by Eric Ugland
Cool Beans, you’ve learned the skill Lying to Yourself
Shut up, game.
I turned the water to hot, stopped the self-punishment, and finished up my shower.
Stepping out, I looked over at the clock, and cursed. It was definitely later than I’d intended, and I had exactly zero clean clothes in the second-floor training apartment. I looked at the outfit on the floor, the same thing I’d worn to the ball. I didn’t want to be seen in that again — not ever, if I had my way. There was very little to tie me personally to the theft, but still. Better to remove even the hint of a chance I’d be recognized. I balled the clothes up and tossed them in the fireplace, fully intending to deal with them at a later date.
I went upstairs, towel around my waist, and politely knocked on the door to the fourth floor apartment. No answer. No sound from inside. I pushed it open quietly, and tip-toed into the room. I was completely silent. Benefit of being a thief: plenty ready to sneak around someone else sleeping. Thing was, Shae wasn’t sleeping under the covers, at least not all the way. Instead, the covers had been kicked off at some point, and she’d worn one of my shirts to bed. And the shirt didn’t really cover that much of her.
Gaze properly averted, I ran into a chair, tried to regain my balance, failed, and fell over.
But like a true thief, I did it all in relative silence. Shae barely even stirred.
I crept over to my dresser, keeping my eyes firmly on the furniture and not on the semi-nude woman on my bed. I got some work clothes out, and then made a silent retreat.
Back in the safety of the stairwell, I got dressed.
Which meant it was the perfect time for Lothar and his young son, Sven, to step out of the second floor apartment. Our eyes met.
Lothar laughed.
So did Sven.
I laughed too — nothing else to do. It was ridiculous. I owned the building, and I’d saved their lives by fighting a big-ass monster. Now here I was, standing naked at the top of the stairs trying to get my pants on without tripping and tumbling down the stairs. What a world.
Chapter 79
I got all the way outside and halfway to the tavern door before I realized I needed to let Shae know what I was doing and where I was going. It didn’t seem smart to just disappear on her. Especially since she was in my apartment. Also in my bed. But that’s really just semantics since I didn’t exactly sleep in the bed. Or had never slept in that particular bed. Mostly, I slept in closets. It was a glamorous life I’d chosen.
I trudged back up the stairs, wishing elevators had been invented, and knocked on my apartment door with a little authority, doing my best impression of the ol’ NYPD knock I’d heard more than once.
“Minute,” came a mumbled voice on the other side of the door.
The door creaked open a hair, and there was an eye and a dagger in the crack.
The eye widened.
“It’s you,” Shae said, sounding like she was genuinely surprised.
“Who were you expecting?” I asked.
“Now that you say that,” she said, opening the door. She had a blanket wrapped around her. “I suppose it makes sense it was you.”
“I’m not coming in,” I said. “I have to get to work, but I was going to grab breakfast first.”
“Oh, is it in here?”
“The breakfast? No, it’s downstairs in the tavern.”
“Can I come?” she asked, but then her face fell. “Sorry, I just—”
“Of course,” I said. “Get dressed and meet me downstairs.”
She nodded, her big blue eyes sparkling. Then she dashed back into the room, tore off the blanket and my shirt, and I got a view of her butt in all its glory.
I closed the door and headed down the stairs.
The Heavy Purse wasn’t technically open yet, but the kitchen was cooking, and Titus’s crew was having their breakfast.
I walked in. From the look on Titus’s face, I could tell that Lothar’d already been spreading the news of my early morning nudity.
“Good morning,” I said, sitting on a stool at the bar.
“I’ve heard,” Titus replied.
“Got anything on for breakfast?”
“Big or small?”
“Two big, if you don’t mind.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve another tenant.”
“Potentially,” I said. “But I also made a deal to get the building next door.”
“You already spoke to Carson?”
“Is Carson the current owner?”
“So you didn’t.”
“I made a deal with someone who’s going to buy it in return for something I gave him.”
“I’m liking the sound of this,” Titus said with a smile, probably because he felt like he’d won the lottery befriending a dimwit like me. Then he walked back towards the kitchen.
Still, things were coming pretty easy to me, money-wise, and I figured the good thing to do, karmically at least, was to indulge in some generosity.
I turned around to look at the place. It was a little rough around the edges, with some furniture that needed replacing and a few holes in the plaster. Right above me, a dagger stuck out of the ceiling at a rather cattywampus angle.
Lothar and his son sat at a far table, eating and talking quietly to each other. Sven had a massive plate in front of him, practically overloaded with food, including a number of things that seemed as if they might have been custom made for the little dude. It made me smile, since clearly he’d won over some of the kitchen staff.
“Thanks for the bed,” I said.
Lothar nodded. “Seemed like you might need one.”
“Last one had an accident.”
“Maybe you keep that story for after this one’s asleep,” he replied, smiling and using his chin to point at his kid.
“Ha, not like that,” I snapped back.
His smile told me he didn’t believe a word of it.
Shae entered the room, and Lothar’s eyes shifted to her. His cheesy grin disappeared almost immediately. She was wearing my shirt and my pants, having found a string somewhere to tie the pants tight so they fit snug around her waist. She made it look pretty good. She walked over and sat down next to me.
Titus walked back into the room with a heavy plate of food and dropped it in front of me. Then he looked up at Shae. Then back at me, and back at her. A straight up, in the wild, double take.
“Who’s this?” he asked.
“Shae,” Shae said, reaching her hand out and taking control of the conversation.
“Is she with you?” Titus asked me.
“I’m right here,” Shae said.
“She is,” I replied to Titus, then turned to Shae. “He’s only asking because he’s not technically open, so this is a private time.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Titus Calpernus,” Titus said.
“Shae,” Shae replied.
“Big or small breakfast?”
She looked over at my breakfast. “Is that big?”
“Yep,” I said, taking a big honking fork of eggs and shoveling it into my mouth.
“Big,” Shae said.
Titus nodded, and whisked away.
“Where do you work?” Shae asked. “I thought you were a—” she looked around, then leaned in close to me and whispered the last word, “thief.”
“That’s more a long-term sort of thing. I still have to do something to pay the bills. Pit Restoration.”
“What’s that?”
“Not from the city?”
“No,” she said, smiling. “Is it that obvious?”
“Bit obvious, yeah. Where are you from?”
“North and west. It’s a small town along the river, in the mountains. My family had a little mill there, and, uh, now I’m here.”
“Is your family okay?”
“I don’t have a family anymore.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be,” she replied.
It was the first time
I’d seen her without even a hint of a smile. There was something really hard about her then. I couldn’t help but wonder about what events transpired to get her into the city of Glaton.
A second later, Titus’s wife, Penelope came out with a plate of food and set it in front of Shae. She gave a big smile to the girl, and turned back to the kitchen.
“Yup!” Penelope shouted.
The wife gave us both a big smile, then a little curtsy and walked away.
“What was that about?” I asked.
“I expect Titus told her something about me,” Shae said, “and she wanted to see for herself.”
“Does that happen often?”
She took a bite of food and blew on it, pursing her nearly perfect lips. I had to stop looking at her because I knew I was being creepy.
“Yeah,” she said. “It does. I know what I look like. Pretty common topic growing up. So, yeah.”
“Sorry,” I said.
“Me too. So, what does a pit restorer do?”
I laughed lightly, also happy to change the subject, and I dove into the details of the job.
“Can I come with you?” She asked at the end of my rambling explanation.
I hemmed and hawed a moment, as I sought an answer, but I didn’t have one.
“I can’t exactly offer you a job,” I said. “It’s not my company. And there’s really no aspect of it that I’m in charge of.”
“That’s okay. I just don’t know anyone else here. Just you and Nadya, and I’m sure she’s busy being a noble and the like. So, I don’t really know what to do with myself.”
“You know how to sling drinks, flirt with grabby men, and sass drunks?” Titus asked, stepping up to be right in front of Shae.
“No,” she replied. “Not really. I haven’t spent much time in taverns.”
“Today is a good day to learn if you’d like.”
“You want me to work here even though I’ve got no skills?”
“He wants you because you’re hot,” I said. “Because—”
“I know why he wants me here,” she snapped to me. “I’m not stupid Clyde. I’m just making sure he knows I know.”
“I know what I’m doing,” Titus said. “I’m making sure there’s one more reason to come to the Heavy Purse.”
“You’re not doing it to try and—”
“Honey,” Titus interrupted as a wry smile spread across his face, “you’re pretty as all the hells, but I love my wife in so many ways, you can’t even imagine.”
Shae looked at me, and I had the sense she wanted me to give her the okay.
“Titus talks mean,” I said, “but he’s a big softy. You’ll be great. Just don’t go into the sub-basement.”
“What’s in the sub-basement?” Shae asked.
“Not this again,” I said.
Chapter 80
I was walking to work right around the time I was supposed to be at work, so, you know, good job me. Punctual as always. And since I was a bit tired and going on autopilot, I went to the old pit first. Just because my feet seemed to know that path the best. It was locked up tight. I kicked the gate, and got to jogging. I would show up sweaty, but so what? I’d likely get covered in shit as soon as I got to the new place.
I saw Matthew leaning against the wall eating an apple when I came jogging around the corner.
“Well,” he said, “at least you’re running.”
“Sorry,” I huffed.
“Why are you out of breath?”
“Running from the last—”
“I know you’re doing that thing you do.”
I stopped breathing hard, caught in the act. I’d already been using my stamina regen. The breathing hard was just to make Matthew think I’d been running a long way.
“Why are you waiting out here?” I asked.
“Don’t want to explain myself twice. Nadya’s busy playing with the damn mimic and Gilkes is getting suited up.”
“He showed up?” I asked, thinking about Peregrine Gilkes, the former estate guard I’d gotten a job.
“Yeah. On time. Unlike some people.”
“I had a rough night.”
“I heard.”
“From?”
“Rather big news when one of the wealthiest nobles has his prize possessions nabbed during the highlight of the aristocratic social season.”
“Any word on who did it?”
“Are you asking me that for real?”
“I’m trying to, uh, get an idea if they’re looking for, uh—”
“None of my sources have any leads on the matter. Whoever did it might have pulled off the crime of the century.”
I let out a breath I didn’t even know I’d been holding. Really, up until talking to Matthew that morning, I hadn’t really been considering the fact that I might be arrested and thrown in prison. There was something about the game world that just made consequences seem so alien. I felt invulnerable, and I realized, standing there and smelling the stench wafting through the gates, that I had to take a step back and really think about things. Really try and make my peace with this being reality.
“Good times?” He asked.
“More, I guess, not what I was expecting,” I said. “I’m in the Union, but it was weird. They expected me to give up.”
“That seems odd.”
“Rowland explained that it was a test. I was supposed to give up, then go back, and they’d assign something easier. And they’d train me to the point where I’d be able to do the initial test. So it would be an apprentice sort of thing I think.”
“I suppose that makes a certain amount of sense. They’re the oldest surviving such group, so perhaps there’s a few odd remnants of things gone by.
“Also, there was a girl there—”
“Hopefully more than one, or that might have been the greatest sausage fest in Empire History.”
“A special one.”
“A special one I know about?”
“You know about her?”
“I don’t know if you’re thick or what, kid. Get inside.”
“But—”
“Don’t want to hear it here. We have work to do. The shit inside is just going to get ranker the higher the sun gets today, got it?’
“Got it.”
“We can talk later.”
He clapped me on the shoulder and headed through the gate. I followed close on his heels.
The pit was unchanged from the day before. Peregrine was geared up in boiled leather armor over oilskin cover alls, swinging a sword around to loosen up his shoulders.
“Morning, kid,” the ex-guard said.
“You’re chipper,” I replied.
“First time I’ve had a boss I don’t hate in years,” he said. “And yes, I’m willing to jump into a pit of liquid filth to be able to say that.”
Matthew shook his head, but I caught a smile. Then he bounded up the steps of the small stone cottage before sticking his head inside and yelling for Nadya.
She stepped out, and I noticed she immediately looked behind me before meeting my eyes and smiling.
“Morning,” she said to me.
“Good morning,” I said.
“See, and everyone likes each other,” Peregrine interjected. “It’s a beautiful thing.”
“All right, enough sunshine blown into buttholes,” Matthew said. “We have a pit to fix. And it’s going to be a gross one. Peregrine and Clyde are going to hop onto a raft and fish. Nadya and I will stay up top, get rid of all the crap that’s up here, and set up so that we can haul up whatever you two catch.”
“Fishing?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” he said, holding up a large viscous looking spear. “Fishing.”
Chapter 81
I’d never gone fishing. Not even the normal kind. It always struck me as somewhat silly, standing next to the water casting a bit of food in, and then waiting there with your metaphorical dick in your literal hand. And I’d definitely never gone spear fishing. But this wasn’t spear
fishing. Or, rather, it was quite a bit different from spear fishing.
Matthew revealed to us a raft. It was a thing of beauty. And by beauty, I mean it was a miracle it held together and could float. Quite possibly designed and built by Matthew’s children. It consisted of a few planks of wood lashed together on top of some barrels. It was surprisingly stable, considering, but there weren’t, say, nails or screws holding the raft together. So any quick movement, especially as the bindings got wet in the poop water, caused the boards to slide. That meant Peregrine and I had to counter our own movements from time to time just to get the boards to slide back into something resembling a raft. We lowered the beast into the poop-water with rough hemp rope.
Once we’d figured out how to remain relatively steady, we got the bait: a hunk of bloody meat on the end of a hook.
One of us got the hook, the other got the spear.
I lucked out and got the hook first, which meant it was my job to kneel on the raft and dip the meat into the poop water and swish it around.
Then the fun started.
Before I even got the hook and meat into the water, something knocked against the raft, and I almost fell off.
Peregrine grabbed me, half I think to keep me from falling, but also to help keep his own balance.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” he said.
“Don’t say that,” I said.
“Why—” but he didn’t get to finish his sentence.
Just then we felt a fantastically hard hit on the left side of the raft, pushing it well out of the water. It happened so fast that I didn’t even have time to try and keep my balance. I flew through the air, splashing into the sludge with an impressive farting noise.
I dropped the hook immediately and pulled hard to get to the surface. Something tried to grab my leg, but I kept kicking for all I was worth. My foot connected with something that crunched a little.
Peregrine got to the surface about the same time I did. But unlike me, he didn’t seem to have much skill in the way of swimming. He screamed, and then got violently ripped under the surface.
