47 - Gourmet Street Food [Cherno]

She returned to the other room and found a small, round box waiting at her side of the table, the medicine box gone. Before she could sit back down, Casus pointed it out: “For your sleep deprivation; I could see you nearly nodding off. We don’t have enough time for you to sleep properly, so roll a cigarette from this. Once you smoke it, you will sleep for an hour, and wake up feeling as if you had slept for ten hours.”

“What’s the downside?”

“How long can you stay sane on one hour of sleep a night?”

Krahe nearly laughed. She nearly said “Years on end if need be,” as she had done, just once. At one point, her cybernetics had pushed her past the need for sleep in the traditional sense, but even then, she had gotten hours-long periods of semi-wakeful meditative rest to replace them. The suppressed exclamation manifested as a small twitch in her face, but no more.

What was in the box wasn’t an herb, but small granules. There was enough of it for perhaps four cigarettes. Krahe appraised it. Its name was Adefron Incense. Rather than a list of effects, the Prospector’s Eyes showed her a short description of its effect, which matched what Casus had said; induction of short, highly restful slumber.

“Roll one for me as well. I shall sleep alongside you, as to assuage your suspicion of me,” Casus said in earnest.

A raised eyebrow and an incredulous question was Krahe’s response: “Are you stupid? What if someone breaks in? Stay awake and keep guard.”

Despite the circumstances of her death, she wasn’t that paranoid. Especially not towards someone so straightforwardly genuine as Casus. She didn’t recall ever meeting anyone emanating such an aura of unspoilt innocence as him; at least not since the day her home was made into glass.

Only some fifteen seconds after she finished smoking it, a tidal wave of sleepiness slammed into her and she found herself sprawling out on the couch before she knew it.

Krahe dreamt of it; the Wound-like Smile. Dark, oily tendrils swirled in the deep. Then, she awoke. The Banisher sat there, barely having moved from his spot. The only changes were a book in his hands and two additional cups which now sat next to his first, only one holding any coffee. The book was bound in strange leather and possessed a lock, with no suggestion of its title or author to be found anywhere on the cover.

“It has scarcely been three-quarters of an hour. You are a shallower sleeper than it seemed when you laid there as though a corpse… Or perhaps the incense had less effect on you than normal. I do not know.”

He lowered the book, closing it as he did. His right arm twitched and seized, and he had to force it down with his other hand.

“Really need to get that fixed…” he sighed at the malfunction. Then, he turned his gaze to her: “How do you feel? Fatigue and anathema-wise.”

“Good… And almost good. I wager it will be another hour before I can consider myself back to eighty percent capability. After that, another hour for every subsequent five percent.”

“What percentage were you at the Old Street Butchershop?”

“Seventy-five at best. Sleep deprivation offset by cassia and adrenalin. Nonetheless, I was already at the point of mild delirium when we left.”

“Then we shall take another hour; we can afford that much, I would hope. Lady Blackhand-”

“Call me Krahe,” she interrupted, sitting up as she blinked the last motes of sleep from her eyes. “That’s my actual name.”

“No surname?”

“That is my surname.. Sort of. The full thing is Brunhilde Krahe, but neither is a family name. Do not call me Brunhilde. Call me Hilde, and I will shoot you.”

“I understand. Is that K-r-e-i-a?”

“K-r-a-h-e.”

Nodding, he said: “I will still use Lady Blackhand at times. It is a good title, much like Silberblut.”

“I need coffee and some water. The kitchen is in the other room, yeah?”

The Banisher got up before she could even lean forward onto her feet, gesturing for her to stay put.

“I will bring them to you. You are the one resting, lest you forget.”

“Hai-hai,” she waved a hand in resignation.

She took her remaining foldover out of storage. Cold.

Returning with the coffee and water she had requested, Casus saw her sat there, chewing on the cold scorched rice.

“There is… I am certain I can find something better than the stuff Imraal sells,” he said, setting both drinks down.

“No, this is good,” Krahe refused. “Hot coffee and cold fast food… Yeah. Breakfast of champions.”

“I have eaten those things before. They are good, but not one fifth as good as you make them seem.”

She shrugged, raising the one-third eaten foldover: “This is gourmet food where I come from. Not the preparation, the base materials. Rice, spiced meat, hell, real coffee. Luxury items which I could only eat when I smuggled them and skimmed some off the top of the shipment, claiming I used it to bribe a corrupt official. Do you know how my world’s version of this street food looks like? Slabs of bleached, slightly gritty starch mush, with artificially dyed, artificially flavoured, and drugged protein mush in the middle, soaked in rancid capsicum oil pulled from a sewer. The coffee is caffeine powder with food dye and bitterants. It gives you heart palpitations if you have a grafted heart from one particular company which competes against the coffee manufacturer.”

Taking a large bite, Krahe relished chewing it before she flushed it with a swig of scalding hot, real coffee. She even relished the unsettled coffee grounds that made their way between her teeth.

Though his reaction seemed bemused on the surface, a profound sadness could be seen in Casus’ eyes. He took up his book once more and left her to her breakfast. When she was done with the foldover and was just about finishing her coffee, he piped up again.