Chapter 1 #2
He gasps, outraged, his newly freed hands flying to his pink cheek. “Hey!”
“I leave you alone for five bloody minutes to go and get my new job scrolls—I come back and you’re being marched towards the Citadel? I nearly had a heart attack when I saw you’d gotten caught!”
Torver rubs his cheek where she had hit him and straightens his grubby tunic. They return to the narrow, winding streets, away from the square and its Citadel.
“It’s not my fault! Weren’t you listening? I got robbed!” He can’t help but pout. “I nipped back to my house and—”
She flips her hair over her shoulder, exposing the underside braid he’d woven for her that morning. “You mean that dilapidated hut you rent?”
“My house,” he intonates, pushing his hands into the pockets of his trousers.
“And all of my savings were gone! Every last coin I’ve been saving all these years—now in the hands of some burglar.
So yes, sorry if I was in a bit of a panic and it caught the attention of an Enforcer. My life basically ended this morning.”
He meant it to deflect Bassen’s annoyance at having to come and rescue him, but as he says it, he realises it to be true. He blinks away the sting of his eyes.
Years of working illegally with the deathmancer, yan passed from hand to scrolless hand, are now down the drain. He lets out a mournful breath. “Seven hundred yan. All gone.”
Bassen links her arm through his as they walk, the coldness of her body next to him a welcome respite from the humid air. He hears her lack of response loud and clear. He continues regardless, the loss like claws in his ribs.
“Only three hundred more before I could pay for my new life,” he sighs. “No more hiding…”
Her arm tightens slightly and he sighs, looking down at his scuffed boots.
“Torv,” she groans, her head lolled back in frustration, her voice deep with the tilt of her neck.
“I’ve told you a million times—that’s so sketchy trying to buy fake papers.
Surely you know, whoever that forger is you found, they must be a scam artist?
Only the Officials can make real papers.
And you don’t need to buy counterfeit papers!
It’s not your fault your magic never grew in. You’re perfectly fine as you are.”
Torver lets go of her arm.
“You don’t get it,” he huffs.
They weave through side-streets, crossing small bridges over the snaking roots of the river, towards the west where the sun sets, crossing paths with a few people as they walk.
Some dress in rags, others in merchant finery; firemancers in blacksmithing leathers, soothsayers in shimmering robes.
Those that don’t recognise Bassen smile at them, those that do clear out of the streets long before they can get close.
Torver is used to this fact by now, and he knows that Bassen got used to it long ago.
“You’re right.” She frowns up at him. “I don’t get it, because I’m not magicless like you are. But you know what I do have? I have the rarest, most powerful magic the People’s Kingdom has ever known. And exactly one friend.”
The corners of Torver’s mouth quiver, the last remnants of his adrenaline fading, replaced with his normal level of unease.
“I will always try to protect you, Torv. But if you get caught buying fake papers, I can’t save you. I need to know that you know that.”
He shoots her a withering look, the dark brown waves of his hair falling in front of his eyes.
“Of course I do. You’ve told me more than once,” he sighs. “But you know it’s not just about the papers.”
Bassen goes quiet for a while. Then, eventually—
“I suppose you’ll need somewhere else to live?” she says.
The tumult of his capture and rescue have muddled him and reality slaps him in the face harder than Bassen did.
“I can’t go back to my hut, can I?”
The realisation is crushing.
That Enforcer knows that he is a paperless, scrolless criminal. She knows his face. And now, she knows where he lives. The rental huts of the cider slums whose scent fades with every step.
“So you admit it’s a hut?” Bassen smirks.
“Shut up.” He knocks into her, sending her swaying into the middle of the empty street.
“You can mooch off me, how about that?” Bassen elbows him. “Come and stay at mine. As long as you want!”
“Bassen, I can’t,” he says on instinct. “I couldn’t possibly.”
She doesn’t let up. “You know I have the space—and you practically live with me anyway! And I have money! Enough to illegally pay you to do half my work for all these years. They can’t stop throwing job scrolls at me, they want so many things killed for them.
All I ask in return is that you braid my hair when my arms are too tired. ”
Torver frowns, heavy with the guilt of his reliance. She does so much for him. But, as usual, she’s right. His list of options isn’t exactly endless.
“Are you really sure?” he says hesitantly.
“Do you really have any other choice?”
He supposes, with a sigh, that he doesn’t.
“Thank you, Bass,” he manages eventually. She squeezes his arm and begins to pull him down a ginnel that turns in a grand loop, spitting its travellers out onto Bassen’s street. Her house is at the end of it—a modest redstone, separated from the river by a wall.
Torver shakes his head.
“I’ll meet you there,” he says. “There’s just something I’ve got to do first.”
She looks at him for a long moment.
“Tell me you’re not going to see him?”
Torver brushes his hand through his tangled hair. “My secret contact? Of course I am. I’ve got to go and break the deal off, haven’t I?”
The lie comes easily.
Bassen lets out a breath. “Fine, but here—take this.”
She pulls the cloak from her shoulders, made of dark green linen with a large hood. She balls it up and pushes it into his arms.
“Don’t let anyone see you, you hear? Promise me. People won’t stay away from you if I’m not there and, Beast below, if that Enforcer sees that I haven’t killed you…”
Torver flashes his most charming grin. “Bass, please. I’m not completely useless.”
That lie comes less easily.
“Just watch out for her, yeah? Silver armour—must be quite high ranking.”
“I’ll be careful, Bass.”
When she walks away, he watches. He waves and waits for the ginnel to swallow her. He doesn’t want her to look back and see the direction he’s heading in.
She’s all he has. His best friend, his perennial saviour.
But if she knew where he was going, he’s not sure she would forgive him.