Break the Chains

Chapter Seven

“We don’t serve shitheads like you,” the big bruiser said, startlingly hazel eyes ringed by the smoke wafting out from the ajar door behind him.

Detan held out both hands, palms pointed to the sweet skies in contrition, and tried on a polite smile. It just made the craggy man’s frown dig deeper.

“You don’t serve shitheads with the grains to pay?” He turned his hand over, gamboling a copper grain across his knuckles in a glittering dance. The bruiser’s bloodshot gaze followed the sparkling coinage. The spherical granule rolled smooth as silk over Detan’s roughed skin.

“This ain’t a copper bit kind of establishment.”

“Oh? Is that copper? I say!” With twist of his wrist he switched out the copper for a silver, and rolled that across his knuckles once before bouncing it over to the knuckles of his other hand. “Ah, now, that’s more like it, isn’t it?”

The bruiser’s eyes remained narrowed, but he held out one meaty hand. Detan deposited the grain into the man’s palm with a flourish and took a bow. The big man hawked and spat on the already stained hallway floor.

“Go on in then,” he rumbled. “Run out of coin, or start trouble, and it’s out the window with you, understand?”

“Perfectly, my good man, I am well acquainted with the particulars of defenestration.” Detan snatched Tibs’s hat and donned it. Tibs grabbed it back with a grunt, and they sidled their way through the narrow crack the bruiser allowed. Detan did his best not to comment on the bouncer’s unique aroma.

The room was hazy with smoke and other noxious fumes. He couldn’t figure out which smell dominated: the cigarettes, cheap alcohol, incense burners, or the fetor of the patrons. Detan’s nose was so overwhelmed it simply gave up, a deprivation he was grateful for. From the twist of Tibs’s face, his olfactory system hadn’t done him the same favor.

Square tables dotted a squeaking, wooden floor that had been hastily covered with threadbare rugs. The window from which Detan had spotted the festivities, it seemed, was singular. Which rather explained the hazy atmosphere.

Marking the table nearest that breezy view, Detan strolled over and dragged a chair up to an empty side. It gave a rather alarming creak as he sat.

“What’s the game, gentlemen?” he asked the guards arrayed at either end. They wore the simple white linen shirts assigned to all enlistees of the empire’s many branches. The smoky grey coats that marked them as Fleet guards hung from pegs next to the nearby door. Though their attire was identical, one was large about the shoulders with dark mutton chops marring his firm jaw line, the other shorter, his rectangular head topped by a tangle of curls like a brushweed. They gave him a look, each in turn, then glanced at one another and shrugged.

“Rabbit,” said the one hogging the window seat – the beefy man with the impressive muttonchops.

“That the menu, or the game?” Detan asked, shooting a bewildered glance towards Tibs – who had scarpered off and found another table, leaving Detan raising his eyebrows at the empty air.

Muttonchops chuckled. “Never played rabbit before, eh? Sure you want to put a wager down?”

Detan felt the weight of the grains in his pocket, considering. He had scarce little to lose, and these louts were no doubt testing him to see if he’d buy into their probably-made-up rules. But they were guards. Remnant guards, if the black patches sewn on their sleeves held any truth, and he needed information. Better, he needed buddies on that island – and the best way to turn a target into a friend, Detan had long since discovered, was to lose a whole lotta grains to them.

“I’ll have you know I’m a man anxious for knowledge, thirsty for new experiences. I’ll play your rabbit – and roast it too.”

The guards laughed, comfortable with what they were certain was a sure win. “Suit yourself,” muttonchops said as he dealt out a fan of face-down cards before each of them. “I’m Garlt, and this here’s Yisson. Buy-in’s a copper.”

“Is that all?” Detan winked at Garlt to let him know he was being facetious. Willing as he was to part with grain for friendship, there were limits, and he didn’t want this man thinking he had much more to burn. With a flick of his wrist he rolled a grain out of his sleeve and back across his knuckles, then plunked it down in the pale chalk circle in the center of the table.

“None o’ that sleight of hand nonsense, Mister…?”

“Wenton’s the name, Wenton Dakfert. And I promise you, that’s the only trick I’ve got up my ratty sleeves. Took me nigh on a year to learn that bit of nonsense, so I show it off every chance I get.”

As he scooped up his hand, he let one card drop and fall face-up to the table. Mustering a blush, he pretended to fumble and snatch it up quick as could be, slapping his palm down over it in an effort to hide the face, but not fast enough. Detan let loose with a nervous chuckle.

“Ah, see? I’d say I had butterfingers, if I could afford butter.”

Garlt guffawed and thumped the table with his fist hard enough to slosh his cup of suspiciously yellow brew, no doubt trying to make Detan drop another card or two. He refrained. Just because he’d planned on losing to these two knuckleheads didn’t mean he was going to make it that easy for them.

“What is it you do, Wenton, that you can’t afford some butter for your bread?”

“Who said I could afford bread?”

Yisson snorted and tossed a card face-up onto the three antes. “Match house or color, toss it down the rabbit hole,” he said, not bothering to explain any of the finer points. Or any of the coarser points, really. “And you…” He snapped his fingers at a harried serving girl. “Bring Wenton here a beer, will you? I take it you can afford beer?”

“I would rather spend my grains on beer than bread, it’s true.” Detan pitched in a matching color of low house. Garlt’s brows shot up. Low houses were good, then.

“You so hard up, whatcha doing in this stinkhole?” Garlt asked, flicking down a high house.

“Ah, so you denizens had noticed the local… flavor. I was beginning to think I was hallucinating.”

“Can’t hallucinate with your nose, can ya?” Yisson slapped down a matching color and grinned. Detan had no idea what to make of that.

“If the odor is strong enough, certain visuals might become involved.”

“Would explain your card playing,” Garlt said, getting a chuckle out of his friend.

“Har-dee-har,” Detan drawled as he watched Yisson open a fan of a different house on the table and receive replacements from Garlt. Yisson scowled at his new hand and waved for Detan to play. He frowned. No one bothered to explain that move to him.

“Truth is, lads, I’m a prospector.”

Garlt worked up the nerve to ask the pertinent question, and Detan marked him as the aggressive player of the two. “Of what?”

“Metals, gems, whatever I can scrounge up out of this cracked dustbowl. What?” He smirked, laying down a random card. “You two think I might be some kind of sensitive?”

Garlt shrugged. “Lotta rumors of those lately, what with the empire losing its hold on Aransa. That shitty city lost a lot of sensitives the day Thratia took over. Fleeing being associated with anyone anti-Valathea, I’d wager. Some o’ em went to other mining cities to work, but some went rogue, too. Trying to find tiny caches they can siphon up and sell on the black market.”

Garlt snorted and took a deep drink of his pale libation as the serving girl appeared with the drink’s match. Detan paused, pretending to pursue his cards with care, as he tried to keep his expression from giving away his thoughts. He hadn’t heard that Thratia’d lost sensitives in her takeover. He’d assumed that, with half the city wearing her uniform, they’d been more than happy to see the old guard out and the new warden warming the seat.

But sel-sensitive refugees, scattered across the Scorched? If some sought employment at other mining cities he had no doubt they’d flock to his aunt’s city, Hond Steading. Why hadn’t she mentioned it in her last letter? She couldn’t be that cross with him.

“Wish I had a talent like that, sensing sel. Would mean I’d always have work, eh?” Detan said, watching Garlt’s expression over his hand of cards.

“I wouldn’t want it, that’s fer damned sure.”

“Right you are,” Yisson said. “At least when you sign on for the Fleet, you get good pay and the right to quit if you ever wanna. Those sorry sacks of sel-sniffers are stuck tight. Empire needs ’em to keep the Fleet afloat, and sure as the pits doesn’t want them falling into anyone else’s hands. Harsh punishment for those who get caught running, too.”

Yisson glanced at Garlt, who was too busy chugging ale to see the question in Yisson’s eyes. The big man thumped his drink down on the table and belched. “The Remnant’s no pretty place, but it’s better than a hanging.”

Detan’s heart kicked up its beat, and he didn’t bother looking at whatever card he lay down. Yisson chuckled and clucked his tongue, but Detan didn’t pay him any mind. So the Remnant housed rogue sel-sensitives. A nice, juicy bit of bait to stick on the end of the lure he wanted to lead out to Pelkaia.

“Sounds like a sweet gig, minding the ole bars,” Detan said. “The Fleet hiring?”

“For the island?” Garlt grunted. “Wish they would. Way it works now, we only get one day o’ leave time. Can’t get far from the Remnant in just a day, it’s Petrastad or one o’ those little fishing villages.”

“Pah,” Yisson tossed down a card. “They call ’emselves fishing villages but we all know they’re smugglers. Pearls, mostly, I think. Dunno why the empire doesn’t shut ’em down.”

“Probably because they like the cheap pearls and aren’t keen on doing the labor ’emselves.”

“When are they ever?” Detan interjected, winning a laugh and a thump on the back from Garlt that was, he suspected, designed to make him lose his grip on his cards again. He clung on, just to spite.

“You’re all right, Wenton.”

He took a swig of ale and grimaced. “Mind pointing me towards the bathroom?”

“Gotten to you already, has it?”

“Through me like piss through cheesecloth. Tastes like it, too.”

“Hah, that it does. Bathroom’s down the hall, but I warn you, the reason it’s called a bathroom is because the only thing you’ll want after visiting it is a bath.”

“A boiling one,” Yisson added.

Detan rose, effecting a sway, and left his cards face down on the table with full knowledge they’d peek at them the moment he was out of sight. He pretended an orientating glance, making it look as if he was searching for the door. Spotting Tibs in the corner of the room, he paused long enough to let him feel his gaze probing his back, then swaggered out into the hall.

He used the bathroom. Yisson was, it turned out, being kind.

When he returned to the hall the bouncer ducked into the card room, drawn by the sound of raised voices. Tibs waited, one dead-caterpillar eyebrow arched in question. “Win anything?”

“Pits, no. In fact, we better scuttle before they come out here looking to see if they can squeeze any more out of me.”

“Thought we didn’t have grain to lose?”

“Bah.” Detan slung an arm around Tibs’s shoulder, wiping a sticky substance he’d acquired from the bathroom off his hand onto Tibs’s coat. “Your short-sighted, pocket-pinching ways never fail to distress me, old friend. It was not the proliferation of grains I was after, but the information.”

“Really. And did you manage to lose some information, too?”

“You wound me.” He stepped aside as a broad-shouldered man spilled out of the card room’s doorway into the hall with them. The man staggered, obviously having stomached more ale than Detan could manage, and rammed his shoulder straight into Detan’s chest. With a grunt and a forced laugh, Detan nudged the man upright and steadied him.

“You all right, mister…?”

“Buncha cheats in there,” the drunken man muttered and tugged at his rumpled collar. He pat Detan’s chest with one sticky hand. “You’re all right, though.”

The man dragged his hand free of Detan’s shirt, turning to struggle his way down the stairs, and the harsh rip of fabric tearing filled the hallway. Everyone froze, staring at the spill of cards that Tibs had dealt Detan to keep his hands busy while they were locked in a cabin on the Larkspur, splayed out across the stained hallway floor.

“Err,” Detan said.

“Cheater!” the drunken man roared, and grabbed Detan’s rumpled shirt in both meaty fists.

Detan attempted a protest, but with his feet dangling off the ground and his collar ratcheted up tight around his throat all he managed was a pale imitation of a dunkeet squawk. His back struck the wall and dust rained down upon him, filling his eyes with grit and tears. On instinct he kicked out – more of a flail, if he was being honest with himself – and struck the man hard in, what he was disturbed to realize, was the man’s crotch.

Wheezing and grunting, the drunken man dropped Detan with a thud and staggered back, folding up upon himself like flaccid sail. Detan wanted to harangue the man for his uncalled for assault, but Tibs grabbed him by the sleeve and jerked him toward the stairs.

Shouts sounded from inside the card room. The big man’s cries of cheater must have been overheard. Which was really unfair, considering this had been one of the few times Detan hadn’t had any intention of cheating.

With a weary groan he scurried after Tibs, tromping down the creaky steps and out into the strange streets of Petrastad. A fine mist ensconced the city, bitter cold and obscuring, as night crept in across the waves.

“I blame you for that.” Detan propped his hands against his knees, huffing the chilly air. Tibs rolled his eyes.

“Blame me all you like, you still owe me a new deck of cards.”

“Preposterous! I could not have foreseen that brute’s–”

“There they are!” The singular window of Lotti’s Cards sprouted two heads. One of them hurled a lantern. The glass shattered and splashed burning oil a mere few paces from where Detan hunched. He yelped and jumped aside.

“Now that was uncalled for!”

“Come on.” Tibs took off down a side street, and with a muffled curse Detan sprinted after him, boots slipping on the mist-slick cobblestones.

“Why,” Tibs demanded through harsh breaths, “didn’t you change your shirt?”

“It was clean enough! Do you have any idea where you’re going?”

“Away from them seems the best course,” Tibs replied as he twisted down yet another street. Detan jogged along, beginning to notice a disturbing pattern. This city, just like its rectangular buildings, was laid out in grids. Nice, wide, easy to follow grids. Not a simple city to hide in, not at all. And it didn’t help matters much that their boots smeared mud with every step they took.

Detan sighed. “I hate this city.”

“Didn’t take you long,” Tibs called back over his shoulder.

“Never does.”

Shouts sounded somewhere behind them, echoing off the neat, straight stone walls, and Detan forced his legs to pump a little faster. He told himself it could be worse. It could be the local watchers hard on his heels, but the thought didn’t much soothe when his knees ached and the damned mist was clogging up his eyes.

“Fucking Petrastad,” he said to no one in particular.