1.16

Arghus was in an awk­ward posi­tion.

On one hand, his ruse was utter­ly ruined. Sure, the girl had strange­ly seemed mad­der at that damned intrud­er than she was at him, but now that she had pulled that busy­body out of his store, that same man was get­ting free rein to whis­per what­ev­er manip­u­la­tions he want­ed into her ear. He did­n’t have to be a clair­voy­ant to pre­dict he was­n’t going to get a sin­gle cterl from the girl.

On top of that, he couldn’t leave. This was his shop. He lived on the sec­ond floor. And most impor­tant of all, in her anger, the girl had left her mon­ey on the damned table, along with that sil­ly repli­ca of a Chal­lenger coin. He’d high-balled her on a hunch, but that fat enve­lope was tru­ly a stu­pid amount of mon­ey to be car­ry­ing around. They were def­i­nite­ly com­ing back, and he couldn’t just leave it sit­ting there. Damn that scruffy faced idiot for inter­fer­ing!

Although… this didn’t have to be a com­plete loss, did they?

A drip of temp­ta­tion shiv­ered down his insides as Arghus eyed the deli­cious stack of bills spilling out of the mouth of the enve­lope. Arghus wet­ted his lips and his gaze flit­ted to the door. The muf­fled argu­ment out­side had fall­en qui­et.

He crept his hand toward the stack of bills. Why not take a slim por­tion­ing? Only a fin­ger­ful or so. The girl wasn’t gonna--

BANG!

“Get your grub­by hands off my client’s mon­ey, pal. You’ve pissed her off enough as it is.”

As that young man entered his shop for the sec­ond time that day, foot first, prob­a­bly dam­ag­ing the door, and this time with the girl in tow, Arghus scowled at him. But when the young man arched his eye­brows and looked point­ed­ly at where his hand was head­ed--he snatched it away. As he feared, there was now a tinge of closed­ness to the girl’s expres­sion that had­n’t been there before. He stood up, mouth filled with excus­es that only made feel more guilty than he already did.

He only real­ized the man had said some­thing pecu­liar a moment lat­er.

“I was--wait, client?”

As the girl came for­ward to take back her pos­ses­sions, Arghus saw that the two weren’t near­ly as at odds with each oth­er as when he had last seen them. They shared space in a way that said, ‘we are no longer strangers.’ And when the girl returned to the young man’s side and they both began eying him with a cer­tain, unit­ed vin­dic­tive­ness, a bad feel­ing set­tled in Arghus’s stom­ach.

The young man pat­ted the girl on the shoul­der while giv­ing him a grin full of teeth.

“The name’s Doro. The young lady, Car­neli­a’s her name, here hired me as her finan­cial advi­sor. To help resolve a dis­crep­an­cy in charges ver­sus ser­vices offered. By you.”

“Miss Car­nelia--”

Arghus tried to lean past Doro to rea­son direct­ly with the girl, but found him­self wrenched back into place by a heavy hand on his shoul­der. Doro loomed in his face as his hand squeezed down tight­ly, like a vice.

“Look, why don’t I make things sim­ple for you. You tried to cheat the kid, and I told her about it. Now she’s so upset that she just offered me five hun­dred cterls to kick your ass.”

The man was twice his size, eas­i­ly, with the tough skin of some­one who did hard labor. Arghus had nev­er even thrown a punch before. Ner­vous sweat bloomed beneath his robes.

He searched for the girl again.

“K-kick my ass? Miss--“

“Hey!” A too-close snap of the fin­gers made him flinch. “You’re talk­ing to me now, Arghus. Eyes here.”

Only once Arghus met Doro’s eyes did the grip on his shoul­der relax. The young tough gave him a con­vivial wink as he over­ly-force­ful­ly straight­ened the lapels of his robe.

“Look, guy. I’m not usu­al­ly one to crit­i­cize mak­ing a quick buck. And per­son­al­ly speak­ing, kick­ing your ass? Blood on my jack­et, bruised knuckles--it’s a whole mess and I’d rather not take it that far. But sure­ly you can admit you crossed the line, right? I mean the whole djinn dust thing? That’s pret­ty dis­re­spect­ful of her intel­li­gence, don’t you think?”

Doro thrust a thumb back at the girl, and Arghus’s gaze flit­ted from him and her. Then back again. He low­ered his voice and leaned in, speak­ing in a more nat­ur­al rasp.

“But she total­ly bought it,” he whis­pered. “I mean, until you showed up--”

Arghus lurched back as Doro reject­ed him with a light shove back. He shook his head,

“Sor­ry, man. Ain’t no talk­ing your way out of this one. Fact is, the lit­tle lady wants pay­back, and I’m tellin’ you that she’s gonna get it one way or anoth­er. So now you tell me what we’re going to do about that. Because we’re rea­son­able men, right? Let’s be rea­son­able!”

Arghus peered at Doro’s face, hope­ful but unsure of what that meant. He saw a flicked of impa­tience cross the young man’s face, Doro’s grip on his shoul­der tight­ened again and his smile hard­ened.

“Tell me what you’re going to do so I. Don’t. Have. To. Pound. Your. Face. Into. This. Fan­cy. Rug!”

Each enun­ci­a­tion came with a shake of his whole body that sent his head reel­ing. Arghus quailed as Doro shout­ed the last part in his face. He nod­ded fran­ti­cal­ly.

“Right. Right. Ok. How about this? No charge for the read­ing?”

“Clear­ly not enough!”

“Ok, ok. Then um, the charm! You can have that for free too. It’s good work, I promise you! I have it shipped from a glass-blow­er out of town!”

Both fac­toid were true. Arghus exhaled a mouth­ful of dry air as Doro went to pick the charm up from the ground where they had dropped it ear­li­er. He held it up dubi­ous­ly.

“And exact­ly how much is this piece of junk worth?”

“It’s not a piece of junk! Mar­ket price is f-five hun­dred Cterls.”

Arghus cursed inter­nal­ly as he stum­bled over two dif­fer­ent prices in his head. He felt naked as Doro’s eyes bored into him.

“And what did you pay for it?”

Shit. Arghus avert­ed his gaze shame­ful­ly.

“…only a hun­dred.”

Doro did a dou­ble take and swore. “Sky above. What a mark-up. You’re dis­gust­ing, you know that?”

“H-hey now, no need to get per­son­al. I need the mon­ey.” Arghus raised his hands, at first defen­sive­ly, then pla­cat­ing­ly. “Look, you can have the sil­ver neck­lace I promised for free too. How about that? Extreme­ly rea­son­able, wouldn’t you say?”

Arghus wait­ed with bat­ed breath as Doro looked back at Car­nelia for her opin­ion. But the girl was stand­ing there, arms crossed, her face as unmov­ing as stone. Arghus felt a brick in his stom­ach as he saw Doro fight off a smirk before turn­ing back to him. He cracked his knuck­les.

“Not enough.”

“Come on, man! What more do you want? I’m already tak­ing a loss on this with fix­ing the cur­tains and every­thing, and rent’s com­ing up!”

It was true, inher­it­ed from his grand­fa­ther or not, rent for a store in the mid­dle of the mar­ket was­n’t cheap. Not that sym­pa­thy seemed to be a par­tic­u­lar­ly effec­tive tack for him to take right now. At the very least, it made Doro stop pos­tur­ing… phys­i­cal­ly.

“Not my prob­lem, Arghus. But just between you and me, I don’t think this real­ly has to do with mon­ey. I think what the lit­tle lady real­ly wants is an apol­o­gy.”

A wave of relief washed over Arghus. An apol­o­gy? Those were easy!

“Hey, if that’s what she wants, that’s what she’ll get. Look miss-“

But before Arghus could fin­ish, he found him­self in Doro’s face again as the man wrenched him close once more. His voice was dan­ger­ous and low, like a switch­blade to the gut.

“Look Arghus, You’re only gonna get one chance at this. So you’d bet­ter make it real sin­cere. You know, get on your knees, pros­trate and such.”

He point­ed at the car­pet­ed floor. Arghus looked at him plead­ing­ly.

“…do I have to?”

“Hey guy, if you feel like she’ll be sat­is­fied with a casu­al apol­o­gy, go for it. I’m just try­ing to save us both some trou­ble.”

Then Doro shrugged and stepped away, leav­ing him to make what­ev­er choice he want­ed. As if he weren’t the heads­man, wield­ing an axe.

For a moment, Arghus glanced at the door and he imag­ined a world where he ran. Maybe he could try to grab one of the near­by orna­ments, that glass ampoule over there, smash it over Doro’s head, and--

No. Noth­ing in the past two min­utes had changed the fact that he wasn’t a fight­er. Nor had he grown twice a big. There real­ly was no oth­er option.

Arghus swal­lowed what remained of his pride and threw him­self down at Carnelia’s feet.

“Please, young miss. For­give me. Greed got the bet­ter of me. I saw that you were young and new to the city so I thought I could take advan­tage of you. That was wrong, and I should have nev­er done that. I hope you accept my mea­ger gifts and apolo­gies, and find it some­where in your heart not to act in ret­ri­bu­tion.”

Arghus looked up at her, ears hot with humil­i­a­tion, gen­uine tears in his eyes.

“Please, please, please, don’t let your friend hurt me.

Car­nelia felt a lit­tle bad as she regard­ed the ful­ly grown man grov­el­ing at her feet. She sup­posed it was come­up­pance--he had been try­ing way more mon­ey from her than was fair, accord­ing to Doro. And sure­ly it was all part of the game, where he played the rat, and she the sleepy mon­key with the ham­mer.

In the end, though…

She glanced at the charm in Doro’s hand, sil­ver accou­trements and all. She’d got­ten what she’d want­ed, she guessed. Sure, the believ­abil­i­ty of the for­tune was total­ly ruined so she could hard­ly count it for her buck­etlist any­more, but what a fun sto­ry she had gained in return, right? She could tell Opal that she won this from a evil, lying char­la­tan, with a wicked black beard and eyes the like dev­il! So maybe…

…no harm, no foul?

Car­nelia met Doro’s eyes and shrugged.

“I guess we’re okay.”

---

The door jin­gled as Car­nelia and Doro exit­ed the store. With a wide smile, she lift­ed the small paper bag brand­ed with a goth­ic A and an eye for for the hor­i­zon­tal line and admired it. Arghus had even wrapped the charm for her. What a fel­low!

Once she was back out­side, and the sun­shine was beat­ing the Car­nelia could­n’t help but break out into a scam­per. Well, it was a half-skip, half-jog sort of thing, but it only felt right to call that a scam­per after a hijink like that. She turned to Doro, who strolled beside her, look­ing mighty sat­is­fied.

“That was pret­ty wild, Doro! Do you do stuff like this all the time?”

“Hah, hard­ly! Schemers like him usu­al­ly have ties to the local under­world, for money­laun­der­ing pur­pos­es and such. Mak­ing a move on them isn’t usu­al­ly worth the trou­ble--but what’re they gonna do? Hunt down a dark-skinned dark-haired fel­la in a city of dark-skinned dark-haired fel­las?”

Doro smirked, then saw her high­ly iden­ti­fi­able face. He laughed hur­ried­ly.

“You know what? We should prob­a­bly go, just in case—”

“CARNELIA!”

The whole street froze as a voice howled Carnelia’s name. The two turned to see Arghus pant­i­ng under the blaz­ing sum­mer sun, with his hands on his knees. His eyes were crazed and he point­ed a crooked fin­ger in their direc­tion. Despite the swel­ter­ing mid­day heat, Car­nelia felt the back of her neck prick­le as Arghus stared at her with those dark, sunken eyes of his.

“I warn you, young lady. I warn you.” Arghus’s hoarse croak cut unnat­u­ral­ly across the mar­ket street. “Be care­ful who you choose as your friends. They’re the ones that will hurt you the most.”

Car­nelia shiv­ered. This time, there were no smoke machines or hid­den speak­ers.

She smiled bright­ly and waved him good­bye.

Maybe she’d keep for­tune-telling crossed off her buck­et list after all.