3 Days Before the World Ends, prt. 1

Author's Note: So, this is part 1 of 3 (or 6...? who knows) of the Pick Up Your Pieces rewrite (so if some things sound familiar... they are). This is a draft, aiming to be more of a test of concept than anything else. Any feedback is appreciated, and I'll give GP to useful feedback (you know, to avoid system exploits like what happened in the past).



I’m minding my own business, trying to drink myself blind with glorified horse piss when a little Ejiari brat comes out of nowhere and ruins my morning. Before she arrives, everything’s fine and quiet and peace-like, you know, the way it is when everyone’s gone home, kicked out, or dead in an alley somewhere.

There's Egghead, the innkeeper. When the twerp arrives, he's just counting money at a table by the fire and talking about the Pit fights with Monobrow half-teeth, a regular. I know both their real names, but only half the time. Knuckleheads one and two guard the door. One's a beef mountain with a neck the thickness of my thigh and the other's a fatso who somehow never gets stuck in doorways. They're in a pissing contest about who’s the greatest in bed.

The twerp’s this flimsy, dirty little thing that looks like I could snap her in half if I so much as stare at her wrong. Add to her tininess and youth the bright blue of her skin and the obnoxious purple of her hair, and she’s about as out of place in this little crappy hole-in-the-wall as I am in a ballroom. She runs straight into me, clipping my elbow and shoulder, and what’s left of my drink sloshes down the front of my shirt.

Sarthing holy mother of—

I slam my mug on the table. “Hey you!”

I jump to my feet. The room tilts and bucks like I’m on some sarthing ship. My fingers barely brush the girl’s shirt as she races past. Sarth. A dull pain lances up my hip. Damn. I fell against the counter.

“Oi!” I shout to the knobs guarding the door. “Knuckleheads! Quit comparing dicks and do your damn job!”

They look up and finally move. Seriously. When you see whores so much your ego gets in the way of your basic job, it’s time to get a new pastime.

Then the door opens and a sarthing Blood Tez ducks in, flanked by two brutish human men. Meat Mountain immediately moves to block the newcomers’ path. That doesn’t last long. The Tez straightens to his full height, and Meat Mountain steps back like the coward he is. The Tez’s head’s nearly at the rafters, and Meat Mountain—the ex-biggest guy in the room—isn’t taking his change of status very well. I take a sip from my tankard and... sarthing Gorgoz, nothing! What the—right, that sarthing kid made me slosh everything down my front.

“Hey!” I wave to Egghead, but he’s sarthing busy stepping around his bar to get to the Tez.

“Sorry, friend,” he’s saying to the newcomers. I try getting his attention again. He’s too concentrated on the intruders to give good customer service. “This establishment isn’t made for Tezka. May I suggest the Shifting Falsenight on Temple street?”

The Tez raises his hands. “My apologies for the intrusion,” he says, and his Andellian Common’s got the thick rolling lilt of some Zahyr accents. “I am looking for an Ejia’ari child who may have gotten lost... Ah, I see you have intercepted her already?”

Sure enough, the stupid Ejiari kid’s held fast by the fatso bouncer. She’s fighting him, making muffled sounds behind his hand. She sees the Tez and the fight leaves her. The Tez walks over and grabs her arm.

If the Tez’s with the twerp, he can pay me my drink. I step in his way. Gotta crane my neck to look at his face. For some reason, he looks familiar up close. More than just because he’s a Tezran and they all look the same, what with their facial spurs and ridges and whatnot.

“Your kid spilt my drink running into here,” I say.

“Out of the way, human.”

“Nah. Owes me a drink, she does,” I say, jerking my thumb to the Ejiari whelp. “She’s with you, so pay up.”

The Tez’s lip curls, displaying a hint of sharp predators’ teeth. Something tickles at the back of my mind. Some memory from sober me. Something about… the pattern of brown stripes on his face ridges?

“Buy your own drink,” he replies.

His tone only riles me up more because he’s trying to sound threatening. Muscles bulge in his arms as he crosses them. I notice a spineridge tattoo in black curling down his left bicep.

That... that tattoo looks familiar.

Where did I see that?

Why do I know him?

Ah, right. The Watch’s bounty board. 20 andel bounty. Enough to get me half a year’s worth of drink.

So of course, stupid drunk me runs off at the mouth. “How ‘bout I collect the pretty bounty on your head instead?”

!chair, head and top of torso!

I see the chair he throws flying at me a split second before it does. That gives me the time to dodge out of the way. My limbs get tangled. I trip on my own boots.

And fall.

Sarth. Sarth sarth sarth sarth sarth sarth—

!Boot, face!

I dodge the Tez’s heel and kick the back of his knee. He staggers. I scramble to my feet. On of the human thugs rushes me. My hand closes over the empty space at my hip. Sarth, did I lose my dagger? Nope, forgot it in a dude’s eye last night. Or last week. Gah, focus.

The thug gets tackled by Fatso. Good. I got bigger problems. The Tez comes at me, yellow eyes practically glowing with bloodlust. Well, crap. I grab the first thing to fall under my hand. A tankard. I chuck it at him. It bounces off the ridges on his forehead. He growls, throwing his arm aside, under a table.

And he launches it at me.

My reflexes are sluggish. So all I can do is raise my arms, brace myself, and think of how stupid I am as—

!table, whole body!

—I ‘see’ the table slam into me right before it actually does.

By the time the world stops spinning enough for me to remember what’s going on, the Tez is gone. I limp to the door, stepping over Meat Mountain’s still warm corpse. Sarth. My whole body feels like a bruise.

It’s dark outside, which makes no sense because it’s morning. Did I drink through the day?

Where did that Tez go? Sarthing spikeface’s worth a fortune!

“That way,” comes a small voice to my left.

I shake my head and turn. Hearing voices now?

Then I spot her. It’s the twerp from earlier. I jog in the direction she’s pointing. Whoever designed Derisle’s roads and waterways really wanted people to get lost, either that or the Lanskari really have a squiggles fetish. I pass about three blocks of colourfully-roofed buildings before a merchant’s cart that my useless Talent didn’t pick up on almost knocks me into a fountain. By the time Falsenight starts leaving, I’ve had my head under the fountain water for five minutes trying to shock some sober back into me. Big surprise—doesn’t work.

“You lost him!” comes the same voice as earlier.

The twerp? What in Andellion is she doing here?

“Are you sure you’re a real bounty hunter?” she adds, and her tone makes it obvious she’s already got an opinion on the matter.

“Shove it, kid.”

“Where are all your weapons, anyway?”

I take my head out of the fountain. Hair falls into my face like a black, wet curtain. I push it out and level my don’t-mess-with-me glare at her. In the darkness there are small flecks of glowing white arranged into patterns across her skin. On Ejian it’d help her blend into the adstrumite-flecked glaciers of the ice plains. Here on Andellion, she just stands out as exotic.

“You’re going to need help if you want to take them down,” she declares.

“I don’t need help. And not from some scrawny blue-skinned ten-year old.”

“I‘m twelve,” she says.

“Don’t care.”

“Fine. See if I care.” The kid turns to leave, fists bunched. Her purple hair ripples in the sunlight. Exotic.

Details from the bounty pop back to my mind. Wanted for kidnapping and slave trafficking. A lot of men and some women would pay good coin to fuck the kid in a brothel. Maybe they already have. Maybe the kid’s just trying to—

Pfft. Scratch that. I just want my twenty andels.

“Fine,” I call. “Come back. You tell me where the scum are, I kill them, you get your revenge and I get my money and there’s a smaller number of idiots in the world. Everyone wins. Whatddya say?”

“I say you go to sleep first,” the kid says. “I’m Jeikohyne. Jeiko for short, by the way.”

“Sure, kid.”

“Jeiko. I’m a person, and I have a name!”

I look at her. With that level of spirit, she can’t have been a slave long.

“What’s your name?” she asks.

“Not important.”

“Names are always important.”

“Rhedd,” I say. “Like the poison.”

Maybe that’ll get her to shut up.

“Is that what your parents named you?”

Apparently not.

I jab a finger in the center of her chest. “Listen, kid. You’re helping me get my sarthing bounty. That’s it.”

I jerk my head to get her to follow and head back to the docks toward the Dancing Bells. While I was gone, the chaos in the room was cleaned up, Egghead and his wife are talking to a pair of Bluejackets, a man and a woman. The woman, a full Watchman based on the golden star-and-crescent stitched in the back of her cape, is asking the questions. The man, her Journeyman based on the silver insignia, is scribbling notes in a pad. Egghead notices me come it, and doesn’t look happy to see me at all.

“You!” he growls, pushing past the Journeyman and barring my way. “I am done with your idiocy! Eddra, you got Michelli killed! And my eating hall is trashed!”

“This is the mercenary who ignited the conflict, then?” the lead Bluejacket asks, placing a hand on the innkeeper’s shoulder.

“Yes,” Greg all but spits out, trying to shrug off the Watchwoman’s hand and failing. To me: “You’re out. Grab your trash and leave.”

The Watchwoman looks to me. “Ma’am, we’ll need you to come with us for questioning.”

I push past her and Egghead. “Don’t ma’am me. And I’m still renting a room here. Get lost.”

“Oh no, you don’t,” Egghead says. The Journeyman moves to block my way. I bite back a swear and turn my head over my shoulder. Egghead’s looking to the Watchwoman. “Her rent ran out two nights ago.”

What? Filthy, crooked liar!

“You’re saying that just ‘cause an idiot Tez overreacted to having a bounty hunter after him.” I snap, turning back to the junior Bluejacket. His face is smooth with no hint of a beard whatsoever. “Out of my way, kid.”

“We need you to follow us for questioning,” the Journeyman says, voice and body stiff.

I glare at him, the beginning of a headache coming on. Sarth, I need a drink. I try to shoulder past him. He grabs my arm.

“Don’t touch me!” I turn around, yanking his hand off my arm and shoving him. The Journeyman stumbles into a table. He gets back up, turning bright, sunburn red.

“Kaylen,” the Watchwoman says, voice stern and sharp just as the Journeyman’s about to try to avenge his bruised little ego.

He stops, but he’s obviously still embarrassed and simmering. I sneer at him. Pathetic little Journeyman obeying his Watchwoman like a little yippy dog.

“We can all remain civil and discuss this situation like reasonable people,” the Watchwoman says, still in a pointed voice.

“Yes, ma’am, thank you,” the Ejiari kid pipes up. Apparently, everyone else is as observant as rocks because they all look surprised that she’s here. So much for the Watch training good soldiers. “Sorry for Rhedd, ma’am.”

“What’s the blueskin brat doing here?” Greg asks, glaring at me, his face becoming purple.

He gets a warning look from the Watchwoman. Bluejackets are pretty sensitive about using slurs in public.

“Escaping slavers,” Jeiko says in a small voice, opening her eyes wide. The effect accentuates her youth. “They stole me from my home and wanted to sell me—Rhedd’s protecting me and helping me go back to my family.”

I am? This headache is making it hard to think.

The Watchwoman looks at me. “Is that true?”

I nod, getting a knocking feeling behind my eyes. I rub them. “Hunt bad people. Helping the kid. Talk ‘bout this later?”

10/10 for eloquence.

“Just wait until she sleeps it off?” Jeiko asks. “I promise we’ll answer all the questions you need after.”

The Watchwoman seems to consider this. She turns to Greg. “Let Miss Avner use the room she rented for up to an additional twenty-five hours to allow her to rest and sober up. The Watch will cover all expenses and prevent further trouble.”

Greg’s mouth downturns. “She got until she sobers up. I don’t want her kind of rabble in my inn longer than that.” Normally, I’d have something to say to that, but my headache’s making it impossible to think. “And I don’t want to see her face until she walks out of here.”

“Is that alright with you?” the Watchwoman asks.

Whatever. Anything to get a bed. I just stumble towards the stairs. It’s got more to do with my exhaustion and splitting headache than the drink at this point.

Behind me, I hear the Ejiari twerp promise good behaviour and thank the Watchmen. The exact wording’s lost on me. I drag my ass to my room on the second floor and collapse onto my bed.