It wasn’t the first body to appear on the steps of her smokehouse, but it certainly was the biggest. A clenman from up north by the looks of him, or at least, from what Silva could see of him from under the patchwork of fresh cuts, old scars, and blue, purple, green, and yellow bruises blooming on his anvil of a face. It was a face that had seen more fights than friends if Silva had any say. A face that had ‘trouble’ carved into it with the subtlety of a butcher’s blade and the grace of a backstreet stabbing.
Silva had known enough trouble in her life as it was.
“Dead?” Bika asked, blinking over her shoulder with that slight open-mouthed expression that made her want to knock his empty head until it rung like a bell.
“Do you think we’re that lucky?” Silva replied, stooping down beside the figure and fumbling for a pulse, heart sinking as she found it. “God’s arse.”
“We can’t just leave him here.”
He had a knack for stating the obvious, Bika did, and Silva had to bite her tongue to stop a few choice scathing words in reply. Up close, the clenman was even uglier than before, a feat she had previously thought impossible. His nose was broken ten different ways. A week of greasy bristle clinging doggedly to his chin. And the smell… God, the smell. Either he had pissed himself, or been pissed on, and neither possibility was setting Silva’s stomach at ease… but the shop needed to be opened, and she wasn’t going to have what little business they had stopped at the door by a piss-stained mountain.
“Grab his legs,” she told Bika.
In the end, it took both of them and almost an hour of straining, dragging, twisting, and shoving to move the unconscious bulk onto one of the beds in the back. It looked a child’s cot with his enormous body in it. Her good sheets would smell like piss for weeks, no doubt, and her back ached something fierce, but that’s what small kindnesses got you, she’d found; A hundred little discomforts in the days to follow.
A few stray ghosts had already drifted into the smokehouse by the time they had finished. The most desperate of the decrepit shells, hollow-eyed and grey-skinned, wreathed in pallid smoke and lounging, mouths agape, among the seedy cushions and pillows. When she’d opened the shop those two years ago, these had been the first to emerge from the woodwork, cast-offs and rejects from other, more successful smoke shops. Addicts, teeth blackened and gone from their constant use. Horrifying to some. Disgusting to others. But to Silva, they had been beautiful. A chance at something better. Something honest. A life where she’d no scores to settle and no debts to pay. A life where she didn’t have to look over her shoulder every moment of ever day, or scan the exits of every room she entered for the quickest escape, or live day to day in fear, never knowing when would be the moment that ended her life, or whose the hand…
She’d built a new life. Not a beautiful one, but it was enough, and it gave her some small kindling of pride. Whoever would have thought that these hands could build anything?
“Bika,” she called, mind turning to the day’s work as the great brass door chime gave a tinkle. “I want you to clean that stain behind the curtain today.”
“Why?” he questioned infuriatingly, “It’s behind the curtain.”
“Well, the smell isn’t.” And the stain might not be soon either at the rate it was spreading. “Is it too much to have a little pride?”
“You need to be careful with pride,” a familiar voice behind her said. “It can so easily become vanity.”
She should have expected it really. Trouble always comes in pairs after all. As she turned, with a sinking heart, she was already counting the exits – two - and cursing herself for boarding up the third; an old, shutterless window sunk into the wall of the shop.
“Sultmage Gabriel.” She forced a smile onto her face, an effort rivaling that of moving the clenman’s body. “It’s been so long.”
Not long enough, by her count. Not nearly long enough. Last they’d met, he’d tried to have her killed. And the time before, she him. It had been years and leagues behind, so long that Silva had dared to hope that it was behind her for good. But that just went to show what good hope did you.
A single, groomed eyebrow deigned to lift itself from the man’s face.
“Too long,” he said. “And it’s Arch-mage now.” He glanced about the shop, taking in the peeling walls, the dripping ceiling, and the general filth. “You’ve done well for yourself.”
“Aye,” she hissed. “Better than I have any right.” She eased back a cautious step on the balls of her feet. If Gabriel noticed, he didn’t seem to care. “Why are you here?”
The Archmage seemed to consider that, tilting his head to the side like an owl watching a mouse.
“I’m calling in a favour.”
Silva laughed though she hardly felt like any of this was funny. “For what reason do I possibly owe you a favour?”
Gabriel raised his hand, palm up, and a small flame flickered into existence. Blue and gold and black. “For every moment that I don’t burn this hovel to the ground.”
Silva swallowed. It was a trick, wasn’t it? A pyrotechnic, like the time they’d torched Nosecca’s gambling hall. Or smoke and mirrors, like the display before the abbey which had first earned Gabriel his mage’s cloak. There was a trick to it, there had to be… but Silva could almost swear she felt the heat of that small flame.
“Why me?” she asked, voice hoarse.
Gabriel smiled. “Because I need the help of best thief in Setchan.”