.” My voice is flat.
The girl nods.
“The place with the Light Temple.”
Nod. Shit.
“With all the crazy priestesses?”
Girl's eyes go wide. “Please, you said--”
I cut her off with a slash of my hand. “You want me to kill a crazy who's part of a cult of crazies who aren't only trained fighters, but can tell if you’re lying and can see the future..”
“But--”
“Shut up.”

I pace along the wall of the tunnels, blood boiling hot, very hot. Deep breaths. Come on. You ain’t no neurotic crackpot who’s gonna blow a gasket at a small setback. My fingers clench into fists. Sarth, who am I kidding? I am a neurotic crackpot. I sarthing want to go back in time and give my drunk morning-self a good ol’ fist in the face for putting me in this mess. The girl’s aunt’s a sarthing Priestress of Light or whatever that corrupted clergy calls itself.

“Tell me,” I say in a low voice, controlling it to not betray the red-hot rage burning through me, “who your aunt is.”
“The Iorann?” the girl says in a tiny, so tiny voice I almost miss it.

I stop and stare at the slime on the wall. My breath whistles through my windpipes. The Iorann.

I surprise myself by making a sound half-punched-in-the-gut, half-rasp. Then it happens again. Then I’m laughing under my breath, hard enough my head goes light and I need to lean against the slimy rock. The twerp looks at me, eyes wide. Maybe she thinks I’ve lost it. I know I think I’ve lost it.

To say I wanted to drink myself out of this life with piss-poor booze. Instead, I get to go on a suicide run to take down one of the most powerful women on Andellion. And it’s free!

I shut the lid on my laughing and straighten, serious face in place again. “Let’s go.”