Blood For Wages

8: One Chance for Faith

The scratching woke Fia. The soft, swooping scrape of charcoal on paper. Thanks to the hangover she was wearing, it sounded like someone carving words into the floor with a chisel.

Blackness faded to red. Sleep gave way to the hard sunlight shining onto her face so that she could see the blood in her closed eyelids. Inwardly, she cursed consciousness. She tried to swallow. Couldn't.

Fia moved her head a little, trying to remember where she'd fallen. Her skull felt a couple of sizes too small, her head pounding like a hot drum. She scraped her tongue with her top teeth, almost gagged at the shit that came off of it. She realised she didn't have saliva enough to spit, and swallowed the gunk.

With an effort she hauled herself into a sitting position. Tried to open her eyes. Managed it on the third attempt.

The infernal scratching stopped.

"Well shit, it lives," Gunn said sarcastically. "For a while there I was hopeful you might've succumbed to the bottle-rot all in an evening."

"Sorry to disappoint you."

"Life's full of 'em."

"Don't I know it. Look at the gods-damn company I'm in."

"Not so civil when you're sufferin' from the barrel flu, miss," Gunn chuckled.

Fia rubbed her eyes and looked over at Gunn. The man was still chained to the leg of her solid ironbark bed. His calculating, cold grey eyes were appraising her where he sat with his back to the wall. Like a butcher eyeing up a fresh kill, trying to figure out the best way to joint it. An empty plate, a jug and a cup sat nearby. In his hand was a nub of charcoal and a scrap of paper.

Might still have been the red-eye running in her blood, but Fia found herself eyeing the man with a deal more interest than was wise.

"I do feel a little rough, Gunn," she said, "but not as rough as you're liable to be feeling soon, and not as rough as I'd feel if I had one of those respectable, paid jobs you hear so much about."

Gunn curled his lip. "Salaried work? Fuck that."

Fia went to reply but her voice rasped in her throat.

"Throat's coarse as a cow's tongue," she coughed.

"That'd probably be due to the singin'," Gunn said.

"Get the fuck out of here," Fia blurted.

Definitely still drunk, she thought.

Gunn held up his manacled hands. "Would if I could."

Fia cracked the bones in her neck. She grunted and worked her jaw, touching a point just under her ear and finding it tender.

"That'd be where one of your party cracked you, after you turned down his advances, apparently," Gunn supplied. "Ain't no accountin' for taste, I suppose. Fuckin' hell of a way to start a journey."

Fia snorted. "I've had worse," she said truthfully. "But I thank you for your concern. Unselfish and carin' for such a bad son of a bitch, ain't you?"

Fia started getting her effects together; pistols and knives, broadsword and powder horn. She pulled on the one boot she'd managed to get off before passing out.

"Why d'you talk to me like that?" Gunn asked.

"Like what?"

"Like you don't think I'm the biggest piece of shit walkin' the Five Isles."

"Thinking a thing and saying a thing ain't mutually exclusive, Gunn."

Gunn snorted softly to himself and shook his head. "See, there you go again with your manners, Miss McCrae, and your fancy words," he said. "Sometimes, I wonder why you're not doing something up at Castle Dreymark already, with a mind and tongue like yours."