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Lightning

Ch. 5 - Friends in Low Places

By H. A. Kirsch

--

Trevor had arrived in Castleton on a Monday. Fitch had given him what sounded like an ultimatum on a Tuesday, to be fulfilled on that Saturday. That meant three entire days of fretting about what could happen, with only one break from the panther's glaring attitude.

At least, that's what the maned wolf thought when he woke up on Wednesday, after a night of fitful sleep. The dullweed had helped, and so had humping his pillow. At least at first. He soon awakened in the dead of night still feeling ill, though thankfully from the other end so he could sit on the toilet and not get a faceful of flies. This continued seemingly every hour, until the sun began to bore into the room through the window.

He dressed and was about to dump himself out of the front door when he remembered something. Ears flat, tail tucked, he grabbed the cologne bottle and splashed some around his mane ruff, then under his arms. He sniffed at the air around himself and loosened his tail, then sniffed around the apartment further and scowled. He took a spare sock, wetted it with the cologne, then set it in a sun pool on the less-balanced living room desk table.

He stepped outside just as Lane was opening his door. "I'm surprised to see you out here early," the cat said, then took out a metal cigarette case, withdrew one from inside, and then flicked a naphtha lighter.

"I didn't want you all yelling for me again." Trevor took the letter he'd written the night before, made sure he had addressed it properly including the return, and set it into the postbox behind where Lane was standing.

"I'm surprised to see you out here at all," the cat shrugged, lit the cigarette, and put everything else away. It smelled profoundly spicy, not of normal tobacco, and not of dullweed either.

"Hmm?" Trevor said, squinting in the morning bright. Despite the environment, a change of air made him feel better, and also more hungry.

"You didn't sound so good last night, up and down the stairs, heaved over the shithole, having a fuss, and then the dullweed," Lane said, still as droll as could be. "Clove?" He gestured with the cigarette.

"I don't... hmm, I guess I can't say I don't smoke since you could smell the dullweed. Then again, maybe it's just me. Fitch said I smell bad." After Trevor spoke, he waited. Lane showed no sign of going without him. Petrie wasn't anywhere in sight, and Fitch was neither.

"Fitch says a lot of things," Lane said. He took another cigarette out, then handed it over. He lit it up and Trevor took a test inhale.

"Oh Sellis, what is this," the maned wolf wheezed, streaming the smoke out of his nose. "Aahh!" He rubbed at his nosepad. "I feel like I just smoked breathing salts!"

"Clove," Lane repeated. "The spice. You can smoke it. There's a little central plain spiced tobacco in there, too. Otherwise it won't burn. It's... numbing, and it smells nice. You do smell like dullweed. I wouldn't take it personally."

"I know. And I really smoked it last night. I definitely definitely traveling sickness. I'll be alright, though I could use some food."

"Yeah, if it'll stay inside you. Maybe we should leave the others behind and stop by an apothecary. There's one at the end of this block. Come on." Lane started walking. "They won't wait up. They'll see we're gone and take off, lest Altius go on a rant. He never exactly gets mad, though if he doesn't stop talking, you know you've done it."

Trevor finished about half of the cigarette before squashing it out on the sidewalk. He felt woozy, though not intoxicated the way dullweed made him feel, or cough tonic, or alcohol. They stopped at what he thought was just another house, though there was a rickety sign over a rickety porch.

Lane walked right in, to the alarming chorus of at least fifty small bells. The inside of the shop did not look like any apothecary Trevor had seen, though he had only seen a few and only in various small outer towns. It was packed floor to ceiling on every wall with jars of all sizes, some containing obvious herbs or mushrooms, some containing powders, some containing slurries. The cashier's counter, a wooden affair, had racks below it and they were full with what looked like jars of pickled vegetables. The cashier was a dour-looking rhinoceros with an absurd amount of necklaces.

Lane spoke to the rhino, except it wasn't in Common. He seemed fluent in it, as the two started going back and forth, and gesturing towards Trevor. Finally, the rhino spoke understandably: "What is your sickness?"

Trevor's tongue felt numb and he stumbled it over his teeth. "Ahh. Ah had a clove," he said. "Ahem. A clove, cigarette, from him." He then pointed to Lane. "I just arrived in town, and I think I have a slight fever now and then, and awful stomach cramps, I vomited a few times and had the runs last night... I don't think it's drying sickness."

The rhino pulled out a jar which featured several thermometers in it, all sitting in some noxious liquid that smelled like brandy. He withdrew one and stuck it into Trevor's mouth before the guara could do anything about it. After several moments, he withdrew it, and put it back. "Traveling sickness. I get two things for you." He reached under the counter and withdrew one of the large jars of pickled items, then took out a metal tin and put a scoop of the contents into it. It looked, and smelled, profoundly fermented. Then, he took out a box of poultice cloths and set one out, and went over to the wall where he took down a vial of slurry and slowly oozed it into the center of the cloth, then rolled it up.

"Uh," Trevor said, watching. He leaned over to Lane. "What is all of this? I was expecting some slugwort or something." He tried to whisper, though his throat felt funny and he couldn't make a sound at all unless he spoke loudly.

"I hear you," the rhino said, twisted the ends of the poultice, and handed it over. "Put in here," he then reached out and smacked Trevor's muzzle on the side, where his cheek pouch was. "Before you eat, right now. Eat quarter of tin after each meal until it is gone. Slugwort does nothing to stop traveling sickness, it just binds the shit. Drink plenty of liquid. Fifty pennies."

"Ungh, fifty?" Lane said, and the pair then launched into more incomprehensible arguing.

Trevor, meanwhile, took out his coin pouch and withdrew five ten pieces. "It's not a problem, I'm the one who's sick," he said. Both of them stopped arguing and stared.

"Give him thirty, don't be stupid. Galeans always haggle down. It's rude not to." Lane snatched three out of Trevor's hand and put them on the counter. The rhino snorted, then grinned.

Trevor looked in his hand, where the poultice was making his palm slimy. He sniffed at it; it smelled like a very intense flower. He put it into his jaw and the scent exploded up into his nose. "Ahh, another thing that smells strange! What next, horse apples?" It also made his mouth water ferociously.

"Come on, you can eat at the laboratory. It's Wednesday, and that means there will be some savory bread." Lane pulled on Trevor's arm, and the two left.

"That wash shrantgh, ungh," the maned wolf said, then drooled and took the poultice out. "What is this stuff?"

"Galean traditional medicine. I'm not sure what most of the things are in there. I'm not sure if you're even supposed to eat some of them, especially those mushrooms. On the other hand, I've seen someone brought back from a heart collapse with that kind of stuff, so what do I know? I'm just a chemist," the cat grinned. "Oh! I know what's in the tin. That's pickled crab celery. That really will get rid of traveler's sickness."

They arrived at the laboratory and as the cat had guessed, there was an array of bread set out in the front office. Trevor's poultice had dissolved back to cloth and he discarded it, and tried a chunk of the offering. It was ridiculously dense, laced through with dried vegetables and cheese, and also hard enough to be stale at least on the outside. He was surprised to be able to down it with some low ale and not feel his gorge rising, though.

"Look at him go. You would never know he was ill," Petrie said, and put seedy mustard on his slice.

"Who said I'm ill?"

"Well, you had one of those awful Galean floral poultice things in your mouth. You could freshen the entire quarter outside by just breathing. Quite good for anything clenched up."

Once his bread was down, Trevor followed directions and had some of the pickled vegetables. They were outrageously musky and sour, and tasted awful at first, though when the salt hit, they were actually a good compliment to the bread. "I think I'm experiencing, what is it called, culture shock?"

Petrie laughed again. "You are experiencing how things get done in this part of Castleton! Galean medicine isn't exactly legal, though that particular kind of illegal - against chantry regulation - is quite suspect from an intellectual standpoint. And legal or not, it is effective. Quite strange, really, what you can find for legal sale in certain parts, and yet they try to restrict medicine."

Altius then cut in. "Gentlemen, please pardon the extra noise today, as we are having something installed. It is actually a solution to part of Fitch's problematic wire-puller, and also to the amount of effort needed to crank the energizer."

"What, slave cages for slaves to run in those wheels like they use for big cranes?" Fitch finally said something. He was not eating the bread, and instead had what appeared to be breaded hard eggs that he was eating out of hand as if they were apples.

"No, and since you are being difficult, it is a surprise. Now all, hurry up an' get to work."

To his delight and also confusion, Trevor felt enormously better within the next hour, despite having eaten dubiously fresh food. To his dismay, he faced another day of running internal errands around the warehouse laboratory, this time with a backdrop of banging, hand-drilling, and yelling out behind the building.

Altius, Lane, and Petrie were engaged in more brainstorming and random momentary experiments, and paid Fitch little mind; the panther returned the favor by mostly working in his shop.

Any time Trevor was anywhere near Fitch, the panther stared at him. He expected to be cornered any time he stepped into a room alone, to put something away or to pick it back up. He had to go into the shop or the adjacent storage room often, and his heart skipped a beat each time he saw the panther's head swivel and his yellow eyes fixate on him.

They hadn't finished the bread for breakfast, and Trevor's stomach rumbled pleasantly, for food and not illness. He went out to have a break from the din and running about, and sliced off another piece from one of the remaining loaves. There's no way around it; this is day-old bread. I bet it's charity food. This whole thing is a complete lark.

Trevor found himself so ensconced with his snack meal that he didn't hear Fitch approach from behind. A whisker brushed him and he startled, though with a mouth full of food, he didn't dare make a yell or try to get up quickly.

Sniff, sniff. "Who says you get more bread?"

Trevor's mouth tried to run dry while it was wet with food. He swallowed, grunted, swallowed again. "I... it will only go more stale." It's already stale. Don't be a skirtwaist, say it. "It's already stale."

Sniff, sniiiiiiffffff. "Of course it is. We get handout bread on Wednesdays. I think this one's from Sharyn's. It's the cheese. It's either good food, or fantastic bullshit contraptions. You can't have both on a pittance."

"Oh," Trevor said.

"You smell good. You still stink of dullweed, and that Galean bullshit. But. I smell my favorite cologne," the panther said. "And cock." This, he said directly into Trevor's ear, at just above a whisper. "You listened."

Trevor tingled down his spine. What? Listened to what? His tail swatted one way. You don't need to wash everything. You know what I meant. He squeezed the last corner of his chunk of bread. I came in my hands after humping the pillow last night, inbetween feeling wretched, and I was thinking of... "Why... is it just because I'm new? What is this, is it called hazing?" Oh you dullhead, he's going to get mad now.

Fitch grasped onto both of his shoulders. Today, he wore swordsman's gloves, in supple brown leather. "Those other three aren't my type. My type starts to smell desperate when they see me."

Trevor turned to try and look at the panther, and immediately caught a sniff off his right glove. It smelled just as intensely of cock sweat and seed as his own had after he caught his load the night before. "You really like smelling things," Trevor tried to deflect.

"I really like a lot of things. Some of them are unusual." The panther then let go of Trevor's shoulders, then pushed Trevor's tin of crab celery in front of him. "Don't forget to take your medicine." He then walked away.

He jerked off before coming over here. Where did he do it, in his boiling hot shop? Did he use the latrine out back in the alley? Those workers out there would have heard him. He probably growls while he does it. What a disgusting piece of meat. What an awful mess. How did I get into this garbage! Trevor's cock throbbed between his legs and left a lump in his deerskin pants. He groaned, sighed, then opened the tin of medicinal fermented vegetables and had a serving on his last piece of bread. The unusually pungent flavor reminded him of why he was eating it in the first place, and that wasn't very attractive at all. Problem solved, he went back to work.

By the late afternoon, the din out back had ceased, and Altius and Fitch had gone somewhere related to the people working on it. They were apparently building some sort of utility shed out of wood. Petrie had also disappeared - something about going to a library. Lane came over and found Trevor in thought, looking at the energizer.

"Pretty big, huh? It's a terror. If we get the crank going well enough, we can get bolts twice your height out of it," the cat said. "You feeling better? You worked all day."

Trevor sighed, mostly of relief. "I've never felt better faster. That's very strange. Is that place really illegal?"

Lane looked over to the side. "You aren't the dullhead you think you are, right? It's an act?"

"I feel dull a lot. I fell asleep upstairs yesterday."

"However, you... can tell by now that we aren't..."

"Actually affiliated with Hopsmoth? I figured that out the moment we came up in the carriage. We get people like Dr. Brasseri coming through town every once and a while. They always talk the same way. Hucksters, my aunt calls them. I assumed he was one, but."

"But."

"I'm not sure. I have a question," Trevor said, and stepped closer, and got quieter. "Is there anything I should know about Fitch?"

Lane seemed mostly unperturbed, though he did adjust his turtleneck. He wore it despite being sweaty with the summer temperature. "There are a lot of things to know about Fitch, and I think only Fitch knows most of them."

Trevor scowled. "That's not helpful."

The hairless cat shrugged. "Fitch is the person who fits this part of Castleton the best. Which makes it more ironic that Petrie is the one who has actually been in jail before."

"I beg your pardon?"

Lane then laughed and smiled, one of the few times so far. "If you ask that cat to explain himself, he'll say, 'No'. And then he'll explain himself for four hours while backing you into a corner. I don't want to take away his thunder, but let me say this: he was well on his way to a life outside of law and convention, and had a last minute change of heart."

"Does he ever... does he ever do things to people?"

Lane squinted, rolled his eyes up in thought. "Like hurt people? Well, if you actually do something wrong by him, good luck. That's usually not a problem, though. I did see him lay someone out at a bar once. The guy was a regular, and they got in a fight. It wasn't at Sharyn's, it was down by the docks. I forget what the reason was, but he flattened this big, stout wolf right down with one drive to the face." Lane mock punched. "And then just kept at it. It took me and three other guys to pry him off. I don't know what happened to the wolf, but he got carried out of there, one guy on each limb. Never saw him again. I thought for sure some constable would come after us, and no one did. That's actually the better moral of this story, than anything about Fitch: if something goes down, get ready to help yourself. I don't know what started it, though I do remember it was something worthwhile. Despite his attitude, that cat never starts things for no reason."

Are you sure, Trevor wanted to say.

"Did he do something to you?"

"N-no," Trevor stammered. "Actually, he showed me a shortcut to get to the apartment."

Lane laughed and flailed his tail around. "Ungh, he's obsessed with going near that river. Maybe he catches fish out of there and that's why he's so naffy sometimes. I won't have that, it's disgusting. I suppose it's technically a shortcut, and you can go watch Sharyn's goats eat the moss off of the wellhouse roof. I think that's what makes her goat cheese so good."

"He stares at me all the time."

Lane did look a little pensive. "Oh, he does that sometimes. I think he just isn't good with other people."

Trevor sighed. "What is all this mess out back for? What do we need a shed for? This is a warehouse, isn't it?"

"To go back to what I was trying to say, we're not affiliated with the university. We do get some money from them, however... you're aware that the chantries and the government have lots of things in their regulation code that you aren't supposed to do, right? I don't mean laws exactly, I mean things like 'do not try to study the gods', and all that. On the other hand, machinery is more powerful than any God, and the military enjoys power. Someone has to do research that helps the military. Hopsmoth does quite a lot of that, and that requires resources that they otherwise don't have above board."

Trevor tried to follow along. His head hurt, though so did his shoulders. He hadn't done so much physical labor in the entire previous year. "You mean you do work for the military?" That made him frown.

"No. Yuck. However, Hopsmoth does, and they need quite a lot of interesting chemicals to do that. And guess who is an expert with that? Me. You had that clove cigarette this morning, did you not? What if I told you that it was not a natural clove in there, that I had created an extract from scratch that smells, tastes, and numbs exactly like clove oil, and simply applied it to some choice tobacco?"

"Huh," Trevor said.

"Huh! Hmm. Maybe you are dull after all. That is a small example. Petrie, on the other hand, is good at investments."

"Oooh, I don't hear good things about that, the cheetah who lives next door back in Potterston is a counselor and he's always going after people who make bad investments."

"Investments are all about risk. As a result, they aren't guaranteed. However, you can guarantee them, if you are willing to bend things a little. Despite his stature, Petrie is very good at bending. That is also why he was in jail before coming here."

"And Fitch?"

"Fitch makes things for people who pay well for them. He makes... necessities." Lane picked his words carefully.

Trevor chuckled. "So you all do dubiously-legal things for side money, and what, pump it into all this stuff? For what?"

"Because, and it took a lot of convincing from Altius, the future hasn't happened yet, but it will. If you are on the right side of the future, then you profit from it."

"It's all about money? We're in a ramshackle warehouse two blocks from a river full of shit!" Trevor laughed out loud now. "Although, it really does beat falling asleep in my copy of 'Practical Alchemy'."

"That's a dreadful book. No Wonder. Want to come to Sharyn's? I promise we don't eat there constantly. Altius just has a tab open for us. Maybe some strong beer will help kill whatever ails you."

"Sure," Trevor said, and thus began an entire night listening to Lane - who had initially seemed uninterested in talking to anyone, especially Trevor's cousin - go increasingly into wild tales.

Several beers in, several in Lane's case and just one in Trevor's, Lane thumped his hand down on the table. "I am hot, curse Sellis for this beer," he huffed, and rolled his sleeves up. "I have to wear this turtleneck so I don't get cold, even in the summer, from a chill in the air, or a sunburn. And now I'm hot! It's hot and sweaty and disgusting in here. How can you stand it with all that fur? Anyway, you asked, about Altius. Why would I work for a lizard." Lane pointed as he talked.

Trevor looked around the bar. The dinner crowd had dissipated, and the Wednesday night drinking crowd was neither heavy nor rowdy. "I think I did, maybe," Trevor said.

"I was born here, in Castleton. My father, my father's family really, owns a trading company. That's how I know what's going on, I've watched Castleton go from the very last of the actual castle days, up to now, where there's that omni-train and steam drives like that one they're putting in at the warehouse - oops that's a surprise! - and the water system that I sometimes think actually pumps shit into the sink instead of clean water, I've seen all this stuff happen. It seems inevitable. Not all the places around our continent are like that. There are a few cities that have stayed the same so long that they don't know why they haven't changed. I've seen a lot of that, because my father wanted me to understand the world, and so he took me along whenever he went out to tend to his fucking trade connections." Lane then took a swig.

"And wouldn't you know it, one time, we went to Caroy. That was before the big war that just cleaned up. Maybe we started it. Nah, that'd be stupid, some naffy hairless cats starting a trade war. We're too busy licking our assholes. We went there, and let me tell you something. There is nothing inherently bad about Caroyans. They are an amazing people. However, they are protective of themselves, of their country, of their culture. And they did not take kindly to a trading company showing up to try and barter for things. Things they have that no one else has anywhere in the world. I'm not even talking connite, just herbs and this one seed oil that they have that I swear, would make the most grizzled old wretch as soft as a baby's ass. That sort of stuff."

Lane paused to belch, then had a piece of bread and several nuts.

"Well, this particular village we went to, where we docked up, they were going to kill me. I was a little kid. I don't really remember. I don't remember them actually... doing anything bad to me, but my dad begged and pleaded and everything. Do anything to him, not me. Only really selfless thing he ever fucking did. So they said we'll teach you a lesson you can take back home. And they cut his leg off." Lane then demonstrated with a chopping motion right above his knee. "They cut it off and smeared this stuff on the stump and it stopped bleeding right there, and he started screaming. Apparently, it felt like he was being lit on fire a thousand times over. Then, they beat him with his leg, until he was stupid."

"I'm sorry," Trevor said, and leaned forward. "Did you say... beat him with his leg?"

"Beat him in the head with it, over and over. Gave him a stammer, and sometimes he forgets what he's doing, but he's so stubborn he wouldn't get out of the family business. My uncle runs it most of the time now, but my dad, he still has his fingers in stuff, can still look over the books, check out new trades."

Trevor looked aghast. "And... how is this related to you working with Altius? Altius is a... well, he's Caroyan."

"I remember what they did with me after that. They showed me what was going on. All these humanids in all their ears and tails and fur coats, showing up and just wreaking havoc. Did you know that Caroyans are... they aren't really physically like us that much? You and I, we both have dicks and balls. And a lass like Sharyn, has a cunt, and the stuff inside where you get a baby from. Caroyans don't do that. They can all lay eggs. And they can all fuck each other. They all have kind of a dick and a hole inside, sort of. They still do male and female, usually, but they all can if they have to, do whatever. Anyway, that's one thing, however, they also can't interbreed with us humanids. So that means, not only can we go over there with our guns and cannons and metal armor and stuff and pickaxe connite out until we're buried in it, but we can fuck them all we want and never have to worry about any pesky little kids. So we'd enslave them for sex."

"Okay, so why would I hang out with Altius? Because I saw what was going on, and I said, I'm not going to be like that. My dad didn't deserve it, except he did, except he didn't know he was doing something that bad. I don't forgive them for that, really. I just saw that they still had the short end of the stick. And I'm not going to abuse any of them. Altius ended up finding me and my first thought was, not one of these fucks. And then I thought... no, Lane, definitely one of these fucks. You're going to show him you're a good person, even if you make drugs for people. Shit. Well, that's out of the bag." He downed the last of the beer, and looked ready to circle the drain of incoherence.

"I... oh, I kind of assumed you did something like that. Just based on the other stories."

Lane reached over and gave him a shoulder smack, the customary friendly gesture of the area. "You're not dull. Don't beat yourself up. You're just weird. I don't even mind the smell. I'm gonna go right home and light up some dullweed and think about what kind of trouble I'm going to get myself into in the night district on my day off. I don't know how smart you really are or not. You kinda stand around looking dazed, and sometimes I think you're gonna fall over standing up with your eyes closed, but whatever. And hey, look, Fitch likes you."

"What?" Trevor almost swallowed his tongue. "What do you mean? Did he say something about me?"

"The staring thing. He stares at people he likes. You want him to like you. You definitely don't want him to not like you. Okay, okay, I'm gonna pay cash for the beers, don't try to stop me." He fumbled around for his coin purse, took more than enough out, and smacked it on the table. Then he picked it up, got up, went to the bar, and aggressively smacked it in front of Sharyn. "You can take this and shove it! Into your uh, the money thing!"

"Ye'all get outta my bar before ye fall down drunk!" The mouse guffawed.