Chapter 24: Headpats & Heists

You ever wake and wonder how long you were out? Feel that creeping sluggish heavy sensation that has you wondering if you’d been asleep more than just a night? You know the one that has you wondering if you’d slept through a couple days or been in a coma for months. It’s kind of like waking up on a dark raining day wondering what time it is and going to look at your bedside clock only to realise a blackout happened during the night and your clock is flashing waiting for you to reset it.

Not including my recent nap after my ill advised jaunt down into the valley, I’d experienced the real deal once before.

A few years back my skull had a close encounter with the Philly street after I was grabbed, lifted, flipped and slammed down head first. Pretty much as you’d expect my memory of who did it and why isn’t all that clear. Probably only blacked out for a few seconds, but after picking myself up and stumbling off concussed back to my shack I slept for two nights and a day.

Imagine my confusion when I realised I had lost a day.

Anyway despite the few moments of panic when I woke up just now, I was relieved to learn it was only the next day and I hadn’t missed our trip down into the city or the start of our expedition into the east of the duchy. I guess I had still been pretty deep asleep when the maid came round for my early pre-dawn wake up call. I still felt pretty tired.

Not that I had expected to wake up bright eyed and bushy tailed. While we hadn’t exactly gone to bed late last night, we had gone to bed exhausted, world upending confessions and emotional turmoil takes a lot out of you. We’d pretty much gone to bed straight after a fairly subdued dinner and discussing our plans with Gael.

So after waking, bathing, dressing and a light breakfast of fruit and cereals I’d found myself stumbling half asleep down the from the castle into the city escort in tow and only Roxi’s guiding arm around my shoulders keeping me from tripping and waking myself in a puddle of icy mud slush.

Oh and by escort I mean our excitable and hopefully qualified guide Gael Silvertail who was already giving us a colourfully worded running commentary, plus a Duchess mandated escort of two castle guards to ward off pickpockets or any trouble we might manage to dive right into.

“And in case the rank smell of cold stale man sweat has not informed your burning nostrils, we have reached our first stop on this tour, the Santarriral Barracks,” giggled Gael watching as we grimaced under the duel assault of the smell and imagery her vocabulary evoked. 

”Fuck that smell brings me back to my merc camp days, the castle barracks are a lot better smelling between us maids cleaning what we can and burning what we can’t. Between us maids burning any offending sweat tainted garments left laying about and the Duchess’s threat of removing every door or window pane in the castle barracks and letting the freezing mountain air ventilate their sleeping quarters, the castle guard are pretty good at bathing and utilizing the laundry chutes. The city guard? Not so much.” 

Almost grimacing once again, I managed to instead slip a disinterested smirk onto my face before I could provide her any more amusement. “Umm… Thanks for that Gael, but uh why are we stopping umm here. I thought we were heading for the markets?” 

“Well…” she started, stepping past the door guards and into the barracks proper. “You mentioned last night you had a haul of levy grade arms to offload so I thought I would cut out the middleman for you and bring you to the only place that might be willing to give you real coin for that heap of iron you’ve been lugging around.”

“I hope you have a better plan than going around and asking them one by one if they want to buy a second hand spear or crossbow,” I lightly teased moments before Roxi yoinked me sideways and preventing me from clipping my elbow on the door’s edge as we followed the silver furred catgirl inside.

After looking over her shoulder to roll her eyes at me, Gael nodded ahead. “The requisition officer of the City Guard’s office is not far. He is almost honest for a quartermaster and only half as much a thief as the next quartermaster when it comes to stores mysteriously disappearing. Just don’t let him know I just complimented him.” 

“He just heard you girl. And calling me honest? I guess I should expect some confusion out of a sellsword who signed up to fight dirty laundry and rout dust bunnies in unswept hallways,” a deep voice boomed out from an open doorway just ahead on our right.

“So what brings our little Gael down from the Palace up yonder?” asked the voice as its owner stuck his bald head through the doorway revealing the grinning face and ruddy red cheeks of a rather well fed man.

“Escorting the Duchesses guests, Paedric. They have some arms they liberated on their way here to sell and in case you’re thinking of being a tightass with the guard’s purse strings you might want to think twice. These two have her favor and going off the little I hear serving drinks to the bigwigs they’ve done some big service to the city.”

It was clear the two of them were falling into some well rehearsed act as they traded barbs and friendly banter until the two broke out in laughter and a meaty hand came down on Gael’s hair. The old quartermaster received a half hearted elbow to the kidney as he continued to pat the maid’s head and she pretended to be suffering with patient grace.

Well until she remembered we were there as well…

Then in a furious flurry of movement that had me wondering if she was seeing red instead of going red, with claws out she swiped the hand away and leapt back. 

Barely biting back curses that threatened to slip out Paedric nursed his hand to his chest, before glancing down to his right. 

Down to a version of Gael I hadn’t seen yet. 

Gone was the near constant mischievous snagglefanged smile, replaced by a look of genuine repentance. Her gaze downcast, ears drawn flat against her hair, tail in front being wrung by anxious hands as her eyes flickered back and forth between the floor and the red beading lines that ran across the back of Paedric’s hand from thumb down to wrist

Roxi’s strong shoulder swung into view as if to cover me from any potential trouble. Not that it was needed. Seeing Gael’s sorry state, Paedric dropped his scored hand to his side and let out a large sigh.

“I guess I should’ve known better than to spook a stray by being handsy around strangers,” he chuckled self-depreciatively, head turning back to look my way. “Now then is this little lady a stray as well or has that giant beside you got you people trained?”

What!? Irritated, I almost stepped forward to verbally lay into him before a heavy black nailed hand landed on my shoulder and I caught the twinkle in the quartermaster’s eye.

“You're asking about this one here?” Roxi asked, her thumb drawing firm sedative circles across my shoulder blade. “Oh there’s a lot of stray in this one and she’s far more clever than the rest of us because of it. A word of warning she’ll barter the shirt off your back if you give her cause and then sell back to you for a markup.”

“Oi!” I yelped, snapping out of the trance her thumb has cast upon me. “I wouldn’t sell it back to him, I’d cut it down into handkerchiefs and sell them during hayfever season at a markup.”

“Snrk…”

Our bickering halted as we looked for snickering’s source and found Gael half bent over as she tried to hold back her laughter. Sneaking a look Roxi’s way, my eyes caught hers and sharing a smirk we wound up a second later laughing alongside Gael and Paedric, clawed hands forgotten.

“So what will you be offering for said shirt, it might be uniform but it has sentimental value for me,” he chuckled, still shaking off the earlier levity. I could feel he wasn’t quite taking Roxi’s warning seriously, me seriously. 

His loss. If he was going to underestimate me, I wasn't going to pout over it. No, I was going to squeeze so much coin out of him, future quartermasters across the kingdom would be whispering my name like some sort of boogyman for generations to come.

It turns out it wasn’t even that hard.

With a potential attack on the horizon the city guard were not going to turn down any additional swords, daggers and crossbows they could use to arm additional levies for defence. That and whenever he tried to barter down the price too hard, Gael would out of nowhere mention how fond the Duchess was of her guests or how it would be a shame if the heroes of Santarriral died while off serving the Duchess because they couldn’t afford better equipment.

I almost felt ashamed when we left with fat coin pouches and stunned Paedric behind us chuckling and muttering under his breath almost deliriously. The price we got was almost highway robbery, which was ironic since we’d looted the weapons from the corpses of literal bandits. Hence why I almost felt ashamed, I usually didn’t rob likeable people if I could help it.

Any shame that might have snuck through was quashed by the smug grin on Roxi’s face as she playfully tossed the bulging purse in the air. Her cut of the sales clinking every time it fell back into her palm. It was hard to feel shame over the pride I was feeling from Roxi’s reaction. 

I gave my goth shinies, goths love shinies.