NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 37: Fading Foxes
Fox groaned as her left shoulder popped weirdly again. It’d been feeling weird since last night when she’d failed to push her way through the smaller window into some dumb kitchen. Was she getting bigger or were the windows getting smaller?
“Has to be the windows,” she muttered to herself in denial as she crawled down the roof of the building, making sure that her cloak was keeping her hidden from those below as she finally reached the windows on the second floor. She would’ve done the first-floor ones again, but Fade had already gotten angry at her for messing those up the first time. “Second-floor ones are bigger anyway. No tight squeezes today, thank you!”
Her angry muttering continued as the window was closed up, a lock on the other side keeping it that way. If she’d been less discrete, she would’ve broken the glass panes at that, forcing her way inside, but Fade’s words once again rang clear in her head.
Be subtle. Don’t get noticed.
When did she ever mess up? Ignoring last night, and a few other times, she barely ever made mistakes!
“See?” she told the imaginary Fade in her head, as her quick lockpicking worked. A click could be heard, and she was able to pull open the window without the slightest screeching. “Take that, Fade, you old hag! You think you know me, but you— Ah, fuck!”
With her strengths proven without a doubt, she had leaped inside triumphantly before finding her thigh cut up by an ultra-thin string she hadn’t spotted.
A trap.
Somebody had made a trap meant for those climbing through one of several windows on the second floor.
Fox was as baffled as she was in pain, clutching her thigh as blood continued to stain her new pants. She’d just gotten them cleaned! Fade was going to kill her for this.
“Stupid wire, stupid pants, stupid Fang,” Fox continued to mutter as she pulled off the amulet around her neck. Clicking the side, a small needlepoint came out the underside, which she quickly jabbed into her thigh next to where she’d been cut.
Instant relief, the wound closing back up without a trace. The hint of green veins that briefly appeared meant Fade would tear her a new one for using the amulet twice in a single month, but it was needed to continue this job of theirs. Walking around dripping blood anywhere would hardly help them.
“Where are you two idiots hiding then?” Fox asked, pulling out the paper Fade had drawn for her. The old hag had been spending the past days walking around the area again and again, following their convoluted tracks. Some of their steps had put them back into the slums, and some minor ones going into the other half of the city, yet most of them led right back to here.
This… herbalist shop that was small enough that nobody worth anything would give it a second glance. Fox didn’t understand why those two half-dead people would be here, but she didn’t question her orders. If she was ordered to search around then she would do so. She liked eating, after all.
“Where are you hiding?” she sang as if playing hide-and-seek with kids. Nobody answered, the house empty, but she kept on walking around. The other rooms on the second floor were checked through, nothing but scraps of food and uncleaned beds were found, and most of the first floor didn’t prove good either. “Oh my. Dried mango.”
The kitchen wasn’t too bad, though, when she popped a few into her mouth and kept up the search. At least the owners of the place had known how to be kind to thieves, revealing where they were hiding all the good snacks.
Big door.
She noted as much after looking through the shop for anything worth taking with her and walking down the small hallway. Opposite the way up to the second floor was another door, though this one looked different than the others. The hinge straps were bigger, it looked thicker, and Fox had to push hard to open it up.
“How do the old fucks living here get this open every day?” she muttered angrily, pushing her way inside while wrinkling her nose at the smell. “Fade’s dream right here.”
Following standard procedures, she searched through the different shelves to see if anything was worthy of falling into her pockets. Ignoring the shiny tools, the bottled leaves, and the burners that they already had plenty of, there wasn’t much that really struck her as too important. A door was at the end of the room, though so she—
A quack interrupted her thoughts, Fox jumping back with her dagger at the ready instantly. She wavered in her concentration, however, as she saw the source of the sound.
A duck?
A duck.
There was a duck on the far end of the room, standing on a dirt-filled table. It looked at her for another second before turning its head around and nibbling on its fur for some stupid duck reason.
“Why do they have a duck?” Fox asked, not getting any proper answers from the bird in question. Very rude, to be honest. “At least you’re cute. Do you mind if I touch you?”
The golden fuzz that covered its body was undeniably enticing, making her want to scratch it just a little. As her hand reached for the animal, though, it quickly noticed and tried to bite at her fingers.
“Rude,” she commented, already swinging her blade to cut off the head before Fade’s words rang through her head again. No killing or making obvious signs of being here. “It’s your lucky day, duck. Next time I’ll cut you up and make your fuzz into a little pillow.”
It didn’t react, just quacking at her while she continued over to the other door. Opening it up, there was nothing but some boring purple flowers that smelled weird, so she went over to search the rest of the house.
Not that there was much more to really check through. A storage room with nothing of note, a basement that only had empty crates, and the kitchen’s drawers which had a small bag of dried apricots that she didn’t think important enough to leave alone.
A waste of time, all in all.
“Fade’s not gonna be happy about this,” Fox murmured, going back up the stairs and leaving the way she’d arrived. The windows were closed, shaken up so the lock was put back into place, and then she was on her way. “I wonder what’s for dinner.”