3 Days Before the World Ends, prt. 2

I pull myself out of bed when it’s dark outside. Based on the noise that’s killing my head through the floorboards, it’s actually the evening this time, not Falsenight. I stumble to the room’s tap—Derisle’s one of the few major cities in Andellion besides Ranhed and Isindar to have running water—and rinse out my mouth. My hands shake as I grip the cool ceramic of the basin and lean in to take small sips. The cold water hits my stomach like a bag of rocks.

“Good evening,” a girl’s voice says.

I’ve got the Ejiari slammed onto the ground before my brain registers that the neck my knee’s crushing belongs to a kid.

I get up, dragging the kid up and forcing her to face me. “What the sarthing fuck?”

I keep my voice low, so the Watchmen who are probably posted outside of the door don’t hear.

The kids coughs, rubbing her neck and looking with wide eyes. There’s a bruise forming where the heart-shaped ridges of her face hit the floorboards.

“How drunk were you? I was just saying hi!” she says, and her voice is high-pitched.

The fact she sounds more angry at me trying to kill her than scared shitless finally jogs my stupid, fogged-over memory. Shit. She’s that kid. That drunk me sarthing decided to team up with. The one who got me into trouble with the Watch. What’s her name, Geiko? Juno? Whatever. I thought I’d dreamt that. There’s no way I would’ve fallen so far as to get help from a ten-year-old chit of all people.

Sarth. I hate drunk me.

“Sit down and shut up,” I grumble, letting go of the kid. “I’ll deal with you later.”

If it’s nighttime, then I still have a good half day to go before my twenty-five hours are up. I’ll need that time to slip out of here without getting my ass dragged out to the Watchtower for questioning. They won’t arrest me—there’s enough witnesses between the barkeep and the kid and whatnot to prove that that damn spikeface attacked me first, and not the other way around—but the questioning’s long and pointless enough to be a total waste of my time. I can deal with them after I bring in their bounty.

I peel off my damp undershirt, pants and underwear, then step in the shower. The water's always sarthing freezing enough to slap you awake for a week. I stay until the pounding in my head becomes a manageable throb. When I'm done, I dress and walk around the room to put on my job clothes. That takes longer than it should. Stupid drunk me has no sense of organization, and I find my job pants under the bed, my leather plate chucked over the wardrobe, my overshirt bunched in a corner and my belt half hanging out of the dustbin of all things. It takes me another quarter hour just to find my second sock. I’m running out of swearwords and profanity by the time I finally catch on that sock 2 is bunched in between the windows. Each creaking step on the floorboards stabs through my brain, so by the time I actually get to loading on my weapons my headache’s back to pickaxing with a vengeance. I put a knife at its sheath at my belt, another one at its sheath on my thigh and a small one under my right bracer. Then look around.

Sarthing son of a Raakleok. Where are my three other fucking knives? I knew I’d lost my dagger in an alley brawl somewhere, but my knives?

I start looking around again. “Sarthing fucking mother of a—”

“What’s wrong now?” the kid asks, and I start. I’d completely forgotten she was here. Again. And, again, wishing for her not to be here didn’t do jack shit in making her go away.

“None your business.”

“We’ll be faster if two of us are looking for stuff, you know!”

“Fine,” I snap, straightening from looking under the bed for the second time and turning to glare at her. She’s sitting at the table, the bruise on her face ridges now dark purple. “I’m looking for my sarthing knives. I’m missing three.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” the girl says. “I’ve got one here!”

Sure enough, she waves my other thigh knife at me. I march over to her and snatch it out of her hands, but not before noticing that she’s been using it to draw what is obviously a caricature of me into the wooden tabletop. It’s a crappy drawing—my eyes are way too high on my face, and crooked as a failed thief’s broken fingers—but the scar that runs down the right side of the drawing’s face gives it right away. Caricature me also has sticks for arms and legs.

“Ever heard of this sarthing invention called paper and ink, Ejiari?” I growl at the girl, testing the blade of my knife with the slightest touch of my fingers. The tip is chipped, and, sure enough, the top half of the knife is completely dull.

“My name’s Jeiko,” the kid protests, crossing her arms.

I glare at her again.

“I want the knife back,” she says.

I almost laugh at the gall of her. She completely fucks up one of my blades and she’s got the guts to make demands of me? How sarthing hilarious. “No fucking way.”

“I want to defend myself too!”

“Because you know so much about knives, blueskin?”

“Jeiko! And it’s not that hard—you stick the pointy end into the squishy parts.”

Sure. Assuming whoever she’s killing doesn’t know she’s coming. And assuming she’s got the stomach to actually gut someone.

She stares at me like the little nuisance she is. Then mimes the movement. And her hand’s in completely the wrong position to efficiently stab someone.

“Not that hard!” she repeats, and even looks smug.

My jaw clenches. Winter’s storms freeze the kid to a miserable little ice cube! What in the name of the Gods Almighty did I do to get saddled with this twerp? Did my liver finally give out on me, sending me on a one-way trip to Gorgoz?

I take the dull knife back out and show it at her. “Since you apparently know so much, how ‘bout you tell me how to easy it’d be to cleanly slit someone’s neck with this one, huh?”

“Easy,” Jeiko says, like the little shit she is.

I stare at her, not blinking.

She stares back.

Then here eyes flicker to the knife, and I can see it dawn on her face that there was a trap in the question, and she’s got no idea what it is.

“I mean…” she falters.

“It. Is. Dull.” I say, biting out each word for emphasis. “Because some little idiot who thinks she knows a lot about knives used it to carve out the fucking table.”

She looks back up to me, eyes widening. I step forward and jab her in the chest with the handle of the knife, hard. “Now, you listen up, whelp. I don’t give a sarthing damn how much you want to see those assholes dead. We’re gonna give the Watchmen the slip, then you’re going to show me where the fuck the bounties are and that’s it. I’m the one putting them behind bars or six feet under. Now shut your sarthing mouth before I do it with a needle and catgut.”

The small silver spots on the girl’s face flash briefly, her mouth down-turning. For two beats it looks like she’d be stupid enough to mouth off again. Then she crosses her arms and looks down to some place on the floor to my left.

I sit down on the bed to check my pistol. That’s the last step, and the most important one before a bounty job. The pistol’s a fabrika—adstrumite tech, for the ignorant. That means I need to check the ammo for cracks or chips that can make them explode on me, and the pistol itself for broken circuits and lenses. I pull on leather gloves and get to work, even if each screech of Jeiko’s knife against the whetstone makes me want to reach into my skull and gouge my brain out.

First, I check the safeties. All’s good, the adstrumite won’t fire when I open up. I access the ammo in the magazine. Gotta be fast here, since the more exposed the adstrumite gets to light, the more it loses its charge. The crystals that fall in my hand were cut into spheres, to minimize the surface to volume ratio of the adstrumite and slow down energy emissions. They’re all smooth, and all glow in the half-light of the room. Good. I let them back into the slots in the magazine and close up the pistol, then check the foci in the barrel. The outside one needs cleaning. I take it out, spit on it and rub it on my shirt. Then I raise it to my eye. The world distorts, but there’s no cloudiness. Good enough.

Time to bust some skulls and get my twenty andels. I look to the kid, who’s staring at me sullenly, and jerk my thumb towards the window.

She looks at it, then at me.

“Well?” I ask. “Open up. Tell me how many Watchmen they posted there.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

And because if sunlight hits my eyes before I have time to adjust, it’s going to feel like my eye are burning all the way back to the far end of my skull.

“We’re sneaking out the window?” The Ejiari asks. The little psychopath sounds excited at the prospect.

“Watchmen are a waste of time,” I whisper-snap back. “Now sarthing do it!”

The Ejiari brat finally does as told. The light hits my eyeballs like some god’s searing fire of wrath. I focus on keeping my breath even.

“Rhedd?” the girl asks after a while.

I crack my eyes open. Regret it instantly and close them again. “Are there Watchmen, or not?”

“I don’t know. Who are Watchmen?”

You’ve gotta be kidding me. How new is she to Andellion?

“Sun-and-moon insignia? Blue cape? Constant self-righteous superiority complex? That ring any bell to you?”

“Like… the city guards yesterday?”

“They’re not city guards. They’re Watchmen.”

“But why were they—”

“Sometimes they keep the local peace when countries are too lazy or poor to hire and train their own militias,” I whisper-snap again. “Now shut it and tell me how many Bluejackets are in the courtyard.”

“I… don’t see any.”

Fuck. I force my eyes open and stagger to the window. The light’s like fucking needles stabbing into my eyes right up to my brain. Today couldn’t have been considerate enough to be clouded over, could it? Nah, of course not. That’s sarthing too much to ask. The world just loves screwing with me, that’s what it is.

I squint, trying to see into the courtyard without getting my eyes burned out of their sockets. A storey down, the stable hands taking care of the horses, the inn’s maids hanging out sheets to dry, that sort of stuff. On the other side of the low wall, people are already clogging up the street and the canal. The Lanskari mill about, wrapped in their latest fashion—bright-coloured tunics or dresses with even gaudier patterned body wraps. That shit’s gotta be a tripping hazard if it comes loose. The foreigners stand out because they’re drab and wear different clothes. Within the span of my scan, I spot what had to be a Lemayan couple—the woman’s wearing one of those ridiculous poufy skirts, the ones that make her chest look like someone glued a board to it—and some Easterners with their layered garments. Can’t tell if they’re Fyron or some other country from up here. Doesn’t really matter anyway, since Fyron’s still the only superpower on the Eastern side of the mainland. Unfortunately. That kingdom’s gone to shit, fast. Sarthing Order of Vaëlddra and their stupid cult of crazies.

I scan again. Frown. Huh. Is it just me, or are there more armored patrols than I remember? I track a group that’s navigating the canal on a barge. They’re six on the boat, all armored up—which would make it really hilarious if they fell in—and their colours are red and orange. There’s another group on foot rounding the bend down the street. They’re wearing green and black.

No sign of the Watch’s blue anywhere.

Huh.

“What’s going on?” the kid asks.

Well, crap. Guess I said that aloud.

“There’s no Bluejackets in the courtyard,” I reply.

I turn to the room, grab my travel pack and hoist it over my shoulder. I jerk my thumb to the window.

“Out.”

Jeiko looks at the window, then back at me. And now’s the time that my little, over-eager guide argues with me. Well, I’ll just throw her out if—

The kid shrugs, walks over to the window, and vaults over the windowsill.

Well. Guess there’s no need to defenestrate the blueskin when she so nicely does it herself.

I climb over the windowsill and drop the short way to the stable’s roof. No-one even looks up. I make my way to the edge of the roof and jump down onto the covered haystacks. Then I’m on the ground.