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

[Mamorien]

Yesterday's Headless Over Heels is up at Scribble Hub, and today's chapter has hit the road!

“I have a hexentat scriber to confront.” Seth stepped around the bar. “Didn’t see her in the crowd, so I imagine she’s at her hideout.”

“Oh, fun. Why?”

“She gave me a bullshit hexentat, is why.” Seth reached over his shoulder and patted his back. “The Fox. It’s supposed to give me good advice. It got me caught by Rohan il Agante.”

“That’s how you ended up hired by Annalise, no?”

Seth held a warning finger up. “Don’t start with that.”

Ofelia giggled. It was as disarmingly girlish coming from her as from her mother. “I’ll come along,” she said. “It would be a kick to see you confront someone, I think.”

“Annalise said to take you back to the carriage.”

“You’re trying to get closer to me because if Annalise’s children like you, it’ll give you more of a chance with her, yes?”

“I’m trying to get to know my coworker,” he said. She stuck her tongue out and grimaced like he’d triggered her Darkness. “And also yes. A little bit. You don’t already like me?”

“Taking me to your scriber,” she said, “would be a very Fun Uncle thing to do.”

No Refunds

---

“No refunds.”

Marla snapped another chalky thumb of chew-root from the branchy husk atop her rolling table, and slid her glove back on over her spindly fingers.

“You said this thing would keep me out of trouble if I listened to it,” Seth said. “It’s been nothing but goddamn trouble for me ever since.”

“I didn’t say that.” Marla flicked her loupe down over her singular bright blue eye. She resumed her disastrously shrimp-backed posture over the finch tattoo she was dotting onto her cringing customer’s rhomboid. “I said it’d look out for you.”

Her wiry canvas grimaced over his shoulder. “Maybe you want to finish this before you get talking, huh?”

“I can do mundanes in my sleep,” Marla said. “Hush.”

“It leapt me into danger the first time I used it,” Seth said. “Got me collared by a fucking Syndicate Patre.”

“Rohan il Agante.” Marla shook her wrist out and scratched around her eyepatch. “And how’d he fare?”

“Not the point.”

“When I gave you that hexentat you looked half-starved and hunted. Now you’re coming here, you’re in nice new clothes, you’ve got a cute little undead friend here with you, you’re strutting. Did you get that way ignoring the Fox?”

“I—”

“No, you didn’t.” Marla blew a puff of air into the frizzy curl that dropped out of her corded hair tie. “And even if you did. What’s our refund policy, Agger?”

“No,” grunted Agger the neckless meat mountain from his perch on the cellar steps.

Ofelia wandered across the flagstones into the pool of humming corpselight that hung above Marla’s underground workstation. “Would you perhaps be willing to give another hexentatua for a reduced rate, ma’am?”

Marla didn’t look up. “Agger.”

“No,” the muscle repeated.

“I am loath to bring this up, ma’am,” Ofelia said. “But if you won’t offer incentives for a dissatisfied client, then perhaps you will do so because I am Ofelia al Ydris, daughter of the Verdugo Annalise al Ydris, and you are running an unlicensed hexentatua business for criminals.”

That finally got Marla’s attention off her work. She shoved her chair away from her client and glared up at the monochrome interloper. “Do you know where you are, girl?”

“I do,” Ofelia said. Behind her, at the basement’s only exit, all three hundred pounds of Agger stood, and wrapped his meaty fist around the hilt of his cavalry dusack.

“Do you understand the danger you’re in,” Marla said, “talking like that in here?”

“Thank you for your concern. I’ll be fine.” Ofelia unbuttoned the front of her tunic. On her bellybutton, radiating upward like a compass rose with her ribcage due north, were three stuffed-full hexentat rings. A lethal grimoire scribed into her shockingly muscled abdomen. More hexentatuae on one person than any of the people in this room had ever seen.

“Uh,” Marla said. Agger had been pacing closer. He froze. The guy on Marla’s table looked about ready to bolt from the basement half-finched.

“Now I’m looking for a second-ringer to finish out this row, and I’m looking for another weapon hex.” Ofelia pointed to an open spot near her liver. “My mother gets some splendid mileage out of the Weeping Razor, but I worry about its passive effect. I tend to wear my nails short.”

“Well, uh.” Marla took the shop talk like a rope and climbed as far as she could out from the abyss she’d been dangled over. “I reckon the Salamander works just as well as a hidden weapon, if you’re smart about invoking it. That’s fire out your mouth on the active and a higher body temperature on the passive. Helps ward off the cold.”

“That might be lovely. How’s it taste, the fire?”

“Dunno,” Marla murmured.

“I’ve got enough magic that puts odd tastes in my mouth,” Ofelia said. She folded her tunic back over her stomach. “But thank you for the suggestion, ma’am. Would a two-for-one sort of arrangement agree with you?”

“Uh. Yeah.”

“Splendid.” Ofelia smiled her strange smile. “If you have a broadsheet we can consult of your expertises, Seth and I will happily review it and return to you tomorrow morning for payment and an appointment.”

“No broadsheet,” Marla said. “I’ve got a book.”

“Even better. We’ll borrow it.”

“I… All right.” Marla rediscovered the plug of chew-root in her cheek, and a modicum of courage with it. “You’ll bring it back.”

Ofelia bowed from the waist. “I swear on my mother’s sword.”

“And this doesn’t count as a refund,” Marla added, as Ofelia plucked the book from her cart and brushed past Agger.

Seth shadowed her up the narrow stairs, and they opened the cellar door into the alpine-colored evening. “That went well,” Ofelia said.

“Well as it could have, I suppose.” Seth raised an ear to the chilly air, trying to hear whether the business at the scaffold had concluded. “Do you have room for two more hexentats?”

“The other is for you, of course,” Ofelia said. “It’s time we started filling your rings up.”

“Your mom doesn’t pay me enough for that. Not yet, anyway.”

“Happily, Mr. il Gutierre, we’ve obtained a two-for-one.” Ofelia ambled away from the shuttered florist whose basement played host to Marla’s operation. “I’ll pay for us both.”

Seth found himself as tongue-tied as the street toughs Ofelia had halfway threatened in the cellar. Even a basic hexentat was eye-wateringly pricy. The magnitude of the trust and acceptance of the al Ydrises sank into his gut.

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/173313...no-refunds