Death's Favorite Warlock 4, page 11
“Coins up front. No questions; no service,” the guard said to Alyona when he saw the pair of them walking up to the gate. “And slave sales aren’t for another three weeks if you’re looking to buy and detail another one.”
Lars was actually pleasantly surprised that the man didn’t have any obvious signs of being a beast person. Finding someone whose outward appearance was completely human was an incredible breath of fresh air for Lars, who was used to dealing more and more frequently with chimeric cultivators that had purified their blood to the point of gaining more and more beast-like features.
“He’s not a slave,” Alyona clarified as she puffed her chest out. “He’s my master.”
The guard shrugged. “Whatever you’re into isn’t my business. You can let him put a leash on you and walk you around the town naked while you bark like a dog for all I care. Just pay the coins if you want to go in.”
So, I’m back to being a slave. Can he not sense how strong I am? Lars stood there with his mouth agape as he stared at the moronic guard in front of him. Lars was strong enough to kill this guy with a single flick of his pinky, and yet the guard was treating him like he was a nobody—just a run-of-the-mill slave being dragged along by his owner.
He might not be physically capable of sensing any of your Qi. Remember how oblivious you were to the Laughing Lion’s strength when you first met him? For all you knew, he could have been a beggar in the streets, but he was actually a true master capable of destroying the entire mountain with a single move.
That’s true. Lars nodded along with Ophelia’s reasoning as he looked over at Alyona, who had all the coins from the cultivators they had just killed on her. “Go ahead and pay the man. It’s getting late, and we don’t have all day.”
“Of course.” Alyona smiled as she pulled out a coin and handed it to the guard. “Should I also find a collar? Did his suggestion tempt you, master? Is that what you’re into?”
“What? No, let’s just go in,” Lars replied.
“Woof, woof,” Alyona joked, putting her hands in front of her and pretending she was a dog as she scratched the side of her head with the side of her hand. Lars stood staring at her in befuddlement until she darted into the town, laughing a little as she ran.
“You got a good master,” the guard said. “Mine just sticks me here all day, and I don’t even get to take a break.”
“I suppose life could be worse.”
“It always can be. Dong-chim’s master has him burying poop all day for the entire barracks. Real crappy life, that.”
“Well, I don’t want to make her mad, so have a good one.” Lars ended the conversation and ran ahead to where Alyona was waiting. “So, you gonna tell me where this night market is? Or is it still not dark enough?” he asked once he had caught up.
“It’s at a brothel up ahead,” Alyona answered, pointing to one of the few two-story buildings. The structure blended in quite well with the surrounding structures except for the fact that there was a strange pink line striping the bottom five inches of the building. “Well, to be technical, it’s underneath a brothel, but most of the traders are also clients of the cathouse above.”
“Is that . . . a code?” Lars asked, pointing at the pink stripe.
“Pink means that it’s one of Cherry Lane Gang’s special facilities. They mark all their buildings based on function and where to go. The pink strip on the bottom of a blank wall means the basement is where they are operating. If it’s in the middle of the wall, you have to go out back, and if it’s at the top of the wall, you go upstairs. Kind of a neat system.”
“And what do they do if someone else just likes the look of a pink stripe on their wall? I mean, there has to be someone who would . . .” Lars stopped when he saw Alyona’s expression. It looked like he had just asked how to add one and one, and she was trying to come up with a polite way to answer without calling him an idiot. “Come on, there has to be at least one place that might . . .” He tried to defend himself, but even if Alyona still hadn’t responded, he knew he wasn’t going to win the argument. “Fine. Never mind.”
“No, no, I’m sure you have a good point. There must be at least one person who would choose a random pink stripe with no other color, master,” Alyona said. Although her tone was flat and careful and didn’t have any actual sarcasm in it, it was obvious that she didn’t believe a word she said. “You’re absolutely right. There must be at least one person who says to themselves, ‘I love pink enough to put a stripe of it on my building but not enough to do any more than that.’”
The door opened while they were chatting, and a woman who looked like she had seen the rougher side of life came out. She was wearing a cloth mask that covered most of her face and head, leaving only her wrinkle-covered forehead and eyes to be visible, and she wore a massive robe that didn’t show an inch of skin or any of her figure.
“Are you two done judging our establishment? Because, despite how drab the outside looks, I promise the inside will feel great,” the woman asked while staring at Lars like Alyona wasn’t even there and punctuating her words with a less-than-sly wink that crawled under Lar’s skin like a tick.
“She’s probably not lying, master. She knows better than to lie to customers,” Alyona answered back with a smile that was equally unnerving and gestured for Lars to walk inside the building.
Inside, Lars discovered an awkwardly tight red-walled room with barely any lighting. There was a long bench on the wall opposite the entrance, and a quarter of it was filled with barely dressed women who all stopped what they were doing and looked over at Lars and Alyona as they stepped inside the room.
The woman who had led them in made a gesture with her hands, and all eight of the women there stood up and formed a line in front of them.
“What would be your interest today, young master?” one of the women with cat ears and a long tail that snaked down the right side of her leg asked.
“He’s going to be needing the extra special services,” the woman who had invited them in said. “How about you help him out, Hai?” She gestured to the corner, and as if out of thin air, a woman with a squirrel’s ears and tail emerged from the shadows. As she moved, a dark Qi that had previously masked her presence shed off of her like a black dress slipping to the floor.
“Of course. Would the young master please be so kind as to follow me?” the woman instructed, extending her hand to Lars as she moved closer.
Before she could shake Lars’s hand, however, Alyona placed herself in front of Lars, accepting the invitation for a handshake in Lars’s place. “Please understand that the young master does not need to associate with your kind any more than he already does.”
The woman didn’t seem to take any offense. She simply smiled back at Alyona and then turned and led them through a curtained doorway. As they made their way down a tight hallway barely wide enough for Lars to walk along without his shoulders bumping into the walls, Lars couldn’t help but want to peek into the rooms lining each side of the hall. The same type of curtain they had to pass through to enter the hall was used for each of the rooms, and Lars could hear very familiar sounds of clapping and moaning from each room that he walked past. The noises tugged at his ears.
“Young master, if you’d like a room and a woman to enjoy . . .” Hai suggested, speaking as if she had eyes in the back of her head and could see Lars’s curious gaze wandering toward the curtains.
Alyona’s voice dripped like poison into Lars’s ears as she silenced the woman in front of them. “I don’t think I need to repeat myself, but my master doesn’t require those types of services at all.”
You know, she keeps speaking for us, but I’m not so certain she is speaking for us. I mean, I think we have enough money to afford every girl in the front room. We could buy them all, get ourselves a few bottles of wine, and go have a fun time until the sun rises, Lars. I’ve always wondered what a threesome would be like . . . but a ninesome? Come on, Lars! NINE! And if each one of those cats has nine lives! We could go eighty-one rounds!
Ophelia! Focus! We came here to save Su Ryeon and Soseono. Lars had to quiet the voice in his mind but momentarily wondered what a “ninesome” would be like.
“Then what type of services is the young master requiring? I need to know which room to bring him into first,” Hai probed as they walked over to one of the curtain doors. The room they entered was simply furnished with only a table, two chairs, and a red silk-covered bed that was larger than any Lars had ever seen before. Hai walked over to it and pressed a tile on the floor, which caused the bed to lift up and reveal a set of stairs that led down.
“A flesh merchant—a monster’s flesh merchant to be specific,” Alyona said as she and Lars watched the woman begin walking ahead of them down the staircase.
“You sure this place is going to have what we want?” Lars asked.
“I’m certain enough to bet my life on it,” Alyona answered, gesturing for Lars to go ahead of her.
Lars nodded and walked down the stairs behind Hai, who was obviously taking extra care to make her rear sway with each and every step.
While the first floor had felt cramped and dim, the basement was completely the opposite. The stone-walled room they entered was spacious, brightly lit by torches, and decorated with purple, gold, and white banners strung across the stone wall, and the floor was made from clean-cut white marble. Lars was also shocked to see how busy the room was. Dozens of people were standing around talking to each other in the massive room, and each was holding drinks or food as they chatted away casually in groups of two to five people without a single one minding Lars or Alyona as they descended the staircase.
“If you could be more specific as to which type of flesh you’re interested in, it’d be very helpful,” Hai said.
“He needs dragon blood and flesh,” Alyona clarified. While no one had even glanced at them walking down the stairs, the second Alyona said “dragon,” every person within earshot stopped what they were doing and looked over at them.
Their guide, who had been all smiles and politeness, turned to face them as her expression soured. “You surely are not walking in here dressed in such shabby attire, barely possessing the strength needed to cut the meat off a chicken with a freshly sharpened knife, to negotiate for those precious cultivator ingredients with your meager wealth and status, are you? I have been trying to keep my patience with the two of you because no one dares to fool around with the Cherry Lane Gang, but this is too much. Everyone should be perfectly aware as to the penalty for wasting our time, even you. Do you really not know your place? Did your father—or whoever was strong enough to merit knowledge of our market—not instill within you basic fear and respect? Or did you two just come here to die?”
Even as Hai dressed the two of them down verbally, no one else said a thing. They all just stared at Lars and Alyona with absolute disdain.
“What?” Lars blinked. Is this girl serious?
It’s like I explained to you before: You’re so powerful that they can’t sense how powerful you are. All they can see is two people who aren’t emanating any Qi at all in robes that are absolutely filthy from your constant fighting. The fact that they didn’t treat you with any disregard the moment they first saw you honestly is a testament to their hospitality. I’ve helped escort more than one braggart who tried to enter a night market to their less-than-pretty afterlife before. Usually, these people get much more violent with beggars and fools—and much faster.
That’s comforting, I suppose. Lars frowned as he thought about how annoying this situation was. He had a feeling it would only end in bloodshed no matter how they went about it.
“Master, do you want me to kill her for her insolence?” Alyona asked. “I think if I sever her neck and squeeze her just right, we may be able to get her spine to pop out her rear like a cherry being de-seeded. Then we can just peel her like a grape after.”
You know, we could try the peaceful route. Given her occupation, maybe there is someone I can find that is related to her that’s already dead, and we could mess with her?
That would be fun . . . But Lars was also somewhat disappointed at the prospect that he might be able to end this entire thing without killing a few people.
“Do you really think you have half the power to do that?” Hai scoffed at Alyona’s comment as Lars continued talking with Ophelia in his head.
Remember that killing them might result in us not getting what we came here for—unless it’s on their corpses. But that’s not how night markets always work. Sometimes, deals are struck here, and the product isn’t delivered until the next day. We very well may have to sleep here and wait for them to go grab the stuff. People don’t, after all, keep stuff as valuable as dragon bits on them all the time.
If you knew so much about the night market, why didn’t you just tell me ahead of time? Why did Alyona have to? And why did she have to guide us here?
Sorry, Lars, you know I help you as much as I can, but the rules are rules. I can’t overextend myself . . .
Fine. Whatever. So, did you find anything?
Yes! I did! Now, here’s the relevant information.
“Master, I don’t need your permission, but I do need you to promise you won’t get angry after,” Alyona pleaded as she licked her lips like a starving man eyeing a plate full of food.
However, in a brief moment, Lars had already learned all the relevant information he needed from Ophelia to mess with Hai, who, obviously having lost her patience, had taken a step toward Alyona like she was going to teach her a lesson. Hai’s eyes were filled with frustration at the two as she raised her hand to strike Alyona, saying, “I think what your master needs to do is teach his slave some manners before I have to—”
Lars grabbed the woman’s hand an inch before it hit Alyona, knowing full well that Alyona would have used it as an excuse to murder Hai and everyone else in the room the moment it actually connected.
“You dare touch me, an official servant and guide of the Cherry Lang Gang’s night market?” Hai taunted. “You’re just seeking death.”
“Like your sister Bai did?” Lars asked. “A real shame, what you did to her: kicking her out of the house because you thought she was flirting with your first love . . . even though he was the one who kept trying to make advances on her.”
“What? What do you . . . What do you mean she was seeking death?” Hai asked falteringly. She tried to step back, but Lars yanked her closer so that his face was right next to hers before she could move more than an inch away.
“What do you think I mean? She’s dead. The moment she left the house, that man, Do-yun, whom you trusted so much, hunted her down with his friends and tried to put a collar on her. But rather than accept a life of slavery, she bit off her own tongue and died choking to death on her own blood,” Lars explained.
“No . . .” Hai gulped. “No, it can’t be . . .”
“What? Are you really that surprised? Did you think that he was a saint while he was with you? Did you really not know him? Did you really not know that he’s the reason the deed to your house went missing, that it wasn’t a burglar but he who robbed your place while you were at work, stealing your life savings?”
“No . . . he couldn’t . . . but . . .” Hai’s confidence had completely faded. Her lower lip quivered uncontrollably as she looked wide-eyed and horrified into Lars’s eyes.
“Don’t worry. He got what he deserved too. He gambled away the few silver coins he made by selling you to this group and then had nothing left to pay his debts with except for his own flesh and blood—which a creditor happily collected from him while he was alive. As you know, organs extracted from a living being are considered fresher and sell better on the market.”
“How do you know this? Tell me what you’re doing! How do you know of this?!” Hai begged as she tried and failed yet again to free herself from his grasp.
“Do you want to know what happened to your other sisters too? Binna and Dam-bi? Do you want to know what became of them after you were forced to work for the Cherry Lane Gang? Why any attempt you might have made to meet them has failed?” Lars continued.
“You’re lying to me!” Hai insisted. “You can’t know these things. You must have found out that I worked here and found out their names, and that’s—”
“You still haven’t learned, have you?” Lars cackled in the woman’s face. “I know everything. Everything. Even your mother’s final words to you, that reminder to take care of Ning because of her weak constitution . . .”
This time, when the woman yanked away from him, Lars let her go. She fell backward onto the floor, her face filled with terror as she scooted away from him.
“What an interesting parlor trick,” a patron said as he stepped forward.
Lars glanced over and saw a man with a large lizard-like tail poking out of his pristine golden robes and swaying back and forth as he studied the woman.
“What makes you call my master’s wisdom, a wisdom you could never comprehend, something as cheap as a parlor trick?” Alyona questioned, her hand lighting up as she formed a long Qi blade with the Knife Hand skill.
“He says he knows everything, but that can’t be the case, can it? If he did, then he wouldn’t need a guide,” the man posited. “He would already know which way to go. The only thing I can think of for an explanation is that showing off to us, specifically the great and mighty patrons of the Cherry Lane Gang, must be the point. Otherwise, what is the purpose of such theatrics? Why wait until the girl was in the midst of us to begin such a maneuver?”
“Your reasoning is indeed solid, Sol. This poorly dressed miscreant must be conspiring with Hai to pull the wool over our eyes,” said another man as he stepped forward, the similarities in his serpent’s tail showing he was likely related to Sol.
“I don’t know, U-ram. Have you ever known Hai to conspire with anyone? And is this not the first time we’ve seen these two?” a badger-blooded cultivator asked. Unlike the other two, he stayed right where he was inside the large crowd as he voiced his thoughts.
