by Jim Galford
From the other side of the door, Estin heard two large shapes move and the voices he heard next were the man again, as well as a woman’s voice. They were talking quietly near the door, now.
“Lester, if we don’t get some real food soon, she’s going to get sicker.”
“You think I don’t know that?” snapped the man. He sighed loud enough that Estin could clearly hear it. “There’s no work to be had. I’m doing what I can.”
A muffled sob from the woman made up Estin’s mind.
Balling up his black-furred hand and hesitating only a second longer, he rapped on the door and waited.
The door creaked open loudly and the man—a stocky human with an unkempt beard and long hair—stared out at him, holding a long wooden broom in front of him defensively. He took a quick step back when he got a good look at Estin.
“We don’t have any food for you!” the man bellowed, waving the broom at Estin. “Get out! Get!”
Slowly, so as not to draw any rash actions from the man, Estin opened the bag and poured out the remaining oranges into the doorway, letting them roll into the room.
“For you and your family,” Estin told the human, looking past him at the exhausted-looking woman and young child, who certainly did appear to be ill. The woman clutched the child protectively, both of them staring wide-eyed at Estin. “You need it more than I do.”
Turning the broom over, the man swept the fruit into their hovel of a home, without taking his eyes off Estin. Once the last of the oranges was behind him, he flipped the broom over again and jabbed Estin in the chest with the bristles.
“Ow,” Estin exclaimed, a bit surprised. “I’m just trying to help.”
“Get!” the man snapped, swatting Estin on the bridge of the nose with the broom. “Get outta here! Shoo!”
“I can talk, you know,” mumbled Estin, backing into the dark hallway. “Maybe I can help…”
The man smacked him again on the nose with the broom’s bristled end and Estin stumbled back, nearly sneezing.
“Would you please stop doing that?” he asked the human, rubbing his nose. “It really stings.”
Stepping back into the room, the man slammed the door. The sound of a bolt being locked gave Estin no doubts about whether the human would be back.
“You’re welcome,” Estin told the dark hallway, his long tail drooping disappointedly.
He wandered off to find somewhere to sleep for the day, preferably where humans would not find him. They were just too unpredictable and weird for him to put up with any more that day.
*
Later that night, Estin woke up, feeling much better for having slept through most of the daylight hours. He stretched out his limbs and tail, smacking his jowls as he licked away the last of the juice that had dried, matting down his whiskers.
Rolling over, Estin got a good view of the rising moon and open sky beyond the lip of the perch. He sat up, hanging his legs off the edge of the block he sat on. Above him, there was about twenty feet of wall and below him a sheer drop of about fifty feet. This particular wall was not facing any of the roads and so he would never be seen, allowing him to relax.
Years before, a catapult had severely damaged this particular section of city wall, creating the perch he was enjoying. It was one of his favorite spots to hide when the weather was not too awful.
“Is pretty, yes?” asked a female voice directly above him, her accent very thick and foreign.
Estin nearly fell off the ledge in surprise. Hanging from a rope harness was a young human girl. One sniff and he knew it was the one that had thrown the fruit in his lap earlier, effectively framing him for the crime.
Dark-skinned and thin, the girl wore clothing that even Estin could recognize as an odd fashion. Multi-colored—though mostly blue or brown—and patterned loose-fitting pants and shirt were accented by jingling metal bits on a cloth veil that covered much of her face. She wore a series of pouches fastened to her sashes. Sandals and a light leather vest were the remainder of her outfit, aside from the harness that kept her from falling.
“You weren’t so well-dressed earlier,” Estin noted dryly, still trying to figure out how the girl was hanging over him, let alone why. It looked as though she had tied off on a battlement stone above and managed to climb down without him hearing. “If I didn’t recognize your smell, I wouldn’t know who you were.”
The girl shrugged and laughed, swinging slightly side-to-side, then stopped herself so that she was standing on the side of the wall.
“Clothing gives us away to the city-folk. I must blend in, yes? They suspect me far less if I look like to be one of them. But perhaps you do not know this?”
Estin glared and bared his teeth for a moment, then flopped back down on his perch.
“You’re one of the gypsies,” he observed. The sparkle in the girl’s eyes above the veil hinted that she might be smiling. “You’re about as disliked around here as my kind. Right now, I like you less than the city-folk.”
“I am what you say, but is not why I am hanging off this wall, risking a fall on my quite-crushable head.” She pointed at the rope, as though to remind him. “Perhaps you still have what I rightfully stole? It would be most disappointing to have come all the way down here otherwise.”
“All gone,” he said grumpily. A fly was starting to buzz around his face, annoying him—just like this girl. He swatted at the fly with his tail.
“You ate them all? I think you eat more than my brothers, if this is true.”
Estin gave her a dark glare.
“I gave them away to a starving family.”
The girl laughed and clapped softly.
“You are more generous than most who live here. Sadly, you have taken what was not yours and given it to someone without permission,” she told him, sounding genuinely disappointed in him. “You will of course be indebted to my clan.”
It took a moment for Estin to register what she had said, but when he did, he sat up and demanded, “What do you mean? They weren’t yours, either!”
The girl was already almost to the top of the wall, having climbed the rope back up almost as fast as he could have climbed the wall. When she reached the battlements, she leapt out of sight, then stuck her head back out to look at him.
“Details, my friend.” She waved at him, revealing many gaudy rings that Estin had not noticed before. “We will worry about who owns what another time. You will make it up to me another time. Do not worry about it. We can make this right.”
With that, the girl vanished. Seconds later, Estin heard the marching of a patrol pass by.
“I really hate dealing with gypsies,” he lamented to himself, leaning back against the wall. “Can this day get any worse?”
His stomach growled, as if on cue.
“Right…that whole starving homeless outcast thing.”
Estin sniffed at the damp evening air, testing for any scent of the patrol, but they had passed beyond his section of the wall. Once he was sure that there were no humans nearby—gypsy or otherwise—he picked his way up the smooth wall and over the top ledge. From there, he had to move quickly, scrambling down the inner-side of the wall until he was low enough to freefall onto the stone roof of the guard barracks.
After getting his footing, Estin froze for a minute, making sure no one had heard his landing on the barracks. Beyond the normal noise of the city, he heard nothing and so made his way to the ground. Once he had dirt under his feet, he took off into the city proper, making sure to get some good distance from the barracks before relaxing.
The slums that he was in were probably the safest for him, at least at night. Every lowlife and criminal wound up in the Grinder. For the most part, the guards turned a blind eye to the area, though it was somewhat patrolled during the day.
This early in the evening, the Grinder was just waking up, with prostitutes wandering out from their homes, rubbing their sleepy eyes. In other areas, rather shady-looking gentlemen were dragging boxes to the s
treet corners, where they would undoubtedly sell stolen goods to anyone who wandered past.
“You lookin’ for some love?” barked a heavyset human woman, barely looking at Estin.
“Not tonight,” he answered, holding up his hands defensively. “Besides, I’m probably not your type.”
A massive green-skinned orc stepped out from the alley near the prostitute, puffing on a cigar.
“She’s anyone’s type for the right coin,” he offered, laughing at himself. “Ain’t that right, Marigold?”
The woman grunted and looked past Estin at another passerby, trying to get his attention.
“You’re named after a flower?” Estin asked, somewhat surprised.
Snorting, the woman answered, “You never heard of a stage-name?”
“Sorry I asked,” he replied, moving along quickly. The orc was making him more uncomfortable than the prostitute. The man could likely break Estin over his knee without exerting himself.
After the various prostitutes—and one horrible offer after another that left Estin wishing he could afford a trip to the Grinder’s bathhouse, especially thinking back on the few times he had taken them up on such offers—he made his way to a suspiciously abandoned building at the end of a dead-end street. Though most of the buildings around here probably should have been abandoned, this one truly looked it.
Near the end of the alley, a middle-aged female dwarf was staggering drunkenly, her traditional braids cut short in the dwarven sign of dishonor. She stumbled past Estin, nearly thumping her forehead into his chest—as she was far shorter than even he was—when she lost her balance yet again.
Past the dwarf, Estin had to step over an unconscious elf, who smelled even more strongly of booze than the dwarf, if that were possible. Immediately beyond the elf, he stopped at a door that hung precariously on its hinges.
“You two are the guards tonight,” he stated, before touching the door. Behind him, he could hear the elf and dwarf snickering. A glance over his shoulder confirmed that they were right behind him now and appeared to be stone-sober.
“You don’t belong here, wildling,” the dwarf said hoarsely. “The Grinder’s no place for woodland animals.”
“And yet you let the elf stay?” Estin noted with a smirk. They both laughed, but did not move.
“You know why I’m here,” he told them next, motioning at the door. “I still owe him some jobs and I need the coin to eat. I’m guessing I’m still on the list of people who don’t get stabbed for coming by.”
The elf nodded grimly and pointed at the door. “Then go, little beastie. He won’t wait all night for you.”
Estin backed into the hovel, knowing he probably should not turn his back on either of the two thugs until he had the door closed. Even then, he guessed there were many more in the dark interior of the house, though in all his visits he had not seen them. His sense of smell was no help here either, as the rank odor of garbage covered up any other scents.
He moved by memory through the mess of rotting furniture and random discarded items—he had been warned long ago that a trap would go off if he made a misstep—to the back of the house, where a broken desk lay.
Grabbing the front of the desk, Estin lifted it up. All of the pieces of the desk, including the chair, came up with the floorboards they were attached to, revealing the secret staircase below. He headed downstairs, letting the desk fall back into place behind him.
The light began to get brighter as he neared the bottom of the steps, where the passage soon opened into a larger room. As he had expected, Nyess—the owner of the building and master of the thugs—was sitting at a little table, counting silver and gold coins carefully. The rat-man eyed each coin with suspicion, as though it would trick him into losing its value.
Nyess was a wildling—an animal person—just like Estin, though he bore little similarity. Slightly smaller in stature, Nyess looked just like a large rat, whereas Estin had somewhat more of a humanoid body shape. The only non-animal things about Nyess were his thin shirt and pants, as well as the tiny top hat he always wore to make himself appear more professional. The man really only cared about being able to manipulate other beings into projects that furthered his hoarding of coin.
To that end, Nyess had built quite the underground empire within the city of Altis. While most of their kind were considered a burden on the city, Nyess had somehow managed to make connections and elicit favors from so many people in all walks of life that he managed to keep himself out of harm’s way from any guard in the city, even as he ran a well-established thieves’ guild, hiring many who, like Estin, were willing to perform any job that did not involve bloodshed, if it meant a full stomach.
“You failed on your last task,” Nyess mumbled, placing another silver coin on a pile and noting it in a ledger beside him. “I have yet to receive that necklace I sent you to get. I’ve half a mind to turn you back in to the guards…I think the slave auction still has your name on file. I hear that laborers are going for about ten copper coins these days, though if I convince them that you’re rare and worth breeding, I might be able to get a pair of silver.”
Estin resisted the urge to bump the table. “It’s hard to steal something that isn’t in town.”
“Excuses do not change the fact that you promised to get that necklace,” the rat answered, still not so much as glancing at Estin. “Just because the owner left town before the task was given to you, doesn’t mean you are free to wander off without chasing it down.”
“She was halfway to Lantonne when I found out about it,” he objected, pointing at a map on the wall. Altis was far up in the mountains and Lantonne was nearly a hundred miles to the southeast. Nyess seemed not to even notice or care.
“You owe me, Estin.”
“I hear that a lot lately.”
Nyess finally gazed up at Estin with his beady black eyes, emotionless as always.
“Do you think I care what you do outside of my employ? I don’t care if you owe half of Altis a debt or have a hundred children to feed,” he said, still holding a silver coin over the pile it would go on. “You can either make up for your mistake by doing another job, or you can go play with those two furless idiots upstairs.”
Estin gave Nyess his best sad-face, but the rat-man’s expression never wavered.
“Fine,” Estin conceded, “I’ll do another job, if the pay’s the same. I need the food.”
“Though I would normally let you burn slowly over a fire for questioning what I would pay you, I prefer to be more professional in front of the one who has signed this contract.”
Nyess waved at the back of the room, where boxes of collected artwork and other valuables had been labeled and stacked in orderly rows. From behind one of them, the gypsy girl stepped out, grinning broadly as she gave Estin a playful bow.
“This is Warra,” explained Nyess, apparently unaware that Estin had met her already, though he hesitated with the introduction, squinting at Estin. “That sour look…either you have eaten something that is upsetting your bowels, or you know this human.”
“This one knows me,” explained Warra, touching Nyess’ shoulder as she passed him. “We have much history. This is why I request him.”
Nyess shrugged.
“I really don’t care who you want doing the job, as long as your family pays.”
“As promised, my cousins will pay you the remainder when they arrive in town.”
“And I get to keep everything but Estin’s payment, in addition to what your cousins are bringing?”
Warra bowed her head slightly in agreement.
“Then take the giant squirrel with you and get it done,” ordered Nyess dismissively. “If this weren’t such a big heist, I wouldn’t even consider your offer. Make sure you do not let me down.”
Estin glowered, resisting the urge to bare his teeth. He hated being called a squirrel, a rat, or a monkey. Those seemed to be the most popular choices that people went with in describing him.
“I am
not a squirrel and you know it, Nyess.”
“Yes, I do,” Nyess noted as he documented another coin on his ledger. “It infuriates you so I cannot help it. We’re all vermin here, Estin. Learn to accept it.”
Warra tapped Estin’s arm and headed for the staircase.
“Until next time, Nyess,” Estin said, trying to be polite. The rat-man just grunted something and kept counting.
Turning and hurrying to catch up with Warra, Estin asked her, “So what is this job you’re dragging me into and why are you determined to keep tabs on me?”
Warra raised her veil as she smiled at him, putting a finger to where her lips would be. She pointed at the staircase and made a “wait” motion with her hand.
Biding his time, Estin followed her up into the hovel, then out onto the streets, where they passed the dwarf and elf, who were both back to their drunken acts, stumbling about and looking harmless. It seemed every time he came here, the guards of the secret door were different.
Once they reached the main street, Warra slowed her pace and fell in beside him. The young gypsy girl seemed as spry and untroubled in the slums as she would at a party in her honor. Estin had to assume it was just something about the mindset of the gypsies, as all the ones he had met in his short life had been like this, whether they were human, or another race raised by the gypsies. Always enthusiastic and overly outgoing.
“We must…how do locals say…set ground rules.” The girl casually held her veil to her mouth and nose as they passed a manure cart being hauled from a stable out towards the city gates. “You will follow my instructions, or we will both be in trouble. And what I mean by trouble, is that we will both be quite dead.”
“Danger understood,” he replied, “but why would you want the help of a wildling, Warra?”
Warra glanced at him and turned them north towards the spires of the duke’s keep at the center of town.
“Before we discuss that, we get my name right. My name is Warra.”
“That’s what I said.”
“No…Warra.”
Estin stopped walking and stared at her.
