Chapter 14
"Your key," Headbird said, handing Chaska the key to her room, into which Shiro had already deposited her belongings, a large chunk of the burden he'd been carrying.
Headbird had clearly considered helping with it on the way up to the second floor, but he seemed informed enough about guns to know it wasn't something someone would eagerly hand over, even out of a genuine spirit of service.
As for the skull bag, the one Shiro had been granted the great honor of carrying, he held onto it with a fervor Headbird seemed to have noticed too.
"Is my room like this as well?" Shiro asked, after thoroughly checking hers and finding nothing that would make Headbird's earlier pitch sound like false advertising.
"Yes, of course," Headbird confirmed.
Golden afternoon light streamed through large mullioned windows, bathing the room in warmth.
A grand four-poster bed dominated the space, flanked by a beautifully carved dresser and a small writing desk topped with a vase of fresh wildflowers.
It was better furnished than advertised too, with two armchairs around a small table and enough additional pieces to make the room feel lived in rather than merely spacious.
"Bathroom," Headbird said, gesturing, glancing over at Chaska, who'd stayed in the front section, sitting on the bed.
If Shiro had to guess, she was dying to throw herself onto it, but held back, partly out of decorum in front of them, and partly because of her injuries, which he was quickly reminded of.
"It's got running hot water," Shiro confirmed after checking it himself.
"Exactly as promised," Headbird beamed. "If anything doesn't work, which I doubt it will, just let me know. I'm available around the clock for any issue, not that I expect any."
Talk about customer service. This old man knows his stuff.
"I want to see my room," Shiro declared.
"At once," Headbird said, following closely behind. At the doorway, Shiro turned back to ask Chaska, "You're good staying here on your own, right?"
She nodded, and he pulled the door shut behind him.
Headbird handled Shiro's room the same way he had Chaska's, opening the suite door for him.
Shiro, once welcomed in, showed absolutely no restraint.
He'd paid for this room. He'd paid for the right to throw himself onto that bed, and the bounce it gave elicited something close to an orgasmic reaction out of him.
Kind of orgasmic, maybe. He honestly wasn't sure. He couldn't even remember what that actually felt like anymore.
"Yeah, gotta fix this," he muttered, jerking himself out of bed, mind now set on tracking down the brothel he'd been pointed toward. If anyone could fix his problem, it'd be there.
"Do you need anything else?" Headbird asked. "Food, perhaps. Surely you must be hungry after your journey."
"Now that you mention it, yeah. But this food you're offering, can it be eaten quickly? I've got some urgent business to attend to."
"I can arrange that," Headbird said, rattling off a few meal options he promised to have ready. "Would that be all?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"Alright. And, erm, how should I address you? I know your name, but our clients often prefer a bit of discretion, and we value confidentiality here." He glanced meaningfully at the Vanguard.
"Shiro's fine," he answered without thinking. "As for Chaska, since she hasn't said otherwise, I don't think she has any reason to hide her name."
"Understood. Well, Master Shiro, enjoy your stay with us. Don't hesitate to ask if you need anything."
"Alright—oh, right, actually I do need help with something."
"Yes?"
"About mo—actually, forget it."
He'd almost asked about money, since he'd just realized he had absolutely no concept of its value, none of it clicked the way certain things tended to despite his amnesia.
Someone would need to walk him through it the way people had already walked him through basic geography.
He briefly considered asking Headbird, then decided Chaska was probably the better choice.
Left alone in his room, he immediately started counting, or cataloguing, really, the money he'd gotten from Anya.
When he got it from here, he hadn't bothered to check it yet, but from the look, weight, and feel of it, it seemed roughly what he'd asked her for that night, in exchange for the second bullet and the promise of future business: enough to keep him motivated to stay in contact.
"This amount could either make me look like I struck a great deal, or like an idiot happy with scraps," he mumbled. "Okay, let's see. I've got this, and these, and these."
His purse held several types of coins, splitting into three color categories, silver, gold, and a pale yellowish white, further split by size. Take the silver ones as an example.
That category came in eight different sizes.
He had the four largest in bulk, over 120 combined, which made the rarity of the smaller sizes stand out sharply.
The third smallest had only four coins. The second smallest, two.
The smallest, just one. It bore nothing but a crown symbol on one side and a strange glyph on the other.
It didn't take him long to notice something startling: he recognized that glyph as the letter O, which meant he was somehow literate in a language he couldn't even name.
"Okay. That's good. That has to be good," he told himself, and started paying closer attention to the glyphs on each coin.
Numerically, the gold coins far outnumbered the silver ones.
He only had five gold variants in his purse, though that only reflected what he was currently carrying, not necessarily every variant that existed.
He had roughly equal amounts of each, with one exception, the T.
Baelor, the second largest of the gold coins, which made up a huge chunk of what he had.
As for the third type, he only had one coin, marked with the same letter as the smallest gold coin. That letter, O, he now understood, meant the number one, suggesting this was the lowest denomination of the pale white lineup.
"Okay, not totally sure what any of this is actually worth, but I've got a feeling I'm sitting on a small fortune."
Judging just by the T. Baelor he had, he and Chaska could go three and a half months without worrying about food or shelter, exactly what this place offered.
He also had a large stack of the smaller gold variants, taking up a fair chunk of the purse.
And that wasn't even counting the larger variant.
"And this," he thought, lifting the milky white coin up.
"Value-wise, this has to sit right between gold and silver," he muttered, though he couldn't say why exactly.
All three colored coins were identical in size, each bearing the same O symbol, which reduced his read on their worth to a pure guess.
His mind told him one thing. His instincts flatly disagreed.
"I should just go ask Chaska," he decided.
He stashed the coins and headed straight down the hall. Her door was still unlocked, exactly as he’d left it, allowing him to walk right in, which turned out to be a huge mistake.
"Hey, I'm gonna need your help with som— wow," he stammered, cutting himself off. He'd just stumbled onto something he definitely wasn't supposed to see.
Back at the base of the mountain, when he'd first met her, she'd been bundled in heavy winter layers, that with her personality made him expect a different mood of garments.
It turned out she favored outfits that seemed to deliberately showcase her tattoos, granting him a view he'd have thought couldn't be beaten, until now.
For a solid three seconds, he caught sight of roughly eighty-five percent of her markings.
The missing fifteen percent was only hidden because her left arm happened to be blocking it.
Ironically, her clumsy, panicked scramble to cover herself only ended up flashing that last fifteen percent, revealing all of it.
He had a feeling the lines connected somewhere down there, since it seemed strange for the lines running along her limbs to just be random, unconnected parallels, but seeing them actually meet in that particular place was a real surprise.
Given what the white markings meant, there had to be a reason they connected there specifically, one he was curious about but knew better than to ask right now.
His three seconds of confusion ended with him stepping back and shutting the door.
"My bad, my bad! Should've knocked, definitely should have, but you also should've locked the door before—"
"What do you want?!"
"Nothing important, I was just about to—" he started, then noticed something happening. "Hold on, what is this?" He reached down to check. It was exactly what he suspected. Hard again. Better yet, this time it had responded to actual stimuli, not just morning wood. "Let's gooooooooo!"
"Go where?" she called from inside.
"Nothing, forget I said anything." With that, he nearly bolted straight for the nearest brothel, because what else was there to do, he couldn't let this opportunity go to waste. But as eager as he was, something stopped him. He owed her at least this much. "Hey, I'm heading out now, so I—"
"I'll come too," she declared abruptly, then, "wait—hsss,” he heard her wince behind the door.
“You good?”
“Yeah, wait for me a minute.”
She’d hurt herself and he could exactly how: scrambling to get dressed to follow him instead of settling into the bath she'd clearly been about to have.
"Take it easy," he said. He was about to tell her not to bother, since there was no way he was taking her where he actually planned to go, but a thought stopped him. "I was thinking of heading to the temple, actually,” he said, remembering the girl’s opinion about temples, when he mentioned planning about taking her there.
“To deal with your injuries. They've got healers there who could fix your collarbone pretty easily. "
"No!" came the sudden, sharp answer.
"No?"
"I'm not going there."
"You have something against temples?" he asked, partly-playing dumb and partly curious about her real reason.
"I'm not going there," she repeated.
"Erm... okay," he said, a smile creeping onto his face. "You sure, though?"
She let out a sound that told him to drop it entirely.
He hadn't expected her to be quite this firm.
If she'd said yes, he'd have been doing a genuine good deed, undoing some of the harm he'd caused.
Since she said no, well, that just meant he had an opening to go find the treatment he actually needed.
"Alright then, I'll head to the temple without you, and pray," he said, waving as he backed further and further from her door.
He half expected her to burst out after him, given how insistent she'd been about tagging along everywhere, but apparently her refusal to set foot in a temple outweighed her urge to stick with him.
"This is for the best, I guess," he shrugged, making his way down to the ground floor, where Headbird was waiting with what he gestured was his food.
"Thanks," Shiro said, grabbing the burrito-like thing off the counter and taking a first bite that exploded with flavor, the meat practically melting, the cream enhancing whatever vegetables were tucked inside.
"Good?"
"Ten out of ten."
"Told you our cook knows his craft. This is nothing compared to what he can really do, just wait for dinner," Headbird said.
"Can't wait," Shiro nodded, taking another bite. "Send one of these to Chaska's room too." He glanced at the young girl standing nearby, the one who'd greeted them at the door. "Have her deliver it. Knock before going in."
"Naturally," Headbird nodded, waving the girl over.
With that, Shiro headed out toward the brothel, one specific brothel, the one Maiq had suggested was worth the money if he could afford it.
He passed through a mercantile district along the way, where he managed to buy a proper coin pouch using the smallest of his gold coins, which seemed common enough currency around here.
Eventually he reached the recommended place, and it gave off a good vibe right away.
Mid-afternoon, and already the place sounded busy. Very busy.
He walked in to find a sea of women, all in motion, some applying makeup, others carrying boxes past him, giving him the impression he'd walked in on preparations for some major upcoming event.
"Sorry, ladies," he called out, catching everyone's attention. "Who's in charge here?"
The room went quiet for a beat, before a woman in her late forties stepped forward. "Me."
"Well madam, I'll keep this short since you all look busy. I need someone to help me with something.” He considered laying everything right here and right now but then voted again, saying instead as held up his pouch containing a portion of his money.
I just need at “least” one of your girls to do me “things”, for this bag of money. "