Chapter 16: - The Uniform

  “Touch me, and I’ll bite your nipples off,” Ksenija growled.

  The shopkeeper had sense enough not to touch her.

  He did not look happy however, glaring at Ksenija from across the counter. “I already told you when you came here before, you little witch, I have nothing for you. This place is no charity, and if you don’t get out, I will have the guards get you out!”

  Ksenija calmly walked towards him.

  He took a hurried step back. “What the bloody shit do you think you’re—”

  Ksenija slammed a handful of bank notes on the table.

  The man’s eyes widened. He spoke carefully next. “That’s over… two hundred zlatka. Where did you get that kind of paper?”

  “From fucking your ma, now give me what I came here for.”

  He reached a hand for the money and Ksenija bit it. “Agh!” he yelled, jumping backwards and hissing at her. “You animal! How dare you—”

  “Call me one more name, and I’ll go find another shop to get what I need from.” Ksenija informed him.

  The man looked on the verge of striking her with the back of his hand. But his greed was louder than his rage. He turned around, reached into his drawers and handed her the package.

  Ksenija stuffed it in her bag, and he snatched the money from the counter like a rat might food. He seemed to have forgotten she existed as he desperately shoved the funds into his safe.

  Ksenija was out the door a moment later, greeted by the cold air of Lyubov’s night. The streets were loud, muddy, and smelly—it had rained this morning, so that meant all the waste from the upper district had found their way down here.

  Lovely…

  “How’d it go?” A raspy voice asked. Ksenija turned to see the General speaking to her.

  “Went well enough,” she shrugged.

  He was the General—because Ksenija didn’t know his real name, and she doubted most people did. He’d once been a soldier, that much was certain. Fought for the Republic—lost a foot doing so in fact. People called him the General because he still wore his uniform: tattered, faded, crusted with old mud. But he wore it all the same, and proudly, from what she could tell. “Well, I heard a few colourful words exchanged between the two of youse.”

  “Well, I came out alright,” Ksenija told the old man.

  He nodded. “Yes. yes, I’m sure you did.” Then he had a glint in his eyes and hands held out. “Now, anything for a war hero. I lost a limb protecting you, you know—protecting all of you. It was me, against five Mages—”

  —“All gloved, and with a Shifter under their leash. I dodged to the side, stabbed one in the neck, the other in the throat, next in the nads—but I didn’t account for the Shifter, and it bit off me leg.” Ksenija repeated the line word for word, as if she’d heard him speak them ten times now. In fact, she had.

  The General did not look impressed. “You’re a right cunt, lassie.”

  “That I am.” Ksenija grinned, and handed him five zlakta’s. That should be enough for bread and clean water.

  The General’s eyes lit up as he took it. “You know,” he laughed good naturedly. “You remind me of my Wife.”

  “And I won’t be reminding you of her any more than that,” Ksenija laughed, and the man laughed back.

  The walk through the streets was an uneventful thing, however that was majorly because she avoided the eventful alleyways and streets. That added several minutes to her journey, but it couldn’t he helped—if she was mugged like this, she’d never forgive herself.

  Her destination was behind a door, amongst many in a cramped hallway with only flickering lights—gas, not electric— to show where her feet were. She could hear a million sounds bleeding from each as she walked past them—sounds of love, pain, horror, sorrow, and more. The air tasted of everything wrong and nothing nice—these were communal apartments, people stacked on top one another like cattle in a farm. It was where dreams came to die—it was where people came to die.

  Ksenija knocked on a door and found it open a moment later. Standing above her was Galya, eighteen years old, and with wrinkle lines that made her look forty. Well, having a child would do that to you. Having a dying child would do that doubly so. “Ksenija!” she beamed. “How are you?”

  “Tired,” she replied, stepping into the cramped apartment and making her way for the couch. On it lay a five year old boy—Stepan—son of Galya and a rat bastard whom Ksenija would kill if she ever found. He was pale, as she had become used to seeing him like—pale and lean, and drenched in sweat.

  “He’s getting better, I think,” Galya lied softly. “Stays awake for longer, eats a little bit more.”

  Ksenija reached into her bag and pulled out a crinkled plastic wrap. Inside were pills—two hundred zlatka worth, to be exact. Well, not really two hundred. She’d figured out they were dirt cheap to make; they were just sold for a fuck and an arm because pharmacists were all evil animals who deserved to be beaten to death with a club, and raped—preferably in the reverse order.

  “Is that…?” Galya’s breath caught in the back of her throat.

  “Serathine.” Ksenjia completed. “It should help with the cold, and if you’re lucky, banish it. The dosage is two a day, but he's a little boy, so I asked around and turns out his is one a day.”

  Galya looked at her, stunned, then tears started pouring, and she took Ksenija up in a hug—lifting her up her feet and swinging her around the too-small apartment. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  Ksenjia snarled and hissed. “I’ll start biting if you don’t let go.”

  Galya didn’t let go, and Ksenija reluctantly did not bite.

  She was set down a moment later. Galya looked at her with concern. “How did you get the money for this?”

  “With a few tricks,” Ksenija said proudly.

  Galya’s frown deepened as she inspected the drugs in her hands. “Have you been whoring yourself?”

  “No. Now forget about it.” Ksenija huffed.

  Galya was glaring now. “Well you better have been, because that’s much safer than what I think you’ve been doing.”

  “I haven’t been doing nothi—”

  “You’re going to get yourself Killed, Sen—killed—dead on the street.” Galya moved closer now, placing a hand on her shoulder, squeezing softly, and looking down at her with warm eyes.“You act all grown, and you’re smart—like, really fucking smart. I mean, Sen, you can read—taught yourself, even. And sometimes that’s… inspiring. But you’re still just a lass.”

  Ksenija brushed off her grip. “My ma died pushing me out her cunt, and my pa followed suit after eating something rotten and shitting himself to death. So unless you’re a shapeshifting ghost with a sick sense of humour, I really don’t think you’ve got the right credentials to parent me.”

  Galya hesitated, then thankfully for the both of them, nodded. “Of course, Sen.” She looked at the pills and then back to her. “Thank you Ksenija.”

  She frowned. “It’s not for free—you owe me half a zlakta everyday, starting from tomorrow, until you pay it off!”

  Galya wiped a tear from her eyes, warmth only continuing to bleed from her. “Thank you. Ksenija.” she said, more intensely this time.

  Ksenija hesitated, then nodded. “You’re welcome.”

  She awkwardly made her way out of the apartment, and when she was down the building she saw two strangers at the foot of the stairs—no, not strangers.

  The tallest of the two spoke first—the one with dyed black hair and blue eyes—and he did so with a wide grin. “Hello, Ksenija.”

  Her heart burned. “How do you know my name?”

  He only grinned wider. “Through impressive means that are greater than your tiny mind can even begin to comprehen—”

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  “We asked around for the girl who plays cards really well.” The Putesh replied, stuffing a biscuit into his mouth as he did so.

  The other glared at him.

  “What?” the Putesh meekly asked through a stuffed mouth.

  It was Ksenija’s turn to grin now. “I looked into youse two as well. Asked around for an Exia and a Putesh." She'd gotten the other one’s name from their last encounter, but the Putesh’s was never mentioned. The blue eyed boy’s was a rather common name, after all, many a people loved naming their children after royalty.

  “And what did you learn?” Exia asked, smug.

  “That there’s no House that has boys that fits your descriptions perfectly. Or at least no House that has servants that gossip. So that means the two of you are from one place, and one place only. Bezdna Palace.” Ksenija was rather confident in her guess, confident even that it would catch them by surprise; what she did not expect was for them both to look like they’d seen a ghost. “Is it that surprising that I figured out youse two work in the palace?”

  At that, relief flooded their features. Ksenija tried her best to figure out why, and only found an inept frustration at her inability to.

  “Why are you here?” Ksenija asked.

  “For you,” The taller of the pair said.

  Ksenija reached for her blade.

  “No, no, no need for that,” Exia said hurriedly.

  Ksenija kept her hand in her pocket, but did not pull her weapon out.

  “We just want to talk.” The Putesh said—of the two he seemed the nicer, more pleasant smiles, and open palms.

  They both had something in their eyes that put Ksenija on edge. Not the leering gaze she was used to from boys and men, but something more pragmatic—like an industrialist inspecting machinery.

  “Talk,” Ksenija ordered.

  Blue-eyes looked particularly upset at her tone, but did so anyways. “We want to bring you in on a play. We’ve been scouting out the Zaludachi gamehouse for a while now, and we have a scheme in mind to relieve it of its excess bloat of funds.”

  Zaludachi was run by the Torgovyye—a brutal gang of siblings and cousins with a habit of cutting open the faces of anyone who crossed them. But that wasn’t why Ksenija had avoided scamming them. There was good money to be made at their tables—too good, in fact. Her real reason was simpler: they ran too tight a ship.

  "You two bovki think you can pull a fast one in the Zaludachi?" Ksenija asked.

  “Oh, quite the contrary, Ksenija.” Exia shook his head, still looking giddy. “I know we can. I mean, have you figured out how we nearly won that game of Krovikosti yet?” he asked.

  Ksenija found herself frowning now—try as she might, she hadn’t yet been able to. “I take seventy percent of the score, the rest of youse can split your share how you want,” she said immediately, adding a hard edge to her voice so that when they came with their counter offer she’d look like she was backing down when she accepted.

  “Sounds perfect!” Exia chimed.

  The Putesh shrugged. “Fair enough to me,” he said, noncommittally, like the money meant nothing to him.

  “B-better be,” Ksenija said, a bit caught off guard there. Just how much are they paying the servants back at Bezdna Palace?

  ###

  Sasha found the King alive, thankfully. He was standing by the bridge, dripping wet, and overlooking the running water below with only the steady rising and falling of his chest to indicate that he was a person and not a statue.

  Sasha found her concern fading the closer she got to him, and by the time she was close enough to speak, only rage remained. “What the shit was all that back there?!” she growled, feeling her guts burn with the anger. The King did not respond, he just kept his eyes ahead. “Fucking, look at me!” Sasha roared.

  Right when she thought he might not, the King’s gaze slowly fell on her—level, calm, with no smiles, no jests, or jabs. Sasha had to force herself not to take a step back.

  “What happened back there?” Sasha asked softly, forcing some measure of calm into herself.

  She waited for the jokes, or the ramblings, but they never came. The King told her everything that happened, from the moment he’d entered Navtej’s room, to the moment she found him on the bed. The details were so compact that Sasha could only guess the man had experience giving reports. Navtej was a traitor, he was working with the Zakadochny, he was the one who poisoned Exia. The King had chosen to omit crucial details from her because he wished to protect his friend—the traitor. It was all a lot to take in so suddenly, but at this very moment, she found the fury in her more overwhelming than the news could ever be.

  She had thought—being the fool that she was—that she and the King had some sort of understanding, that there were rules that wouldn't be broken. “You lied to me,” Sasha said, realisation sinking in like a knife’s plunge. Her fists trembled. “You lied to me, you put the mission in danger, you put me in danger.”

  “I am sorry, Captain,” the King said distractedly, like he wasn’t listening—like she wasn’t even there.

  “Stop fucking lying to me!” Sasha roared, snapping now. “How are we supposed to fulfill the mission if I can’t trust you? How are we supposed to do any good if—”

  The King chuckled, and that got under Sasha’s skin in a way she had not yet learned the words to convey.

  “Is something funny to you?” Sasha hissed.

  The King was still smiling, but this was not one of mockery, or mischief, it was malformed, too long at the edges, sour. “Yes, Captain, it’s that you think anything we’ve done, is good.” He hissed, venom lacing his tongue. Sasha’s eyes fell on his gloves and she found herself weary of what he might—

  —“No, no, no!” The King snapped, suddenly and violently. “Do not look at them—look at me!” He dragged the gloves off his hands and threw them on the ground. Sasha met his eyes now, they were wide, almost madly so, his long wet hair ran down in every direction. She had her gloves on. He did not. And she was the one who took a step back once more. She had not seen his rage before, just joy, and mischief, and malice, but not rage. It was as intense as all those combined. “We have done nothing, but kill whoever we’re told to, when we are told to. And then maybe, maybe, as a treat, we get to kill a few people we want to as well. We are not good, Captain, we do not do good, we are murderers who happen to be sanctioned by the state. And just because you wear a uniform, and I silks, does not mean that you get to stand here, and lecture me as to the righteousness of your glorious cause!” The man was panting now, chest rising and falling like wild waves, breath visible in the cold air. When he spoke next, his voice was like a whisper. “There is no sin in subverting your goals. For our very goal is sin.”

  Sasha felt her hands tremble, her words were primed to leap out as a roar. They came out weak instead. “You lied to me,” she repeated, because no words seemed as significant as that at this very moment.

  The King looked almost frustrated as he answered, blue eyes holding onto hers with a vice grip. “Yes, Captain, I lied to you. And I would do it again, to achieve my ends.”

  Sasha grit her teeth, picked up his gloves and began heading back for Znaniye. There, she would detain the King and write the General. “We’re heading back,” Sasha growled.

  “No, we’re not,” The King replied.

  Sasha rounded on him sharply. “And why the fuck is that?”

  The King was unmoved. “Because you’re a soldier, Captain, and you have your orders. You’re not going to let a powerful enemy of the Republic go when you have someone capable of stopping him directly under your command,” he told her. “Snegovetska is the next stop of that train, luckily for us, it’s also the last stop. We can make it there. And you’re going to approve of my suggestion that we do.”

  Sasha perhaps for the first time ever was truly seeing the King for what he was. A King. Her superior. Like Governor Belavkin, like Danilevsky, like all men really—all of them—Mages and non-mages. Because that was what what superior meant in the end. It did not mean a person who was better than you, more deserving than you, or simply more holy than you. It meant a person who would disregard you—throw you away the moment you were an inconvenience to them—and face no consequences. So the King was her superior. Oh he hid it well—so well in fact that Sasha herself had begun falling for the ruse—and perhaps he did not think himself that because he was a man and she a woman. But he was her superior. And now Sasha knew it.

  Wordlessly, she walked past the King, and made her way for the city of Snegovetska.