Chapter 62-
“The docks are very picturesque at night, don’t you think?” Gruse cupped her cheek and looked sideways at Myst, who was leaning against a wooden crate left at the ship’s stern.
“What?”
His confusion confused her in turn.
“What do you mean, ‘What?’” She asked. The waves lapped gently against the sides of the cargo ship.
“I don’t know what ‘picturesque’ means.”
Gruse stared at him like he was a puzzle she’d been working for six hours straight. “You don’t know what picturesque means?”
Myst’s dark eye grew annoyed, his other covered by an eye patch. “No, can you just explain it so we can stop wasting time talking about it?”
Gruse looked back out over the docks, at the line of ships anchored safely in its bosom. “It just means that it looks like a picture or a painting, I guess,” she started. “I just brought it up because it’s funny; even when you paint something like the sea, it’s still moving, right?”
“The painting?”
“The sea in the painting,” she elaborated. “When you look at it, even if it’s just paint and ink with no motion really in it, it represents a real moment in time; to your mind, the sea is moving, so it’s moving in the painting.”
Myst lifted his eyebrows a touch, so small it was difficult to see even in the moonlight. “So it’s a lot like math, then?”
It was Gruse’s turn to be confused. “What?”
Myst sat up with the dry expression of someone explaining their tax history. “Well, math seems like it’s a result of the world’s natural function, but I think it’s really the other way around, just something we intuit to organize the world.”
Gruse blinked a few times at him, lips parted as if she was ready to say something, or, perhaps, she believed she should be able to say something.
“I don’t know what to do with that,” she said softly. “What does that have to do with what I was saying?”
“Well, you said the picture is moving because we know what’s in the painting is something that moves in real life, but it’s really just paint on a canvas, and we suspend what’s in front of us to make it seem like more than it really is.” His eye floated around the scene. “Or like in one of your smut novels; to you it might be the most vivid, real thing in the world, but it’s really just ink on a page, it’s even less than a painting.”
Gruse was fuming. “I don’t read…” She bit her tongue for a moment before whispering the word, “Smut. Okay? They’re romances, and I don’t even read them all the time, I have a lot of things I read!”
Myst was able to look down at her, even from where he was sitting. Her arms, draped beneath her black shawl, were stuck straight down at her sides, her expression sour.
“You’ve been antsy recently,” Myst said flatly. “Probably because you can’t read your smut in peace.”
Gruse paused for a moment, brow furrowed, and wordlessly opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue.
“Hm?” Myst cocked his eyebrow before a spider crawled out from her mouth and over her tongue. He recoiled in disgust, holding his arm over his heart like he was defending from a demon.
“Oh, is something wrong?” Gruse smirked devilishly while the arachnid tip-toed its way down her chin.
“No- I just-” Myst stumbled over his words. “That’s… bad! You know I don’t like spiders!” He shuddered, getting the jitters out of his muscles.
Gruse’s brows went from slanted to curved, softening her devious smirk into a lighthearted one. Content she’d beaten Myst out, she turned around and leaned over the railing again. It was funny to her, that someone so tall and athletic had such a childlike phobia.
Suddenly, she perked up.
“Myst,” the abrupt weight of her voice triggered a change in his own demeanor.
“Yeah?”
“The ship we were looking for, remind me what it was called?”
“The Prayer?” he asked, wondering if she’d really forgotten.
Gruse turned around with a smile like she’d just found out it was her birthday, pointing down the docks. “Can you make out what that says?”
He scooted himself up off the crate and took a gander. “Well,” he matched her smile. “I’ll be.”
“God’s been smiling down on us since you started wearing that.” Her eyes pointed to the salamander necklace Myst had recently taken up wearing. “Wanna go shake ‘em down?”
Myst yawned. “Let’s do it tomorrow, I’m tired. Besides,” he cast his gaze to Eroh, splayed out on the ground. “He’ll want some action.”
---
The gate was rusted and grimy, Sonsee winced at the awful squeaking sound it made as she pushed it open.
From the center of the courtyard, the entire apartment complex reeked of age; rotting red bricks towered five stories high, interrupted by grimy dirt-pasted windows from which she could feel eyes bearing down on her.
Before leaving Hilltop, Sonsee and Gallow made sure to tour the city’s array of scenery, including its dingy lower levels. East Galeton was not too unlike Level 3 of The Chaff, only perhaps more classical.
The center of the courtyard was laid with a stone walkway that led her to the front lobby, the doors of which had seemingly been replaced with newer glass-paneled ones, though they had long since been covered with specks of dirt and age. Upon opening the door, she was nearly knocked off her feet by the stench of something worn and rotten. After coughing into her arm, she plunged within, taking shallow breaths.
The lobby was dim, lit by weak gas lamps and the small but of natural sunlight which broke through the windows. All about the room were people of all ages lounging about, half-conscious or asleep, stretched out on cheap moth-eaten sofas or leaning against faded wallpaper. Every few moments, someone would let loose an awful, hacking cough.
Her eyes darted about, looking for anybody who could direct her where she needed to go. Finally, she saw an older man reclining in a tall, cushy chair with a pipe in his hand connected by tube to a small vase-looking object. Intermittently, he would pull the long, thin pipe from his lips and blow out a heart stream of smoke, always coughing two or three times after. Sonsee thought he looked quite like some of the elders of the Atamape, who would sometimes smoke the crushed parts of a local plant during holidays.
“Excuse me?” She pulled down the hood she’d been given by Thornlove along with some new clothes.
The man with the pipe took a moment to react; his face was terribly aged, though she couldn’t tell if it was from substance-abuse, disease, or natural causes. His eyes, buried in a desert of wrinkles, lifted and focused on her.
“Hello, lady,” he greeted, blowing some more smoke out. He spoke in a wavering tone that didn’t tell her whether he was masking some intent or just severely out-of-it.
Sonsee let out some small coughs to keep her lungs mostly untouched, and asked, “Does someone named Felix Bruhodt live here?”
He stared at her blankly for a moment before his thin lips parted, “Why yes, he does, is he expecting you?”
She paused. “Yes, he is.”
“Oh, how nice,” he flashed a toothy, gummy smile. “You’ll find him down in the basement, right down that hall, down the staircase through the third door on the right.”
With that, he returned to his smoke and, judging by his vacant eyes, seemingly forgot about her.
Sonsee took a few steps down the hall and found the door, denoted with a small sign that read “BASEMENT.” Before she opened it, she peered further down the dark hall; the red wallpaper and carpet were stained, giving the whole passage an eerie crimson hue through the smoke-washed light. At the end of the hall was a staircase that spiraled upwards; even though there was nobody there, she found herself wrenching the door open just so that she could escape from the possibility that someone might appear. The whole place was unnerving.
Surprisingly, as she descended the stairwell, she found that the basement was a good deal brighter than the upstairs, owing to some garden-level windows and candles strewn about. Ignoring the flakes of paint drifting about, the air was much more breathable as well, the nice smell of cold cement overpowering whatever had been swirling together in the lobby.
In the corner of the decent-sized room, a man was busily scratching ink into paper at a little wooden chair and desk.
“Hello, Felix? Felix Bruhodt?” Sonsee called, a few steps off the ground
At the sound of a woman’s voice, he looked up from his paper. He was no older than thirty with a pink face and wearing modest clothes, though he kept an ascot around his neck in some attempt to seem refined.
“Ma’am?” he posited. “May I ask who you are?”
Sonsee descended the rest of the way and introduced herself. “I’m a friend of Rodan, Rodan Calari.”
His face lit up. “Oh, my friend, Rodan! Has he sent you here?”
Sonsee smiled awkwardly. “Well, not exactly…”
Felix sat in silence as she explained what had happened to the sculptor and his wife, and the dire predicament she was in. His face grew pale with concern when he learned of the orb falling into the hands of the Inquisition Squad.
“That’s quite the situation…” He mused, bringing his hand to his chin.
“I can’t go there myself,” Sonsee stated with a modest quiet. “That’s why I was sent here, no one else would be willing to help me than the Hewlinites.” She glanced around at the otherwise empty basement. “Where… are the others, if I can ask?”
Felix tapped his finger on the desk softly as he spoke. “Well, there aren’t very many of us, only myself and two others. Right now they’ve left to go pick up groceries for us. It’s easy to sneak out of here without being picked up on, and once you’re a good ways away you can drop the act like you’re sick.”
“Sick?” Sonsee asked with a sudden sting in her voice.
Felix looked up at her from the paper he’d been eyeing. “Why, what do you think is wrong with the people upstairs?”
She was flustered. “I assumed they were just addicts-”
“Were you not told beforehand what this place was?” he asked, trying his best not to sound pompous.
“I was-” she stammered. “I just didn’t think that everyone here was… infected…”
“Was there an old man up there?” he wondered. “Smoking something out of a long pipe?”
She nodded.
“That’s Alfonse,” Felix explained. “Not a bad man, but he was really broken down when he had to come here. Maybe you could tell, but nobody really comes here to make sure there’s a health standard. Have you ever smelled someone who’s died of Exitis?”
Sonsee shook her head, an anxious expression refusing to leave her face.
“Well, he isn’t smoking that pipe just for the feeling,” Felix leaned back and looked to one of the windows. “It’s powdered snapreed, grows outside the city naturally in the bogs, produces that strong smell like perfume. Every once in a while he runs out and one of us goes out to get him some more.”
“Do you like the smell?”
He laughed. “It’s better than some of the corpses that lay around here. Sometimes it takes a while to figure out who’s dead and who’s sleeping. Sort of like a nursing home.” He chortled again at his dark joke.
“A nursing home?” Sonsee didn’t get it.
“Hm?” he checked that she was serious. “You don’t know what that is? Where you send your grandparents when they’re too old for you to take care of?”
“What?” Sonsee was utterly lost. “The family doesn’t take care of the grandparents?”
“Not always, sometimes they can’t, sometimes they don’t want to.”
She stood there on the cement, befuddled, when Felix spoke up again. “Sorry, what were you looking for? I think we got lost.”
“Exactly what I said before,” she answered. “I’m trying to get into the Heavensward Gladial.”
Felix’s brows raised, and his forehead wrinkled. “By force?”
“How else? Do you think they’re just going to let a criminal walk in and take another criminal out of their jail cell?”
Felix laughed, not like before, but a nervous laugh. “You’re not serious, right?”
Sonsee blinked at him. “Are you telling me that you revolutionaries aren’t going to fight when they have one of your own?”
“Well…” Felix twiddled his thumbs, looking down. “Maybe Rodan will do fine without our help, kind of like a grandparent in a nursing home.”
She stared at him blankly. He went on.
“I mean, we aren’t really revolutionaries like maybe the ones over in the South Continent, we’re more like intellectual revolutionaries…”
“Intellectual…?”
They looked at each other, Felix open mouthed and Sonsee open eyed, when he stood up with his paper.
“Let me show you what I mean,” he straightened the parchment and began reading it off. “Now, this is something I was just finishing up when you came in, ahem:
‘From atop his black tower,
The gaze of tyrant looms tall.
When our history’s last hour
Strikes, the foolish bird will fall.
Grace permits, its love will show’r
Through God-given muck and pall.
The chamber within melts slowly,
The rose’s petals are still holy.’”
He looked up excitedly at her, watching her face for any minutia of a reaction. Sonsee’s face was unbearably tight, as she was using the strength of ten men to restrain herself from letting her emotions show.
“Oh God,” she thought. “They’re all artists.”
The door opened at the top of the stairwell, prompting both of them to crane their heads to attention. Sonsee’s nose twitched, there was something familiar in the air. Footsteps beat slowly down the steps. “Eugen?” Felix called, used to the distinct sound of his friend’s walk. Sonsee couldn’t help but smell something familiar, though her inability to place it set her on edge.
Slowly, a young man descended the creaking steps, followed by a young woman in a black shawl.
Sonsee’s jaw would have dropped had her nerves not been on high alert.
“Her!”
In a heartbeat, her spear was drawn, unfolding from beneath the thick black rain cloak Thornlove had gifted her. She flew through the air before Felix had a chance to say anything, flicking her weapon with a whooshing gale.
“[JOIN HANDS]”
---
In the months since Mello’s death, Eroh had taken to wearing a different vest over his mesh bodysuit, one with a thin, stylish fur line that wrapped from the collar to the plunging neckline. He’d spent a pretty penny on it before leaving Andeidra, and every time the fur blew dramatically in the wind, the purchase became more justified.
He sat perched atop the apartment complex, balanced quite well on the thin flat surface spaced between the two sides of the steep roof. The sky was a pale shade of blue that made him seem even paler than usual, though he wasn’t worried about being seen by a passerby. The only people around would probably write him off as a hallucination from the cheap drugs in their system or an angel of death sent to warn them of their impending disease.
“Whatever,” he thought, watching the occasional pedestrian walk down the thin, messy streets. To his right, far off in the distance, he could see an enormous stone bridge that carried much more wealthy folk to parts of the city they actually lived in. He scoffed a bit, imagining the wealthy aristocrat-types sneering down from the windows of their locomotives into the slums, and the irony that he was no better.
“We’re at the same level, but different buildings,” he mused, smirking at his metaphor. “Maybe they could buy an army, but I could kill a man myself. That’s the difference between us; a rich man and I are just as powerful, but his strength in money is just imaginary.”
His little internal rant was cut short when he heard the sound of wings flapping.
“Hm?” he muttered, turning his head to see a bird.
“What-?!”
He couldn’t believe his eyes.
Sonsee’s spear stopped dead in the air. For a moment, the room was quiet. In between two beastly red fingers, the point of her spear was rendered motionless. Sonsee’s eyes met Gruse’s, which bore no killing intent. Sonsee leapt back, keeping her spear drawn.
“Excuse me,” Felix whimpered. “W-What is happening?”
Sonsee kept her eyes on Gruse. “This woman killed President Cartwright.”
A pin drop would have sounded like thunder. Suddenly, another person entered from the stairs.
“Is your memory so bad?” Myst chided, appearing beside Gruse, hands in his pockets. “You were there, I’d think you’d remember who took the shot.”
Eugen, seemingly of the same disposition as Felix, joined him in cowering behind the desk.
“How did you get here?” Sonsee barked. “What are you here for?” She was starting to get sick of asking that question.
Gruse cleared her throat. “Well first thing, we aren’t trying to hurt you, this is just a funny coincidence, so you can put down the spear.”
Sonsee held a stoic glare, refusing the offer. Gruse threw her hands up dramatically.
“Okay, then. Look, we’re here on a contract, I don’t think you’d have what we’re looking for, so would you mind just stepping out while we do business?”
Sonsee didn’t budge. “What are you looking for?”
Gruse scoffed. “None of your business.”
For the first time since entering this bizarre scene, Eugen spoke up in a boyish, feathery voice. “I mean it, we don’t have it, Rodin Calari was supposed to receive it!”
Sonsee snapped her gaze to Eugen. “What did you say?” Her voice was gruff enough to make him jolt. “What did you say?” she repeated, pressure mounting in her words.
“Well,” he began. “These people met me outside in the lobby and threatened to hurt me if I didn’t tell them about an item that our friend Rodin was supposed to get; you must know Rodin, he’s an absolutely wonderful sculptor-”
“What was it?” Sonsee caused him to draw back again.
Myst took note of her tone. “Hey, lady,” he prompted her. “Do you have any idea what we’re talking about?” As a mercenary, he was used to speaking on the back foot of the situation in terms of information while still keeping his words jagged and dangerous.
“I might just,” Sonsee turned to the assassins. “Some kind of black orb?”
Their eyes lit up. “What do you know about it??” Gruse snapped.
“Well, if you were going to send them to Rodin, you’re out of luck,” Sonsee glanced at Eugen. “He and his wife were arrested by the Inquisition Squad last night.”
“What?!” Felix and Eugen shouted in unison, echoing off the basement walls.
“Before they took them, he gave the orb to us.”
“Us?” Felix wondered, looking around at Sonsee’s lack of companionship.
“You don’t need to worry about that,” she replied, looking to Myst and Gruse.
“Where is it?” Myst demanded. “There’s a big price on that thing!”
“Gallow had the orb,” Sonsee explained. “And he’s also being held by them.”
Gruse stared at her. “So that means…”
Sonsee didn’t need to finish the sentence for her. “What do you need it for, anyway?”
Myst spoke up. “That orb was stolen from a private collector in Andeidra and sold on the black market to someone we traced here. We found the ship it was sent off on and figured out the rest.”
Sonsee’s eyes flickered. “You found Captain Thornlove?” She couldn’t restrain the concern in her voice.
“You know that woman?” Gruse asked.
“How do you think we met Rodin?”
Gruse threw her hands up and slacked her neck to the side mockingly. “I guess, fair enough. Why did you clowns want it, anyway?” She directed her last question to the Hewlinites cowering in the corner.
“Hey,” Eugen put on a brave voice, shaky nevertheless. “My aunt was a clown; there’s no shame in the clown business.”
Sonsee looked from Felix and Eugen to the assassins. “They wanted it for the little coup they were planning.”
“Huh?” Myst cocked an eyebrow. “How would you use that for a coup? It’s an art piece, isn’t it?”
“Apparently, it’s an ancient powerful relic,” Sonsee said flatly. “Something like that.”
Gruse stepped forward, pacing around the space between her and Sonsee. “Well, I don’t really care what it is, I’m just trying to get paid. Do you know how much was put up for it? $10,000,” she said haughtily. “I could live off that for the rest of my life without having to worry about being public enemy number one.”
Sonsee couldn’t help a small smile from curling at one side of her mouth. “I guess that’s another thing we have in common,” she grinned.
“Huh?” Gruse stopped and put her hands at her hips, lowering an eyebrow. “Two? What do you mean?”
Sonsee pointed her spear upwards, letting it rest on the ground cradled in her arm. “We both want something back from the same place, from the same people… Put it together.” She felt so smooth facing the two of them down, she wanted to relish in the feeling of coolness.
Gruse and Myst’s faces both grew expressions of intrigue and disbelief. Sonsee folded her weapon up gracefully and fastened it to her waist, striding forward and extending a hand to both of them. Gruse took a long look at it before placing her soft, pale hand in Sonsee’s rough, dark one. Sonsee clasped it firmly and pulled both Gruse and herself together so that their right breasts met. After disengaging, she noticed Gruse’s bewildered, frazzled face.
“That’s an Atamape handshake,” she explained with a grin. “The closest agreements are between two hearts.” With that, she reached for Myst, who took her hand more gladly, both to make Gruse feel more odd for being uncomfortable as well as to rub against an attractive fit woman.
Gruse let out a sigh, “I suppose if our interests align, we can help each other out.” Her shoulders slouched and she let her arms dangle at her waist.
Sonsee paused for a moment. “Sorry, but how did you two find this place?”
Myst’s lips parted as two disparate things came together in his mind. “You said you knew that Captain Thornlove?”
“I sailed with her from Andeidra, yes,” Sonsee bit.
Myst chuckled awkwardly. “We kind of shook her down for information, she just told us to come here.”
Sonsee’s brow furrowed. “When was this?”
“Just an hour or two ago,” Myst replied.
Sonsee sputtered for a moment in disbelief. “That means she sent you here after she gave me the address!”
Myst had a blank, sappy expression. “Why, is that meaningful?”
Sonsee put her hands on her hips. “You don’t think it’s a little questionable to get shaken down and then send those people after your friend?”
Gruse was finally able to cackle. “Do you think you’re her friend?”
Sonsee paused, and considered both the coldness and generosity shown to her by the captain.
Before she could answer, a thumping sound came down the stairs.
“Hey, fellas,” a dark voice rasped from above. “Look who I found!”
Eroh hit the bottom of the steps, on his hand was a black bird with a single golden feather, its leg tied to a string wrapped around his finger. He had an incredulous smile on his face, but the instant he saw Sonsee, it melted into alarm.
“Hey,” he chopped. “What the hell is she doing here?”
Gruse wasted no time in giving him the short of what was going on. “The Inquisition Squad has the orb and Gallow; we want the orb, she wants Gallow, we’re working together.”
Eroh chewed on her explanation for a moment before swallowing and digesting it.
“You’ll probably get to kill someone,” Myst added to win him over.
Eroh cocked his chin up. “Oh, why didn’t you say so,” he had a bit of sarcasm in his voice, while remaining honest. “Anyway, you recognize this girl?” He gently waved the bird around for them to see.
Gruse leaned in, one eye squinted. “Is this the same bird?”
“Yep, the same one,” Eroh assured her. “Mello told me there were no other birds with the same feather, pretty funny, huh?”
As the three of them marveled at their old “pet,” Sonsee found herself shrinking back slowly in discomfort. The near-death experience she’d suffered at his hands was still fresh in her mind, and it was otherworldly to see the same person so… docile.
Myst suddenly looked up from the bird to Sonsee.
“I don’t think anyone introduced themselves,” he noted.
One by one, they told her their names.
“I’m Myst.”
“Gruse.”
“Eroh.”
Sonsee held her tongue for a moment before returning the gesture. “My name is Sonsee-array, Sonsee for short.” She looked at all three of them, once her devoted enemies, and now partners.
Myst nodded. “Nice to meet you, Sonsee, if that’s ok?”
Sonsee’s nose twitched again, and her eyes darted to the top of the stairs. “Someone’s here,” she announced gravely. Thumping footstep could be heard overhead, heavy boots knocking hard even on the carpeted floors.
From the back of the room, Felix and Eugen, who had been silently watching this whirlwind of negotiations, ran to push over an antique cabinet pressed against a wall.
“They’re coming!” Felix cried. “We didn’t expect this so soon, they’re coming!”
The cabinet scooted back to reveal a small doorway that led to a single poorly-lit room.
“Come!” Eugen implored them, gesturing wildly from behind the cabinet.
Eroh looked over his shoulder and up the stairs. “I’m good,” he muttered in a distressingly casual tone. He took the string off his finger with his teeth and handed it to Gruse. “Take her, I need this arm.” With that he took off up the stairwell, followed closely by Myst and Gruse. Sonsee was the last to join them when they paused right before the basement door. Eroh’s ear was pressed against it, listening intently to orient who was where in the room. After a few seconds, he threw the door wide open and rushed out.
Two Inquisition inspectors were standing in the lobby, their eyes snapping to him as soon as they heard the sound of the door slamming against the wall. Eroh’s murderous intent was palpable, and they had barely drawn their thin clubs when he had already skidded past them, his body lunged forward like a pouncing panther. A thin trail of clear poison shimmered in the air and one of them fell to the ground, his black uniform torn across the chest. With a whirl, Eroh pivoted around and followed up against the second inspector, striking his arm. The inspector dropped his club before receiving a kick to the stomach from Eroh’s left leg.
Sonsee watched in a kind of horror as he delivered the final blow across the inspector’s face. Eroh stood up straight and threw his head back, shoulders heaving as he basked in the afterglow of his violence, a modest smile drawn across his black lips. The old man held his pipe between his lips from his chair, casting a glance over to the carnage, lifting his eyebrows before returning to his smoke.
Another set of footsteps trampled down the hall of the basement door, where the other three were still hidden out of sight. Two more inspectors ran past, but before they had gotten past the door, a red arm flashed through the air and skewered both of them. As Gruse’s Vocation vanished, they fell to the ground lifelessly.
Sonsee clutched her stomach, she felt like vomiting. Gruse stepped out into the hall, bird in hand, and peered down at her kill.
“That’s strange,” she muttered. “Hey, Eroh,” she called down the hall. “Is there any blood?”
“What?” Eroh glanced around and realized that in the release of his repressed instinct, he’d forgotten his favorite part of a messy death. He knelt down to inspect the bodies, touching a finger to where he’d slashed the first’s chest. “No,” he yelled back. “Just… dust?
Gruse set about examining the two in the hall, noting that they seemingly possessed muscle tissue and veins, but little to no blood and skin that hardened around the puncture site.
Sonsee found that her queasiness had subsided enough to make the connection in her mind.
“I think I know what’s going on,” she stepped forward, followed by Myst. Gruse looked up at her.
“I’ve only met one of the leaders of the Inquisition Squad,” Sonsee explained. “But she smelled just like this, and I’ve seen a person like this, it was stowed away on The Prayer trying to get to the orb.
“Do you think…?” Myst wondered cautiously, staring at the unnatural corpses.
“I couldn’t tell you,” Sonsee answered. “But we could get to the bottom of it.”
“Well, then,” Gruse stood up, straightening her shawl. “Let’s.” She strode out into the lobby and turned to the door.