Gods & Thieves ✔

44. Deceived and Kissed

༄༄༄

"They say shamans throw orgy parties every Friday," Kofi says, cheerful again, as my brothers and I descend from the attic. It's already the middle of the night, there's no sound around; the water in the bathroom is no longer audible, and not a glimmer of light oozes out from behind the closed door of my room. So Loretto, without waiting for me, is asleep. Maybe it's for the best. "I heard there are hot springs in one of the temples in Tik'al, and there they are, among the steam and wine after midnight..."

"Nonsense," Cale snarls, locking the attic door with a hideously creaking lock. "Those are not orgies, but sacrifices. And they drink the blood of the plainbloods, not wine. One guard saw everything personally, and he was stabbed with a ritual knife after that."

"Then how did he tell other people the truth for you to know if he was stabbed?"

"He managed to tell someone before shamans caught him, obviously."

"And that someone he told everything was caught, caught again, and then what? Released?" Still fiddling with his unfortunate hangnail, Kofi turns to me. "Eli, how do you spend your Fridays in Tik'al?"

Without giving me a chance to answer, Cale clicks his tongue. "Eli is not such an idiot as to stick his head out of the laundry room where he lives after midnight, Kofi! Isn't that right?"

Feeling the annoying, poisonous-burning cold weight of the bag of silver pearls that now lies in my pocket, I end up only shrugging my shoulders vaguely. I won't waste my energy trying to explain anything to them. It's useless anyway.

"Have you by any chance changed your mind about swapping bedrooms for one night?" Kofi asks me, noticing that I'm lingering, not in a hurry to leave. "Tom must be bored there..."

"Or sleeping," Cale corrects, standing behind us. "I hope so. It is better not to communicate with such people at all. I don't even trust our contacts who work in Tik'al of their free will, and this Tom is weird. Smiles to everyone. Eli, don't bring him here anymore. And it's better to burn the bed linen after him tomorrow. And--"

"Oh, fuck you!" Unable to bear it, I turn around so abruptly that Cale recoils from me in surprise. "For the first time in my life, I have a friend, a real friend! And now one of you wants to fuck faer, and the other one wants to set everything on fire after faer. What's wrong with you?"

After exchanging glances, my brothers look at me with sincere surprise.

"I'm just worried about you," Cale says, rather gently this time, reassuringly. "You can't call a friend a person you've known for a couple of months. It takes years."

"And I'm worried that you're not using all the privileges of this successful friendship," Kofi grins, unabashed.

"You make friends in a different way," I say.

"That is?"

"For sex?"

"And? Good lovers are always friends, Eli. But friends are not always good lovers. So...I guess I'm just better at choosing friends than all of you. And don't forget, there are no shamans among my passions, I can see those bastards from a mile away. So what about Tom?"

"I said no. Piss off."

Seeing my frowning expression, realizing that it's useless to argue, and sighing in disappointment, Kofi picks at his hangnail one last time. He pulls with such annoyance that he finally tears it off and hisses softly when a drop of blood appears on his finger. After muttering something unintelligible, which sounds like both a good night and a curse, Kofi goes to his room.