Spit and Song (Ustlian Tales Book 2)

by Travis M. Riddle

  Eva reintroduced them to Kali, who they had forgotten since their younger years, as well as Puk. “He looks goofy!” one of the boys said, earning a scolding from his mother. Puk didn’t seem to care.

  The boys washed up at their mother’s request, and Kali and Puk did likewise. A day of sandy travel and combatting a cordol had left them both pretty dirtied. Kali could hear her companion’s stomach gurgling as he washed and dried his hands.

  Caleb and Fitz then took their customary seats around the table. Kali and Puk filled in, sitting opposite the boys, leaving the head of the table for Eva.

  Ever the gracious host, she circled around the table filling everyone’s water glasses, then placed huge steaming plates of food in the center of the table so that everyone could help themselves.

  The main dish was piled high with small, whole grilled fishes that were common in the Loranos Gulf. They had been seasoned with dried lemon zest and pepper, a combination that was practically making Puk drool in his lap. On the side was the aforementioned asparagus, as well as freshly-baked bread rolls. Eva apologized for not having any dessert prepared, and Kali assured her that she was already being more than generous. Dessert was not necessary.

  Eva made Caleb recite a short prayer before allowing them to dig into their dinner. Kali grabbed three of the tiny fishes and a few pieces of asparagus to start. She wouldn’t bother with the bread; her palate could only tolerate baked goods that were sweet.

  The first bite of fish burst with flavor in her mouth. The citrus added a surprising depth to the meat that she thoroughly enjoyed. Lemon icing had always been one of her favorites, after all. It only took a minute for her to devour the rest of the first fish.

  Puk was enjoying himself as well. His plate held five of the fishes, an equal number of asparagus, and two rolls. Normally, Kali would’ve chastised him for taking so much food, but he hardly put a dent into what Eva had cooked. A truly absurd amount remained in the middle of the table, even after all five of them filled their plates.

  “It’s a shame Violet isn’t here,” said Eva. “She would’ve loved to see you. Maybe you can stop by the gallery before you head out?”

  The house was on the edge of the arts district, so the gallery where Violet worked was only a couple blocks away, but Kali shook her head. “I don’t think so, unfortunately. We’re on a somewhat tight schedule.”

  Eva frowned and continued eating. Caleb and Fitz whispered conspiratorially to each other, casting sideways glances at Puk every so often.

  “So, what brings you to two to town, then?” Eva asked, after Kali gushed about how delicious the food tasted.

  “A business trip,” Kali answered. Eva asked if she was still trading, and she nodded.

  “That’s wonderful,” said Eva. “I always thought what you did was so cool. Traveling to different exotic places, seeing all the sights, meeting interesting people…where are you headed from here?”

  “Atlua,” Puk said around a mouthful of bread. Crumbs tumbled from his lips onto the lavender tablecloth. “Headed across the gulf.”

  “Wow,” whispered Fitz in awe. “That’s damn cool.”

  - -

  When dinner concluded, Puk and Kali thanked their host profusely for allowing them to join in on the meal, and Kali offered to help clean up. Puk would have too, but the kitchen was not designed with qarms in mind. He wouldn’t be much use washing dishes if he couldn’t even reach the sink.

  His thoughts were cluttered with other distractions anyway.

  He excused himself upstairs to “sort through his things and prepare for their departure,” as he put it to the two women. In other words, he wanted to get away from the gawking children and indulge in some spit.

  Standing there in the locked washroom, corked vial of raw cordol spit in hand, Puk possessed a modicum of self-awareness. More than a modicum, really. He muttered aloud to himself, “This is fucking stupid.”

  There was no telling what drinking the spit would do to him. In all his years of carousing, he had not encountered anyone who’d done it, because why would they? It was perfectly easy to acquire the powder or distilled liquid. If he marched outside right now and sought a dealer, he probably wouldn’t have any problem doing so.

  But there was no possible way to slip past Kali, especially with the extra scrutiny she seemed to be giving him. She had steadfastly refused to split up earlier in the evening, and he doubted she would be okay with him running out into the night on his own.

  Now that they possessed the eggs and made it to Restick, maybe she was worried about him abandoning her. Hopping over to Myrisih on his own to collect the bounty after using her and her money to get here.

  If only he could explain to her that wasn’t the case.

  I just wanna get high, for shit’s sake.

  Puk stared at the bottle of spit in his hand, wondering whether drinking it would send him into a drug-induced death spiral or perhaps have no effect at all.

  More than ever, he regretted giving that asshole Gael the last of his fire-spit.

  Puk’s body ached. It’d been aching all day. It was impossible to tell whether it was due to all the physical exertion or because it was craving the high.

  He uncorked the bottle. The stopper tottered to the floor.

  This is surely an extremely bad idea, he told himself. Then he said aloud, “This is not smart.”

  His mind raced with reasons not to do it:

  It could kill him, maybe. Who knew? He could recall no tales of people drinking raw cordol spit. There was no telling what effects it might have on his body.

  He was a guest in some kind woman’s home. She would not appreciate what he was doing upstairs.

  He needed to be sharp for their boat ride in a couple hours.

  Kali would be pissed.

  Any one of the reasons was enough to not follow through with his terrible idea, never mind combining them all.

  But he really wanted it.

  He brought the bottle’s opening to his nose and took a tentative sniff. The liquid smelled sour and he nearly retched. Another item to add to the list.

  But I really want it.

  Puk had done many stupid things in his lifetime. He knew that. He was not an intelligent man. Sixty-six years was a lot of time to engage in stupidity. If he were lucky, he would have sixty-six more.

  Or this bottle of animal saliva would kill him.

  It was probably not worth the risk. Refined spit was totally harmless, but drinking it raw…

  Alas, he really wanted that high.

  He held his breath and kicked it back.

  It came out like sludge, coating his throat as it traveled down. The taste was awful, an acrid sweetness like rotten fruit. He forced himself to swallow, and once he did, he came close to vomiting.

  He let out a hacking cough, spittle spraying onto the countertop before him. He corked the near-empty bottle and stuffed it back in his pocket. There were still one or two spoonfuls sloshing around inside, though he truly did not want to experience that flavor ever again.

  The effects were extreme and immediate. He could no longer form a coherent thought, and his entire body was going numb. It was inconclusive whether this was better or worse than the aches. Puk took a hesitant step backward, and there were tiny pinpricks on the bottom of his foot.

  “Fow,” Puk said, which was not a word.

  What he tried to do next was take a step toward the door, to—for some reason—leave the room and go downstairs, but this seemingly simple task proved troublesome.

  When he took the step, his foot lethargically came down on top of the other. He attempted taking another step, tripping himself, sending his foot shooting backward and causing Puk to slam face-down onto the floor, scraping his stalks against the door. He uttered more muffled gibberish into the floor.

  Without getting up, he reached his hand toward the doorknob. His arms were stubby, though, so he could not reach it, and ended up only rubbing his fingertips up and down on the smooth
wood. The numbness sent a tingle through his hand that he found mostly unpleasant.

  Aside from his hand, which now seemed to be stuck in a never-ending loop, Puk found he could not move his body at all.

  This had gone worse than he’d anticipated, and he had anticipated dying.

  It was to his great despair that he heard the door swing open. His hand continued to brush up and down against nothing but air.

  With great effort, he succeeded in tilting his left eyestalk up and stretching open his eyelid to see Kali staring down at him, mouth agape.

  “What the fuck is going on?” she demanded. “We heard you fall all the way in the kitchen.”

  Puk could not comprehend any of the words she said, though they sounded delightful. His head was spinning wildly and he was absolutely sure his stalk was still extending outward and would soon crash through the ceiling. Maybe his eye would extend to the skies and become a star.

  Something in his brain recognized that, because he had been spoken to, it was appropriate for him to say something in reply. So what he landed on was, “Fogga ween mesh,” which was nothing.

  Kali rolled her eyes and muttered, “Fuck me.” She lifted him up by the armpits and placed him on his unsteady feet.

  His left eyestalk focused on her, but the right one began to drift into a sideways curve, so she grabbed it and straightened it out. After surviving the raw spit, the look on her face would kill him.

  “What—the fuck—did you—do?” she asked, spacing the words out as if that would help with his comprehension. Her voice seethed with anger.

  Puk babbled incoherently, thinking he was doing a swell job with this social interaction, but Kali ignored him and spied the dribbles of saliva on the countertop.

  Her eyes narrowed to slits. She leaned forward slightly but did not need to give it a good whiff in order to catch its scent; it found her nostrils easily, and she gagged as she stepped away.

  “What is that?” she asked him, then instantly groaned as he laughed at her.

  Both of Puk’s stalks then began to droop sideways, so the angle he saw of Kali arching her arm back was peculiar indeed.

  And then she slapped him, though he only knew that because he saw her hand shoot toward his face. He did not actually feel the contact, though a slight warmth emanated from the spot where he assumed she had struck.

  Kali swore and slapped him again. It accomplished nothing.

  Puk straightened out his stalks (though the right one was still a bit wobbly) and gave his companion a stern look. She reciprocated, waiting to hear what he had to say for himself.

  “Fung,” he said matter-of-factly.

  She slapped him.

  - -

  It took two full hours for Puk to regain any sense of normalcy. Kali had quarantined him in the washroom in case he threw up, and explained to Eva that he wasn’t feeling well. She had to assure the woman that it was entirely unrelated to the fantastic meal she had cooked.

  Now there was hardly more than an hour until they needed to meet Zenib at the docks. Kali ushered Puk into the guest bedroom to interrogate him.

  At first, he tried to feign ignorance, suggesting he just felt sick from something he ate. She wasn’t buying it.

  “That wasn’t someone who was sick,” she whispered in harsh tones. She knew the boys were upstairs playing in their room and did not want them to overhear. “You were beyond fucked, and I want to know what’s going on.”

  Puk sighed. “Look, I think I was just dehydrated from all the desert travel. I ain’t equipped for it. Qarms are built to take in a bunch of water.”

  Kali shook her head at this explanation. “First of all, you had a shitload of water at dinner. Second, we had multiple water bottles on the trip. But whatever you spilled on that counter in there certainly doesn’t seem like water.”

  Puk shifted nervously on the bed where he sat. Kali stood before him, chastising him like an angry schoolteacher.

  She continued. “You were acting weird at the outpost the other night too, but I figured that maybe you’re just a weird guy. Something’s going on, though, and you need to tell me. Now. Or this whole deal is done. You can fuck off to Myrisih or Atlua or wherever you want, and I’m going home.”

  The guilty qarm rolled his eyes, and she resisted the urge to slap him again.

  “I’ve been snorting fire-spit,” he said. “I do it all the time. I’ve done it for years. It’s not a big deal. I had some the other night at the outpost, alright? It’s not somethin’ to freak out about.”

  Of course Kali was familiar with fire-spit, as it was probably the most common drug in the country. But she had never really been around someone who was using it, and hadn’t known the signs to look for. She felt like a fool.

  But she wasn’t a big enough fool to believe that what he was on tonight had been the same thing. Fire-spit was, all things considered, a pretty tame drug when used correctly. His reaction to it had been far too intense.

  “What were you on tonight, then?”

  He fumbled, but said, “It was spit. Just raw spit. From the cordol we killed today.” His eyestalks dipped in shame.

  “You…drank its spit?”

  Puk nodded, averting his gaze.

  Just imagining it made her want to hurl. Not to mention the lingering stench from the liquid. It must have tasted disgusting. No wonder he looked so ashamed.

  “Why the hell would you do that?” she asked.

  He groaned. “I just wanted it,” he said bluntly. “I wanted some, and it was all I had. So I drank it, like an idiot.”

  “So you don’t have any left?”

  Puk hesitated a moment, then shook his head and said, “I drank every drop of this nasty shit, and I gave the last of my stash to that mage at the outpost in exchange for Bella.”

  That tracked. She should have pressed harder the other night when asking how he pulled off the deal, but she hadn’t wanted to grace Gael with another thought.

  “Well, good,” she said.

  He finally looked back up at her. “So are we fine now?”

  “Not quite.”

  She was still furious with him, not only for doing what he did at all but because he had done it in her friend’s house—how would Eva have reacted if he’d destroyed all of her family’s beautiful, expensive possessions with his vomit or mania? Or what if he’d overdosed and the boys had stumbled upon a dead qarm in their washroom? It was wildly irresponsible.

  “What do you want me to do, then?” Puk asked. “I can’t un-drink it. I wish I could, ’cause I’ve still got the terrible fuckin’ taste in my mouth. Do you think that’s something a white mage could help me with?”

  Kali ignored his quip.

  “I want you to stop getting high,” she said, awaiting the backlash.

  As expected, Puk was not thrilled with the suggestion. “I’ve been fine until tonight,” he countered. “How about I just don’t drink straight spit from a cordol’s mouth from now on?”

  She had no patience for his flippant remarks. “No. Cut yourself off. Like you said earlier, we need to cooperate with each other and be on equal footing. I’m already incredibly uncomfortable with this whole situation as it is, and now I’m about to travel to a city I’ve never been to before—one that as recently as last week I wasn’t even sure existed. If even half the stories I’ve heard about the place are true, then I’m not the type of person who will fit in there. You are. If I’m gonna go to Myrisih, then I need to trust that you’re focused and alert. Not high on fire-spit with an addled mind.”

  Puk mulled her words over. She did not think there was anything to consider, though. It was a reasonable request.

  “Alright,” he finally said. “You’re right. Totally right. Even if I was goin’ to Myrisih alone, it’d probably be stupid to have my guard down.”

  Kali breathed a relieved sigh. She was still pissed at him, but at least they had come to an understanding. That was good enough until they got the job done, and then they could go t
heir separate ways and he could snort all the fire-spit he could buy with his crescents.

  He asked her how long it was until they were going to the docks, then said, “My head is killing me. Do you think Eva’s got any coffee?”

  “I would be surprised if you could think of anything in the world Eva doesn’t have,” said Kali, walking toward the door.

  Together they headed downstairs to ask their host for one last favor while they waited to leave. While Eva prepared the coffee, she asked Puk if he was feeling better now.

  “Yeah,” he told her. “Just got a bit of a headache.”

  CHAPTER X

  A LIE SOMEHOW

  Gas-powered streetlamps illuminated the west end streets of Restick. Tall, thin, imposing things that loomed over Puk as his boots clomped on the cobblestone. The lamps glared down at him, casting light on his embarrassment and shame that he wished would recede into the darkness, tucked away and forgotten.

  Tonight was the second time in as many weeks that he had, essentially, overdosed on fire-spit.