11. Fenric
By the time Fenric reached the rental house, he was soaked to the bone.
It didn’t matter whether he was in his human or cat form, being drenched left him in a pissy mood.
When he added in the fact he had no new coin and had spent a good chunk of his evening in jail, he wasn’t fit to be around anyone.
Thankfully, when he crept into the dark house, he found everyone had either turned in for the night or was still out carousing. His wet boots squelched as he padded up the stairs. His cold, wet clothes clung to him like a second skin and his hair dripped water down his face.
A low creak cried out from his bedroom door as he slipped inside. He quickly shut it behind him and paused, listening for Hapi’s low breathing. Necromancer or not, the elf still liked to sleep, and he could be nasty when someone disturbed him.
Just a whisper of breath rose from his side of the room. Fenric took one step. His foot landed on something round that shouldn’t have been there and he tumbled over, landing hard, barely catching himself enough to stop his face from slamming into the floor.
“What the fuck!” he roared, not giving a shit about Hapi and his sleep.
There was immediately a clatter of bones and a scraping noise as one or more skelebabies scurried away to hide under Hapi’s bed.
“You’re late getting back,” Hapi stated in a sleepy voice.
A teardrop flame appeared, cutting through the darkness when the elf lit a candle.
He rolled over on his side, his pale blond hair falling across his thin shoulder as he stared down at where Fenric still lay on the floor in a heap.
“The skelebabies were worried and wanted to wait up for you.”
“And they had to do it in front of the door?” Fenric grunted as he picked himself up off the floor. There was more grunting and swearing as he peeled off wet clothes. They made a loud splat on the wood as he dropped them, along with the thud of his boots.
“I thought this was just a quick snatch and grab. You said you had the perfect place scouted.” Hapi sounded less sleepy now as he watched Fenric dry off with a towel he’d left in their room from earlier.
“It was supposed to be, but the whole thing was an utter disaster and I ended up spending a couple hours cooling my heels in the Pomor jail.”
Hapi let out a dry snort. “You’re joking.”
“But it wasn’t my fault.”
“It couldn’t have been. Your stealth and thieving skills are flawless.”
Fenric took the pat to his ego. Hapi wasn’t the type to say platitudes and other nice things just to soothe a person’s ruffled feathers. If he said someone was good at something, then he believed it based on hard evidence.
After pulling on his last pair of clean pants, Fenric threw his towel down with the rest of his clothes forming a puddle on the floor and sat on the edge of the bed facing his friend. “I chose Cartwright’s place because he and his wife were supposed to be attending this fancy dinner.”
“He’s the rich merchant?”
Fenric made a noise of agreement. “The house was supposed to be empty except for the cook.”
“Who I’m sure you took care of.”
“Of course. Except Mrs. Cartwright didn’t go to dinner. She invited in a pretty boy for some bedroom fun without her old husband.”
Hapi huffed a dark laugh. “And I’m guessing you ran into him. Probably thought you were the husband come home early to kill him.”
“No idea. But when Mrs. Cartwright realized she was caught, she ran to the window, tits flopping everywhere, and started screaming thief and intruder. Loverboy and me made a run for it, but it was too late. We got grabbed and chucked in jail for our troubles.”
Hapi rolled onto his back, near silent laughter tumbling out of him at Fenric’s bad luck. “And I’m guessing the watch rounded up anything you’d managed to pocket.”
“That’s just it—I ransacked the entire first floor and there was nothing.
Nothing, I tell you. Not a single fancy candlestick or good piece of cutlery.
Not even a painting worth a damn. All the rugs and furniture were threadbare.
I swear, if that man has more than two gold coins to rub together, he’s got them hidden somewhere no one is going to find them.
Unfortunately, because of the lady’s screaming, I didn’t get to search the second floor. ”
“So, your pockets are empty once again,” Hapi observed.
“Two coppers and lint. That’s all I’ve got for now.
” Fenric threw himself down on the thin mattress and pulled his blanket partially across his body.
The air was warm, but the rain had left a chill to his skin.
“My face has been seen around town too much now. It’s getting too hard for me to wander around Pomor. I might scout out Bjornkill soon.”
Hapi yawned and pushed up enough to blow out the candle. “We can talk with the others tomorrow to see if they’re ready to move on. I’ve no reason to stay here any longer.”
Fenric’s fist twisted in the blanket as he stared at the black ceiling.
The rain had slowed to a gentle pitter-patter on the roof and against the windows.
He’d gotten nearly everything he wanted in Pomor and then some.
He’d followed up on a couple of leads about his mother’s lost treasures.
The main thing was to get his hands on more coin.
His funds had been running dangerously low when they’d rolled into Pomor roughly a month ago.
He’d hoped to make himself a tidy pile of loot while here to hold him over for a while so he could afford to focus exclusively on finding those lost items—and possibly killing the people who’d stolen them, but that was just icing on the cake.
Instead, he’d gotten a couple of shreds of maybe useful information and a puppy who was killing them off again and again with his cooking. Yeah, they needed to get the fuck out of Pomor before anything else weird happened.
“Are you any closer to finding what you’re looking for?”
Fenric was startled out of his wandering thoughts by Hapi’s question. He thought the elf had fallen back to sleep. “Huh? What are you talking about?” He’d not told anyone he was searching for something. The other men definitely didn’t know anything about his mother.
For a heartbeat, it felt like his stomach had fallen out. He wasn’t ready for anyone to learn about his mother. Doing so would have the group learning more about him than he was prepared to share. Stuff he might never be ready to share. It was all a dark pit he didn’t want to talk about.
But to climb out of that pit, to put the past behind him at last and reclaim those lost pieces of himself, started with getting back those stolen treasures.
An irritated noise escaped Hapi and he yawned again. “We all have something we want. Our private little quests. I’m willing to bet they all fall into the same three categories.”
“Which are?”
“We’re either searching for something, wanting to kill someone, or running from something.”
Wow. Hapi’s words were frighteningly accurate. Fenric needed to reconsider bunking with him so much. The elf noticed far more than Fenric gave him credit for. Couple more years and Hapi would know all of Fenric’s secrets.
“You don’t strike me as the type to run from something, and I really feel that if you wanted to kill someone, you would have done it already. That just leaves looking for something.” Hapi’s speech was getting more slurred the longer he spoke. He sounded half asleep already.
“Which category do you think Puppy falls into?”
“All of the above,” Hapi mumbled.
Fenric grinned into the darkness at Hapi’s answer as his heart slowed back down, his fear passing, but the smile slid away almost as quickly as it had formed.
Maxie couldn’t be more than eighteen or nineteen, with little to no practical experience in the world, and if Hapi was right, he was already so in over his head.
They had to get serious about giving him the training and tools he needed to survive. Hopefully he learned to ask for help.
Fenric snorted and rolled over. Yeah, Maxie would probably learn to rely on others as quickly as Fenric had.