Inch by Inch

The rope was tight at his waist. It shifted back and forth as the others tugged, the rough strands sawing at his clothes.

Jay blamed the other two for tangling them up like this. He had stayed still the entire fight, holding the oddity down. It was Ana and Kane that had run around and made a mess of things. For this reason, he remained in place while the two of them sorted it out. Or tried to.

“No, you got that way.”

“That will not work.”

“Just do it!”

The untangling took far longer than it should for a man whose Word was Threads and a woman who’d trained as a seamstress. Jay interrupted only to ask Kane to check for more quags in their area. The tall swordsman’s inspections continued to come back clean. Nothing his worded eyes could see was moving towards them and even if something was, they were in a relatively safe spot. The next terrace was thirty-three feet and three inches down, the one above thirty-three and one inch.

When finally free and after ensuring the quag was really dead, they took a break lest they unravel themselves. It wasn’t the exertion from the fight itself as much as the mental strain. Every step they took in here was a step waiting for an ambush. It dragged on their minds. They wanted to enjoy the peaceful space while they could.

“You said we were here for two reasons?” Ana asked after a few minutes of rest. “Something you wanted me to try?”

Jay took a sip of water and nodded at a nearby outcrop of stone. It was jagged and bore weather-worn tool marks, only distinct because of how regular they were. “I wanted to test the cost of your Word, and if it changes based on what you’re cutting. We’ll see how long it takes for you to start to feel an effect with stone, then try again another day with wood.”

“Here?” Ana asked, glancing around the quarry with some hesitance.

He tried not to take offense at her tone. It was good sense rather than doubt towards him; they had fought an Oddity minutes before, and the place was known to be infested with more of the creatures.

“Yes. I don’t want you to push to the point of exhaustion, just up until you feel the strain.”

“But here? Right here?” she asked, raising both eyebrows.

“It doesn’t seem like the safest option,” Kane chimed in.

“Oh. No, we can try it by the entrance to the quarry. I just thought this was the best place to find the stone to test with.”

“Well, there’s always the city wall,” Ana said with a teasing grin, no doubt remembering his last reaction when she nearly suggested the same thing to Peter. “I doubt they’d miss a few notches.”

Jay made a face at her that rightfully expressed his opinion of that. “Anything approaching Kane?”

When he responded in the negative, they set about carrying the quag back to the entrance.

The oddity’s look-away effect had faded after death, which was great, as transporting it would have been difficult if not impossible otherwise. A short trip still turned into a long one as the dead creature proved more difficult to carry than expected. Its long thin body was too heavy for one person to hold alone unless they were willing to sling it over their shoulders, and with all the tendrils full of sedative, that wasn’t an option. One quag was as many as their team of three could carry. This was the end of today’s hunt.

Jay and Kane were grateful for the break when they stopped at the entrance. It didn’t take long to find a suitable outcrop of stone and then there was little for the two of them to do but sit and watch. Ana cut line after line into the stone, making the slices as even as possible. Jay took notes and Kane kept an eye on their surroundings.

“Ah!” Ana’s cry broke the silence. She stepped back from the outcrop, shaking her left hand out.

Jay took note of that, too. Ana was holding onto the spear with both hands as she cut, but it was her left, her dominant hand, that was affected first.

“You okay?”

“Fine,” Ana said through gritted teeth. She stopped shaking her hand and tried to hold it flat in the air. The fingers trembled. Scowling, she shoved it under her armpit. “It’ll clear in a minute or two.”

Jay’s eyebrows raised. “You sure? It took days after the wagons.”

“That was exhaustion.” Ana’s voice was sharp from the pain. “This kind has always cleared up shortly.”

“This kind?” It dawned on him. “Ana, how do you know that?”

Her scowl shifted from her hand to him. “I practiced.”

“In the city?” Her words about notches on the city wall felt a lot more real now. “On what? What did you do?”

Ana looked away.

He knew wouldn’t do that if she wasn’t feeling guilty about something. His teammate was no actor.

“What I do during lunch is none of your business.”

“It is if you’re breaking things. Don’t you remember the whole mess with the tree and Vasily? What if you hurt someone? We’re allowed to use our Words in the city, but that doesn’t mean that can’t be taken away.”

“It was just some trash!” Ana snapped, but her eyes were still looking away. “If anyone wanted it, it wouldn’t have been left on the street.”

Jay groaned, rubbing his face with his hands. “There’s a reason we’re practicing this outside of the city. One slip and you could kill someone.”

“But I didn’t.” She was glaring at him now. “You might be in charge of the team, but that doesn’t mean you can control what I do with my Word.”

“I’m not controlling it, I’m just asking you to stop risking everything!”

“Stop.”

Both of them turned to Kane, who was looking between them, eyebrows furrowed. “There are no quags around us.”

They winced at the reminder and quickly looked around at their surroundings. The unsafe environment they were in. The reminder that Kane was keeping track of his duty while Jay argued made him feel all the more foolish.

Kane took a breath. “Ana, you are taking a big risk practicing in the city. If something goes wrong, we could lose our adventurer status.”

Ana grimaced, but that hint of earlier guilt seemed to stop her from saying any more.

Jay relaxed his shoulders. Yes, that was exactly what he was talking about.

“Jay, you have to trust Ana like you do in a fight. She is not a child. Stop treating her like one.”

What? That’s not-

He opened his mouth to object, only to meet Kane’s impassive face and Ana’s victorious eyes. All hopes that the earlier mess with the rope had broken their recent alliance disappeared. This was not a debate he could win. Unfortunately, a white peace wasn’t on the table.

“What about your Word?” Ana asked.

“Huh?”

“Kane was looking for the quags. I got the stone testing. What about you?”

“What about me?” Jay grumbled, turning away.

“We need to train our Words remember? ”

He tried to deflect. “Why does it matter? You wanted to train your Words. Here we’re training them.”

Kane wasn’t having it. “Our Words.”

Jay threw his hands up. “Why do you care? It’s not helpful, and it’s my Word right?” He shot a look at Ana. ”Weren’t you just saying something about that?”

“Why don’t you?” She yelled back, her voice rising beyond the conversation. “You’re being a hypocrite.”

“Ana,” Kane warned.

“No!” she snapped at him, then caught herself. She ground the butt of her spear into the ground. What she said next was short and clipped. “The leaders of Heritage and the Marching Orders aren’t in the city.”

“What?” Jay asked, the statement not making any sense.

“They’re gone on some task. They have been since the solstice.” Ana continued pushing the point, not explaining at all.

“Ana, what are you talking about? That has nothing to do with-”

“It has everything to do with Words!” she shouted over him. “Pono takes the guild’s tasks. The guilds take ours, we train our Words to catch up- it’s all wrong. None of that’s important.”

Kane’s calm voice was like a river in front of a rockslide. “Ana. Will you explain?”

“They were talking last night, in Peak.” She said in a halting tone, less a shout and more of a gasp.

For once, Jay didn’t feel a sting at the name. He was more worried about how his teammate was speaking. Something had gone badly wrong there if Ana was still shaken over it.

“The guildmasters- they only go out- city killers alright? They were talking about city killers, and then how it wasn’t likely because no towns or villages had gone quiet and I kept thinking about Mom, and home, and it’s- just-”

The thought caused a spike of fear to flow through Jay. It was a horrible idea, to return one day and find your home devastated. He hadn’t thought about it since leaving home. Why hadn’t he? Now, the mention brought back worry from his childhood, from when his father’s caravan would be late arriving by days, sometimes weeks. It was a lingering fear.

But City Killers were just another kind of Oddity. Jay had grown up with them and had learned to deal with that knowledge. You couldn’t live your life in fear, always watching and waiting for the worst. That was no life at all.

“Ana,” Jay said, his voice even now. “I’m sure they were wrong. If they left during the solstice, we would have heard about a city killer by now. The caravan would have been told before they left the city. It’s nothing to do with Kavakar.”

“I know! It’s just-” She paused, taking a shuddering breath. “It’s stupid. Pono, the guilds, the tasks. We need to train our Words for that, but we need to train them for this more.”

Jay’s eyes couldn’t help but widen. “City killers? You can’t think we should be fighting city killers?”

“No! Yes? Someday?” Ana ran her left hand through her hair. It had stopped shaking. “That’s the point of this all. Isn’t it?”

Jay didn’t have words to reply with. Was it? He hadn’t set out to fight creatures that destroyed cities, that crushed towns or left them silent and frozen in time. All he wanted was to see the world, to help people, and found a guild he could be proud of someday. To make stories.

Did the city killers play a part in that?

He didn’t know. It seemed none of them did. The conversation died there, and they only spoke again to discuss carrying the quag back.

Tense as it was with their hands full, they heaved the body out of the pit and back to the city without any issue.

| i i i ¦ i i i | i i i ¦ i i i |

“Now see, you’ve made a mess of this one.” The knacker poked a finger into one of the gaps in the skin of the quag, paying no mind to the fuzziness that played around his appendage.

“We needed to kill it,” Jay said with a hint of disbelief.

“And you’ve done a fine job of that,” the knacker soothed, retrieving his finger and wiping it against the fuzz. All the gunk slid off with dubious ease. The man’s hands were well kept, his nails shining with some kind of polish. Some gimmick of the trade, perhaps. “Tricky creatures, these things. City wants them dead, but can’t decide what to pay. Guards are wary, but they won’t approach the walls so they just make sure the things are dead. Alchemists want the tendrils, but don’t want to do the milking.”

“Milking?” Ana asked in horror.

The knacker ignored her, continuing with his monologue. “The meat’s stringy and inedible for us, but give it to a mean cow and they’ll be docile for the day. Leatherworkers want the skin, but only for custom orders, the kind that the guards pay a close eye to if you’ve been considering it.”

He slapped the oddity; the fuzziness shaking in an unsettling way. “Every part useful, but a pain to deal with.”

“Are you getting at something?” Jay asked. He appreciated the explanation, but he was tired after carrying it back, and exhausted from the arguments.

“Well, no leatherworker's going to pay full price for this, are they?” The man exclaimed, sticking a finger back in one of the many wounds.

Jay wished he would stop doing that.

“Can you stop doing that?” Ana asked, voice shaky.

“It’s a tricky thing to move, this is.” The knacker shook his head sadly. His hair was trimmed right down to the scalp, leaving only a thin brush. “I could only give you twenty for it.”

Jay’s eyes narrowed. So that was his game. “Twenty? You’ll get more than that from the alchemists alone.” It was a guess, but sedatives had to have some use. “We couldn’t let it go for less than a silver.”

“A silver?” The man choked, finger flying out of the body to point in the air. A bit of viscera came with it, flung up by the motion. It landed on the road behind them with a splat.

“Can’t be too many quags about,” Jay said, stepping forward and reaching for the oddity like he was going to pick it back up off the knacker’s cart.

“And no more for quite some time if the Brigade’s negotiation with the city continues to go so poorly,” Ana tsked, catching onto Jay’s tactic instantly and matching him. Their experience, two childhoods spent in shops and years of assistant duties as soon as they could count, coming back to them in an instant.

“The negotiations going poorly, you say?” The knacker asked, eyes narrowing by two millimeters before the experienced trader caught himself. If true, it was bad news for this transaction, rarity determined price, but the knacker wasn’t buying the oddities for himself. Any lapse in supply was a lapse he could take advantage of too.

“Mmhm,” Jay hummed, not turning to face the knacker. Instead, he shifted his hands and took a hold of the Oddity, lifting it up. “And that was before this Pono business. Can’t imagine that’ll help things.” He turned back to the others and nodded at the other end of the oddity. “Kane?”

The man in question stood well back, eyes wide as he watched them. Kane was never one for people, and Jay didn’t think he’d ever seen him in his family’s shop before.

“Now, now,” the knacker said, placing his hand flat on the quag as if to smooth the fuzzy out. Or hold it down.

Ana and Jay had him. The bait was set.

The man’s face relaxed, becoming friendlier. His tone shifted. “Let’s not get too hasty. That’s new information to me, isn’t it? Only adventurers such as yourselves would hear the latest. Traders like me have to wait a while. For things to disseminate. Changes like that, the price must change with it. I’m sure we can find a number that suits us all.”

Jay paused for a moment, as if to think, before releasing his grip on the corpse. “We have come to you with all our corpses, haven’t we? Expecting a fair price.”

“And I’ve given it to you,” the knacker crooned. “A good deal has to have that foundation. Shame the bureau takes the ears. Lots of interest from the jewelers and crafters for more mood sensors.”

Jay noted the hint, but had no intention of bypassing the bureau for what could only be a few bronze.

As the man turned to nod at Ana and give her his attention, Jay met Ana’s eyes. They had the same intent as his own. He smiled.

The haggling began. Ana and he had the upper hand, but the knacker, Tony as he introduced himself, was no newly worded, and knew more about the market than either of them. Like with the fight earlier, Jay played the hook, the catch. He stood still in his bargaining while Ana chipped away, using her inexperience with oddities and adventuring to suggest outlandish prices that Jay never could, and then her seamstress expertise whenever the hide of the oddity was mentioned.

They shook at fifty-two bronze, a price set for future oddities while Brayden’s Brigade dithered. Tony’s hand was less slippery than Jay expected, but far warmer than he would have liked.

Ana hid her reaction to the knacker’s hand worse than his, eyes widening as her nose crinkled, but Tony burst out laughing instead of taking offense.

“Oh, that was fun. You two are better than most new adventurers.” Tony raised an eyebrow at Ana. “I don’t think anyone’s told me I should pay more because they’re inexperienced before – and have it work! Stick to that. You won’t pull off the hardened warrior trick for quite a while.”

He paused, spinning to face Kane, who’d been quite neglected in the negotiations. “No, still quite a while, but maybe if you loomed a little more. You certainly have the height for it.”

Ana grumbled, but her cheeks had risen with a hint of pride or amusement. Kane seemed just as lost as before, and the normal kind instead of what Jay was coming to accept as his Word cost.

“Now I best get this off before the guards complain about the drips,” Tony said. “You enjoy the rest of your day, and keep coming by this gate!

They waved him off, and made their way to the adventuring bureau to receive a further four for the confirmed kill of a quag, handing in a note from the guard. It was a good day, and they were all in high spirits as they debated where to go for lunch. About twenty minutes later, when reviewing the conversation, it occurred to Jay that Tony might have been better than he’d realized.