The Dead Dove Locker -- "I don't know what I expected."

[Mamorien]

When he said Headless Over Heels would be updating every day for "the next couple weeks," I guess he really did mean every day.

“Look at that,” she said, softly. “Three rings. You could only afford one hexentat, but you got space enough for a dozen. Know what I call that?”

“Stupid.”

She laughed. “Promise, Seth. I think you show a great deal of promise.” Her finger poked his midsection. “Also a great deal of ribcage. And if you’d let me, on our journey up to get my head, I’d like to bring one out and bulk away the other.”

Never Trust a Skinny Chef

He lowered his shirt and accepted his stogie back from her. “That’s a suspiciously kind offer.”

She sighed out a cloud of savory smoke. “You strike me,” she said, “as a boy who’s been kicked and kicked all your life, and nobody has stopped it. And what you need’s a big angry bitch with a sword to stand in front of the world for a while until you can stand up and dust off. Nobody ever comes for the hurting people in this world, y’know? Even if they see what’s coming, they just keep their heads down and say not my business. Nobody ever makes it stop before it goes all the way bad.”

Seth wanted to ask what that meant, but she was looking past him now, down the road they’d come from as if examining some dark edifice only she could see.

She snapped out of it and smiled again. “You’re a cook, right?”

“Never trust a skinny chef, I know.” He put a hand on his concave stomach. “I haven’t had so many chances lately.”

“Not what I’m saying,” she said. “You ever see a cast-iron skillet that’s been left with someone who doesn’t know how to take care of it? And it’s all dingy and rusted, and if you don’t know what you’re looking at, it’s garbage. But if you have an eye for these things you see what it could be. What it should be, if it’s in the hands of someone who recognizes its value.”

He didn’t have a response he trusted, yet, for that; he busied himself with another inhale.

“I can swing a sword, I can sling a spell. But in matters of padding about, like you can, I am unfortunately befucked. That was pretty work you did, taking the box from me. And pretty work again breaking into Rohan’s house. And you’ve notched your second corpse, now, and you seem steady.”

He seemed steady. He looked at his hands and remembered them spattered with Pritchard’s blood. Like testing a sore tooth with his tongue. Still didn’t hurt as bad as he’d expected.

“What do you think, il Gutierre?” Annalise leaned back on the hood of the car and crossed her legs. Her pale knee showed through the hole in her riding breeches. “Do you want to keep trying at whatever that was back there, or you want to take a chance and throw in with your Verdugo for the rest of the year? Won’t pay much at first, but there’ll be a big ol’ bonus at the end of the year, and you won’t be sleeping in stables before then.”

“I wasn’t sleeping in stables. I had—”

She smiled gently. “You had straw on you, kiddo. Second day I saw you.”

“Uh…”

“I promise you that’s over with, if you sign with me.” Her cigar flared brighter as she paused for another pull. “It’s nasty feckin’ work. A lot of it. We’ll be killing plenty of people. We’ll be hunting monsters and madmen. Or I will, but you’ll help me. You could call it an end-of-your-rope kind of job and I wouldn’t say you’re wrong.”

She leaned forward. Her chest pressed softly against the pommel of her sword.

“But I think there’s something fucking excellent waiting to come out of you, Seth il Gutierre,” she whispered, like she was telling a secret. “And I swear to you. I’ll see your value and use you right. I’ll season you. I’ll take care of you.”

And there was such a look of—of something on her face. Something so earnest Seth had to avert his eyes. Something Seth didn’t have the word for, but if he’d ever known his mother, he might have.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/173313...kinny-chef
https://www.scribblehub.com/read/2385004...r/2391175/