The Prize of Dysprosium

Chapter VI: To the Marrow

As I walk the last half hour in towards the city, get my cold joints working again, I feel nothing but an overwhelming fatigue. The job has taken much more out of me than I'd thought it would. When I finally reach the Cave, hungry and bone-tired, and is let inside by Ginnifer to see that they are already getting ready for rush hour. Garmen sticks her head up from the basement the second she hears the door creak open and I manage a tired smile her direction.

"What the heck?" she asks after she's tackled me in a hug. "Where have you been all day?"

"Out and about," I mumble, well aware of all the eyes looking at me. Where could I have gone all day? Frei saw me leave, but she knows nothing more, and I'm sure Barooba has done her's to keep the gossip down.

She is actually coming out of her office right as I think of her, eyebrows raised.

"I assume it went well?" she asks.

"It's done," is all I say, and the few people on the ground floor and not downstairs grow quiet at the obvious secrecy. Barooba just nods and turns back into her office.

"Seriously, where have you been?" Garmen asks, her voice hushed.

"I'll tell you later," I promise in a low voice. "I just really need to lie down. You go work."

"Alright," Garmen grumbles, clearly annoyed. But she can also see how exhausted I am, and maybe she can even hear the whale sounds my stomach makes because she tells me to get some food and hurry up and sleep so I can be rested to tell her all my secrets.

I make myself three sandwiches and bring them with me upstairs whereafter I go hunting in Hannah's room and find a bottle of wine hidden underneath her covers. I take it back with me and drink it straight from the bottle to wash down the sandwiches for no other reason than that I can't find a reason not to. As I change out of my drenched clothes, I notice that someone, most likely Garmen, has put the few coins Father George left me in the top of my bag of gold. I take the three pieces of metal in my hand and try to come up with something to do with them. Just looking at them make my gag reflex go off so I can't imagine keeping them, but I can't just throw them away either. Maybe it's my time on the streets, or the fact that there is always the weekly fee we have to make, but it feels fundamentally wrong to throw away money, no matter who they come from. So I decide to leave them in Hannah's room as payment for the wine. I've just gotten back to my own room when I realize it makes no sense what I'm doing and that I have maybe just given myself away as the wine thief. But it's done and I'm tired, and all I want to do is lie down in my bed and sleep.

Of course, I tell Garmen everything in the morning when she brings me minced rice for breakfast and an actual Danish which we share on my bed. She already knows about the underage girls and Governor Raze, but I also tell her that I only told Mafalda half the story. When I'm done, Garmen stays quiet.

"It's not like he has any way of tracing the story to me," I say as I lick crumbs off my fingers. "I heard it from someone else, Governor Raze has never even officially met me."

"It's not that," Garmen says.

"Then what?" I ask.

"You're going to think I'm a fruitcake," she breathes. "But I feel bad for him."

"Seriously?" I ask. "Garmen, it could have been you, you could have been one of those girls he bought with food, raped and then killed off," I say.

"I know that," she says. "I just wish there was a way to stop it from happening without all the secrecy and planning. And now everybody has to consider how they feel about someone they don't know who is telling them something they don't know is true about someone they don't know either, and since they don't know who it is no-one is going to do anything about it."