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Cut and Restore Rope Trick
Following Miles’ directions, I managed to find the aforementioned ‘kitchen’. Boy, he wasn’t kidding when he said there wasn’t much in it.
Apparently Miles’ version of a kitchen was a rusty metal room with a small island counter, two Bunsen burners, a five-gallon water bottle with a spout, and a small round table shoved up against the wall. Every surface was covered in dirty dishes and old crinkled papers, and I didn’t even want to think about the small dark splotches on the floor.
Two obnoxious structures towered on either end of the room. When opened, I discovered several stacks of various canned foods. I was thrilled to find a small basket of cucumbers still fresh enough to eat. Pulling them from their spot and setting them on the nearby table, I cleared off a chair and began to chow down.
As I attempted to choke down an odd bit of a dry cucumber, Olyvia wandered into the kitchen from the other door. She was kid-free, but her lanky body sagged with fatigue, her thick boots dragged on the wooden floorboards with every step, and her arms hung by her sides. I felt my eyebrows go up with an unspoken question, to which she responded with a sharp shake of her head and a sigh.
Very well. It wasn’t worth asking.
Rather, it wasn’t worth asking right now.
After eyeing my food, Olyvia began scrounging around the kitchen for her own meal. She managed to find a dead chicken and an old sausage link, setting them on the other end of the table and tearing into what she dared.
The way she was tearing into the meat suggested she hadn’t eaten in too long. According to the she-wolf, marwolaeths needed raw meat to sustain themselves. Usually they managed by raiding the freezer section of a local store, despite the claims they lived on wild game like feral creatures. Olyvia once told me the only real way to kill a marwolaeth was to starve it first. I had yet to try out this theory, but I was getting a first-hand display of it now.
“I thought you didn’t need to eat,” I finally said through a mouthful.
She let out a growl as she tore into a chicken leg. “I was hoping to use the night to recover. Instead I spent it antagonizing a killer and blackmailing Keepers.” The bone snapped between her abnormally long teeth and she began to crunch on it. “I need something to keep my strength up...especially if...”
I hesitated. “You think Miles is going to try something?”
She shook her head. “Not if you keep him busy with our payment.” Glancing up and giving the dead bird a break, she asked, “what did you wind up telling him, anyway?”
“An old life story. Mostly fake,” I lied.
She didn’t believe me.
In all honesty, she had no reason to. She knew my tells, subtle as they were. She also knew me well enough not to call me out on it. At least, not right now.
We stared at each other for a moment before going back to our food.
“So you seem tired,” I said, redirecting. “The kid?”
She shook her head. “Just recent events.”
I’ll bet.
In the last twenty-four hours, Olyvia had gotten herself tangled in an old marwolaeth prophesy, magically Bonded herself to an unstable elven teenager, blackmailed law enforcement, and basically helped to start a civil war between the wolves and the foxes.
My silence elicited an annoyed snort from Olyvia. “What?” she asked, swallowing the last of the chicken.
“I’m worried,” I answered. “You and Layla sharing the Bond means whatever happens to her happens to you and vice-versa. But half-bloods have been proven to be unstable. What happens to you if the kid can’t control herself?”
“I can handle it,” Olyvia growled, aggressively grabbing at a sausage link. “I’m stronger than she is. More willpower means more control.”
“And if she goes feral?”
“I can handle it!” she snapped.
“Alright, alright,” I said, hands going up in mock surrender. “Don’t bite my head off.”
“Then don’t piss me off,” she snapped again. “I can handle a child strapped to my head.”
Famous last words.
We went our separate ways after finishing off our food. Olyvia went to go check on Layla, the kid bringing out the over-protective mother in the wolf. I didn’t care; I needed to get back to Miles anyway. He ‘doesn’t do payment plans’. I couldn’t complain. Not many pirates would cart you from Texas to France for the price of a good story.
Well...I could complain, but I was choosing not to.
My cell buzzed, Sympathy for the Devil playing loudly and making me do a dance as I tried to pull the flip-phone from its holster strapped to my belt.
“What?” I said, flipping the phone open.
The sound of my voice crackled with static over the phone as one of my copies all but growled, “I’m calling it in. I’ve done everything I can, short of taking this sword apart.”
“And?”
“I can’t make heads or tails of the inscription.”
“You’re kidding.”
“It’s an alien language, what did you expect?”
“A translation.”
“I could barely read it the first time, remember? To make it worse, the inscription changed halfway through my translation and there’s no repeating characters. Everything I managed to do over the last few days is wiped. I give up; I’m taking it to Sparrow.”
“Fine. Know what you’re gonna trade her?”
“The copy I made of the journal Layla found. If I understood it correctly, there’s enough information in there to suggest interest for her. If she wants something else, I’ll just go and steal it.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“I always have a plan.”