The Thief stretched his legs; they ached. He hadn't been on his feet very long, but the hurt would leave him soon.
He was uncertain of their location. Somewhere between Acera and Italina obviously, but with the time they had to kill, he wondered if Samuel might have taken a detour at the reins.
The soil beneath some of the grass was as dark as charcoal. That implied they were nearer to Acera and perhaps even Urgway than they were Italina. Agriculture was a necessity to Acera and was all that Urgway had to offer except for a faster route to Jalint. Once they neared Italina, they'd see the soil become brighter and fainter at the blink of an eye. In Italina, there was essentially no means for fertilization.
Copé could see Lukas Lewis leaned against one of the trees not too far off, speaking to Samuel Syi.
Besides the wet-grass, The Thief could also smell something very distinctive in the air. Beyond the smell of the leaves and the dirt, the freshness of it all, he could also smell the saltiness of the Amisoic Seas. The Seas wrapped around all of Maharris, and in some areas, the Seas extended to small creeks and lakes throughout the Unprotected Wilderness. Secrat followed the smell. His legs marched through bushes and twigs, crackling some of them and sweeping through others. He could hear the loud hissing noises from beetles somewhere on a nearby tree. That, and the crickets roaming around.
Copé stopped as he met a creek. The water was a slight greenish tint and rocks led a path as the creek became deeper and deeper. Enough to submerge his body to his waist, the creek went on for as far as his eyes could see and the width from his side to the next exceeded ten feet. Secrat dropped down to his knees near the rocks and held one of the stones in his hands. The weight of it. He chucked it into the creek and watched it skip and make a splash.
The sound of thick footsteps came behind him, but he didn't turn around to see who it was. Brutus Ess walked with such oomph that it was easy to distinguish him from everybody else. Unless, it was a bear. Secrat hoped it wasn't a bear.
"It wasn't exactly true what I said back there," Brutus said. His voice sounded more serious than usual.
"About what part?" Secrat asked, throwing his eyes over to Ess.
Copé fidgeted with a stone in his hands. Rested it in his palms. Wrapped his fingers around it.
"I have never seen Veras angrier than the night he found out what you'd done."
Brutus walked nearer to Secrat. His haggard body moved damn-near like a snail, but Copé didn't pay it much mind in this moment. Soon, Ess dropped down on his bottom beside Secrat, without grace, he landed, sending several rocks tumbling down off from the creek's edge and into the water.
"It was a mistake."
"Nobody's doubting that, not even Veras. But the whole thing burrowed into his skin, like a worm festering through the dirt. You see, that's a man with thick skin. Thick as it comes. But the simple thought you could betray him or this troupe, even by mistake, was enough to send him over the edge."
Secrat said nothing. He looked down at the stone in his hands like a nervous child being lectured by an adult.
"Veras sees something special in you. He has a long time, but to see you fail like that, that's something I didn't think he'd be able to move past."
"I never asked to be held to a higher stan..."
"But it's that high standard that saved your ass, boy!" Brutus quipped. "That higher standard does nothing but good. Tell me, what would happen if, in some made up world, Lukas Lewis would've done been in your situation? If he'd killed Elson instead of you? If you'd been traumatized by it? Think Old Daddy Toucan would've let him come back?" Brutus Ess' voice didn't change throughout. His voice was unsteadily loud but not because anger but because inebriation.
"Toucan Veras," Secrat began, but then stopped, "Father would have made certain to have Lukas' severed head on a pike."
"That's right," Brutus agreed.
Secrat looked down at the stone in his hands. The weight of it. A lot to bear. And like last time, he would chuck it out and into the creek.
"I can be everything Toucan wants me to be," Secrat said, a smirk forming on his face at the thought of it. Humility didn't last him very long, and frankly, he figured everybody else knew it to be true. His eyes went off the creek and over to Brutus, who smiled at him with amusement.
After a snort, Brutus exclaimed: "You and Veras might not be blood, but you're his son, that's for certain."
Secrat's eyes went back to the creek, but he flinched when he heard the sound of Brutus rising up to his feet. Copé watched him a moment, as Brutus stripped out of his leggings. It wasn't a very attractive sight, because, as described, Brutus was far from physically fit. His legs like tree-trunks and his stomach round like a barrel. Brutus' body was covered in hair. It was a bear behind him after all, Secrat thought to himself.
"What exactly are you doing?" Secrat asked. He looked away from Brutus with discomfort. Even more than his grotesque physique, it was Brutus' body hair that was most jarring and despicable. With no patches of skin visible on his stomach and legs.
Brutus was kind enough to leave on his black undergarments. Brutus flashed a smirk that struck The Thief as more terrifying than suave or good humored. "Going swimming," Brutus replied.
"Uh-huh, I wish you the best of luck with that," Secrat said.
Brutus didn't seem to fathom the sarcasm in Secrat's voice, which was likely for the best. Instead, he backed away from the creek a short moment before running forward to make a leap.
Splash! Brutus' body flopped down into the water like how a large boulder would. A ca-plunk sound followed, and a wave of water rushed out from the creek. Secrat hadn't even thought to back away, and his attire was soaked because of it.
The water was cold. Shaded by the leaves and the trees, but was easy for Secrat to attune himself to. Copé still shivered at first, however.
Brutus stayed underwater for a couple of seconds. The top of his head poking up out of the water. His long grayish hair revealed a large bald-spot now that it was wet.
Copé crawled back from the creek while Brutus splashed around like a crazed baboon.
Secrat heard the sound of footsteps behind him; Samuel Syi's, and behind him was Lukas Lewis. Samuel laughed, taking in the sight.
Lewis looked at the whole spectacle with nothing short of apathy. In-fact, Lukas didn't even pay attention to it. As if it was too close in vicinity of Secrat to take the risk.
Secrat, on the other-hand, looked down at the creek, feeling like a child watching his father embarrass him. His Father, however, would never stoop to such a level.
"Do I even want to ask what he is doing?" Samuel asked. Unable to hide his chuckling amusement.
Brutus paddled himself near the edge of the creek, bringing his head out from under the water and resting his forearms on land. His drenched hair looked almost comical and his smirk only added to that. "I figure we have time to kill," he said.
Samuel nodded back at him, "And I suppose this is one way to do it." Syi walked forward and sat down a little further out than Secrat, his feet dangled off the edge of the creek and into the water.
Lukas Lewis, on the other-hand, remained standing, uncomfortably crossing one of his arms while the other rested at his waist.
Samuel seemed to notice Lukas' discomfort as he turned and faced him for an instant, "I don't suppose a swim would cool off the hot-bloodedness you've got going, am I wrong?" Samuel asked.
Lewis' face reddened, but as much as he might have wanted to bite Samuel's head off and spit it somewhere, he didn't.
Samuel watched over in quiet amusement until Ess brought the attention all back on him. The unsettled splashing and rustling of his body beneath the water, but as the large man leaped his torso out into the open, he let something out of his hands and onto Samuel's lap.
Syi reacted about as any of them would. He flinched, but once he realized what it was, he couldn't help but be impressed.
The buffoon Brutus had went ahead and caught himself a fish. The fi
sh was large and flopped across Samuel's lap, trying to make it back to the creek, but Samuel kept it from happening.
2
The sound of crackling sticks roared in the raging fire. It almost had a rhythm to it. Or at least, Secrat took a liking to it. His legs out-stretched as he sat down on the grass, feeling the warmth of the fire in-front of him. Dark outside now. The night-air vanquished by the blaze, the blackness and smoke traveling up with the stars. All of it was very necessary to him. A sanctum for his wearied bones.
He gnashed his teeth into the side of the cooked fish.
Brutus Ess was a skilled fisherman.
A crunching sound happened with every bite he made. Perhaps it had been in the fire for too long. But Secrat didn't mind. It was a different kind of taste to what he had become accustom to. Fish wasn't something he had eaten many times before.
"I don't see why none of you joined me in the creek, would've been able to catch your own fish. Been a nice bonding moment for all of us!" Brutus spoke with such unsteady enthusiasm that Secrat hardly recognized him.
Brutus took a swig out of his flask. Not as nice as the one Secrat had. Ess' flask had a brown and fuzzy-looking fabric wrapped around it. The flask was likely hand-made by Brutus.
"The leeches you'll discover on your more sensitive areas might help you figure out why no one wanted to bond with you," Samuel commented dryly.
Samuel wasn't wrong about the leeches either, when Brutus arose out of the water, his legs were covered in them, and because his leg hair, he was still finding more as the night progressed.
Brutus scratched at his leggings, now dressed, the fire long-since dried his body. "Toucan's sense of time and distance don't seem to be what they used to be." Brutus let out. "We wasted a whole day doing absolute nonsense and will still arrive at Italina with time to spare."
"I don't have a problem with it," the round-faced thief exclaimed. "I am only happy it has gotten me a day off from cleaning the horses." A obnoxious laugh followed that sealed the chubby fellow as a new target for insult.
"He wanted us to establish a rapport before we actually made it Italina. He wanted for this added day to make everybody a little bit more comfortable with each other and help us all function together coherently." Samuel answered back fast.
"But, we're all comfortable with each," the chubby thief stopped. He threw a glance over to Secrat and then to Lukas, figuring it out for himself.
A laugh from Brutus Ess followed. His body was leaned back against a hollowed tree trunk covered in dirt and moss. This left nothing about his heavy protruding stomach to the imagination. Some might have been insecure about such a figure. Maybe have felt the need to hide it. Brutus wasn't like that. He wasn't ashamed of anything about himself, and he let his gut hang out to show it. "That's right, Father Toucan doesn't want Lukey Luke or Secrat over there," motioned at both of them as he spoke, "Ripping into each other. He 'specially doesn't want it happened in somewhere as crowded as the Aer Festival. But I don't think we got nothing to worry about, you ain't going to kill each other, are you boys?" Brutus asked, looking forward over at Secrat, who was now feeling uncomfortable.
Copé gave a polite smile as distraction. Distraction so he had time to find a team-building response that would benefit him more than work to his detriment. "There are no ill feelings for me to Lukas Lewis. He did nothing wrong and I can only hope his anger for me subsides in time." Secrat replied.
The words felt awkward as they came out of his lips. No inflection in them, and no emotion. Like he was reading a bit of dialogue out from a storybook, but nobody seemed to catch onto his phoniness.
Brutus chuckled aloud some more, laughing at a joke that nobody but him seemed to be let in on. "That's right," Brutus said, both his hands resting on his belly.
Secrat found himself with an odd mental-visual of Brutus playing the drums with his stomach. Brutus looked through the fire at Lewis, "And what about you?"
Secrat threw his eyes over to Lukas also. The fire was in-front of him, making a slight discoloration on Lukas as well as brought him into the light.
Lewis looked like a demon, but Secrat knew Lukas wasn't a demon, and knew that Lukas looked through the flames at Secrat and saw the same thing. Secrat wasn't completely sure that he, himself, wasn't one of the devil's men.
Lukas Lewis looked at them with cold-eyes and replied, "I'm not the one that kills people."
Nobody said anything for a moment. Leave it to Lukas to end a wonderful night on such a somber note, Secrat thought, but didn't say aloud. After all, that wouldn't have been very team-building.
Brutus Ess was the one to break the silence, as Secrat was certain everybody expected. "I don't 'spose any of you has any smokes," blurted out, coming off a little sadder sounding than usual, perhaps out of empty. "I think I dropped all mine somewhere near the creek."
It was empathy that made Brutus sad, but inconvenience. He dug his finger-nails into his teeth, scraping the pieces of fish out the gaps between them. Brutus had already finished two of the fish he had caught, whereas Secrat was still chomping at the bits with one of them and thought it unlikely for him to be able to finish it.
"Do you think it'll be difficult stealing at the Aer Festival," the round-faced thief asked. Like Brutus, he had already dug into two fish by himself, while everyone else was finishing their first.
Secrat reached into his leggings. Cigarettes were almost always on him. He used them so little. Copé threw one of them onto Ess' lap, for which Brutus responded with a grateful nod. Leaping up to his feet, Brutus leaned forward toward the brewing flame, lit it, and then flopped back down against the tree trunk. "I mean, there will be a lot of people around and that makes it easier to blend in, but that also means more eyes on us."
"If we don't do anything foolish then it'll be fine," Samuel answered. "Most of us know exactly what we're doing, and the ones that don't will be watched over. This heist isn't about just plucking everything we see. We're after what's worth most, not the quantity or bulk of item's stolen."
"Who will I be watched over by?" The round-faced boy inquired.
Brutus chuckled at the thief's lack of self-confidence.
"You have the least experience. Lewis might very well be on the brink to becoming an Elite, and Secrat was almost one before his dismissal." Samuel explained. "And I hope this keeps my next statement from sounding too much like an insult, but I won't be having you assist any of us in the heist. Your contribution will be to watch over the wagon as the others scavenge amongst the Aer Festival. That's an important job," Samuel's face got serious, but Secrat heard another chuckle from Brutus.
Samuel's expression broke a subtle moment, but he regained himself at once, "All the items stolen from the Aer Festival will be in that wagon, which means if anybody finds the wagon or anything else, our entire expedition will accomplish nothing. I would even venture to say you have the most important job of us all."
Secrat saw Brutus bite his lip in an attempt not to laugh, and Secrat couldn't help but smirk as well. The wagon would be far enough away to keep any of the guests of Italina from stumbling upon it, and even if they did, it'd be covered with a tarp and would look like an ordinary wagon.
"Can you handle this responsibility, Taison?" Samuel asked. Secrat made a mental note of his name.
The round-face thief's expression looked confused and stupid. Secrat couldn't tell whether or not he was bothered and frustration, or if he didn't understand the words said. The chubby boy smiled with a big grin. "I will, if nobody else wants to take on the responsibility," he said.
Bastard, Secrat thought. Nobody was that stupid.
Once Secrat finished his fish, he felt filthy and disgusting, like he wanted to jump into the creek like Brutus had done earlier. But, of course, the leaches kept him from actually acting on his intentions. Instead, after scraping the gunk out of his teeth with his finger nail, he walked down to the creek and dipped his clothes into the water. All except for his under-leggings.
Secrat left his clothes and begun his search for somewhere to sleep. Brutus had already fallen out of consciousness against the hollow tree trunk. He snored and carried all the grace of a dying elephant as he slept.
Looking at the fire, Secrat flinched at the sound of rustling leaves behind him, and turned to see Lukas Lewis staring back at him.
Lukas' face didn't demonstrate anger or frustration, but it wasn't forgiveness or anything painstakingly obvious. Secrat didn't know what it was.
"I have been talking to Samuel," Lukas said, speaking soft. Secrat feigned a face of interest. "He tells me I have to accept the situation as is. That pouting won't change things, and in the grand scheme, I know it isn't a big deal, Secrat."
He glared at Secrat with a tough-guy disposition, but relented, feeling, for once, at ease: "People die, and The Red Flux has been the cause of many. Toucan Veras makes himself out to be a man of peace, all while lugging his giant sword around with him. We call ourselves thieves, but we're also killers, and at times, I feel I might as well be a Carver."
Secrat's expression changed, sudden surprise, he responded, "We aren't Carvers, Lukas. Toucan doesn't go around chopping people in twos and threes, and we don't torture for the thrill of it all. Don't EVER compare us to them. Don't ever compare ME to them. I made a mistake, but that doesn't make me like them."
Lukas smiled. "I don't think you're like the Carvers, Secrat," he said plainly. "But I don't think you're good either, and I will never be able to trust you again. Because, when you killed Elson, I saw a side to you I had never seen before. A side that was mirthless and didn't care. It's for those reasons, above all else, I don't want you to be in The Red Flux."
The Red Flux and the Wunderkind Thief Page 13
