Cordyceps Thirty
Cordyceps Thirty
“Hey, Jimothy,” I said as I walked up to the stall.
The man behind it was a tall fellow, skinny, with a face covered in blisters and acne. He blinked at me, then rubbed the side of a hand under his nose. “What do ya want?” he asked. “We’ve got chicken, pork, and I have a few veggie skewers too.”
“I’ll have your pepper-ball skewer, please,” I said.
Jimothy jumped, and I figured that whomever had sent this guy didn’t send their best. “Uh, you sure?” he asked. His eyes darted around the marketplace.
Fortunately, I’d come here alone. The other boys were at the cotton candy stall. “Yeah, I’m sure,” I said. “Come on, what do you have for me?” I fished out a shilling and placed it on the edge of his stall.
Jimothy shook his head, then started setting up a skewer. He used his bare hands, and I had real doubts about the cleanliness of his cooking utensils. “Here,” he said as he gave me a skewer with some long strip of fatty pork on it and a few small potato cubes. It did smell great. “And, uh, here.”
Jimothy placed a small folded letter right on the edge of the stall. I swiped it away in a hurry and pointedly didn’t look around.
“Thanks,” I said. “Keep the change. And I’d tell you to forget you ever saw me, but I don’t think that’ll be hard.”
“Huh?” he asked.
“Exactly.” I stuffed the letter away and took off back to the others. They each had a puff of cotton candy on the end of a thin wooden stick, and Montgomery had two, one which he handed to me. “Oh, thanks,” I said.
“No problem,” he said. “What’d you get?”
“Meat,” I replied before offering him the skewer.
He shrugged, then took a bite while I held onto it. “Oh, that’s... not very good meat,” he said.
“Thanks for letting me know,” I said. Then I started eating it anyway. I wasn’t going to waste meat, no matter what.
Besides, it might help me level my poison resistance.
It took some time before I could escape the others long enough to read the letter. I could have waited for a while, until I got back to the Academy, maybe, but ditching the letter out here would leave far fewer traces that I was the one it was destined for.
The others all went into this local bakery and candy store, while some visited a shop that sold books and games and magazines. I slipped into the washroom of the latter, sat on the toilet, then unfolded the letter.
Dear Mister Miloson,
I hope this message finds you well. Firstly, I wanted to wish you a happy birthday. Twenty-six is a big age, and I’m impressed by the strides you’ve made despite being so young.
In addition to birthday wishes, I wanted to touch-base regarding some business-related matters. The last batch of fertilisers we received don’t seem as potent, and I had some serious reservations about the quality of the goblin workers one of my partners brought to the workplace. We should gather and talk in person about it. Your assistance would be greatly appreciated in eliminating these issues.
Thank you,
C. Edison
I tore up the letter, then flushed it.
So, the son of my target Milo was having a birthday? The fact that we called the businessman Milo’s son Milo kind of made things confusing there. Did Milo’s father also go by his family name first?
Whatever, I was getting side-tracked. The birthday party would have two more targets. Someone in charge of producing fertilisers and someone in the goblin-slave business.
And the Union wanted me to kill all three of them.
I puffed out my cheeks and let out a long breath. Tough one. But... probably manageable. Maybe. It would depend a lot on the situation. The only date I had was the 26th, but no month was given.
Shrugging, I left the washroom after washing my hands in the sink, then met up with the others. “Hey, Montgomery,” I asked.
“Yeah?” he replied. “I mean... yes?”
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“When’s your birthday?” I asked.
He blinked, then grinned. “Why do you want to know?”
“What? Don’t expect a big gift, I just want to know. In case,” I said as nonchalantly as I could.
“Mine’s on the ninth, in two months,” Andrew, who I shared Botany with, said.
And then I got everyone else’s birthdays, all in a rush. My attention was mostly on Milo though. “The Twenty-sixth, in less than a month,” he said. “My dad loves birthdays, so we always have a big party. It’s awful, most of the time.”
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“Well, it’s all of my parents’ friends, and some of their kids, but they’re all either way older or way younger than me,” he complained. “The gifts are nice though.”
“Well, this year you can invite people your own age,” I suggested, and that improved his mood. “I’ll be sure to get you a gift you won’t soon forget.”
I suppressed a small pang of guilt after saying that.
It didn’t take much to bury it. Our little outing had been fun, and we were returning to the Academy with arms full of candies and all sorts of junk food. A few of the boys were heading back home in the evening, so they wanted to be back at the school sooner rather than later.
Of course, we ran into some complications, mostly in the form of a group of fourth years barring our passage into the Academy. They were Dragons, like us, and they were demanding that we pay a ‘toll’ to be let in.
The toll was paid in gumballs and licorice and in mocking laughter, but I had the impression that we got by without paying nearly as much as the next group of Trolls to try the gate.
This school certainly had... some unique characteristics to it.
“Are you staying here tonight?” Montgomery asked me.
“Yeah. You’re heading home, right?”
“I am,” he said. “What will you do while you’re here? And what about...” He leaned in close. “What about Sir Eyenibbler the Terrible?”
“I think he’ll be fine,” I said with a grin. “As for me, I think I’ll spend some time in the library.”
“Studying ahead? Because if you’re going to do that, you should go to the music room first.”
“Ouch,” I said. “But no, I want to look a few things up. Maybe find something nice to read?”
He shrugged. “Reading is a woman’s hobby,” he said.
“What? Since when?”
“That’s what my dad says,” he replied. “Not that you shouldn’t know how to read, of course.”
Shaking my head, I said my goodbyes to the boys, stole a gumdrop from the accumulated candy pile that they hoarded onto a desk in our dorms, then I slipped out. I was finally free.
I could have gone into the basement and checked on my mushrooms down there, but I had something else to investigate first. Nothing related to the school but something I might discover in the school’s library.
The library was a large section of the administration building, though it was far from the biggest library I’d ever seen. It was a rather compact little space, with four rows of stacks that ran fairly deep and tall, with wheeled ladders to allow people to grab books that were higher up off the ground.
A librarian sat at a desk by the entrance, reading something with a cup of something warm next to them. “No food allowed in here,” he said without looking up from his book.
“Okay,” I replied. “Can anyone sign out a book?”
“You’ll need to sign for that... ah, first year?” he asked.
I nodded.
“In that case, no. Second-years and up only. You have previous firsties to thank for that.”
“Right,” I said. That was unfortunate. There didn’t seem to be much reading space either. A few comfy looking seats, and three desks, but all out in the open by the front. “I’m looking for a book on religion. Uh, on the different gods and goddesses.”
The librarian looked up, then glanced at the stacks. “See the plaques with letters?”
“Yes?” I asked as I spotted the signs he was talking about.
He leaned forwards and tapped a small brass plate on the front of his counter. It had subjects listed on it, and their code to find them. “Ah, right, thanks,” I said.
There were three sections for what I was looking for. Gods and Goddesses was its own thing, Religions was another, and Divine Workings a third.
I decided to start simple, Gods and Goddesses it was.
Time to find out what I could about my patron. Feronie had been a mystery to me for long enough. If I was going to kill in her name, then I’d best know what there was to know about her.
Or at least, what the world thought to write about her.
***