Chapter 19: Chapter 19 – The Pauper Princess, Part 14

Marv couldn’t believe his luck. He’d been running his shop for over twenty years now and had never seen something like that walk through his door. He had a good eye for aftos and a better eye for their era and manufacturer. He’d only ever glanced at an afto made from the Age of Enma once before today. But to actually touch one, and an oxium-forged afto to boot? What a treat!

He had to be careful not to betray his eagerness. The girl, Luci, seemed skittish. He closed the catalogue of antiques he’d been scanning on his ten-year-old computer and donned an unimpressed face.

Then he scraped up a portable scanner. Its low-resolution screen was at least twenty years dated and only showed the barest information that it could pull from the Logos Afto Registry. It was practically useless for any good afto retailer. You needed a good eye for quality, and the best a scanner could do was tell you who owned what. Marv’s scanner didn’t even manage that!

With an exaggerated groan, Marv walked out to the front of the store.

“Alright, Luci, I’ve been doing a bit of research on the make and I’m not seeing…”

Marv froze when he noticed the counter was unattended. His tired eyes passed over the store. His vision wasn’t what it used to be so he looked twice, three times. There was no sign of the girl anywhere.

“Take my eyes off her for two seconds and…”

The door slammed open, letting in a burst of rain. Three men came in dripping from the downpour. Marv cursed under his breath as he recognised the man leading the others. A scar ran from his eye down to his lip, and where his lip had been carved through, the flesh had been damaged so that that side of his mouth remained set in a scowl.

The leader scanned the store. “Marv! Good to see you’re still walking.” He didn’t look Marv’s way. “So, er, where’s the girl?”

“That damned grupp,” Marv spat, feigning anger. “She threatened to blast the store with that afto of hers. I couldn’t do anything about it. But don’t worry, Flak. I’ve got her details. If you get your people onto it, you’ll be able to track her down no problem.”

The scarred man, Flak, turned to Marv. The rut on his face made it impossible for Marv to tell if he was mad or not, but he wasn’t taking chances. He kept quiet and lowered his gaze.

“Hey, Marv?” Flak said. He looked side to side then spread his hands. “I’m not seeing the girl’s details.”

Marv held his breath. “This is a store, Flak. If you want something, you have to pay for…”

Flak’s hand moved to his hip where he’d holstered a handgun. His companions—his soldiers—had taken positions on each of Marv’s flanks, weapons in hand. Flak stepped up to the counter. Marv looked down, refusing to make eye contact. Then Flak’s hand braced around his neck and pulled him in. Marv stifled a whimper.

“Hey, how many years have we been doing business, Marv?” Flak said nonchalantly. “Two, three years?”

“Two and three months,” Marv croaked. His eyes flashed towards Flak’s gun.

“Two and a half years!” Flak exclaimed. “We’re good buddies. After all this time, don’t you feel like you owe your buddy something?”

“Flak, money is tight. I can’t—”

“Hey, you called me to help you with some dirty work,” Flak said. His hand squeezed tighter around Marv’s neck. The older man’s back had been giving him problems of late, and Flak knew about that. “What’s the deal? Are you just using me, huh? Is being old and crippled your excuse for taking advantage of me?”

“No, Marv. That’s not it!”

Marv nodded. “Alright. Phone.”

Hand’s shaking, Marv removed his phone from his pocket and searched for his contacts. When he found the image of Luci Black, he opened the options and selected to share. Then he held his phone out to Flak.

The scarred man put his phone to Marv’s. Both devices dinged to confirm the information had been sent. Then he released Marv’s head. The old shopkeeper exhaled in relief.

Flak checked the girl’s details and Marv waited with his shoulder pressed to the wall behind the counter, trying to keep as much distance as was agreeable. Then the unscarred side of Flak’s mouth ticked up.

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“Well, Marv, looks like you’ve found me something good,” he said. “I’ll cut your protection pay this month. You’ve earned it.” He winked at Marv, then turned to one of his underlings. “Call the girl who wears the ears. She owes me a favour. Tonight, we’re making ten million kin.”

*****

Luci passed the southern gate cursing herself.

“What were you thinking?” She tucked a strand of hair back under her cowl. “Lunacogita is your burden to bear. Even if it hurts, even if it kills you. You’re the Daughter of the Waxing Moon. So just put up with it!”

The Sylexans had been gone when she’d left the pawn shop, and she’d had no issue slipping out of the Pot other than her body protesting from fatigue. She trudged past farms in the gaining darkness. Rain beat down on her. Every step was agony. She deserved it. Who was she to think she could run away from home with Sylexa’s most prized afto and have some fun exploring dungeons? She had to keep that disgusting part of her in check.

When Luci finally made it back to her tent, she collapsed onto her bedroll. She dropped Lunacogita and it sank into the mud beside her. She was gasping for air. The walk had sapped every last bit of her energy. Her body felt like lead.

Once she’d recovered a little, she took out her phone and stared at it. The handheld device weighed maybe a couple hundred grams in her hand, but with how tired she was plus with how heavy her arms were, it may as well have been a dumbbell.

She unlocked it and returned to the home screen. It showed a blank page with a text field for input, plus a small circle icon in the corner for accessing a few small, inbuilt apps, nothing that useful. All data was stored in the Syndicated Information Network—the commonly used interfaces like phones and computers had minimal functionality. Mostly, they displayed whatever data you searched for on the SIN network. She didn’t search for anything, however. She just stared at it. She locked it, then opened it again. She stared at the blank screen for a little while longer.

Her stomach growled. She hadn’t eaten since her cheese and bread meal in the dungeon.

Luci looked outside, saw the rain, saw the running water of the Gethalat River, the raindrops dappling across the gurgling surface. She sighed.

“What are you even thinking, Luci?” she mumbled. “You can’t catch a fish. If Wip were here, he’d be able to scoop up half the river just by sensing out the fish, and then he’d punch the water or something and they’d all fly into the air. You? You’d have to stand in the river up to your neck just to get in the right position for your gestalt sense to be useful. And then what? How will you get out when you weigh twenty kilograms more than usual?”

She dropped her phone beside her head. Her hand brushed against her staff. “At the end of the day, you’re just a stupid, pampered princess who thought she could be a dungeoneer. Without your title, you’re nothing.”

She curled up and tried to preserve as much heat as she could. Her body shivered relentlessly. She was too worn out to start a fire, too cold to sleep, too hungry to eat. She needed to rest, but without a good meal she’d wake up groggy and unsatisfied. Without a fire, she could get sick and then she wouldn’t be able to get another meal again. Her thoughts went around like that in circles and, in the face of that monstrous reality looming over her, of how hopeless her situation had become, she didn’t see much of a point in trying.

A drop of water landed on Luci’s head, causing her to blink in reflex. When her vision focused, she noticed a pinhole in the canvas. Water was leaking through it in slow but steady drips.

“Right, you forgot to patch it up.”

She rolled over and scratched up the dirt beside her bedroll. Out of the hole she pulled her box of meagre possessions. She opened the box, shuffled through it, and took from it a yarn of thread. The yarn was almost empty; not even a finger’s length of thread remained on it.

That was all it took.

It started with a sniffle. Next was a whimper. Her throat locked up and her chest ached. Before she knew it, Luci was curled up on her soaked bedroll bawling her eyes out. She scraped up her box of possessions and clutched it to her chest. The crystals she’d saved up for months scattered into the mud. Her only photo of her sister got scrunched in her hands.

“Vesi,” she babbled through her sobs. “I’m sorry. I’m the worst big sister. I couldn’t control Lunacogita. I couldn’t be a dungeoneer. I was supposed to be someone you could look up to but, instead, I’m a failure. A stupid failure! I’m sorry, Vesi. I’m sorry.”

She wasn’t sure how long she cried for. The rain seemed to last forever. Her hunger fled and the cold faded in the wake of her misery. No matter how hard she cried, the pain wouldn’t go away. When she stopped crying, it was only because she was too exhausted to keep the tears flowing. The rain fled. The moon drew closer and closer to the dark horizon, its rays peeking through the passing clouds. For hours, maybe, Luci lay curled up on her soaked bedroll, alone, too broken to even shiver.

Then her phone pinged. She didn’t recognise the sound at first because she’d never received a message on this phone before. She’d left her old one back at home, along with the rest of her miserable life. Slowly, moving arms that felt like lead, Luci picked up her phone.

When she read the message, the weight that was crushing her heart was replaced by something far, far worse.

Despair.

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