1x06 “Weighty Credentials”
Released on http://www.patreon.com/99geek on July
2018
Penelope knocked on the door of Janice’s pub, and the tall
chubby thief Sean opened it to greet them.
“I brought him,” Penelope said, gesturing underneath her
cloak to her butler Roric. He too was wearing a cloak and hood over his pale
balding head.
Sean seemed to eye the man critically, and Penelope wondered
if the gay thief was about to comment on her Roric’s age. It seemed the man had
more crass than that, however, asking instead, “You know first aid?”
“I studied for many years as a doctor but never completed my
training,” Roric said, raising his nose proudly.
“You’re more qualified than anyone else in hear,” Sean said,
widening the door to let them inside. “Frankie really isn’t doing so good.”
“I’m doing fine,” Frankie said, from a table where Janice
had her strewn out and topless. As Frankie spoke, the bartender poured alcohol
on one of her smaller cuts and she screamed, twisting on the table in agony.
Gasping for breath, she watched as Roric place his leather bag of supplies on
the table beside her.
“This old man is gonna save my life?” Frankie asked
Penelope, laughing, and then cringing from the pain.
Penelope rolled her eyes. “If you give him a chance,” the
princess said sternly.
Frankie tried to cover herself with her hand. “Don’t make
fun,” she said weakly to Roric. “I know they’re small.”
“Frankie,” Janice said, stroking the thief’s head
affectionately. “You’re beautiful and you know it.”
“Not anymore,” Frankie muttered, looking down at the bright red scar under her breast.
The gash in her shoulder where Janice had pressed a bloody rag. The other
bloody rag pressed against her stomach. “Look what that bitch did to me.”
Janice kissed her tenderly on the lips, squeezing Frankie’s
hand. “You’ll always be beautiful to me,” Janice told Frankie as their lips
parted. Penelope thought it was cute, but Roric ignored the display of
affection and got to work lifting the cloth off Frankie’s flat stomach. He
reached his fingers in to examine the wound.
“Agh,” Frankie groaned, staring into Janice’s eyes
affectionately if only to avoid thinking about the pain. “If only I had known I
just had to get cut up pretty bad to rekindle the fire between us.”
“The fire never left,” Janice said in a sweet song voice,
her dark sin shining in the bronze light of the bar. “It was you who pulled
away or don’t you remember?”
Frankie winced again as Roric poked and prodded at her wound,
pulling gloves from his bag, and gauze. “Hey doc,” she said to him. “Couldn’t
you take a look at the big guy here. The lady and I have some catching up to
do.” She glanced across to the table beside her where her large blonde friend
was strewn out lifeless.
“I’d rather finish tending to this,” Roric said, looking
closely into her wound. “It’s gone untreated long enough. It’s thin but looks
relatively deep. How long was the blade that stabbed you here?”
Frankie reached under the table to pull something from one
of the wooden legs. It was one of her daggers, one she was likely playing with
earlier. “It was identical to this,” the thief said, twirling the blade in her
hand, careful to avoid the two broken fingers Janice must have bound together
while Penelope was gone.
“That’s deep,” he said, whistling. “You’re lucky it missed
your liver. It looks like it did some minor lacerations to your intestines but
it’s not leaking and you should heal okay as long as there isn’t an infection.”
He grabbed the bottle of whiskey the bartender had been
using to clean her smaller cuts. “This is going to hurt,” Roric told Frankie
and then Janice. “A lot.”
Janice’s eyes teared up, and she squeezed Frankie’s hand,
kissing the wounded thief again as Roric poured the liquid over and inside the
wound.
Frankie tensed, and then went limp, Janice releasing her
from their kiss.
“Frankie?” Janice said with worry. She shook Frankie who’s
eyes seemed to loll into the back of her head.
“She must have passed out from the pain,” Roric said, not
seeming too concerned.
“Or from blood loss,” Janice said fiercely with a look at
the older man.
Roric ignored Janice’s insinuation. “She’ll be alright. This
was the best thing that could have happened. I’ll quickly sew up this wound,
than bandage that one on her shoulder. It’s too wide to sew, but also shallow.”
He pointed at the shoulder and then grabbed his sewing kit from his bag. “Both
wounds will heal but leave scars. The rest of her cuts should be unnoticeable
in a couple weeks.”
“Where’s Ed?” Penelope asked as her servant got to work with
his needle.
Richter pointed to the stairs, from the bar where he was
sharpening his daggers and giving Frankie the decency not to look.
“We put him into a room upstairs,” Janice said with a look
to Penelope. “He wasn’t looking too good either. What in all the hells happened
to you guys out there?”
“Lee happened,” Richter said gruffly as Penelope passed him
on her way to the stairs.
“Second door on the left,” Sean told the princess as she
made her way up. She followed his directions, passing the first closed door and
opening the second. Inside was a small quaint room, with an open window to
allow in a breeze.
On the small single bed Edward tossed and turned, his face
covered in sweat. It was clear he was in too much pain to sleep, and when he
noticed her he turned away dramatically.
“Edward,” Penelope said, stepping into the room and closing
the door behind her. He let out a small
moan, trembling even though he was covered in layers. “How are you feeling?”
She felt like the question was redundant.
“It hurts,” he said slowly, between gasps for breath. “It
hurts more than it did when I was under the influence.”
She reached for him but he pulled away from her.
“Don’t look at me,” he snarled. “I hate it.” She wasn’t sure
what he meant. “But it’s all I want.” Did he mean the drug they’d injected him
with.
“Edward,” she said again.
“This is how they died,” he said, and Penelope frowned. She
was having a most impossible time following his train of thought. “My parents.”
“You’re an orphan,” she said. She’d had no idea.
“They were found in a drug den overdosed on something the
guards couldn’t identify,” Edward said, shivering under Penelope’s hand. The
whole bed shook as she sat upon it. “They were guards too. No one knew they
were crooked. I didn’t even know.”
“How old were you?” Penelope asked.
“Seven,” Edward told her. “I still remember them. They
seemed so loving, and righteous. If they could see me now they’d be
disappointed.”
Penelope shushed in, cooing gently into his ear. “They
wouldn’t be disappointed.” He still wouldn’t turn to look at him, but she lay
down on the bed beside him and wrapped her arm around his waist. Pressing her
chin against the back of his head she whispered to him, “They’d be proud of the
man you’ve become.”
“I became a soldier to try to clear their name,” Edward told
her. “Bring honor back to it… it was dumb. I’ve only managed to dishonour our
name more.”
“What IS your name?” Penelope asked him.
“I--” Edward paused for a long moment. “It doesn’t matter.
I’m an orphan. I don’t have a name.”
“You were born with a name,” Penelope insisted to him.
He finally turned around to lie on his back. “I don’t
remember it. I’m just Edward now.”
Penelope lay her head on his clammy chest, straddling him
and closing her eyes as he lay trembling beneath her.
*
Frankie opened her eyes with a start, the doctor Roric still
finishing up with her shoulder.
“I’m awake,” she said loudly, and Janice grabbed her hand
excitedly.
“Good,” Roric said with a smile, pressing the tape against
her bandage. “I’m just about done here.”
“You scared the shit out of me,” Janice told Frankie.
“Hey I’m okay babe,” Frankie said, raising her good arm to
touch Janice’s black face. “I can survive anything. It’ll be me alone at the
end of the world facing down the demons of all the hells.”
She smiled to Janice. “How long was I out?” Frankie asked,
lifting her head to look at her torso. Both her gut and her arm hurt like hell.
She could only just see the gnarly stitches for a moment before Roric slapped a
bandage on that too.
“You’ll need to change these bandages every day,” Roric told
her.
“I’ll try,” Frankie said unconvincingly.
“I’ll make sure it happens,” Janice told the princess’
servant. Looking down at Frankie she finally answered the thief’s question. “You
were gone about twenty minutes,” she said affectionately.
Frankie bolted up, and both Roric and Janice tried to hold
her down.
“Whoa!” Janice exclaimed with worry.
“Take it easy,” Roric insisted. “You’ve been through a lot.
You’re gonna need time to rest and heal before you can be fully active again.”
Frankie slid off the table onto her feet, almost swooning as
her vision blurred and she had to lean on the table. Janice came around the
table to put an arm under her.
“I’m okay,” Frankie insisted. “I’ll be fine. Just help my
friend. Please.”
Roric turned around on his stool to observe the man on the
table beside them. Frankie took and unsteady step forward and leaned on
Aldonn’s table, looking down at his pale blonde form.
“What’s wrong with him?” Roric asked, confused. He
unbuttoned Aldonn’s tunic and searched him for any cut or bruises.
“He had his throat slit,” Frankie said, tracing her finger
along the barely noticeable scar on his neck. Even the scar seemed to be fading
away, and would soon be gone.
“That’s impossible,” Roric said following Frankie’s finger.
“I saw the man bleed out,” Richter said, hopping off the
bar, and coming around to join them. He glanced to Frankie, “Where did you find
this big lug?”
“Hey!” Sean said in complaint.
Richter raised his hands in defence. “Not that I have a
problem with big lugs.”
“Just don’t get any ideas,” Sean warned playfully while Roric
checked under Aldonn’s eyelids. He brought a candle close to Aldonn, and moved
it away, seeming to watch how the irises reacted to the light.
“I found him locked up in a cage,” Frankie told them. “He’s
always healed fast.”
“Nobody heals this fast” Roric insisted. “I think your
friend is in a form of coma. If what you’re saying is true, it’s likely brought
on by bloodloss. It’s certainly possible his body might be able to heal, but
his blood still replenishes at a natural rate. Especially if he was brought so
low, that might not be an easy thing for even him to accomplish. He’s riding
now ona line between life and death.”
“What can we do to help him?” Frankie asked, as Janice
handed her one of the barmaid’s tunics, and helped her painfully slide it on
over her head. The shirt was too big for her, baggy at the sleeves and chest as
well as extending past her waist.
Janice interrupted before Roric could respond. “I’ll do it,”
she said. They looked at her with eyebrows raised. “You were about to say she
needs a blood transfusion,” Janice explained to Roric. “And then she, expecting
that, was going to offer herself.” She touched Frankie’s face. “But Frankie
dear, you’ve lost too much blood. I’ll do it.”
“It’s a risky procedure,” Roric said. “I can’t guarantee it
won’t make things worse for him. But it might also be the only thing that can
wake him up.”
“You sure about this?” Frankie asked her. The last thing she
wanted to do was risk the life of her closest friend.
“There’s more,” Roric said to Janice. “As a Mystene,
there’ll be added complications to the blood transfusion.”
“A Mystene?” Frankie repeated. She’d heard of them, everyone
had heard stories of the habitable land on the other side of the scorched
desert. But no one had ever seen it. Or returned from a voyage across. There
were legends of the people from there, the mystical city of Mysteria. For the
name of a city, this one was apparently pretty on the nose.
“You’ve met one of my kind before?” Janice asked Roric with
surprise.
“So it’s true?” Frankie said, her mind still a flutter.
“Oh really now,” Janice said with impatience. “You never
wondered why I was the only black woman you’ve ever met in Capsin?”
“I--“ Frankie started to say. “Maybe that was what I liked
about you.” It was said the people of Mysteria possessed inhuman abilities.
Suddenly all the pieces were falling into place. “Well at least you’re not one
of those hippie tree loving druids.”
Ignoring Frankie, Roric continued. “It’s possible during the
blood transfusions your minds might connect.”
“Our minds have connected before,” Janice told him with a
nod. “I can handle it.”
“You won’t be able to disconnect the link like you’re used
to,” Roric told her.
“I can handle it,” Janice repeated. She grabbed the table
Frankie had been lying on, and with Richter and Sean’s help she dragged it to
be up against Aldonn’s.
“Very well then,” Roric said with a nod. “I’ll need time to
prepare and sanitize my tools.”
“Okay,” Frankie said, getting out of the way and nodding her
head as her mind started to wander. “And while you’re doing that, I’ll go to
the mage tower.” She looked around for her jacket and found it on a chair. She
slipped her bad arm through the sleeve carefully, still in quite a considerable
amount of pain.
“What?” Janice said.
“What?” Richter said in tandem.
“You shouldn’t even be on your feet right now,” Roric argued
indignantly. “You absolutely should be going anywhere.”
Frankie slid on the other sleeve, careful not to wince too
much from the pain and worry everyone. “I’ll be fine. I’m not just going to
wait around here while my on again off again girlfriend risks her life for my
best friend.”
Frankie looked at her friend’s pale form on the table. “I
have to do something. Lee did this,” she said, looking around the room. “Lee
has hurt all of us. And we need to start thinking pay back.”
“You can’t take Lee,” Richter warned her.
“Maybe not right now,” Frankie said, rubbing her bad
shoulder with mock bravado. “But maybe the mages can if we give them some
warning that he’s coming.”
“I thought you hate mages,” Janice said from the table.
“I do,” Frankie assured her. “I just hate Lee more.”
“So you’re going to storm over to the mage tower and do
what?” Richter asked her. “It’s the middle of the night.”
“It’s nearly dawn,” Sean said from the window, giving
Richter a look he didn’t return.
“I’ll warn them,” Frankie said determined. “I’ll warn the
shit out of them. On Sean’s shoulders singing at the top of my lungs if I have
to.” A tune came to her mind and she started singing, ‘In your eyes, thieves
are coming, your eyes, hear me humming.’” She did a short, painful, dance with
her arms and hips.
“We’re not going with you,” Richter said assuredly.
Sean crossed his arms. “Yeah we are,” he said. “She can’t go
alone.”
“I’m coming too,” Penelope said from the stairs, the
princess descending steadily.
Roric looked up at her from where he seemed to be putting
his tools against the flame of a candle. “I know for a fact you hate the
mages,” he said.
“I don’t hate the mages,” Penelope told her butler Roric. “I
just don’t trust them. And what better opportunity than this to take a closer
look at what they’re up to.”
“Yeah,” Frankie said, “’cept we don’t exactly need a
princess.”
“That’s why she’ll be wearing the same cloak she used to
sneak into the thieves guild,” Sean said, spotting the cloak lying against a
table and tossing it to her.
“That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Frankie admitted.
“Haven’t you figured it out yet?” Richter asked, joining
them by the door. “Once my boyfriend decides on something, you just have to go
along with it.”
Janice lay back on the table as Roric finished up. “This is
your last chance to back out,” he warned her.
“Wait,” Penelope said. “What are THEY doing?”
Janice’s eyes bugged out as Roric lifted a needle. “It’s
that big?” she exclaimed, second thought definitely in her voice.
“It’s probably better you don’t ask,” Richter told the
Princess, beckoning for her to lead the way out the door. Frankie would have
followed but she went back to grab Janice’s hand.
“You don’t have to do this,” Frankie told her.
“You could stay here with me,” Janice told her back. Frankie
didn’t respond, but she didn’t have to. Janice could see it all over her face.
“Just promise me you won’t be dead when I wake up.” Richter stuck the needle
into her arm, and she let out a painful gasp.
Frankie shook her head. “I shouldn’t make promises I can’t
keep,” she told the barmaid. “In fact I’m feeling a little funny right now.”
Frankie grabbed at her shoulder and stuck out her tongue. “Agh! They got me.
I’m sorry Janice I tried.”
Janice’s eyes fluttered
closed as her blood travelled through the thick rubber tubing into Aldonn’s
body. Just before she passed out her last words were “You’re a real asshole
Frankie.”
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