Chapter 19: Chapter Eighteen: The Innocents Abroad

Leo soaked in the warm water of his tiny, bronze tub, his legs hanging awkwardly over the sides. The bathing room was nothing more than in a narrow, wooden room that seemed to exist only to hold the tub and a rack of towels.

This was their most “luxurious” room. It wouldn’t have passed for a closet on Leo’s home world.

            Everything is relative.

It wasn’t the most original thought, Leo knew, or even the first time he had thought that since he had arrived on Toth. But lack of originality didn’t make it less true.

In fact, replication is the basis for confirming most scientific theories, so one could argue that lack of originality is what makes things truer, from a certain viewpoint.

            Leo remembered a time when he had gone mountain hiking with his ex-wife, Lisa. It had been six hours in the hot sun, and they had climbed over a mile vertically, and probably close to twenty horizontally. Near the end, when he’d been tired, sore, and dehydrated, they had stopped to stare out over a particularly beautiful vista. Leo had taken some grapes from the pack. His hand had been dirty, sweaty, and probably covered in bug spray, but he had shoveled those grapes into his mouth, and he couldn’t remember enjoying food in a more visceral way in his life—until the monster chicken they’d had the other night.

            After three weeks of sleeping in the open in a forest, or in the open on the deck of a galley, Leo couldn’t remember enjoying a bed and roof as much, either. And this warm bath, for all that it was becoming tepid, felt like a tiny slice of heaven.

            They have the Blood Abyss… I wonder if they have dimensions similar to my concept of heaven? And what kinds of beings might live there?

            Leo had things to do today, however—lots of things. He needed to stop soaking and letting his mind wander, as it was wont to do.

            With a groan, Leo pulled himself out of the water and onto the mat provided, wiping himself down with the towel that had been laid out on the rack for him. He briefly admired the increasing tone in his legs, arms, and abs from his continued workouts, and then he put on the outfit that he’d purchased from the River Darter crew.

            Black-dyed doublet and breeches comprised the base of the outfit. According to Lily, that wasn’t appropriate wear for a high elf—who were more of a robe-wearing people—but Leo felt it was the closest thing he had seen to appropriate wear for him.

A belt with a scabbard, his new non-magical longsword in its sheath, added to the ensemble. He’d also replaced his shoes with a new pair—a leather shoe with a wooden heel. It was far, far inferior to a good tennis shoe, but it was better than the ragged, half-broken shoes that was all Leo’d had left by the time they got here, after his weeks long hike from the forest.

            Overall, the clothing was awkward compared to the easy, comfortable T-shirts and jeans he was used to. He did think he cut a decent picture in it, however. And black worked with his pale skin and metallic-golden hair just as much as it had with his old blue-eyed, black-haired self.

            I like black. It’s the color that works with everything, so you don’t have to think about it.

            He was tempted to put on his magical leather armor but settled for just throwing his magical cloak over his shoulders.

            Leo left the bathroom and exited into the narrow second-story hall of the inn, then headed downstairs. Lily, ‘dressed’ in her now ubiquitous illusion of an extremely fancy white dress, green shawl, and emerald jewelry, waved him over.

            Hugh was beside her, lying on the floor of the inn, rubbing at his bloodshot eyes.

            Sitting at a table in the back and spooning up last night’s fish soup, Meryl gave them the eye as they gathered.

            Lily handed the backpack to Leo. “You can guard this thing now.”

            Leo shrugged it on, feeling the intense magic once he was close to it. He took a few moments to sort it and the cape out. And there goes any dashing-ness to the figure I was cutting. Backpacks have zero ‘cool’ factor.

            “Ready to go, buddy?” Leo asked Hugh.

            “I’m never having alcohol again,” Hugh groaned, his voice a verbal wince. He stared up at Leo with bloodshot eyes. “What in the name of Merdrek’s Teeth did I drink?”

            “They called it ‘troll spit.’ To be blunt, Lily is the only one of us who didn’t look like a fool on our first day in the, uh, ‘big city,’” Leo said, holding his fingers up in air quotes. “I got my coin pouch stolen and you spent most of your coin on magical booze. For you and your new acquaintances both. We need to be better.”

            “It was a lot of money you both just lost. But I suppose on the scale of what we’re about to do, it wasn’t that much.” Lily giggled, covering her mouth with one delicate hand. “Perhaps a relatively inexpensive and amusing lesson, all things considered. We could have been mugged for the backpack.”

            Leo shuddered. “Yeah.”

            Lily gave another giggle. “And somewhere, there’s a pickpocket who made enough money to retire from his life of crime, so you could argue, perhaps, that you’ve actually punched your good-deeds card.”

            Leo pointed at his own eyes, and then toward Lily in the “I’m watching you” gesture, and she laughed harder, still covering her mouth with her tiny hand.

            “It’s too early for you guys,” Hugh grumped.

            Pot, kettle much?

            “What’s our first stop?” Leo asked.

            “The Shield Bank,” Lily said. “We need to establish a deposit before we sell the, uh, I mean, before we sell our goods.”

            Leo reached down and patted Hugh’s head. “You need a bank vault as well, slosh-dragon, so make sure to keep up with us.”

            Hugh winced and groaned but struggled to his feet. “Sure, I’ll do that.”

            They headed out of the Dragon’s Rest Inn, Hugh blinking owlishly in the morning sun. Leo was more concerned with the fact it was already hot, even though the sun wasn’t high in the sky yet. It’s going to be a scorcher.

Lily scanned the cobblestone roads leading deep into the city, and after a moment, pointed at one a couple hundred feet away. “There we are. The barkeep told me that the road next to Olga’s Tavern”—she pointed to the side, at a small, rundown building with an image of a jolly, overweight woman in an apron on the front, carrying beer—“would take us to the Shield Bank. Since only one side of the tavern has a road, that has to be it!”

            “That road looks like a mugging waiting to happen,” Leo said, staring at the broken stone road leading back between close-set buildings.

            “We’ve got a dragon.”

            “You’ve got, at most, half a dragon this morning,” Hugh groused. “I don’t think I felt this bad in any combat we were in, except with that stupid golem.”

            Leo chuckled. “A hungover dragon, sure. And I suppose if we get mugged, we can always make more experience. Weapons loose.”

            “Weapons loose?”

            “I mean, put them in your hands,” Leo said as they started walking toward the side street.

            Lily started talking in her slightly higher-pitched voice. “It’s illegal in Steelport, and most of the Inner Sea, really, to display weapons openly unless threatened, or if you’re a noble. That rule came down from the Averian Codex and was kept by most places even when the empire fell apart, much like Middle Averian is still spoken by most of the populace here. And even where the empire didn’t rule directly, like here, the Codex influenced the laws heavily.”

            “Interesting,” Leo said, both meaning it and wanting to move to the main point. “Okay, fine, just be ready to draw steel if it comes to it.”

            “You’re the only one who draws steel,” their dragon said, flexing his claws.

            “Hugh…”

            Lily ignored the byplay of the boys as they walked into the shadowed side street, the cobblestones slimed with various disgusting, organic things. She wrinkled her nose as she daintily stepped around anything that appeared suspect.

Leo felt like he had crossed from the semi-bad part of town into the absolute worst part of town almost immediately. He saw people sleeping in wooden boxes and under awnings, as well as rats and human excrement.

            The heat was enough that everything was already starting to stink, the same miasma of odor he had encountered when they arrived yesterday, only far more cloying here.

            “How is this place supposedly so wealthy and yet so squalid?” Leo asked as they walked. “I mean, I get that this isn’t a modern world, but still, this seems excessive.”

            “Mortals are always squalid,” Hugh said. “And I have no idea what you mean when you say modern.”

            “Have you even been to a mortal city before? Or any city?”

            “No,” Hugh said. “But it’s common knowledge. I learned it in the caves of my kind from our long speakers.”

            Lily daintily stepped over a man passed out on the side of the street, pulling her skirt hems up slightly to avoid them touching anything. “It’s the nature of the city. Food has to be imported, so it’s expensive and makes those who are poor, who eat mostly food—”

            Leo laughed, and Hugh cocked his head to the side.

            “I mean, who spend money mostly on food,” Lily corrected with a blush, “even poorer. At the same time, the few powerful families with rights to control the merc companies or the iron mines get rich, and the people in the middle aren’t the usual merchants, but rather those with control over the vice trade, since this city acts as a port of ill-repute for most of the Inner Sea.”

            Six men stepped out into the street as if they’d sprung full-grown from the shadows, weapons drawn. They were all dressed in mended breeches and the most basic of shirts, and they carried wooden clubs and knives, except for one with a sword. None of them looked like they got enough to eat most days.

            One pointed a club at Leo. “Barbaric dragons and their slavey friends don’t need wealth. Hand over your ill-gotten goods.”

            “I think they’re violating the law,” Leo quipped, his hand dropping to his own sword. He didn’t really feel the need to engage the thugs in verbal repartee.

            Then he recognized one of the men, who was rat-faced but otherwise fairly nondescript. The man with the nice, new sword. “You! You’re the ass who stole my coin purse!”

            The man’s eyes darted left and then right, but after a second, he focused on Leo. “And now we want the coin purse of little princess there, and your drunk lizard as well.”

            Was one of these other five jerk-wads at the inn? Leo didn’t recognize any of them.

            “I’m no one’s drunk lizard!” Hugh said. “Except my own!”

            “You’re not helping,” Leo said, fighting the temptation to facepalm even in this tense situation. He watched the men.

            They’re holding their weapons wrong, and their stances are all off.

            Leo withdrew his sword. “I’m as near to certain of anything I have been since I got to this world that this mugging doesn’t end how you think it does,” Leo said. “Back off now and I’ll pretend I didn’t see you—you can even keep the coin. I’ve got bigger fish to fry. Move on me, and I swear by all I hold holy that I’ll leave all your wives as widows.”

            “Wow,” Lily said. “That’s… That’s dark for you. What happened to noblesse oblige?”

            She didn’t sound worried about the thugs. Leo had seen her worried about battle—her voice always went a touch lower, and her words came faster. This wasn’t worried Lily.

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            The men hesitated, but the leader must have taken courage in their numbers. Rat-Face yelled, raising his sword over his head in a two-handed grip, and charged.

            Hugh started to move, but Leo stepped forward. He held his sword up at an angle, intentionally catching the powerful down-blow. The normal smart move was to dodge such a telegraphed attack, but Leo wanted the weapon lock. His enemy’s blade hit his and ran down it with a metallic scritch, catching on the guard. The man was firmly planted on both feet.

            A terrible stance, really, in a fight. For multiple reasons.

            Leo pivoted, turning his hips, and threw a powerful kick to his opponent’s side, shin first, just below the man’s ribs. Leo’s elf body wasn’t quite as strong yet as his old MMA-forged human body, but between the level-up stats and the working out, he’d gotten a lot closer. The rat-faced man gasped and half-collapsed around the blow, his face a rictus of agony.

            Leo leisurely brought his sword down toward the man’s face. Rat-Face gave a yell and started to retreat.

            But the face chop had been a feint, and as Rat-Face backpedaled, Leo hooked the thug’s heel and the jerk went down in a clatter as his sword bounced across the cobblestones.

            Leo stepped forward, prepared to end the man’s life with a quick thrust into his neck. The man’s eyes widened, and he put his hands in front of his terrified face, outward, trying to push away the fate he knew was coming. Leo hesitated.

            This guy, and likely his more cowardly friends, are jokes. And I really don’t want my levels to be composed of mortal souls if I can help it. If he’d been more competent, and I was fighting for my life, then maybe… but this isn’t self-defense, not really. It’s butchery.

            One man must have decided to save his friend, and he rushed forward just as everything was coming to a standstill. He picked up his friend’s sword, but Hugh stepped in the way, and the man’s strike bounced off Hugh’s scaled—and magically hardened—hide, clattering to the street again mere seconds after the man had taken it. Hugh didn’t finish the man off, which pleased Leo—he must have been following Leo’s lead.

            Hugh might have spared the man’s life, but he didn’t spare him his mockery. “It’s entirely too early in the morning for you. If you’re going to use that thing, could you at least do it right? I could really use a good backrub right now. I’m all stiff from sleeping weird. And not that pansy stuff you just did, either. I need someone who can really dig in there and loosen some knots.”

            That completely took the wind out of the remaining men, who ran off down the street, all except for the rat-faced guy on the ground at Leo’s feet, who stared up at him with wide eyes.

            Leo bent down and ripped the coin pouch from the man’s belt, opening it. Well, I’ll be. He actually came back with my coin rather than storing it somewhere. Too wrongs made a right again. Or maybe two idiots made one smart guy… Nah, I’m reaching.

            For good measure, Leo grabbed the thug’s sword with his mind and pulled it from where it lay on the cobblestones into his hand. “I’m taking this. You and your friends clearly can’t be trusted with weapons. For your sake, as well as for the sake of others.”

            The man scrambled backward across the gross cobblestones and stood. “You’re not going to kill me?”

            “Magic Eight Ball says, ‘Outcome Unlikely,’” Leo quipped. “Now get out of here.”

            The man’s eyes lingered hungrily on the pouch for a second, but discretion proved the better part of valor, and he ran after his friends.

            “Ah, I wanted experience,” Hugh said. “Why’d you decide we weren’t killing them?”

            “Those guys were chumps,” Leo said, then he started walking down the street again. “I mean, seriously. They would have given us, like, an experience point each. What were they, level a-half?”

            “You come up with the most absurd things,” Lily said. “Level a-half? I can’t even with you.”

            Leo chuckled. “Oh, bonus points for remembering that phrase. Maybe if the leading members of the eventual court of the Glorious Empire of Averia Reborn use it enough, it’ll catch on. A demented little slice of home.”

            “I thought you were going to kill them, like you threatened,” Lily said. “How come you didn’t?”

            “I mean, I feel odd, since I don’t want to get in a habit of threatening things I don’t mean. I guess the best way I can say it is, I morally believe that if you open the door to violence, you can’t complain about what walks in, but—”

            “What?” Hugh asked.

            “I just mean, if you start a fight, especially with deadly weapons, it’s justified for the people you started the fight with to kill you in retaliation.”

            “Of course,” Lily and Hugh said at the same time, and then they looked at each other in surprise. They rarely agreed on things.

            “But,” Leo continued, “it just didn’t seem necessary. Again, I’m not philosophically opposed to violence or killing, under the right circumstances, but this just seemed… pointless. I mean, if a four-year-old attacked me in a rage, I wouldn’t cut their head off.”

“Or a gnome!” Hugh supplied, thumping his tail on the cobblestone road, presumably for emphasis.

“Oh, good, you’ve mastered this analogy,” Leo said. “Tomorrow, we’ll work on drinking etiquette. The point is, they just didn’t seem like enough of a threat to justify killing them.”

            “I’m honestly torn between thinking you’re badass for calling the guy who just tried to murder you a four-year-old and thinking you’re a freaking cat,” Hugh muttered.

            Leo laughed explosively, caught totally by surprise. “A cat? What?”

            “Cats are well-known cowards,” Hugh responded in an authoritative voice. “Always running when they might lose and then attacking from stealth and shit. Miserable little bastards, really.”

            Lily giggled, holding her hand to her mouth again. “Did a wittle-kitty scare you when you were a wee, wittle baby?” she asked in a saccharine voice.

            “Listen here, you little—”

            “Guys!” Leo shouted. Always something new with these two, he thought. I have to remind myself that they’re both, relatively speaking, quite a bit younger than me.

            Well, not this body so much, which looks of an age, but still. Younger than I was, at any rate.

            They continued down the filthy cobblestone street. After about ten more minutes of walking and occasionally quipping at each other, or about the town, Leo found himself facing a huge, stone edifice. It was surrounded by a giant lawn, of all things, with granite statues dotting the area. Guards were clearly visible, walking in pairs, carrying swords and shields and wearing half-plate armor. These weren’t just security guards—it was a small military force.

            As Leo stepped onto the path leading to the front stairs, and from there up to the large door in the massive stone building, the gross smells of the place suddenly disappeared, and the air was cool and fresh.

            Two of the guards approached. The first, a six-foot-four behemoth who might be able to handle one of Hugh’s charges without being moved, asked, “Who’re you? Do you have an appointment at the Shield Bank?”

            “Um, no?” Leo said.

            “Then get out of here, ya freakin’ slavey,” the man replied, cracking his knuckles.

            “Hey, I’m getting real tired of people calling Leo that,” Hugh said, stepping forward. “Leo’s a great guy! Be nice to him!”

            The huge man’s face flushed red. “Don’t make me gut you, wyrm!”

            Hugh bared his fangs at the man.

            Lily stepped forward, two fingers of one hand raised. “Please, there’s no need for this. I’m Lilianae ap Willowynd, the ruling member of House Willowynd, of Lakusi in the Havi Imperium. I have need of an account before I sell, quite possibly literally, thousands of gold worth of merchandise. I would speak with your masters.”

            She tapped the tiara still on her head.

            The second guard—whose only notable feature was an impressive red mustache—ran his eyes over the group, lingering on Hugh. “This is an odd coterie. I think we need to run it up the chain. Let’s take them in, Kyle, and see what the masters have to say.”

            Kyle hesitated but then gave a single nod. “All right. You escort them in, and I’ll go let Sergeant Ivers know what’s happening. I don’t want to be around these wyrm-loving slavies anyway.”

            He gave Hugh a wide smile, and Leo reached out and rubbed Hugh’s back.

            When nothing further happened, despite his wanton contempt, Kyle turned and left.

Mustache stepped forward, holding his hand out. “Sorry about Kyle. We get a lot of riffraff here trying to sleep on the lawn or bum some coin. I’m Nick. Pleased to meet you.”

            Leo took his hand and gave it a firm shake, even though he was pretty sure Kyle’s issues went a lot deeper than bums hitting them up on the job.

            Nick continued. “We don’t see many elves here anymore, except as slaves—hence the stupid nickname. I’m not sure I can even remember the last time one came in as a customer. Thanks for making my day a touch more interesting.”

            Leo glanced over at Lily and saw that her eyes were a touch narrower and her brow slightly furrowed, the rest of her unnaturally still.

            “You should prepare for the day when the elves are your most common and richest customers,” she said. “We have a panache, an elegance, and intelligence not found in other races, and we’ll be on top again soon.”

            “Okay, then,” Nick said, his eyes widening slightly. “Touchy subject, I guess. I’m sorry again about Kyle, but I’ll stop talking. Shall we get going?”

            Lily gave a regal tilt of her head and the three of them followed Nick up the stairs to the door of the stone edifice. They entered into a single, giant hall, held aloft by huge pillars every twenty feet. The middle was bisected by a large counter, and behind it, in wool-covered chairs, sat five humans, all bearing a faint family resemblance. Each was spaced almost fifty feet from the others. A gaggle of staff, many of whom were elves wearing silver collars similar to the one the elf waitress had been wearing at the Dragon’s Rest, surrounded the sitting men and women. A few non-elves also wore the silver collars.

            Sign of enslavement?

            The side of the building that they had entered was covered in upholstered benches. Ornamental bushes, adorned with flowers, also grew in huge planters around the room. Elves, and a few humans, all comely females and wearing the same silver collars, moved around the room, serving refreshments to a collection of waiting people. The waiting group was mostly human, but a few dwarves, a single orc with bone claws coming from his hands and bone spikes on his back, a three-and-a-half foot woman in a four-foot-long purple robe, and two… small minotaurs, Leo guessed, rounded out the collection.

            Nick pointed to a bench. “Wait here, and I’ll check if one of the masters of the Shield Bank will see you.”

            Leo nodded and took a seat.

Nick moved over the huge divider and waited. After a moment, a woman in an extremely fancy tailored dress came over. The two talked for another minute, Nick pointing Leo and his team out. As they were talking, an old man with wispy, white hair and a stooped back happened to walk by on the master side. Whatever was being said apparently fascinated him, as he stopped and listened in on the conversation.

Then the lady went and briefly whispered in the ear of an old woman sitting at one of the five front reception spaces. She looked over at them, her eyes widening slightly, and she then gave a slight tilt of her head. The first lady came back and whispered to Nick, who walked back to Leo and his group.

            “Okay, you’ll be seen, but it’ll most likely take a bit of time. Make yourselves comfortable.”

            “Yeah,” Leo said. “And thanks for being one of the only reasonable people in this kooky world.”

            Nick raised one eyebrow at that, but obviously, based on his facial expression, decided not to engage, just nodding and wandering off.

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