NOVEL NEXT 75 – Not Quite Reeling
The following hour or so was, somehow, both a ride and utterly mundane at the same time. Most of the patrons expressed their satisfaction with how she had dealt with the assassin with shouted encouragement immediately followed by anti-Pateirian epithets, a few promised to buy her a drink, and fewer still tossed another coin or two into the pit.
It soon turned out that several of the patrons held positions in the city guard, with Berga and Not-Quincy vouching for two older men in particular with utter certainty that they would get the assassin’s corpse to the right people who wouldn’t just sweep it under the rug before sunrise, and therefore before his employers were likely to begin to worry.
Before she felt comfortable permitting anyone to touch the body however, Zelsys felt obligated to remove all his knives herself. If she got cut, it wasn’t a big deal, even if by some miracle the venom took hold. If someone else did, it could kill them. And so, she pulled knife after knife off him, stacking them up in a neat little pile in the sand. Long, short, wide, narrow, curved, straight, even what looked like sharpened knitting needles, it was a wonder this guy hadn’t suffered a self-inflicted death by a thousand cuts. Once done she finally allowed her breathing and heartbeat to return to normal, but continued Fog-breathing in the manner which came naturally as a means of pain suppression. The venom did nothing and her wounds were sealed shut, sure, but unsurprisingly, raw stab wounds through the back and into the lungs and heart were still rather painful.
As Zelsys climbed out of the pit, she felt many eyes upon herself, Zef’s in particular, her pinpoint focus jumping across her back. The concern behind her stare was palpable even before she got up close and overtly declared that they were “going back” as soon as conceivably possible in case her injuries turned out to be more severe than first thought. And once more, she caught a glimpse of that Woman in Red amongst the crowd, with the cone hat, the long pipe, the little smirk, and in the next moment she was gone.
A dense atmosphere of unrest had taken hold in the parlor, the topics of conversation shifting sharply towards stricter vetting of patrons, outright lynching of the Pateirian senators as per “The Old Law”, and, inevitably, Zef’s eye and Zel’s apparent immunity to a venom known to drop grown men with a miniscule dose. Fortunately for the two women, the patrons also had the good judgment to leave them be.
They sat down at the bar, waiting for Not-Quincy with the intent to claim their winnings and order something to drink while they waited for Jorfr.
“Don’t know what to say other than that you can have drinks on the house for tonight,” sighed the barkeep apologetically before he hefted several bulging sacks of coin of varying size onto the counter. With a glare at Berga and his compatriots he added, “I had thought we had better security.”
“I can’t be ev’rywhere at once, an’ I certainly don’t recall letting ‘im in…” rumbled the old man with anger in his voice. “I think he might’ve just slipped through with that disappearin’ trick.”
Not-Quincy went on to portion out the coin sacks, pointing out one, “That’s your winnings after the house cut plus the earlier bill…”
Then pointing out another, about half the size of the first, “And that’s your one-third cut of Berga’s, Toled’s, Bissok’s, and Strulbad’s winnings.”
“Two Fruit Right Hooks…” Zef ordered in the meanwhile, looking over at Zel then back at him before she added: “Make that three.”
The barkeep nodded and did his job, and in the meanwhile, Zel took out her tablet while Zef reached for the sacks of money. Placing both in Fog Storage revealed that altogether they had more than triple the money they had put in. When Not-Quincy returned, Zef pushed two of the glasses towards Zel, which she gladly accepted, taking a sip from one before asking a question: “Does this much money move around on a regular evening?”
An immediate shake of the head from both the barkeep and Berga.
“This was the uh… Fourth match with bets of this scale, I’m quite sure,” the barkeep explained. “Usually the bets only really reach one-tenth of this scale, both in terms of money and spectacle. You saw those two before your match, that’s more in line with the kind of fight we get. I could count the number of people in this room capable of participating in full-blown Fog-breather fights on my fingers, and those that I think could remotely match up to you, Berga, or Jorfr on one hand.”
His eyes flicked to the side, and he added, “Speak of the ice-beast.”
Jorfr walked up to the bar and sat down with great caution, his right arm’s shoulder and hand both wrapped tightly in bandages that reeked of alcohol and herbs. He held up a sinew cord from which hung five long metal objects which jangled together and sang the tones of cold-iron, placing it down before Zelsys with a nod. They were each about a third of a meter long, with a narrow rectangular tang that ended in a loop by which they were affixed to the string, and a long flat rectangular body, gleaming and damascened, begging to be sharpened.
“Each is graded to one-and-a-half sovereigns,” he said, pointing at a small Grekurian symbol stamped into the flat portion of each hryvn just below the tang. “It may seem like much to you, but it is not much where I come from. I wager that in a few years, merchants from the great holds will learn of starmetal’s value in the south and inevitably bring great quantities of it, driving down its value.”
“Is this your main currency?” Zel asked, genuinely curious.
He nodded, “Each hold has its own particular manner of trade, but the hryvn is universal, its size and value set in stone by the Revenant King long ago. He has only changed their value in times when old mines grew barren and before new ones were carved from beneath the ice.”
Berga interrupted with a facetious skepticism, “How’d’ye know it’s starmetal if y’dig it outta the ground?”