Chapter 85

Now three coppers lighter, Luke stood on the inside of the gate and took a deep breath. The city smelled, well, if he was being honest, it smelled awful. Maybe the wall prevented fresh air from circulating through, or maybe too many people were dumping their chamber pots in the street at once, but either way, Kazos was nowhere near as clean as Valtira.

It didn’t take long to get directions to the business district, where Luke had his choice of half a dozen different stores selling traveling supplies. His mother would have strangled him for it, but Luke did not comparison shop between them. He picked the least dumpy looking one on the dubious logic that it would have the least dumpy merchandise, then bought a pair of knapsacks, and filled them both with food. He bought two new pans and a canteen, a small hatchet for splitting firewood, and a first aid kit, though the shopkeeper called it a medic’s bag.

That last one was more for Zea, just in case. He couldn’t heal her with [Life Surge] and she didn’t have a way to patch up her own injuries, which was really another point in favor of her acquiring some actual spells if she didn’t want to be a physical fighter like him. In the meantime though, being able to bandage and stitch a wound might literally save her life.

With directions to a tailor in hand, Luke wandered around town looking for the shop and protecting his three bags from tampering. After the third time he caught a young pickpocket by the wrist, he said, “Look kid, it’s just apples and bread and shit.”

“I know,” the sullen ten year old said, trying to jerk his hand back. “I’m hungry.”

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Luke muttered. “Am I really being stalked by a pack of starving homeless orphans?”

He released the kid, who stood there massaging his wrist and giving Luke the stink eye. With a sigh, Luke fished out an apple and tossed it to the boy. “That’s all you’re getting. Tell your buddies I said to fuck off before I have to get mean about it. Sorry about the wrist, but I’m not going to be so gentle next time.”

Luke watched the kid scurry off for a moment, then shook his head and started walking again. He knew he was close to that tailor’s shop, but couldn’t quite find it. Maybe he should have told the kid he’d give him a bit of food if he took Luke there, but he figured it was even odds that he’d end up walking into some sort of trap set up by the Oliver Twist gang. It was better to sidestep that possibility completely and just find the stupid tailor on his own.

That did not stop the kids from following him. The great thing about having such a high perception was that he didn’t need to see them to know they were there, though [Peripheral Awareness] often pointed the kids out to him anyway. There were at least twenty of them, some of whom did a credible job of hiding. Others stared at him openly, or rather at the two knapsacks he had slung over his shoulder.

Luke heard the yelling before he rounded the corner. “-my fault they won’t fix the fucking hole in the road, now is it!”

“Well you could have driven around it!”

“Not bloody fucking likely.”

Two men were standing next to a wagon, arguing loudly. It was loaded to the hilt with cargo so heavy that he could see the wood bowing under the weight. A pair of sturdy, thick-limbed horses waited patiently in their harness while pedestrians streamed around them, surprisingly placid despite the commotion. Luke didn’t know much about horses, but he’d always heard they were skittish animals.

“How are we going to get it out of here? The horses were already struggling. I told you we should have done two loads.”

“We don’t have time for two loads,” the other man said.

“Yeah, we saved ourselves a bunch of time, didn’t we? All the time in the fucking world.”

“Yeah, shut it.” The man raised his voice and said, “Anyone willing to help us out here? Someone with a bit of strength to lift with?”

Luke could go around. He didn’t need to get involved. Nobody else was stopping either, at least not any longer than they had to while they waited for their turn to squeeze past the wagon. Now that he could see it, the back wheel was stuck in a giant pothole, perfectly sized to hold it in place. Between that and the weight, it was no wonder they were stuck.

“Come on,” the man begged. “Somebody. I’ll pay!”

Luke paused. Easy money was something he could use more of. “How much?” one of the women in the crowd asked.

The man grimaced, and said, “Four copper?”

The woman snorted and walked away while the flow of traffic around the wagon resumed. Luke looked around for a street sign, hoping to find something that would confirm he was heading in the right direction, or even the wrong direction if it meant he didn’t need to wait to get around the wagon. Then he let out a groan when he spotted the sign in the window, a pair of scissors and a spool of thread.

Of course, it was just his luck that the tailor he was looking for was right there, just behind the wagon. He could probably squeeze by if he had to. He’d need both men to move first, but he could do it. On the other hand, he didn’t think it wouldn’t be that hard to get the wagon moving again, and maybe it would buy him some goodwill with the tailor himself, who Luke could see watching with tightly-pressed lips through a window.

“I’ll help,” Luke said, stepping up to the wagon. “Just need to lift, right?”

“Yeah,” the man said, his face lighting up. His partner gave a snort and nodded.

“You are the luckiest son of a bitch, you know that? I can’t believe anybody is willing to go out of their way for four fucking coppers.”

“Well, that and I want to get into the shop you’re blocking,” Luke said.

“Oh, sorry about that,” the man said. “It really was an accident. We don’t normally take this route, and this knucklehead wasn’t paying attention.”

“Throw me under the cart, why don’t you?” the other guy muttered. “Like it’s my fault there’s a huge fucking hole in the street.”

Luke ignored the bickering and slung both knapsacks onto the cargo. He reached down to grab the wagon, and looked over to the man. “Ready?” he asked. At the return nod, he heaved upwards. Wood groaned and creaked, but the wheel slowly lifted free of the hole. As soon as it was clear, the man urged the horses forward a few steps.

“Thanks, sir,” the politer of the two men said. He fished out four copper and held them out. “Wish I could pay you more, but it’s all I got on me.”

“Sure,” Luke said. “No problem.”

He caught a blur of movement out of the corner of his eye and turned just in time to see one of the orphans turn a nimble no-hands cartwheel through the air, snatch both knapsacks while he was upside down, and land on his feet on the hard cobblestones. “Hey!” Luke yelled. “Get back here, you little shit.”

The boy took off, unbelievably fast as he wove through the crowd. Luke knew he could follow fast enough to catch the kid, but not without knocking down a shit load of people as he plowed through them. He was far too big to weave like the kid did too. “Shit.”

He could let the kid go, or he could draw all sorts of attention to himself trying to catch him. Maybe he could do it without doing anything too suspicious, as long as he kept his feet on the street and didn’t push his stats too hard. Either way, if he didn’t do something, his choice would be made for him.

Luke went as quickly as he could, gently pushing people back without flinging them aside, and tried to keep the kid in sight. That wasn’t easy, considering that there were plenty of adults who were a foot or more taller, and also that he was sure the kid would have no problem navigating the alleys and side roads that made up the majority of this part of the city. As soon as he turned down one, Luke was going to lose him.

That, or he was going to have to cheat, but cheating meant leaping up onto the roofs, and that would draw attention to him. Maybe if he was lucky, the alley the kid picked would be empty and Luke could lay on the speed before the kid got out of sight. It was a foolish hope, but it was better than nothing. If he didn’t catch the kid, he’d be shelling out another few silver for replacement food and bags.

The kid juked left onto a side street about a hundred feet away, and Luke put on a burst of speed to get to that corner before he lost the little thief completely. More than one startled curse chased him down the street when he knocked someone aside, and Luke couldn’t do anything but yell back his apologies and for someone to stop that thief. Nobody helped, of course.

Kazos was kind of a shithole city that way.

Luke reached the corner just in time to see the kid duck into an alley a few houses down. Fortunately, the side street wasn’t nearly as crowded as the main road he’d been on, and he was able to close the gap quickly. Hope sprang anew when he hit that corner and saw the kid half way down the alley. He was going to recover both of those knapsacks, and Zea would never, ever, ever need to find out about this.

That was about the time he realized the kid had stopped running and was waiting for him to catch up. Luke slowed down and eyed him warily before sweeping his gaze up the walls to check the roofs. The last thing he needed was to have to find out how many ten-year olds he could take on at once. He wanted to say the answer was ‘all of them,’ but it wouldn’t surprise him to find some jacked high level eight-year old working as a bruiser.

“It’s not a trap,” the kid said. “You’re the apple guy, right?”

“The apple guy?” Luke echoed. He’d never even owned a turtleneck.

“Yeah, you gave Temmo the apple.”

“Is Temmo the last kid who tried to rob me before you showed up?”

“Yeah, that’s him. He’s… he’s not very good at it. I told him not to, but he didn’t listen.” The kid held out the knapsacks for Luke to take. “Here, these are yours. Don’t worry, I didn’t take anything.”

“Why did you take them at all?” Luke asked, confused. Either the kid thought he’d bit off more than he could chew and was trying to deflect by pretending he wasn’t really trying to steal them, or Luke was missing something. If the next thing that kid said was any variation of, ‘It’s just a prank, bro,’ Luke was going to punch him out.

“That’s, uh, I know this doesn’t make a great first impression, and I wanna apologize for my crew coming at you so hard. Thanks for not hurting any of them. It’s just, we’re kind of desperate right now.”

“Mmhmm. And?”

“Right.” The kid took a deep breath. “I kind of wanted to ask you for a favor. Just a little one. Won’t take an hour of your time.”