One Fell Sweep (Innkeeper Chronicles #3)(47)
*
Fart.
Fart.
Faaaaaaart.
“Will you please stop doing that?”
Cookie giggled and waved the fart gun around.
Males and farts. Any species, any planet, didn’t matter.
We walked through the shadow area of Baha-char. The streets were narrow here, the colors duller, the canopies worn. Grime had settled on the doorways. The merchants stayed in their shops with their weapons within reach. Sean scanned the street with his gaze. I felt weary. Cookie skipped without a care in the world as if he was in the middle of a sunny meadow. Possibly because the hulking monstrosity that served as his bodyguard followed us, breathing down my neck, but most likely because his apron identified him as a scion of a Merchant clan. Harming a member of the Merchants meant signing your own death sentence.
We turned the corner. Sean stopped. High stone walls rose on both sides of us, enclosing an area about the size of a football field. Directly in front of us was an enormous metal wall, hammered together from giant rectangular hard steel plates. Smaller plates interrupted it, with rust and acid trails stretching from them over the metal. The huge gate in the center at ground level was big enough for two elephants to pass together side by side.
Cookie rubbed his hands together. “Stand back please and do not say anything.”
He raised the fart gun and let it rip.
A small plate slid aside about fifty feet off the ground.
Cookie took the smashing game and pounded it with the hammer. Lights and awful screeching noises broke the silence.
More plates slid open.
Cookie raised his hands and spoke in the chirping language of the muckrats. He waved his arms. He walked back and forth. He walked some more, lecturing. He lifted the fart gun and let out another blast of sound. He smacked the game with the hammer. He spoke again, then he fell silent.
A short chirping question came from the wall. “Chichi-chichi?”
Cookie launched into a second lecture. He stood on his toes, raising his arms as far as they could go and drew a big circle. He put his arms behind his back and walked around. Then he waited.
The fortress remained quiet.
“I say we storm it,” Sean whispered.
“Hush.”
Another chirp.
Cookie turned to me. “Can I have your shoe?”
I reached for my sneaker.
A chorus of outraged shrieks emanated from the fortress.
“The other shoe,” Cookie said softly.
I took off my left sneaker. Cookie raised it like it was a treasure and deposited it by the toys.
A metal clang echoed through the fortress, followed by rapid thuds. The gates swung open and a horde of muckrats spilled out. About four feet tall, they resembled weasels who somehow walked upright and developed monkey hands. Their sleek fur ranged from rusty brown to black, and they wore little leather kilts adorned with lights. They poured out of the gates, dragging the massive argon tank. The tank was deposited on the ground. A short muckrat dumped a pile of gold coins by the tank, another added a dead scree rat the size of a small cat, and a third put some complex electronic part on it.
The leading muckrat pointed to the pile. “Chi?”
Cookie made a great show of inspecting the goods. “Chi.”
The leading muckrat grabbed my sneaker and raised it up over his head.
“Chiiiiiiiiiiii!”
The muckrats erupted in screaming. The toys vanished and the horde ran back into the fort, as if sucked into it. The metal doors clanged shut.
Sean picked up a gold coin from the pile. “Are these Spanish doubloons?”
“So sorry about the shoe,” Cookie said mournfully as his bodyguard hefted the argon tank onto his shoulder like it weighed nothing, “but they wouldn’t budge on it.”
CHAPTER 8
“You’re not carrying me.” I pulled off my right sneaker and started down the street.
“You have no idea what’s on this street.” Sean wrinkled his nose. “It’s disgusting.”
“Then I will find a shoe merchant and buy a new pair.”
“You do realize that I could carry three of you and it wouldn’t slow me down?”
“You do realize that you can’t even handle one of me? Three of me would be entirely too much.”
Sean opened his mouth.
“I’m walking,” I told him. “It won’t kill me to go barefoot for a couple of blocks.”
Sean muttered something under his breath.
“I heard that,” I told him. I didn’t, but he didn’t need to know that.
Walking barefoot in this part of Baha-char was a bad idea. The big square tiles that lay in the open, baked by the sun, were too hot, which forced me to hug the edges of the street by the buildings, where trash and grime had drifted, pushed to the side by wind and the never-ending current of shoppers. Staring at the ground to make sure I didn’t step on anything that would slice my feet open got old very fast. But letting Sean carry me wasn’t an option. I had to preserve some dignity. Besides, being carried by him would be… nice. I had a feeling I would like it, and we weren’t out of the woods yet. I didn’t need to be contemplating how exactly being that close to him felt until we were back in the safety of the inn.
I looked up long enough to see where we were going. At the end of the block, a grimy storefront under a ratty green tarp had a bright neon sign that announced FOOTWEAR in seven languages. A colorful shell, resembling that of a garden snail but five feet tall and colored in hues of brilliant red, rich brown, and lemon yellow, sat in the doorway of the shop.
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