13. Sunrise and Breakfast (Patreon)

I woke up with a jolt. Something soft covered my face, thick and stinky. A rotten stench clung to my nose and mouth. I breathed in, and hair fluttered into my mouth, the ends of the hair tickling at my throat. I coughed and shoved blindly. It rolled away, then, with a grunt, rolled right back toward me.

“Argh! I’m gonna choke!” I sat upright, shoving the thing away again.

Ace glared at me and rolled over again, eyes sliding shut.

The small room reeked. Pungent human stench clung to the air, the walls, everything. I held my nose, but the stink got in through my mouth anyways.

“Ugh, that’s it.”

I snatched up Ace and slung him over my shoulder. Startled, he flailed, but he barely weighed a hundred pounds. I held on and waited for him to quiet down. “You’re getting a bath, like it or not.”

At that, he flailed harder. “I don’t—”

“You do.” I kicked open the trapdoor.

Vi sniffed and blinked awake, squinting at me in the squint of the not-really-awake.

“Don’t worry. Go back to sleep.”

She blinked again, then sunk back to her bedroll.

Grabbing wildly, Ace gripped at the wall. “Don’t—need!”

I hopped through the trapdoor, ignoring his nonsense. A short pulse of magic offset the extra weight on my shoulders. I shoved out of the pantry.

Ace gripped onto the doorknob. “Let me go!”

I yanked, fighting against him. “Nuh-uh. Bathtime, kiddo.”

He twisted and kicked, but I had a hold on his waist. I pulled. His hand started to slip. He kicked harder, panicked. I reached up a leg and pushed on the door, leaning back with my body. He stretched out, gaining another inch or so, it seemed, to maintain his hold on the door. He kicked again, harder than before.

I grunted. An ankle caught me in the solar plexus, and I folded. Ace, sensing weakness, grappled at the doorknob with both hands.

I snarled and kicked the door, almost yanking him free entirely. “Kick me one more time, and see where that—”

Tanya strode by, both eyebrows raised.

“Uh—you have a free bath?” I asked, nodding at Stinky-And-Clingy.

“There’s a bucket in the stables,” she replied.

“That—alright, fair.” I kicked again, harder. The handle popped out of Ace’s grip.

“No! No!” Ace flailed. His hand caught a mug. It tipped over and fell toward the ground.

Tanya snapped over and caught it, inches from the floor. She turned to me.

“I got it, I got it. Ace, stop. You’re getting washed one way or another. All you’re doing is prolonging the inevitable.”

“Don’t want,” he whined, thrashing harder.

His stomach grumbled. We both paused, looking at each other.

“I’ll buy breakfast if you take a bath.”

Ace stiffened. He hesitated, then fell limp in my arms.

I smiled at Tanya. “Er, could you…?”

“I’ll add it to your room fee,” she said, bustling past. “You’ll get whatever the girls want.”

Better than I could make. I nodded and hurried Ace outside before he got second thoughts about our deal.

As promised, a bucket awaited us by the stables. Big enough to fit me, let alone a scrawny twelve-year-old, it’d do the job. I let go of Ace, waited a second to make sure he wouldn’t run off, then dragged it over to a rusty pump and began to fill it. Rust-colored water rushed out, then russet, then a kind of faint amber. With every pump, it grew paler, and the bucket filled.

Ace crouched beside me. I looked up. He held a filthy horse sponge and a block of soap.

“Give me that.” I ran the sponge under the water until it squeezed clean-ish, then passed it back to him. “Hop in.”

“Clothes?” he asked, plucking at his.

“Good idea, wash ‘em at the same time.”

He hesitated again, looking around.

“What are you, a maiden? No one’s going to come by the tavern at this hour. Go at it.”

He looked at me and bit his lip. “What if they do? If they see my core…”

“Want me to keep watch? Fine. Just hurry up.”

He nodded and placed a foot in, then yanked it out. “Cold!”

I rolled my eyes. “C’mon, princess. Quit coming up with excuses and hop to. What, or do you want me to wash you?”

“No!”

“Yeah, yeah. Go on. Breakfast won’t be hot forever.” I turned my back and crossed my arms.

Splashing behind me. I peeked a look, just to be sure, but at the sight of the kid begrudgingly scrubbing his shirt in the chilly water, I turned back around. “Wash your hair, too.”

He made a grumbling noise in the back of his throat, but the next thing I heard were bubbles blown in the water.

Some time after the sun rose, well and truly, a small, cold hand pressed at the back of my neck. I jumped. “Ace!”

He laughed and darted away. Dark hair no longer tainted with blood, it glistened almost blue in the early dawn light. Soaking clothes clung to his body and sagged off his limbs, but at least they no longer smelled like dead snake. “I did it. Give me breakfast.”

“Get the others.” I waved vaguely.

He wrinkled his nose. “They didn’t take a bath.”

“I know, but they deserve breakfast, too.”

Unconvinced, he frowned at me.

“They’ve had a hard time lately, alright? They get a break, just this once.”

His frown didn’t vanish, but he spun on his heel and vanished anyways, ragged jaw-length hair flopping around from the weight of the water.

Breakfast proved a quiet affair. Distantly, we could hear the girls giggling in the tavern proper, but we ate in the back room, clustered around a dirty table with two chairs between the lot of us. Vi sniffed and wiped her eyes all through it. Edmund stared, barely remembering to lift his fork to his mouth. Milton ate voraciously, almost matching Ace, who ate like a wild beast. At the edge of the splash zone, I leaned away, but lost to the inevitable anyways as a splat of eggs landed on my pants.

I scooped it up and ate it. No point wasting food.

“You’re still holding Cher,” Milton noted, looking me over.

I grunted, adjusting her strap idly. “High-quality cores are expensive. People’ll yank ‘em outta anything they can get their hands on. They’ll tear one right out of your chest, if they can.”

He blinked. His eyes darted toward the trap door.

He left the gun upstairs, I realized, and bit back a chuckle. “Mass-produced, or farmed, cores? No worries, though. At the point someone would steal one of those, they’d make more money taking your wallet.”

“Oh,” he said, turning back to his food.

Finished, I pushed away from the table. “I’m heading out. You lot, stay put. I’ll be back later, find you a better place to stay.”

Edmund nodded. Vi wiped her eyes and managed something like “Okay.” Milton gave me a thumbs-up.

Ace stood up as well. He grabbed onto me. “Me too.”

“Are you a fugitive or not?” I muttered. I’ll take him to Piper’s later tonight, once it’s dark. For now, it’s best if he stays out of sight. I did kind of kidnap him from the cultists, after all.

He stumbled a step and leaned against me. “I wanna go.”

“That’s nice, kid, but—whoa!”

Ace swayed. Eyes rolling back, he went limp and toppled to the floor.

“Ace!”