Guild Of Zeroes

Chapter 22

I made my way back down to the ground floor of the Tower. I only needed to stop twice to rest my damned useless leg. It was improvement, but not much. Maybe someday, I'd be up and running circles around Mouse and Quin again but it didn't feel like it would be any time soon. On top of everything else I was stuck being half useless. At least I could shoot. If we have to fight again, they'd have to stick me in a wagon with a good sized pile of arrows. Not a bad idea, really. I'd file that one away for later.

When I was finished feeling sorry for myself, I completed the descent and found Mouse crouched in front of the secret. He had scrounged up a scrap of parchment from somewhere along with a piece of charcoal, which I supposed was readily available. He pressed the parchment up against the door and took a rubbing of one of the runes.

I held the key from Hawk's room out to him. "I don't want to disparage your methods or anything, but maybe a key would work better than a drawing for opening the door?"

Mouse stood and took the key from me. "You think so? Is that how doors work?" There was a note of acid creeping into the edge of his voice. "I thought we were done telling each other what to do or how to feel."

I limped to the charred remains of a large potted plant and sat on the edge of the pot, rubbing at the knot of fire twisting in my left leg. "I'm sorry, Mouse. I ... I just don't have anything left. It feels like life has been making nothing but shit sandwiches for us, and right when you can't take anymore, it asks you to take another bite. I'm sorry I can't just pick myself up off the floor like you can. I'm sorry I'm not as strong as you are."

"Parsnip," said Mouse, setting the parchment down. "You're my best friend, and you know I love you. You have to trust that I am coming from the best possible place when I say this. I am sick to death of that self deprecating, woe is me attitude that you have sometimes. You can pick yourself up out of this garbage heap of pity you're building yourself at any time. I don't really have the energy to do that for you right now. I have my own history to dig through."

The words hit me like a slap. But maybe a well deserved slap.

"I'm not any stronger than you are because I've lived this nightmare before," Mouse continued. "If anything I am more broken. You lost a parent, and your entire home. I've lost all of that twice now. I know I wasn't the biggest fan of Stargazer, but that loss still weighs on me. It brings back a lot of ghosts that I had hoped to leave behind when I joined the Guild."

I let out a long sigh. "You're right, Mouse. We're all struggling, and I'm here to listen if you ever want to talk."

"I don't know," he said. He shook his head and his shoulders slumped forward, like a great weight had suddenly been dropped on him. "I don't know if I'm ready to talk about what happened back then. I think the best thing now is to keep moving. We'll get back out into the world and head for the Phoenix Roost. For right now, I want to see you pick yourself up a little and stop putting yourself down so often. You deserve better than that, and if there's a weak link in our tiny three person chain, it's me."

"I think you need to take your own advice. We'll make a deal. From now on, neither one us blames themselves or puts themselves down when things get tough, okay?"

Mouse shook his head and the ghost of a smile flitted across his lips. "Well, that might be a little too sappy for me to take to heart right now, but I'll try."

I stood and patted him on the shoulder. "That's all either of us can do. I'm going to head down to the armoury and find Quin. They're probably busy loading up everything they can find into a cart."

"And that's a bad thing?" Mouse asked.

"If it was all up to them, we'd have enough steel to equip an army and not a crumb of food."