Right from the beginning of the encounter, the gambling den was in a state of absolute, screaming chaos. Over time, that noise had faded into a low murmur, with people whispering prayers or frantically debating whether to run. Now, with two of Batiz's men lying dead on the ground, the remaining patrons stood in whispering silence.
Jesper, whose cloak was now mottled and a bit heavy with hot, dark blood, stood over the body of the fat man with the dripping dagger in his hand.
His sister, on the other hand, had covered her mouth with her bound hands and was taking trembling steps away from the corpse.
She could not believe what had just happened, and honestly, neither could Jesper. Everything had just suddenly gone to shit, and even more than that, he had so many things to think about. Like why he was suddenly in a world that was awfully similar to the one he used to read about in a novel in his previous life.
'…everything has gone to shit.'
Out of the many thoughts in his mind, he held on to that one.
'We need to move fast.'
Looking away from the corpse to his sister, he took a few steps to her, then said in a voice laced with urgency, "Snap out of it, Yar. We need to get out of here."
Not only did they need to get out of here, they needed to get the hell out of these slums immediately. If they did not, they would be in even bigger trouble.
'Is it possible for us to get to Nikolai before news of what we have just done reaches him?' Jesper sighed as he quickly cut the rope binding Yar's hands.
When he was done, he took one last quick look around the now noisy den, then jogged a few steps to where he had been knocked down earlier to pick up his cap.
After putting it on, he walked back to her and quickly grabbed his sister's hand to snap her fully out of it. Then, ignoring the murmurs and cursing of the patrons, he began walking briskly until they were out of the den.
The night air hit them like a bucket of ice water that smelled of industrial soot, waste, and a bit of cold shit.
But more importantly, they could both see that just like every night, the green mist which usually came out at night and blanketed the floor of the streets was already rolling around thickly everywhere.
The moment Jesper laid eyes on the fog, he suddenly began to hear a chorus of foreign voices whispering into his ears.
One of them was a male voice who spoke with a mocking lilt.
"Oh, look at you now. You've messed up, boy; you guys have messed up real bad. I can literally smell your fear. It's thick enough to taste."
"Do you need our help?" A sympathetic female voice quickly cut the man off. "Come on, I know you do. You know very well that Batiz will find you now."
"Of course he will," an old man's voice interjected. "You killed his men in front of everyone who knew you both were Nikolai's rats. Now Batiz will know for certain it was you guys who stole from him."
The old man's voice was still talking when the first voice chimed back in. "Just think about the horrifying things he's going to do to you when he catches you. Ha! Oh, you'll wish, you'll wish he kills you instead."
Upon hearing the voices, Jesper, who had already broken into a sprint with his sister, took a breath of the foul air and immediately tried to calm his fear.
These voices were called the Dushi. The Dushi were dangerous wraiths that came with the green mist that blanketed the world every night, and they were attracted to intense emotions like fear and despair.
So, to chase them away, Jesper tried hard to regulate his chaotic emotions. As he did, the voices of the Dushi began to grow desperate:
"Come on. We can help you escape from him."
"Don't be a fool, boy take the help. The man's a Warlock!"
"For Blight's sake, think of your sister's safety too!"
"…"
But since Jesper was no longer paying attention to the whispers, the voices began to fade, until he could hear them no more.
As the twins continued to run through the labyrinth of leaning tenements and soot-stained shacks, Yar asked, "What about Marie?"
'Marie…'
…The memories flooded back with that thought.
Jesper suddenly remembered how she had jumped in to help them.
He remained silent and felt his chest tighten.
After a moment, he finally responded in a pained voice, "She is probably dead already."
***
…
..
.
Less than twenty minutes later, the siblings were breathless; however, they had finally reached Nikolai's lodging.
Amidst the trashy backdrop of the slums, the two-story building stood larger than the others and looked like an industrial warehouse made of soot-stained brick.
Unlike the wooden shacks around, this building was a massive public bathhouse with a flat roof and heavy iron pipes running along its exterior. Thick steam hissed from the vents near the top, and the only entrance was a wide, reinforced wooden door with iron bands. A faded sign above the door simply read: THE GRAND BANYA.
Currently, the siblings were not standing directly in front of the building because there were two of Nikolai's men leaning by the entrance. Instead, they had stopped by the side of the building in the shadows of a rusted steam pipe.
Jesper looked to Yar, whose beautiful ruby eyes were clouded with exhaustion and a growing terror.
He exhaled, and as he began taking off his bloodstained cloak, he said curtly, "Hand me the pocket watch, cufflinks, and ten imperial gold."
"Huh?" Yar turned to him, while absently tucking a strand of her brunette hair behind her ears. It took a fraction of a second for what he said to register, and then she breathed a faint, "Oh…" and quickly reached into the satchel with trembling hands.
After a few seconds, she pulled out the items and handed them to him. Because her hands were trembling so much, a few coins fell from her palm to the ground. She gasped and dropped to her knees, frantically clawing at the filth to pick them up.
As she did, for some reason, she started to sob, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
Jesper sighed.
He could tell that the poor girl was probably traumatized and was struggling to process everything. With everything she had gone through in the last few hours, including the sight of her brother driving a knife into a man's jaw, it would be a surprise if she were not at her absolute breaking point.
Not to mention, she also had to bear the whisperings of the Dushi who were currently probably gorging themselves on her fear.
After Yar handed the coins to Jesper, he put them in his own pocket. Then he wrapped the other items, including the knife, in his cloak, which he then hid behind a barrel near the foundation of the warehouse.
With that secured, he gestured with his head. "Come on. Let's go."
He moved first, and she slipped into step behind him. They turned the corner of the building and began walking toward the large open doors. Nikolai's men did not stop them; one of them nodded in greeting, while the other simply watched with cold eyes as they walked past.
Upon getting into the banya, the cold air of the slums was suddenly replaced by thick, steaming air that smelled of sweat and old men's ballsacks.
In the center space, there was a very large bath filled with noisy men of different ages wearing only towels. There were a few women dressed in only towels too who walked around giving them massages or attending to other more… dubious comforts.
Rows of stairs lined the walls on the left and right leading to the second floor, or other areas of the banya.
The siblings only paused for a brief moment before they turned and headed up the stairs to their right. They climbed to the second floor, then walked to a door that was guarded by a man in a greasy fur coat.
"What are you looking for, lad?" the man grunted, leaning against the doorframe with a toothpick between his teeth.
With a face devoid of emotion, Jesper replied, "We are here to see the boss."
The man let out a short, dry laugh, then shook his head. "It is not yet time for you to report in, and he did not send for you." He pointed a thumb behind him at the door. "Plus, as you can hear, he is quite busy now."
Of course. Jesper could indeed hear that the man was busy. After all, the moans of women coming from behind the door were really, really loud.
But he needed to see the boss as soon as possible so that he could get the hell out of these slums. Luckily, Nikolai loved money more than anything in the world.
"Please tell him that we have the Imperial to buy ourselves out of his slave's contract."
The man arched a brow, then quietly scanned both siblings until his eyes rested on the satchel Yar was carrying.
"Wait here," he finally said as he turned around and knocked twice on the door. Without waiting for a reply, he cracked the door open and slipped inside.
During the brief time the door was open, Jesper could have sworn he saw Nikolai naked, and the man was currently straddling two women on a velvet couch.
When the door shut, Jesper took off his cap and began to fidget with the frayed brim as he waited for the guard to come back out.
He was experiencing a severe case of cognitive dissonance, and since the immediate life-or-death danger had passed, his original personality was also trying to claw its way back to the surface.
Because of this, his nerves were really tense, his hands were trembling severely, and his mind was racing.
The scene of him driving a knife into the man's neck kept playing over and over again in his head. As someone who had never killed before in this life, the image appalled him greatly.
He was still spiraling deeper into his collapsing mind when the door opened again and two beautiful black-haired women walked out wearing only towels.
They both shot Jesper a look of profound relief, as if his arrival had been a divine intervention that spared them from another hour of the boss's company. Without saying a word, they clutched their towels tightly and hurried toward the stairs leading down.
Not long after, the guard poked his head out, and waved a hand for them to enter. "He's in a mood. Don't make him wait."
Jesper turned to Yar, and both of them shared a quick, silent nod before finally stepping through the door.
The room was large and actually looked a bit luxurious, at least by the standards of the filth they usually lived in.
There was a tarnished brass chandelier hanging above, a table by the side cluttered with half-empty crystal decanters, and a cracked, gold-rimmed mirror that caught the flickering light. In the center of it all was a large velvet couch that had seen better days.
Sitting on the couch and currently lighting a papirosa was a burly, middle-aged man with a face that looked like it had been carved out of granite and then kicked a few times. He was wearing just an expensive silk robe and thick gold chains that clinked against his hairy chest as he moved.
After taking a drag and exhaling a cloud of gray smoke, he smiled. "My guy Butchy here told me something interesting. Says you two lads have enough gold to buy yourselves out?"
Jesper watched the way Nikolai's smile spread with every word. He then nodded and replied firmly, "Yes boss. We have fifty imperial. Twenty-seven for me, and twenty-three for Yar."
He turned to his sister who was standing just slightly behind him to his right, then nodded signaling her to bring it forward.
She looked at him briefly, then took a step toward the couch and presented the satchel.
Nikolai tipped his head toward Butchy, who snatched the bag from Yar's hands. The guard walked over to the side table, dumped the coins out with a loud metallic clatter, and began counting them.
After a few tense seconds, Butchy turned back and nodded. "It's fifty, boss. All here."
"Oh?" Nikolai arched a brow in disbelief. He looked at the gold briefly, before returning his gaze to the siblings.
"Now, that's certainly interesting."
Taking another slow drag of his cigarette, he exhaled and muttered grumpily.
"Answer me this, though. Where did poor brats like you get your hands on this much coin?"
Jesper swallowed.
There was no way in hell he was going to say they had stolen from Batiz. If he said that, Nikolai, out of fear, would simply bind them and present them together with the gold to Batiz to save his own life. That was why he prayed and hoped Nikolai had not heard the news of what happened in the gambling den yet.
As for the alibi, well… since both he and Yar had been raised as thieves, they did plan to say they stole the gold.
Hiding his emotions behind a wall of cold indifference, Jesper replied, "We've been skimming it for years. One coin here, a few there... stolen from the drunks and the high-rollers who came to the Gilded Rat."
The Gilded Rat was the name of the gambling den Marie worked at and the den they had just come from. Although there were not a lot of well-to-do people in Frankenfurt, occasionally, a few bored high-rollers who visited the slums would come around to the Gilded Rat to watch the aerial silk performers who danced from cloths hanging from the ceiling.
Jesper could only hope that lie would be enough to convince his boss. He hoped that Nikolai would not probe any further and would just take the damn money.
After a few seconds of agonizing silence, he added, "It took a long time to save that up. We just want out, boss. That is all."
It was quiet again after that.
Finally, Nikolai leaned forward until the light of the chandelier caught the deep lines around his eyes and his voice dropped to a low, gravelly rumble. "You lads reek of blood, you know."
He tilted his head, pointed to Jesper's head and added, "And that's one nasty wound you've got there."
When Jesper heard that, he reached up and touched the matted hair near his temple, where the skin had split into a laceration. He then brought his hand down, noticing the dark smear of crimson on his fingertips.
Three seconds passed, then he looked up and replied with a straight face, "We got into a fight with a drunkard earlier. We tried to steal food from him and he got a bit violent with us."