When the Student is Ready, part 2 (Patreon)

7 Years Later

The scrapyard was just the right blend of order and chaos that Emilio had come to enjoy due to his experiences in the Omnist orphanage.  A combination warehouse, smithy, and open market, the wide enclosed yard looked at first glance like utter lunacy, awash in cacophonous noise and bodies either milling about or rushing to and fro on urgent business.  Only with some exposure and experience did the pattern begin to reveal itself; there were orderly stations and lines for everything from people selling scrap wood and metal to the house or buying it, stations where employees such as himself sorted the junk into categories, small stands where smiths and woodworkers and tinkerers crafted objects from the yard’s products, larger (but still small) facilities in the rear where scrap metal was smelted down and junk wood burned into charcoal.  There were even stands capitalizing on the constant crowd to peddle food and drink, though they were banished to the street outside the yard proper; there was a rest area within the walls where employees spent union-mandated breaks and even some regular customers (mostly old men retired from one of the represented trades) liked to hang about all day.  Of course, this meant employees dashing back and forth carrying loads of heavy wood, metal, and occasionally other valuables, and customers milling around either conducting their business or just getting in the way.

It was orderly,and because average people were both inconsiderate and fairly stupid, there was always enough chaos going on to keep him on his toes.  Emilio rather liked the atmosphere, even if the nature of the work itself was pure drudgery.  He was a picker, given heavy leather mitts and a place to stand and assigned to sort different kinds of metal and discard other, useless materials that found their way into the big loads the yard bought from the factories.  There were haulers who’d take the filled boxes he produced to the various stations which would be their next stop, though depending on who was working and how busy it was, half the time he ended up having to do that himself.  The picking was finicky and tedious labor; Emilio enjoyed the opportunity to exercise his muscles properly by harnessing himself to a wooden sled and dragging a load of metal to the smeltery, but at fourteen he was only barely old enough to legally work in the Empire and the union’s rules didn’t allow him to be assigned such heavy labor.  He only got away with doing it sometimes because nobody actually cared that much about the rules, so long as he wasn’t on the books or under an officer’s eyes doing anything that’d cause legal trouble for the yard.

On this particular day the weather had first threatened a downpour, prompting a closing of half the stalls and decisions by the boss to send some of the haulers home.  Two hours later the sun was shining brighter than it practically ever did in Tiraas, leaving the scrapyard understaffed, half-shuttered, and inundated with a heavy load of customers, all of which meant Emilio was going to be doing his own hauling today.  In short, it would have been his favorite kind of day if not for the distraction which came barreling in an hour before noon.

“Emilio! You gotta help me, man!”

“Oh for the—Raoul, I’m working.”

The shorter boy slid right up to Emilio’s picking station, panting.  “Yeah, I know, and you knowI wouldn’t bother you on the job if it wasn’t a matter of life and death!”

“You’re probably bullshitting, so let me just assure you it isa matter of life and death, in that if you get me fired I’m shoving your skinny ass in a smelter.”

“Aw, you’d never hurt me, we’re bros.  Anyway, I’m dead serious, he’s after—”

Raoul was continually glancing over his shoulder as he spoke and suddenly broke off, skittering around behind Emilio’s current pile of metal scrap to hide.  Emilio didn’t stop working, though he did cast a quick gaze around the yard.  Nobody in his line of sight seemed to be on the hunt, or particularly agitated, so he wrote that off as Raoul just being jumpy.

“All right, then,” he said with a sigh even as he hoisted the coil of rusted chain which was currently concealing Raoul’s face from the yard and transferred it to his box of iron scrap.  “What’d you dothis time?”

“Ah, ah,” Raoul chided, straightening up and grinning at him even as he resumed peering nervously about.  “You know me better than that, man.  It’s whoI did.”

“And now he’s coming to chastise your performance.”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re hilarious.  No, seriously, man, you’d have done the same if you’d been there.  You remember that Stalweiss chick from the fair last week?  Green eyes, body like a dryad, sixteen?”

“Well, I didn’t ask her age while I was manning the vegetable stand.”

“Only because Brother Tamir was watching.”

“Damn right.  So not only did you steal a march on me, now you want me to save your butt, as usual.  All right,” he sighed heavily.  “Who is it this time?  Father, brother, boyfriend?”

“None of the above!  It’s just…well, y’know, a girl like that will invariably have other interestedparties.”

“Uh huh.  One of ‘em a sore loser, or…?”

Raoul cleared his throat awkwardly, still looking out for whoever had been pursuing him.  “Okay, well, you gotta understand—I mean, you sawhow hot she was, and naturally I was pretty pleased with myself.  So, our paths crossed at the market this morning, and I may have indulged in a little light…taunting.”

“Yep, there it is.”  Emilio shoved him lightly out of the way, turning to deposit a load of copper gears in the appropriate box.  “Hey, Masi, gimme your full boxes.  I’ll take a load back if you’ll watch my valuables.”

“I’m gonna pocket ‘em and tell the boss you did it,” the girl at the next station over immediately announced, even as she began loading boxes of scrap metal onto the sled Emilio had half-filled while he strapped himself into the harness.

“Funny stuff, Masi.  You know this is why you’re single.”

“Yeah, it’s totally that and not my lack of tits.”

“It seriously is.  Raoul, tell her.”

“I’dhit it,” Raoul chimed, immediately lounging against a support pillar and winking at her, a bold move considering Masi was three years older than he, two heads taller, and twice as broad in the shoulder.  Despite those physical advantages, she much preferred to stand in place sorting scrap, so Emilio hauled for her as well on days when they had to do their own, letting her keep an eye on his station while he was away.  “And that’s not idle boasting, baby.  What time do you get off, and how much help would you like with that?”

“Your friend needs to learn not to punch above his weight class, Emilio,” Masi said right past Raoul, though not without a smile.

“Yeah, so I’ve told him.”  In the next moment, Raoul yelped at receiving a kick from Emilio.  “How about we deal with the fallout from your lastconquest before you start working on the next one?”

“Then you willhelp me!  I knew it, you are a true brother.  By the way, what valuableswere you talking about?”

“Oh, just valuable compared to junk metal,” Emilio grunted, dragging the sled out into the aisle and starting toward the smeltery in the back of the yard.  “Mostly burned-out enchanting components that fall outta the old machinery.  Back-alley ‘chanters have some use for it, I dunno.  Also the occasional piece of rarer metal, some of the scrapped equipment has gold or silver parts they forget to strip out before selling ‘em off.”

“Oooh.”

“Tinypieces, and that’s rare.  It’s not worth stealing, Raoul.  What you’d get from a pawn shop is less valuable for your time than if you just got a damn job like a normal person.  Also, Boss Callin would break you in half.”

“Hey, I’m no thief! I was just thinking, y’know, hypothetically.  I’ve got more pressing problems right now, speaking of which…”

“Yeah, this is sounding more and more like a youissue.  I’ve got your back if it’s about a girl, we’ve all been there, but you deciding to gratuitously piss somebody off is something else.”

“Now, in my defense,” Raoul said reasonably, “I was not in possession of all the facts up front, which makes this not my fault.  ObviouslyI wouldn’t have spoken to him in the same manner if I’d knownhe was Guild.”

Emilio actually stopped mid-trudge, the slid proceeding a few more inches on inertia before grinding to a halt behind him.  He closed his eyes and drew in a slow breath.  “Please tell me you mean the Right Honorable Guild of Scriveners and Copyists.”

“Right.  Sure.  Except, ah, not so much Scriveners as Thieves.  But I hear tell they’re pretty honorable in their own—”

“Omnu’s dangly balls, Raoul!”

“OI!” another voice bellowed at them.  From across the yard, Callin herself leveled an accusing finger.  “Your friend can hang aroundif he doesn’t get in the way, Ezzaniel!  Back to work or get rid of him!”

“Yes, boss,” Emilio shouted back, pulling the sled into motion again.  “Just go home,man.  This time I think you might wanna sack up and tell the monks what kind of trouble you’re in.  They might ream you out, but not literally. Eserites are another fucking matter!”

“You think I didn’t already come to all those conclusions?” Raoul whined.  “It’s not the Thieves’ Guild after me, it’s one pissed-off dude who’s init.  I don’t think I wanna lead him back to where we sleep. There’s kids there, man!”

“You mean, in addition to the kid whose fault all this is?”  Emilio managed to sigh while dragging the sled.  “Well, that’s not a bad point, I guess.”

“Also, he was righton me, and I don’t think I coulda made it all the way back there before—  Oh, fuck.”

“Case in point, I take it?” Emilio muttered, again letting the sled grind to a stop so he could turn and look.

He was just in time to see Masi pointing at him and another fellow who he’d never seen before stomping in his direction.  Burly, scruffy, and also a teenager by the look of him, though a good bit closer to twenty than Emilio and Raoul.  He was very much aware of his awkward position on the road to manhood, though in Emilio’s case it had more to do with the kinds of work he was allowed to do, and the goods and services he could buy with the proceeds.  Raoul’s indeterminate standing tended to manifest more as it was today: he was always going after women who should have been out of his league and getting in trouble with men who definitely were.  At least he was still young enough that most of the women laughed him off.  Emilio was seriously concerned the guy was going to get himself murdered before he was thirty.

“All right, where is he?” the scowling hulk of a boy in the ragged coat demanded, stalking right up to Emilio.

He looked around, the motion meant to express that there were people on all sides of them (several halting in their own business to watch this new show), but also noted that Raoul had managed to completely disappear in the last three seconds.

“Wanna narrow that down, bud?” he asked, keeping his tone deliberately mild.  Situations like these were depressingly familiar to him by now; Emilio made it a point of both pride and strategic policy to remain calm when threatened.  He’d had seven years of practice since getting an unexpected life lesson from a sorceress in an alley, and while the art of poise under pressure had not come naturally at first, by this point he had it mostly down.  Convincing the monks to actually train him had helped a lot, though these days he was largely out of favor in the temple as he’d been forced to reveal that he didn’t plan to be initiated as a monk himself.

“Don’t get cute with me,” the bigger boy snarled, reaching for Emilio’s collar.

A rapid jab swatted his hand away hard enough to make him lean to regain his balance; the Eserite narrowed his eyes and Emilio had to concentrate on not gritting his teeth.  He’d hopedthis would be some muscle-brained fool who would lash out and provide an excuse for his own clobbering in self-defense, but this one clearly noted Emilio’s better-than-expected physical capability and revised his approach.

“I’m working here, man,” Emilio said, trying for a reasonable tone.  “If you want help finding somebody, go talk to the boss over there.  She gets paid enough to play tour guide.  ‘Scuze me.”

He started to turn around and resume his course, and was not particularly surprised when the thief reached out again to prevent him.  Had Emilio not been physically buckled to a heavy load of metal and in the process of turning away he was confident he could have deflected that as well, but as it was, he only managed to bring up his hand again and thump the back of his fist against a brawny forearm as he was grabbed by the shoulder and forcibly pulled back around.

“Don’t waste my time and I won’t waste yours, bud,”the Eserite said in a dangerous tone—a quiet one.  Emilio was not intimidated by blustering oafs because it had been a year or so since he’d met one he couldn’t knock on their ass.  Then again, he’d never scrapped with anyone in the Thieves’ Guild, for the simple reason that (unlike Raoul) he was not an idiot.  This fellow was trained to intimidate, and undoubtedly to harm, which made him something Emilio had to take seriously.

If the thief didn’t kill Raoul, he might.

“Could you take your hand off me, please?” Emilio inquired politely.

The sausage-like fingers, predictably, tightened on his shoulder.  “You know who I’m looking for, and you know where he is.  Cough him up and I’ll get outta your hair.  Otherwise—”

Emilio grabbed the hand and removed it, prompting an incongruous yelp of pain.  He was pleased to discover that grip worked in real-world conditions, not having had the opportunity to test it before, but no amount of muscle was a match for simple leverage.  Thumb pressed into the palm, bottom edge of the hand pushing down on the wrist; the thief had to either let his hand be pushed away or let his wrist be broken.  Human reflexes being what they were, nobody ever took the second option.

“I asked you nicely,” Emilio reminded him, still wrenching the bigger boy’s hand in a painful grip.

Naturally, that wasn’t the end of it.  He’d heard about techniques for de-escalation, things the Veskers and Vidians and even (supposedly) Omnists practiced, but that had been no part of his own courses of study.  Emilio’s way of handling things meant somebody always got their ass kicked in the end, and this was shaping up to be no exception.  It usually wasn’t him; he wasn’t quite as sure about this time.

The thief bared his teeth and drew back his other fist to deliver a blow which looked like it could knock him out.  The upside was that the speed of his reactions demonstrated the guy relied on sheer brawn in a fight, and Emilio knew how to counter that.  The downsidewas that all the counters to brute strength were hampered by him being harnessed to a sled full of scrap metal.

Then the other guy froze, his snarl dissolving into a blank face, and Emilio followed the suddenly changed direction of his gaze.

Boss Callin had appeared just behind him and to his left.  Though she was a petite woman in the latter half of her forties, her lean arms were as taut and sinewy as a ship’s rigging, which itself didn’t make a huge difference at this moment as she was also pointing a wand directly at the thief’s face.  Emilio immediately let go of his hand and took a step back.  If Callin shot the guy, that would solve this problem, provided he was not physically holding onto him.  Despite his own studies not emphasizing magical equipment, one didn’t train in any kind of combat in this day and age without learning exactly how lightning behaved.

“I don’t know what this is about and I do not give a fuck,” Callin stated.  “You don’t fucking come into myscrapyard and try to manhandle one of mypickers.  Get the fuck out, boy.  Now.”

Released by Ezzaniel, the thief raised one hand in a gesture of surrender, the other occupied by producing a doubloon from within his sleeve.  “Now, now, ma’am, let’s not go overboard.  You have my apologies for the intrusion.  But I think you should reconsider just who you’re pointing that piece at, hm?”

He had begun to roll the gold coin along the backs of his fingers in that thingEserites always did (or so Emilio had heard, this was the first time he’d seen it in person).  Whatever reaction he’d been expecting to that, he was clearly taken aback when Callin stepped forward and slapped it right off his hand.

“Do I look impressed, you little shit?” she spat.  “I told you to get out,not to get shirty.  You are now trespassing, which means I get to fry your ass and tell the constabulary why I did it.  Last chance.”

“Nowyou’ve gone and escalated this,” the thief retorted, glowering.  “If you wanna give mea hard time, fine.  But you are not going to disrespect—hey!”

To the clear amazement of both himself and Emilio, someone threw another coin at him.  A copper penny; it bounced right off his temple, effectively grabbing his attention.  The Eserite rounded on the source of this, snarling once more, and the expression immediately melted from his face.

To the side, now, stood one of the regulars, who for whatever reason had chosen the clamor and hustle of the scrapyard’s picnic tables as his preferred hangout spot for shooting the breeze with fellow retirees.  Emilio had seen him around but never paid him any mind; when you’d seen one sixtyish man in rumpled working-class attire, you’d seen ‘em all.

Now, though, the old man had planted himself so firmly in the aisle that the passing shoppers and yardworkers, those not already stopped to watch the unfolding spectacle, instinctively flowed around him.  He had fixed the young thief with a steely expression, and was, himself, now rolling a doubloon across his knuckles.

“Son,” the old man said in a voice gravelly from years of smoking, “this is a place of business.  You are being extremely rude.  I do hope you’re not wasting these good folks’ time because of some personalaffair?”

The younger man stared at him blankly, clearly taken aback, which afforded Emilio a few precious seconds to parse what he was seeing and fit it all into place.

Of course.  He’d heardthe Thieves’ Guild was only tolerated by merchants because they didn’t pick on people indiscriminately and put a firm stop to any disorganizedcrime in areas where they held sway.  Between the crowds, the bustle, and the large number of conveniently pocket-sized items being rushed thither and yon, the scrapyard was a veritable pickpocket’s paradise.  Naturally, the Guild would keep watchers here.

And apparently, Thieves’ Guild watchers counted the chastising of their errant members among their duties.

Slowly, the brawny young man drew in a deep breath and let it out.  Without another word to his senior, he turned to Boss Callin and bowed.

“Humble apologies, ma’am.  It seems I was out of line.  I’ll just get out of your way.  You folks have a fine day, now.”

He lingered just long enough to give Emilio a malicious stare, but turned and strode back to the scrapyard’s front gate.  The old Eserite had already about-faced and was ambling in no great hurry back toward his usual spot at the tables, once more with the slightly shuffling gait of an elder who just wanted to lounge in the sun.  Even viewed from the back, the transformation was striking.  Completely gone was the straight-backed, hard-eyed enforcer who had just stared down an angry Guildsman.

Callin blew out a heavy breath of her own, then turned a dour look on Emilio.  He cleared his throat and grabbed his leather harness, turning to resume hauling, but the boss stepped right in front of him.  Not to chastise Emilio, though; she stalked right up to a heap of scrap metal, leaned bodily over it, and thrust her arm into the gap at the other side.

“Hey what ow ow ow!”

Boss Callin was even stronger than she looked; even being no taller than Raoul, she had no trouble hauling the boy physically upright by a grip on his hair.

“You wanna explain to me what fuckery you just dragged into my scrapyard in the middle of a workday, son?” she demanded, releasing him.

“I…uh, well.  Madam, I won’t bullshit you.”  Raoul roughly smoothed his hair back down, ducking his head and looking up at her through his eyelashes.  “This all started over a girl.”

“Oh, for fuck’s fucking sake,” Callin groaned.  To Emilio’s surprise, she didn’t seem actually angry.  “You kids and your bullshit.  Look, boy: this is a place of business.  We’ve got shit to do, and if you disrupt my yard any further I willpersonally hurl your bony ass into the street.  But,if you can avoidcausing me any more headaches and stay out of everyone’s way, I don’t mind you being here.  Clear?”

“Crystal!”  Raoul saluted.  “Lady, you are both saint and scholar and it is a privilegeto bask in your radiance.”

“Omnu’s balls, he talks like a bard.  You really hang out with this kid, Ezzaniel?”

“We were raised together,” Emilio explained.  “Speaking of which, boss, we livein an Omnist temple.  Not even the Thieves’ Guild is gonna go cause trouble there.  You reallydon’t need to indulge him.”

“Traitor,” Raoul complained.

“You need to take better care of your friends, Ezzaniel,” Callin said severely.  “Ninety percent of everything is bullshit, except the people who have your back.  Now youget back to work, I don’t pay you to stand around getting life lessons.”

“Yes, boss,” he sighed, pressing forward into the harness and tugging the sled back into motion.  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Raoul already making a beeline for the table area and the older Eserite once more seated there.

Because of course he was.

***

“They’re not useless swords, just over-specialized,” Emilio explained that evening as he and Raoul walked home from the scrapyard.  He was carrying a length of polished wood which had turned up in the burnables pile and which he’d saved and bought for pennies, because he recognized its form.  Hence this conversation.

“What’s specialized about it?” Raoul demanded, reaching over to flick the bokken now resting on Emilio’s shoulder.  “I remember they looked like that,except metal.  A sword’s a sharp metal stick which you put in the other guy before he puts one in you.”

“I know for a fact you only say these things to piss me off.”

“Yeah, and it was more fun before you realized that.  Hey, d’you suppose this one came from that studio you went to?  There can’t be many Sifanese martial arts schools in town, right?”

“This ‘town’ is huge and the capital of the Empire, so who knows?  I can’t see Sensei throwing one out, especially since there’s nothing wrong with it.”  Tugging the bokken away from Raoul’s prodding finger, he ran his own hand over its smooth length.  About a yard long, curved, carved so that its convex side resembled a wedge though of course it wasn’t sharp enough to cut anything, and polished, it bore many dents and scratches from a lot of practice sparring, but certainly wasn’t damaged enough to deserve having been in the trash.  Emilio did not strictly speaking have any needfor the thing, it had just hurt his heart to see it destined for the charcoal burners.  “Anyway, they’re specializedbecause they require that one very specific martial art style to use effectively.”

“What happens if you use a kanata the wrong way?”

“Katana, and like any specialized tool, it breaks.  They’re made to cut traditional Sifanese armor in duels, which is cloth and wood because it’smade to block arrows rather than swords.  And that’sbecause Sifan has these crazy powerful fairies called…uh, kitsies or something, I pretty much only memorized the martial arts terms.  They have all these rules everybody there has to live by, one of which is the people there can’t mine very much iron.  So there’s not enough for infantry swords or metal armor.  So, specialized swords for nobles, made to cut cloth armor.”

“Shame.  I remember seeing the ones the teacher had displayed, they were wicked cool lookin’.”

“Objectively true.  But it doesn’t really matter how wicked cool a sword looksif it’s just gonna bend as soon as it hits a different kind of sword, or platemail—”

“Sorry to interrupt your history lesson, boys, but I think you owe me something.”

“Aw, fuck,” Raoul muttered, hunching his shoulders.

Emilio turned back around, unhurried, to behold the otherreason he’d seized the serendipitous opportunity to snap up the wooden practice sword.  Behind them stood the brawny young Eserite from before, which he had more than half expected, knowing a fair bit about the psychology of bullies.

“Have you seriously been waiting around out here all day?”he asked.

“Oh, it’s my day off.  There wasn’t much to miss.”  The youth idly swung a new acquisition of his own which had not been in evidence that morning: a brass-studded cudgel, also dented from considerable use and marked on its business end with ominous stains.  “Now then.  Where were we?”

“I think when we left off you were getting a reminder of the Thieves’ Guild policies about throwing your weight around on non-Guild business,” Raoul said, not so subtly edging behind Emilio.

“Yup.  I was outta line,” the thief agreed, slowly whirling the cudgel at his side by its attached leather strap.  He wasn’t spinning it fast, but the weightof it still made menacing whooshing sounds with each revolution.  “My apologies for that.  So just to clarify my position here, Tiny, me beating yourass is strictly personal, no religious business implied.  That clear up your concern?”

“Well, not my chiefconcern,” Raoul muttered.

“How about if he just apologizes?” Emilio suggested.

“Fuck that and fuck him!”Raoul exclaimed.

“How about if you butt out?” the thug retorted.  “I’m not gonna hate on a guy for backing up his friends, so I’ll tell you what, bud:don’t stick yourself into this again and I won’t give you a taste of your own, sound good?”

“Oh, buddy, you have no ideawho you’re messing with,” Raoul crowed.

“Raoul,” Emilio said patiently, “if you don’t shut the fuck up I’m gonna personally handyou to him.”

“What’s it gonna be, smart guy?” demanded the tough, deftly catching his cudgel.

They weren’t on the busy street right outside the scrapyard, of course; the guy had apparently been following them since then, only making his move now that they were in a completely deserted side avenue too narrow for vehicle traffic and only better than an alley because all the tenements lining it had their doors on this side.

Psychology of bullies.  Emilio had no interest in beating this guy up and certainlydidn’t need the Thieves’ Guild getting a bug up its butt about him, but he recognized that this had already progressed far enough that the boy wasn’t going to drop this unless forcibly persuaded.

So, instead of answering, he flowed instantly into stance and swept the bokken at the club.  Not, as nearly all sword forms demanded, at his opponent, but at the weapon.  Wood clacked against wood hard enough to make the Eserite stumble; to Emilio’s disappointment, he had gripped the cudgel too tightly for it to be swept from his grip by the blow.

The thief staggered briefly, but caught himself just as quickly and grinned.  “So that’s how you want it?”

Emilio raised the bokken to a ready position and waited.  It wasn’t a proper kendo stance; he barely knew those, having had only three lessons before figuring out that such an esoteric martial art was too specialized to be much practical use to him when there were so many others to study.  For example, he did know the relatively obscure Eagle Style longsword form.  And despite his lecture of a minute ago, to a certain extent, a sword was a sword.

The Eserite swung at his head.

Emilio deflected it, whacked the bokken against his shoulder and then jabbed him hard in the solar plexus.

Those would have been disabling and then killing blows respectively had it been a bladed weapon; as it was, the man still didn’t even drop his club, nor collapse the way someone shouldon taking a hard jab to that spot.  His coating of muscle was clearly no joke, and perhaps Emilio had been an inch or two off.  As it was, he stumbled back, half-doubled over and staring up at Emilio in consternation.

Emilio surged forward, wooden sword upraised.  The thief raised his club to block it; he changed his angle of attack and cracked the man’s wrist, finallymaking him drop the weapon.

Then, rather than pressing the advantage, he stepped back.

“We live at an Omnist temple, you know,” he said while the thief wheezed and clutched his bruised wrist.  Hopefully he hadn’t broken the bones; you coulddo that with a wooden sword.  In fact, you could kill with one if you hit the head or neck in just the right way.  “Free room and board till we’re twenty.  We can even earn some pocket money taking over extra chores; Raoul does.  I don’t needa job, you see.  I dothe job to pay for my training.  I take lessons in every fighting style that someone in Tiraas teaches.  Any moment I’m not working, I’m learning ways to beat you within an inch of your life.”

He shrugged, and lowered the bokken, still held at the ready but in a less defensive stance while the bruised Eserite stared at him.

“Just thought you deserved to know what you were wading into, bud. It sucks getting blindsided.  You still wanna push this?”

“Yeah, sucks to be you!”Raoul crowed.  “C’mon, where’s all that bluster now, huh?”

Emilio smoothly stepped to one side, opening a space directly between the Eserite and Raoul, and turned a flat stare on his friend.

“Now, Raoul,apologize to the man.”

“Excuseyou?” Raoul demanded, his own bluster evaporating instantly.

“You’re my friend; that means I have your back if you’re being picked on.  It also means I’m not gonna sugar-coat it for you when you need and/or deserve to get your ass kicked.  This guy is reasonablypissed off because youwere acting like a cock.  I’m not saying he’s handled it gracefully, but the man deserves an apology.”

It was hard to say which of them looked more incredulous.

After the stunned pause had drawn out for a few heartbeats, however, Raoul suddenly chuckled.

“Yeah.  Y’know what?  He’s not wrong.  Look, man.”  He stepped to the side, opening a wider space in which to get a full view of the Eserite.  “I was bein’ an asshole to you, and it really wasn’t called for.  So, I’m sorry.  Sincerely.”

“Huh.”  The thief had straightened back up and was now looking quizzically back and forth between Raoul and Emilio.  “Well, then.  All things considered, I guess my only reasonablechoice here is to politely accept.  Apology…accepted, then.  And look, kid,” he added, annoyance creeping back into his face and voice.  “It wasn’t really about the girl.  Shit happens, I don’t believe in holding grudges over stuff like that.  But you were seriouslybeing a little shit over it.”

“I’m half curious exactly what you said,” Emilio commented.

“Hey, lesson learned!”  Raoul held up both his hands, palms out.  “Henceforth I shall be the very soul of grace in victory.

“You’re all right, man,” the thief continued, turning to Emilio.  “Hey, you’re also good in a scrap.  The Guild always needs—”

“Not a chance in hell.”

“Wow, don’t over-think it,” he drawled, bending to pick up his cudgel—with his left hand.  “I wouldn’t want you to agonize onmy account.  Well, boys, you take care.  See you ‘round.”

“Not if—”  Raoul broke off at Emilio’s flat look, for once not needing to be whacked.  Silence reigned while the Eserite turned and strolled off back the way he had come, leaving them alone in the narrow street.

“Why do I get the feeling,” Emilio asked, “that despite all the fires I’ve had to pull you out of, it’s gonna beme who ends up murdering you?”

“Aw, you love me,” Raoul grinned.  “C’mon, let’s get outta here.  This has been a triumphant day, I say we celebrate at the Shabby Quack.  I’m tellin’ you, that waitress was giving you the eye last time.”

“Mm.  You’re buying.”

“Oy, you’rethe one with the big fancy job!”

Emilio gave him a look.

“On the other hand,” Raoul mused, “there isthe fact that I’m buying.  Gotta consider that.”

“That waitress was notgiving me the eye, you perv.  She was, like, twenty-five.”

“Aw, c’mon, don’t be like that.  Live for the challenge, that’s what I say!  Even if you don’t get under her skirt I bet she’s flattered enough by the effort to sell us alcohol.  That’s how I get served in half the pubs in this district!  Ladies have egos, too.”

“You ever pause to consider that maybe the way you act is the reason for all the trouble you get in?”

“Emilio, life’ll pass you by while you’re pausing to consider.  Girls and booze, that’s where it’s at!”

“You can’t hold your drink, either.  That’s how you got bannedfrom half the pubs in this district.  By the time you can legally drink you’ll have to ride the Rail to Madouris to find someone who’ll sell to you.”

Behind a resurgent layer of Tiraas’s infamous cloud cover, the sun sank below the level of the walls as the two of them sauntered on toward whatever the night held for them.