“I, uh....”
“Give me that damn paper.” Tsaeb jerked the paper from his hand, inspected the front page, then the back. “Now get!”
“He didn’t mean that,” I apologized, reaching into my pocket for cash. I pulled out a five. “My friend doesn’t know the significance of manners.” Nervously glancing around at the passersby, I hoped to diffuse a scene before it started, but no one seemed to care.
“Thanks,” the young man replied, though he looked at the money strangely.
Tsaeb skimmed through the contents of the paper. The young man pocketed the money and grabbed another newspaper from his armpit. “You need an escort? I sell those too,” he added and then leaned in closer. “For a price.”
“I said go
a-way
,” Tsaeb growled, looking up from the paper. “I’m all the escort he needs.”
A sneer ruffled the young man’s nose. I looked across at Gorg who had been unloading items from his carriage since we arrived. I didn’t know which freak I’d rather stand beside.
“Things have changed since your last visit,” said the young man to Tsaeb, “and I doubt you’ll even find Tiny’s Tavern without an escort.”
“Tiny’s Tavern, eh?” Tsaeb began. “I can sniff that place out easily. No one brews Briar’s ale like Tiny Toolknocker.”
“Jackson and Sons?” the young man quizzed.
“Lester Jackson can’t go anywhere without leaving a trail of finger bones behind,” Tsaeb answered with a smirk. “Sucked clean, even the stains, like a trail of bread crumbs.”
“Madame Darla’s House of Pleasure, Barnaby’s, Stookie’s, the Underground Tunnel
—
”
“We don’t need to know where those places are!” Tsaeb was losing his patience.
“Thank you for the offer,” I said, stepping between the two, “but we’ll find our way around.”
“Around, sure, but inside, I doubt it,” said the young man.
“Inside?”
“The fortress,” Tsaeb said to me. “Another place I can get in without an escort.”
“You seem sure of yourself,” the young man chuckled. He raised his newspaper in the air, waving it about so not to miss any customers. “Get yer news!”
“But that doesn’t surprise me,” he added looking back at Tsaeb. “You always were a pompous ass, overconfident and self-absorbed beyond
—
”
Tsaeb stepped right up to the young man, glaring upward that full two-feet he needed to see his eyes.
“Look you two,” I said, taking Tsaeb’s shoulder vigorously. “I don’t care either way, escort or not, but can we keep it down?”
“Fine with me.” The young man began to walk away. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.” The offer was a polite one, directed only at me.
“Get yer news here! The queen’s life threatened again!”
His voice faded into the crowd, only the waving newspaper remained for a moment high over the heads of the city people.
“Why do you have to be so arrogant?”
“Arrogant?” Tsaeb truly looked shocked
“Yes, arrogant. Rude. Problematic. One hundred percent Grade A
Asshole
.”
Tsaeb grabbed a hold of my arm, stopping me in my angry march back toward the carriage.
“Look,” he growled, brows drawn, voice low and secretive, “Please and Thank You’s will get you nothing in this city.”
“I’d say good luck,” Gorg said from the carriage, “but sumthin’ tells me luck wishin’ is a waste o’ breath.”
I headed toward Gorg, carefully dodging the few mud puddles along the way.
“You’re leaving already?”
“I never stays long.” Gorg fiddled with the horses’ restraints, tightening and loosening them where they needed it. “Sold alla my stuffs and am good fer another six hundred days or so.”
Gorg’s carriage looked much cleaner than before, definitely less cluttered. There was not a finger or toe, shrunken head or dangling eyeball left anywhere. Gorg had even gotten rid of the ghastly necklace he wore around his throat.
“How much did you get for her wings?” I said.
“Oh, I bet he got another fifty years for those,” said Tsaeb stepping up. Tsaeb nosed his way inside the carriage. He reached in, grabbed hold of his oversized bag of stolen riches, and dragged it out with a grunt. Afterwards, my tattered backpack filled with less valuable items, landed next to Tsaeb’s bag.
“
One hundred
fifty, to be exact.” Gorg answered. “Afrodeesiac. Yep. That funny smell they got
—
the best smoke this side of the Field, I tell you wut.” Gorg put his thumb and index finger together at his lips and sucked in air.
“Ain’t you’s gonna ask why I sold my stuff for ‘days’?”
I was caught off-guard.
“That did occur to me...well, now that you mention it, I would like to know.”
“Fiedel City is a city of flesh-eatin’ coots, and the queen owns that there Field of Yesterday.” Gorg pointed toward the field as if I didn’t already know where the torturous place was. “Parts and stuffs from the body pay my way, give ol’ Gorg more time to travel the field.”
My brows creased with confusion. “Why would anyone
want
to travel through that field?”
“Dun’t know why anyone else would, but I do it a’cause I dun’t want to no more.”
It made absolutely no sense, but I refused to press the issue. Already my head was on the verge of migraine status.
Tsaeb tried furiously to position the heavy bag on his little back, but to no avail. Every four-letter-word ever invented rang out.
“Well, time for ol’ Gorg to head out. Gotsta stay on time and on course, y’know.”
Gorg hopped on his carriage and snapped the reins. Disgusting. Perverted. Uneducated. Gorg was all of these things, but he was not Tsaeb, a demon of Greed, and that said a lot.
Gorg rode out; the big, squeaking wheels left a muddy trail behind him. Once it disappeared around the first crooked curve, I took up Tsaeb’s bag of riches and threw it over my back.
“Don’t worry,” I said, “I’m not going to steal anything.”
“Better not.”
~~~
“When are you going to get rid of this stuff?” I said ten minutes later. We stood in the street between a dozen odd buildings that had no signs. “I can’t carry it around forever, and it’s heavy even for me.”
I took the bag from over my shoulder and set it on the ground, kneeling in front of it. “What all do you have in here anyway? And how is any of it worth anything in a city like this?”
“Not everyone here is a cannibal.” Tsaeb snatched the bag closed, and I stood shaking my head. “You’ll thank me for this later because nothing you have in those pockets of yours will pay for what you need most.”
“Like what?”
“Uh, I don’t know,
duh
,” Tsaeb said with belittling sarcasm, “protection, food that won’t make you sick, women that won’t give you warts just by looking in their general direction?”
He went on, his voice rising, “I don’t know, Norman, maybe a couple of horses to get the hell out of dodge when the assassins figure out who you are
—
Don’t even say it. That was a slip of the tongue. You know I can’t say. Don’t even ask.”
“I won’t,” I snapped, “but let it be known that if I could take back my decision to choose you from the alley, I would’ve taken the twins instead.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah!” I started to walk away, but then remembered Tsaeb could barely carry the bag of riches on his own. I snatched it up and tossed it over my shoulder again.
“Which way?” My tone was anything but kind.
The people of Fiedel City were as filthy as they were rude. Those we passed on the street often bumped into me and sent me scrambling to hold my footing. “Watch where you’re goin’!” they said, and no one moved to let me pass even though I clearly deserved the right of way. The street was narrow, barely wide enough for a carriage pulled by a single horse to pass through; it was thick with mud making it more difficult for me to tread carrying such a heavy load on my back. The rain picked up by the minute. People entered and exited buildings, bundled in hooded cloaks. A two-story wooden building stood haphazardly to the left. Its uncovered windows were warm with lantern light where busty women sat on ledges, beckoning onlookers. A building to the right, much smaller, was boarded up. Windows and doors with bright red paint smeared across the front that read: ‘fuCken sHUt doWn’.
“
And on the Eighth Day, God gave us ale and it was good.”
--
WE PASSED THE TOWN center where a body dangled from a noose, head uncovered with the tongue lolled out of its mouth. Fresh corpse. Clothes finer than that of the average denizen. Haircut. Shaven face. Compared to everyone in the streets, the dead man had been wealthy and looked as much a native of this city as I did.
“Ah, here we are.” Tsaeb stopped in front of another two-story wooden building. “We’ll get a room and stash our things before we go to the fortress to see the queen.”
“Wait a minute
—
stop right there.” I went after him, stumbling up the rickety steps and toward the building entrance. “I thought we were here to see some witch?” I cringed, thinking about what I apparently had to do with her. “I don’t want to do anything else, meet anyone unnecessary or go anywhere out of our way.” I dropped the heavy bag on the porch and tried to catch my breath. “I said
stop
!” I jerked Tsaeb around.
“Yeah, yeah, the queen
—
she
is
the witch. The imps want her dead, others want her alive. Women love her, men hate her, children
—
even the fake ones like myself
—
don’t know whether to be afraid of her or to throw things at her for fun.”
“Why do men hate her?” My voice shook with the question.
“Dunno.” Tsaeb pushed open the wooden door. “Never met her.”
My teeth grinded angrily behind my tight-closed lips.
The tavern was as I imagined; unsettling and dark, surrounded by musky heat and sweaty drunks. Mangy long-legged dogs lay in wait on the floor for leftovers. Barmaids acted as barmaids
and
prostitutes; perfume thick and intoxicating. Corsets busting out. Pots and pans clanked and banged in the back. A pig squealed somewhere in the distance and then suddenly fell silent. A chorus of voices carried through the tavern; so many talking over one another that few conversations were clear, and even fewer hospitable. Old men belching and farting, slipping their greasy hands up the dresses of the barmaids who pretend to be repulsed, but were not the greatest of actors. A small group of sullied old men near the bar sang some song: ‘
the rick-tickety witch creaks and squeaks and ticks when she wickety-walks’
, their mugs raised and toasted, raining ale on their already soiled clothes.
I was ready to buy those horses
now
and leave this place.
“Come on,” Tsaeb urged, stepping up as though he had just gotten back from somewhere. “I got us a room. We’ll go hide my bag and come back for something to eat.”
I followed quickly.
Maneuvering our way up the stairs and around one corner, we came upon our room just above the noisy tavern. The walls were thin and rotted, blocking neither sight nor sound from the room next door, until I stuffed a piece of cloth in one large crack and an old bed sheet in another.
Tsaeb dragged his bag of riches across the creaking floor and stuffed it, with difficulty, underneath the bed. Jewels, rings, and a golden thimble tumbled out. He shoved them back inside only to have more fall out. Giving up, he draped a ragged, mildew-stained blanket sloppily over the side of the bed to conceal the stash.
“I think I’ll stay in the room,” I said, taking a seat in a wobbly chair with uneven legs. I leaned back, my legs splayed and relaxed out into the floor. Absently, I broke apart the buttons of my dress shirt.
“Better eat while we’re here.”
“No way I’m eating anything from this place,” I sneered. “I’ll do just fine with my cheese crackers. Where’s my backpack, anyway?” I raised my back from the seat, looking around.
“By the door.” Tsaeb nodded in that direction. “Suit yourself, but you’ll need something more than crackers in your stomach before we leave Fiedel City.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
I watched Tsaeb for a moment, eyeing the kid from across the room. He appeared harmless, like a child should, when he wasn’t running his foul mouth. His soft, boyish cheeks were speckled with freckles. His lashes were long and thick, black and perfect; the kind women pay high dollar for back home in my city. He even had dimples when he smiled, though his smiles were usually grins or smirks, and perhaps those dimples were the perfect disguise.
Tsaeb moved toward his bag again and lifted the blanket in his fingertips.
“Gotta look important,” he said slipping on the dead carriage driver’s oversized rings.
“Won’t that make you a target?”
“Yeah,” he answered, positioning a golden vambrace on one arm, “but a target that gets respect,” then the matching vambrace on the other. “And around here, if you got wealth, most think you got bodyguards sitting around in the shadows ready to pounce.”
“Oh, like that wealthy man hanging from a noose six buildings down?” I shook my head. “
That
kind of important?”
Tsaeb stuffed several gemstones and gold coins deep in his pockets. He straightened his vambraces, which hardly fit his little forearms, and balled his hands into fists so that the rings would not fall off. He looked ridiculous.
“You wouldn’t get executed because you’re rich, only if you try to kill the queen.”
“Why do so many want her dead?”
Tsaeb shrugged.
He did a wonderful job avoiding the question.
Against my vow to stay in the room, we headed back to the noisy tavern downstairs.
I sat on a barstool, crushed between two men. The man to my left had a shiny balding head. There was more hair on his chin; long, gray and disheveled, where just below his bottom lip the coarse strands were wet with ale.
“Bah! Morris McAlister has seen worse,” said the bearded man. The sound of his wooden mug hitting the bar top was brief.
I wiped the corner of my eye where a few driblets of warm ale had ejected from the mug.
Tsaeb had already eaten and now sat quietly, picking his teeth.
“It’s like you’re talkin’ to yourself,” said the man to my right, with long brown hair, untied and unwashed. He looked at me. “One of them slave boys that talk in first-person...erm, third person...Ah! You know what I mean!” Then he turned back to the bearded man named Morris McAlister. “And what do
you
know anyway? You
live
in this tavern. Hardly ever see anything outside it.”
“Morris knows well enough, you fool. He was there when Queen Agrippine
—
”
“For the sake of all drunken men here, Morris, stop using your damned name!” the brown-haired man said back at him. “You’re confusing
me
and I’ve known you for an unfortunate fifteen years!”
Roasted swine filled my nostrils, but it wasn’t a pleasant smell. There was something about it, something rotten or spoiled. And the flies loved this place. The barmaids made their rounds, slapping away groping hands, but with big, crooked smiles along the way. The clanking of metal pots in the back was annoyingly loud, but not nearly as loud as the men who carried on about the former queen who was apparently favored by few and friend to even less. I brought my mug to my lips, sitting quietly with my arms across the bar top.
“Agrippine was a good queen,” said a red-haired man sitting nearby in a chair at a small round table.
The bearded man, Morris, slammed his mug on the bar again. “Agrippine was a dimp! She claimed to be a way-finder, but she was more a politician and wasn’t even good at
that
!”
“No, she was a money-hoarder, a self-serving coin-monger,” the brown-haired man said, raising his greasy, balled fist in the air.
I turned fully on the stool so that I could see the red-haired man at the table behind me, the one of the three that seemed the least intoxicated.
Tsaeb entered the conversation that before did not interest him. “Hell yeah,” he said looking at the brown-haired man. “A greedy liar, that witch was.”
I shook my head.
Look who’s talking
.
“What do you know about the politics of Fiedel City?” the bearded man named Morris said. He added after another clumsy chug, “You’re just a demon brat from the Outside.”
“Yeah, but I know a lot of things,” Tsaeb said with a smirk. “And Agrippine was a better queen than Livvy, even though she was a compulsive liar.” He went back to picking his teeth.
I leant backwards against the bar, propping my elbows upon it, my out-of-place dress shoes supported by the spindle below.
He knows a lot of things, hmm?
“A better queen than Livvy?” said the brown-haired man, his expression twisted into disbelief. “What’s wrong with you, boy; did you fall in the Well of Illusions?” He threw his head back in a loud chain of laughter, pounding one dirty fist on the bar top. The various mugs and half-eaten plates near him jumped.
Morris let out a foul-smelling belch and tilted his baldhead to see Tsaeb near him. “Better watch that mouth of yours, boy. Livvy was a good friend of Morris.”
“What?” said the brown-haired man, dumbstruck. The wrinkles deepened at the corners of his eyes. “You couldn’t have been older than six when Livvy
died
!”
“Forget he said anything.” I looked between them. As usual, Tsaeb’s over-the-top personality was making me immensely nervous.
Morris gestured for the barkeeper, too drunk to find a rebuttal. He absently moved his mug before the pour was finished; ale spilled onto the bar, but the barkeeper went about his business, not worried about cleaning away the mess with the dirty cloth dangling from his belt.
If I can’t get straight answers from Tsaeb....
“Why do so many want the queen dead?” I said over the arguing.
The argument came to an awkward stop and all three men looked at one another cautiously. It seemed that my question might have even sobered them up some. The tavern was rambunctious and cruel, but in the small section where I was with the three drunken men, the air was thick with silence.
Finally, the brown-haired man leaned toward me and quietly broke the silence that was making me more nervous than ever.
“You must be an outsider too.”
“Has to be,” Morris added, whispering.
“Yep,” the red-haired man said, stepping up from the nearby table. “And we haven’t seen an outsider like you for...” he paused, chewing his top lip, “...at least thirty years for me.”
“Morris ain’t seen one in
—
”
“No it’s been more than thirty...forty-five at least,” the brown-haired man added.
“One what?” I hated this. “What do you mean, ‘an outsider’ like me”?
“An outsider that’s human,” the red-haired man said, watchful of listeners around him. “You should be careful,” he added.
“He’s right,” said the brown-haired man, “and you should get yourself a weapon or six.”
“Tell me about the queen,” I whispered nervously, “if you don’t mind.”
The red-haired man looked around the tavern once more to make sure no one else was listening, and then took me by the shoulder.
“Lilith’s boys are everywhere, and it’s their job to kill every queen.”
I was no less confused.
“...Oh, and to kill every man that comes from the Outside whose job it is to give up his seed to her.”
My eyes grew wide. My heart thudded in my chest and then made its way to my stomach. I felt incredibly dizzy.
The red-haired man helped me to the table where the dog under it still lay chewing on leftover bones. The other two men went back to their drinking.