Dungeon Runner
The Tiger Writes
sciencefiction
sciencefiction
31K5
Tibs survived by picking pockets; until he's caught.
Instead of losing a hand, he's sent away and told he must now survive a dungeon.
How is a kid who knew nothing more than his ...Bottom Rung, Chapter 22
The rooming house had been finished for a few weeks now, and while Tibs had looked into it as an alternative to the cots, he hadn't selected it. He didn't need much to sleep, something to keep the weather out was the only thing he'd considered important, so with the cots being free, the rooming house wasn't appealing, but one thing it had in its favor was privacy. That was what he wanted for him and Jackal right now.
Only, now that he was here, he had to think about what he wanted beyond right now. If he and Jackal were a team, and if he wanted to keep his team alive, he needed to think past the now and into tomorrow. So did he want the room only for the discussion, or did he invest in his team, even if it meant the risk of losing people he cared about?
He placed a silver on the counter and absently noted the animal head on it. A boar, one of the other runners had told him it was; the other side had the face of a woman. "How long will a silver give my team a room for?"
The woman on the other side, tall and rotund, with brown hair that shone red in the sunlight streaming through the open door, took it, made a face at the design, and put it back down. "A silver gives you two weeks. You don't pay up at the end of that, and everything in it gets thrown out for anyone to take. No negotiations on that." Tibs thought her voice could be pleasant, when she wasn't bored and brusque.
"Tibs," Jackal asked. "What are you doing?"
He took the coin and faced the fighter. "We need a place we call our own. We can't be a team with sleeping on the cots or where you've been sleeping and where the others have..." he trailed off and swallowed the lump.
"Tibs, I'm not sure if—"
"We are a team," Tibs stated, putting all the conviction he could muster behind the words. "Maybe it's only two right now, and some of us will die. But I've decided I can't be a runner and think like that. Can you?" When Jackal didn't immediately reply, Tibs pointed to the counter. "That's how we become a team."
Jackal's lips curled up and trembled with the effort needed in trying not to. "Shouldn't she get a say in that?" he asked before snorting a laugh.
Tibs looked and realized he was pointing at the woman, he lowered his finger to point at the coin on the counter, only to remember he'd taken it—Street reflex to never leave something precious out of sight—and put it back, pointing to it.
"She might be too old for you," Jackal said between laughter, and she chuckled.
Tibs tried to glower at the fighter, but he chuckled too.
"How many keys? The woman asked, still chuckling lightly. Tibs had been right, she had a nice voice.
He looked at Jackal.
The man took a breath to calm his laughter and nodded to Tibs. "Two for now. We'll get more as we find teammates."
The key was brass, like most keys Tibs had seen in his life, and every key in the town, but unlike the others, the end had no teeth to move the tumblers with. It was flat.
"Magic," the woman said when she noticed Tibs studying it. "The guild doesn't let us use anything else. Too many rogues around who can pick any locks, they say." She shrugged. "Security's always a good thing, so I don't argue. The door number's written on the bow. You lose a key and I'm not responsible for your stuff going missing, got that?"
"You have more keys," Jackal said, "what if you decide to go into our room?" the accusation was slight, but there.
"If I go in, it's because you missed a payment and your stuff is headed for the street. There's five beds in there," she continued before Jackal could add anything, "with partitions you can put between them if you want. What you get up to in there ain't my business, unless it gets out of your room; that means noises too. There's two taverns out there if you want to get loud. More on the way, I hear."