19 - Intel-gathering (and Lunch) [Cherno]

A/N: Fleshed out chapter in general a bit.

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“Well, that would qualify you as a G3 or perhaps F1, making you an Exterminator. Just a step below a proper Contractor, quite good to start with. I can either print you a basic CQF ID or file a paper record in our archive with your description.”

“Is it a self-contained item, or is there an archive of IDs somewhere?”

“We don’t archive CQF IDs, and there is no single archive of them either. Many Agencies do keep thorough records of their roster of Contractors, however.”

“Like the Silversword Agency.”

The receptionist nodded.

“Alright, give me the ID.”

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Krahe made her way out of the Zaveshian church with three memoryslates and lighter by three-hundred DDs in rings as payment for the objects. One held her ID, and two detailed bounties for local criminals, both of whom were grotesquely deformed. The bounties listed their races as “Gor’un Baneworm/Human”. She hadn’t asked what that meant, but she guessed them to be some sort of body snatching parasite due to the similarity to Tur’ith Ur-baneworms.

She stuck her hand down her pants pocket, stored the memoryslates in the Kenoma Pocket and summoned a cigarette into her hand, lighting it with a flick of her thumb. Deeper into the city she went, off the main arterial road. What drove her was the search for a true fount of knowledge, a trustworthy source of up-to-date information from below the skin of the city. The place was beautiful wherever she went, both in construction and in weather. It still hadn’t fully sunk in that the weather was just like this here, that it wasn’t an engineered clear-sky event for some executive’s visit. No acid rain. No smog. Just sunlight. A faint smile had stuck itself to her face and wouldn’t come off.

They were the small people, those who may as well be invisible. Laborers, cleaners, street vendors. It wasn’t long before she found one. A peddler of drinks, an utterly normal looking old man with a mustache; perfectly inconspicuous. She bought a glass bottle of dense, bluish juice from him, drinking it on the spot. It was very strongly sweet and tangy, obviously flavored by fruit, leaving a pleasant tingling heat down her throat alongside a curiously metallic aftertaste. It was sold as “Machine Crab Juice”, and when questioned, the merchant revealed that the name was literal.

“It’s one part specially processed Machine Crab Blood and eight parts goat milk. Drinking the pure stuff makes your teeth fall out and causes all sorts of nasty mutations, dunno what they do with this stuff to make it safe. I just buy it wholesale from the Crystal Decanter Agency. I’ve drunk it near everyday for the last decade, though, so no worries.”

No leads here, but she remembered him for later. Over an hour later, having spent several hundred DDs, and having sampled several different kinds of equally delicious street food, Krahe finally found a merchant that gave her the right feel from observing him for a few minutes. The cautious spark in his eyes, the way he cycled through his motions, the fact he had clearly noticed her yet masterfully pretended as if he hadn't.

A lizard-man, over two-and-a-half meters tall even with a hunched posture, his face resembling that of a mythical dragon more than a real animal. His green skin was like a monitor lizard, reinforced in many places by large, armor-like scales with peacock-like patterns in purple. His arms were long and lanky, and his tail was prehensile. Using these three limbs he skillfully worked his grill-cart, a rack of rectangular pans lined up over burners that bloomed with white flame. Seeing Krahe approach, he scooped a grain that may as well be rice from a pot of water and spread it out in a pan.

“What’ll it be, boss?” he asked.

Krahe’s eyes momentarily glazed over at the wide array of natural fragrances that lingered around the cart. Four options were listed on a small chalkboard on the cart’s side.

“One of each,” she decided.

“So eh, where’s you from? Ain’t seen you ‘round, and you sure sound like a foreigner,” the lizard asked offhandedly. Innocent small talk, at first glance.

“A faraway land plagued by thieves and scum, one where even the most virtuous man must become a grifter just to survive.”

“Don’t narrow it down much, but I get ya. Ain’t much better here in Audunpoint, truth be told. Folks vanishin’ off the street n’ turnin’ up gutted or used as some baneworm gangster’s newest meatglove, Vedesians walkin’ out in the open and hasslin’ good, honest Evoy that don’t want nothin’ to do with their racial supremacy bullshit, it’s just a mess, tell you what. But it’s our mess, and I wouldn’t trade it for nothin’. We’ve got all sorts’a foreigners comin’ through, what with the Dregstone Road out west and the Beyond Frontier down south. But eh, can’t hold it against you if y’want to leave your past behind. Half this damn city came here to escape from something… Or someone,” he rambled as he cracked open a pot, stirring its contents. Krahe had to blink a few times to snap her attention away from the pot’s mouthwatering contents, or the smell of them at least.

“Vedesians?”

“Yeah, I know, right? You’d think they’d been wiped out. Those Evoy are all the offspring of Vedesis, if you ask me - so long as one of ‘em lives, the Vedesian Swarm ain’t really gone… But some of ‘em are good folk. Some. You can usually tell which ones, ‘cause they deface their swarm marks. You ain’t gonna find a guy that hates the Vedesians more than an apostate Evoy. And uh… You didn’t hear this from me, but if you ever see a real twitchy fella that keeps rubbing his hands together, it’s probably a Vedesian Evoy tryin’ to pass for another race with heretical fleshgrafting.”

Krahe wasn’t one to take racial prejudice at face value, but she was also neither dumb nor idealistic enough to dismiss it. She would form her own views on this world’s races, but even if the vendor’s rant turned out to be simple racist rumors, it was still valuable information.