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“Good fight,” Don compliments. “Not good enough, though.”
Schwann knows when he’s lost. He resorts to a cool, helpless apathy in these moments: a trait characteristic to him since he was given a name.
“Then kill me,” he says without inflection.
“You won’t beg for your life?” Don asks.
“I am already dead,” Schwann says. “There is nothing to beg for.”
"Geez, you kids sure are getting bleak." Don shrugs his massive shoulders, like saying, ‘well, what can you do?’. "Cheer up son, today's your lucky day! Hey, boys! Give this man a good Altoskian welcome, and escort him to a cell, will ya?”
Altoskian hospitality is not entirely unlike the Empire’s, Schwann reflects. They knock him around, piss in his water bowl, and don’t give him any toilet paper to wipe his face or his ass during the whole damn stay. Then again, an assassination attempt against his Imperial Majesty would easily warrant a public beheading — here, it seems to equate with seven days of enforced meditation toe-deep in his own shit before being kicked to the curb like nothing ever happened.
“You’re letting me go?” Schwann asks, a faint tone of disbelief in his voice.
“You’re not the first to try to off the Boss, y’know,” the guard explains, “and you won’t be the last. It’s almost a right of passage at this point.”
Schwann must reevaluate the guild’s hierarchy. His intel was clearly missing some rather important information. “Did you also try to kill Don Whitehorse?” he asks, not even meaning it sarcastically.
“Sure,” the guard admits, like it’s nothing. “Though I tried to poison him, myself. Gave the Don a case of the runs and he put a bucket of it in my cell and that was enough to make me not try again.”
Schawnn’s just spent a week stewing in his own filth and understands what a powerful motivator the stench of unceasing faecal matter and lack of hygiene can be to a man who once thought himself as dignified. “Huh,” is all he offers. Is that how Don Whitehorse inspires loyalty? By sparing his foes in such a contrived way?
“Now, I’d close my eyes if I were you. Ready? Splash !”
After Schwann’s been waterboarded into smelling a little less like sewage, the guard escorts him out the door and onto the cobbled street some ways from the headquarter’s main entrance.
“That’s it?” Schwann repeats, still not quite believing it.
“That’s it,” the guard says. “Though if I were you, I’d get a proper bath and new duds. You fucking reek.”
A bed and shower at the inn requires gald he no longer has. And even the filthiest tavern won’t let him in wearing the shit-smelling rags he’s got tattered on by a thread. He’s tired, he’s hungry, and he’s really five seconds away from giving up and taking a nap right there in the street. Where even is he, anyway? This city is a labyrinth with far too many dead ends.
“You need quick cash, son? I’ll pay you to suck my dick,” a strange man with a caved in nose offers in one such dead end alley, idly smoking a pipe.
Schwann considers it for all of three seconds before he smoothly says, “I must decline,” and walks off in the opposite direction as fast as his tired calves will take him. It’s barely been a week and he will not fall to prostitution just to get a fucking bath. That guy probably had syphilis, anyway. That nose was telling.
“Hey! New guy!”
Schwann would’ve started walking even faster if the pitch of the voice hadn’t distracted him — it belongs to a kid, prepubescent, gender difficult to tell with the patchwork quilt of nonsense they’ve got on.
“Take this package to Saggitarus,” the kid says, and hurls something at him that Schwann catches out of reflex.
“What?” he asks, but the shrimp's disappeared. Fast little bugger—either that, or great at climbing walls. “What?” he repeats, staring at the innocuous brown-paper-wrapped box in his hands. It’s about the weight of his pauldron, some two kilograms dense, and rattles like there’s something round inside it. A blastia, perhaps?
“Saggitarus,” he echoes. The tavern?
Is this a test?
Is the Don testing him?
For a moment, Schwann expends energy to expand his senses, wondering if he’s being followed. He can immediately feel eyes on him, and detect the sounds of muffled laughter in the distance. Then again, that might just be paranoia. He has just spent seven days with no privacy and bored guards idly betting on when he’d get thirsty enough to drink the piss-bucket. (Shamefully, he only got to two before he succumbed.)
If there’s a blastia in here, maybe he can sell it, or, hell, use it. If his cover is already blown and his dignity gone with it, then surely some unhinged violence is justified…
The thought crosses his mind and leaves it without much fanfare. There is a task he has been given, and he shall complete it. “Saggitarus,” he repeats, and twists his ankles in the direction of the last tavern he’d been to. Maybe he can ask for directions there.
“The tavern? It’s that way, new guy,” says the bouncer stationed outside.
Hm. Does everyone know his task, then?
“Saggitarus Tavern, huh? It’s southeast,” another man offers, “follow the music.”
It’s starting to feel like a wild goose chase, and everyone’s in on it. There is no music but distant laughter.
“Naw, new guy, it’s north! Y’know, by the fountain? Surely you passed it already.”
On and on and on, each new direction being interrupted by some new person with eyes on his package and cruelty in their smiles. It’s clear they’re all in on it, and he’s the butt of the joke.
“You’re all fucking with me,” Schwann says monotonously. He’s really quite tired. Honestly, he doesn’t really need a weapon to kill things. If he goes outside the barrier, maybe he could just rip a couple of stray Filifolia monsters into lettuce for a salad and then sell the rest of it for gald enough to pay for hay to rest with the horses…
The thought tantalizes him for three seconds before he focuses back to reality. Don Whitehorse probably has forgotten him. His underlings are the cats playing with the new toy the Don has given them.
He’s nothing but fresh meat quickly spoiling.
“You finally give up, new guy?”
It’s the kid who gave him the package. Schwann eyes them more carefully this time. Blond, grey-eyed, and oddly confident in their stance. For being such a pipsqueak, this kid has balls to poke an enemy of the Don while he’s down. Schwann’s dead tired and still quite capable of snapping the kid’s neck like he would a chicken.
“What happens if I say yes?” Schwann asks, lightly.
“I take the package back,” the kid says, and stretches out a small hand riddled with weapon-born calluses. “Hand it over, then.”
“Hm,” Schwann makes as if he’s thinking, and a part of him feels silly but the rest of him is delighted when the kid begins to look visibly impatient. Is this kid the one in charge of his punishment…? “I think not, then.”
“Ugh,” the kid says. “Then hurry up and make it!”
Schwann bows his head like he would to Princess Estellise. “Of course, young Master,” he says, and is rewarded by the kid looking proper startled. Bingo. “I’m afraid I am quite lost, though. Why don’t we both help each other and you get me there, for real this time? That way we can both finally take a break.”
The kid squints at him and then gives an explosive sigh and turns around and starts walking. Schwann follows them leisurely. They walk down faintly familiar streets and end up at the tavern right where Schwann started. The bouncer outside looks just as amused as he did the first time.
“Ah, I see now. Saggitarus is your name, isn’t it?” Schwann says, managing a sardonic smile.
“At your service,” the guy says, and stretches out his hand. “Did you ever find the tavern, then?”
“Your directions were one of a kind, but my sense of direction is quite another.” Schwann plops the brown box unceremoniously into the guy’s outstretched palm. “Here’s your package, Mister Saggitarus.”
“Here’s your payment, Mister New Guy,” Saggitarus says, and flicks him a single gald coin.
“Thanks,” Schwann says without a trace of sarcasm, and turns to the kid. “Y’know where a tired old man could get a bucket of clean water for a single gald?”
“Uh, try the fountain,” the kid says. “Duh.”
“Duh,” Schwann echoes, and can’t help but laugh a little. Duh, indeed. Children above, he’s so tired.
“Hey. New Guy. I’ll throw you enough for a meal if you give Pecan this package,” Saggitarus offers, clearly taking pity on him. “Pecan’s the third waiter on the right at the Saggitarius tavern. You know your way there now, right?”
Schwann’s everything aches, but he’s starting to get the hang of this place now, he thinks. “Sure,” he says. “Throw in a tunic and I’ll deliver it as fast as these old legs can take me.”
“Do it without causing a ruckus and I’ll give you some new shoes, too,” Saggitarus says.
“You got yourself a deal,” Schwann says, and points his feet towards his goal. He can’t wait to feel a little cleaner and rest enough to regroup and decide his next course of action; if he doesn’t send an encoded message to Zaphias soon, Commander Alexei’ll probably assume him dead or, worse, a traitor.
Till then, it’s nice to have a mission with clear cut instructions.
“Third waiter from the right,” Schwann murmurs to himself, and sets off.