The Shady Adventures of Fabian

Chapter 14

Fabian awoke groggily the next morning with a pounding headache. He had ended up indulging quite liberally in the bottle of booze Amber had offered in an attempt to wipe his memory of the horribly disgusting and depraved acts he had participated in. He rolled over on the straw pallet and couldn't help but notice that Amber was nowhere to be seen.

He soon realized he wasn't alone in the room, however. There were two decidedly large and dangerous looking men there with him, one of whom wielded a long iron bar, which he was tapping menacingly against the floor.

"Good morning?" Fabian said.

"So you're the bloke who robbed Jankins last night?" the man without the bar said. He was bald and had a jagged scar running across his throat.

"That doesn't ring a bell," Fabian said.

"Oh, it doesn't ring a bell, huh?" the man said. "Perhaps this will help your memory." He punched Fabian in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him.

"No, I don't think that helped," Fabian wheezed.

"Let's get something straight here, you and me. Kasey runs this town. No heists, no burglaries, not even any petty larcenies go down without his say so. You got that?"

"Come on now," Fabian said. "I'm a full-fledged member in good standing of the International Brotherhood of Thieves. I should be able to operate anywhere I want. What, you don't believe me? Here, I'll give you the secret handshake." He held out his hand, but the man simply stared at him. "No? Fine, but I'll have you know this Kasey person is operating in direct violation of the Brotherhood code number J8547. I'm afraid I'm going to have to file a report."

"You ain't paid any dues to Kasey. That means you don't operate in this town."

"So I have to pay some fees to the local kingpin in order to do my business in this little rinky-dink backwater you call a town?" Fabian asked. "All right, fine. How much does Kasey want?"

"We've already taken all of your gold as punishment for pulling an unauthorized robbery," the man said. "Don't do any more thieving, or old Skrimm here is going to use his iron bar on your face."

The man holding the bar bared his teeth and let out a low, gutteral growl at Fabian.

"You guys are robbing me of my livelihood here," Fabian whined. "If I can't steal from people, what am I supposed to do?"

"Go get a real job," the man who had done the talking said with a shrug. "And don't get any ideas about disobeying our orders or Skrimm here will find you. Show him you mean business, Skrimm."

Skrimm unzipped his pants and proceeded to urinate all over Fabian. He then whacked his iron bar against the wall, leaving a sizable hole in it. The two men then walked out of the room and slammed the door behind them.

"A real job?" Fabian groaned as he looked around for a towel or something to dry himself off with. "I hate work." He couldn't even find a rag to work with, so he ended up rubbing the pillow all over himself in a mostly futile attempt to clean up. He made a quick search of the room, but didn't find much of value other than the small clay pipe in which he had attempted to smoke the useless ragweed. He shoved the pipe in his pocket and continued to look fruitlessly for a few more minutes.

After giving up on finding anything else of value, he wandered sheepishly back downstairs and walked up to the bartender. "Hey, would you happen to know where a fellow could find some, uh, honest work around here?"

"Well, I can't have you hanging out here," the bartender said. "You smell like piss and you'd scare off the customers."

"I didn't say I wanted to work here, did I?" Fabian snapped back. "I'd probably catch a disease or something in this dump, if I haven't already. Come on, man. You must know somebody who's hiring."

"Well, what are you good at?" the bartender asked.

"I'm a widely renowned hero and adventurer."

"Have you been by the adventurer's guild?" the bartender asked.

"There's an adventurer's guild?" Fabian scratched his head. "That's mighty convenient."

"Yeah, the guildmaster has a big file of jobs and I think there might even be a bulletin board where people offer to pay reward money for heroes to complete quests and whatnot."

"Well, that sounds like something I could do. I am a great hero and adventurer, after all. Where is this adventurer's guild?"

"On the complete other side of town from here. I'd give you directions, but it's honestly kind of complicated. Tons of twists and turns. There are lots of young enterprising folk who would be willing to hire out their horse and carts to take you there."

"Yeah, that might be a bit of a problem, since I'm a little cash poor at the moment," Fabian said. "Say, you wouldn't want to loan me the price of the fare by chance, would you?"

The bartender shot Fabian a look that said plenty about how he felt about that.

"Uh, never mind. I'll figure something out."

He wandered out onto the street and waited for an empty horse-drawn cart to roll past. Finally he spotted one approaching. "Ow!" he screamed at the top of his lungs and dramatically grabbed at his foot. "You just ran over my foot with your cart, you idiot!"

The driver of the cart was a young boy who appeared to be about fourteen years old.  He had messy brown hair that looked like it was probably cut by his mom, who was possibly blind.  He also sported a generous amount of acne on his face.  "Gee, sorry about that, mister. I didn't see you standing there. Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?"  The boy's voice cracked a few times as he talked.

"As a matter of fact, there is," Fabian said. "You can give me a free ride to the adventurer's guild and I'd be willing to forget that this matter ever happened."

"Oh, thank you, mister. My pa would have my hide if he found out I'd run over someone. Hop on in!"

"You should probably give me a little money for my trouble, too," Fabian said as he rubbed his foot. "I think you broke some of my toes."

"Weren't you rubbing your other foot a minute ago, mister?" the boy asked.

"You ran over both my feet, you clumsy oaf!" Fabian shouted. "Are you questioning my integrity? You're lucky I don't report you to the local authorities. Now take me to the adventurer's guild!"

"Yes, sir," the boy said as he cracked the horse's whip. "Right away, sir."