The inn was in the slums. At first I wasn't pleased about that fact, but after rethinking it I concluded that it would mean the rooms were cheaper, and because I didn't fear for my safety it was actually a positive rather than a negative. The building, like most of the others in the slums, was mostly wood. The bottom floor was stone, but the upper floor or floors had clearly been broken apart or had fallen over at some point, and the repair job had replaced them with wooden construction. I didn't hear what the name of the inn was because Koyl had begun babbling about something a few minutes before we reached it, making me ignore him. Unlike the other signs, there were no pictograms beside the text on the inn's label. Instead, there was some kind of ideogram that I didn't recognize.

“And here we are!” Koyl announced as we walked through the saloon-style front door. The interior of the inn was noticeably more shabby than the one I had seen in Frahmtehn, with obvious dirt and scuff marks across the wooden panels of the floor. Just like the inn in Frahmtehn, however, the bottom floor was mostly open with the exception of some weight-supporting pillars. It must just be a common floorplan here, I murmured. Tables and chairs were strewn about haphazardly, and there was a bar with what I assumed was a kitchen in a closed-off room behind it at the back. I glanced at the stairs in the far right corner and saw a man staggering up them.

“How much is it?” I asked, but Koyl had already broken away from me and started towards the bar and kitchen in the back. I followed along behind him, figuring that he probably knew where he was going. As I did so I tried to look for open tables and found only two out of around twenty. By the time I reached the bar, Koyl was already conversing with a woman behind it. She looked average in most ways for the region, with the only things that stuck out to me being clothes, her hair, and her chest. Her clothes fit very tightly and exposed skin along her arms and collarbone. Her hair was very long and straight, reaching the bottom of her back. Finally, the size of her chest was highly disproportionate to the rest of her body. Is this another person who has a fat storage gene mutation? I wondered.

“I've missed you!” the woman squealed in what was clearly not her normal tone of voice. “You stopped showing up a few weeks ago and I got worried. What happened to your shirt?” Koyl leaned over the counter and propped up his head with his right hand.

“Oh it's been terrible Yehpweyl,” he said in a very dramatic tone, “I was falsely accused of theft by a client and banned from working for the Steelheart Company, then I was robbed at knife-point and made destitute.” Despite how comically obvious the embellishments to his story were, the woman behind the counter appeared to be believing them. “My shirt was torn during the attack, which I barely survived, and only by a stroke of the highest luck did I manage to find my new friend here, who saved me from starvation.” It was only then that the woman, Yehpweyl, turned her attention to me.

“Well he certainly has a strange look to him,” she commented, “but if he helped you he can't be all bad.”

“How much for a room?” I asked. Koyl looked back and shot me a dirty look for some reason, and Yehpweyl giggled.

“Very direct,” she mewed, “for you, big boy, we can go with eighteen ngeyt for one night, but if you buy more in a row it'll cost less.” Something about the way the woman looked at me, and the way she referred to me, piqued my aggressive impulses. Still, I kept my face neutral and my tone respectful.

“We'll take one room, splitting it into two equal halves,” I said, Koyl once again looked back at me, though this time he was shocked and distraught as if he couldn't believe what I had said.

“Oh I didn't know he was that kind of friend,” Yehpweyl giggled. “Do you still want me to join you like usual, Koyl?” Koyl cringed silently, licking his lips and sucking in a sharp breath of air.

“We will take two rooms,” he enunciated clearly, “Yuwniht here was just making a joke.” Did he misunderstand me? I wondered.

“If we take one room, we both pay le-” I tried to explain.

“I'm not sharing a bed with you,” Koyl hissed quietly.

“I can sleep on the floor if there is only one bed,” I said, “I just don't see why you would want to pay extra to have your own room.” Yehpweyl giggled again, and I stuffed another aggressive impulse down until it vanished.

“You know, if you pay for ten days I would be willing to take nine ngeyt per day,” she offered, “just so long as you also buy breakfast here every day and clean your own room.” She smiled at me, fakely but enticingly, and I did some quick calculations. It's not that big of an investment, I thought, if the pay I received today is somewhat average it would allow me to save large amounts of funds quickly. I just need to ensure that this place is worth paying for.

“Renewable?” I asked, then seeing the blank look on Yehpweyl's face I elaborated. “If at the end of the ten days I wish to stay longer, may I purchase another ten for the same price? Also, I will be paying for tonight only right now, but will pay for the other ten nights if I find the room to my liking. Is that also acceptable?”

“Of course!” she chirped. “It's so rare that I get anyone who wants to stay longer than just a day or two at a time that I never thought about that before. However, if you do choose to leave I'll have to charge you the remaining nine, if that's okay with you?” I reached into my pouch and pulled out two twelve-ngeyt coins, placing them on the bar in front of her. Yehpweyl grabbed them in a swift, practiced motion, then dug around inside her pants' pocket and removed two six-ngeyt coins and three single ngeyt coins, putting them in front of me. Pants, I thought, it's strange, almost all the women I've seen so far wear dresses. I took the coins and put them back in my pouch.

“Key?” I asked.

“Just take a seat at the tables,” Yehpweyl suggested, “I'll go up and see which rooms are free, then give you one in a few minutes. Koyl, would you like the ten-day deal?”

“Yeah,” Koyl grunted, swapping a ngoywngeyt coin for change. “Could you have Zeyn get us some bread too? We've been working all day.”

“I'll put that one on the house, just because I think you're both cute,” Yehpweyl laughed. Koyl looked back and saw my expression, somehow correctly read it as annoyance, and quickly ushered me to one of the empty tables.

Both Koyl and I stayed in some shabby rooms on the second floor of the inn, across the hall from each other. The noise level in the inn was even worse than the one in Frahmtehn, with grunts and moans echoing through the halls at all hours of the night. The bed was acceptable, though I found insects under the sheets and had to fry them with my heat ability before I could sleep. By some miracle I managed to sleep soundly by midnight, and I woke up at sunrise feeling rested. Breakfast was served by the male cook, and consisted of bread, meat, and a melted fat sauce for both. Again it was “on the house”, leading me to suspect that the typical day rate for a room was vastly more than Yehpweyl needed to be profitable.

Over the next five days, Koyl and I ended up taking several different labor jobs. Because of my exceptional performance at processing the firewood and the barn owner's apparent glowing review of my strength and stamina, Dawpvaol decided that I would count as three men for the purposes of basic labor which allowed us to take on many jobs which would have been closed off otherwise. My second day was spent crushing ore, my third day was spent shoveling dirt and removing tree roots, my fourth day was spent cleaning out a barracks, and my fifth day was a repeat of the first at the same location, processing firewood.

“You know Yuwniht, one of the other offices has been looking for additional guards,” Dawpvaol informed me while Koyl and I picked up our pay from the firewood job. The harsh physical labor had worn down Koyl considerably, but my own stamina had only improved as I made subtle optimizations to my working technique to save energy. I suppose it's easier to do with a heads-up display showing you just how much stamina you're using, I thought.

“How much does it pay?” I asked. Dawpvaol reached behind the counter and pulled up a sheet of paper. While I still couldn't read more than the barest of words, like “inn” or “ngeyt”, I saw the numbers and figured out what they meant pretty quickly. “That's less than what I'm making right now,” I said flatly, “I would be better off continuing with labor.”

“You might not be able to labor forever though,” Dawpvaol countered. “We've had a lot of work lately, but sometimes it's scattered and competition is fierce. Guarding is consistent.”

“He isn't cleared for it anyway,” Koyl muttered, “wouldn't he need to take a test to prove he can fight someone off?” It was a good point, Dawpvaol had told me that skills were tested for and recorded. Not that I would fail at such a task, I thought as I suppressed a grin. Guard work made up the majority of my deep-cover jobs in the past. It's strange that my fighting ability would even be in question, with my current body size and musculature, I thought.

“The office in question says they will test the candidates themselves,” Dawpvaol countered. “Frankly Koylzmeyl, I think you're just afraid that Yuwniht will stop letting you leech off of him.” I had been giving Koyl half of the money for the jobs under the condition that we would both pitch in equally for a room on a ship to leave the island, but Dawpvaol didn't know that.

“Well, I wouldn't have to worry about that if someone would reinstate me,” Koyl countered. “I told you that I didn't steal that sword, and you have no proof. That old coot just didn't like me because I gave him some attitude, so he decided to screw me over. Npoyt ngaazmayjh.” Dawpvaol sighed deeply.

“As I told you before,” she stated with unhindered exasperation, “I have submitted your counter-claim and it is being looked at by the main office. Given your past conduct and reputation, I am not comfortable with giving you temporary permission because when you screw up again it will affect my standing if I do.” Koyl grumbled something, then stomped out of the office.

“I'll think about it,” I told Dawpvaol, then I followed him.

“You're not really going to do it, are you?” Koyl asked me as we sat in the noisy dining area of the inn. His roughly-repaired shirt dipped into the fat sauce on his plate as he gestured to me, causing him to swear a few times as he wiped it off. Gravy, I corrected myself, that sauce is called gravy.

“I'm thinking about it,” I replied. “The pay is low, but I could try to negotiate it to be higher. If I'm reading the situation right, the office asking for guards sounds desperate. They might be willing to pay more because of it.”

“Not to mention you're a beast of a fighter,” Koyl mumbled, poking at the food on his plate with one of the utensils. “Still,” he added, “didn't we agree that we would work like this and split the money, then charter a ship when we had enough by pooling funds?”

“Those were the conditions of the equal split, not general conditions,” I stated.

“Guard positions are long term you know,” Koyl lectured, “if you take one you can't just up and leave them, you're on the hook until the contract runs out.”

“Is it illegal to leave them early?” I asked.

“No, bu-” Koyl started.

“Then the rules only apply if I care about my standing with the Steelheart Company,” I continued, “once I reach the mainland I have no reason to care what they think of me. The only reason I even need money to travel in the first place is because I cannot just swim to the mainland. Being unable to work for them means nothing to me after I leave.” Koyl stared at me, then smiled and took a bite of his food.

“I'll tell you what, that's something I like about you,” he laughed. “You only do things that benefit you, honor and ethics be damned. I really do have a good eye for people.” Debatable, I jabbed in my head, since you still think of me as a person.

“Is that why you decided to follow me around and kept doing it even when I tried to let you leave?” I asked. I didn't really care about the answer, but I had been practicing small talk since it was a useful skill with the humans of Vehrehr.

“Oh no,” Koyl said, “I did that for two reasons. Firstly you scare the shit out of me sometimes with how strong you are, and secondly, you're a total idiot with no amount of healthy greed. The perfect combination for money-making by proxy. I figured you would kill a bunch of people and I could loot them for cash then turn you in for a reward. That, or I could figure out a way to convince you to do work for me and make me money.”

“The latter is happening to some extent, so I suppose you're right,” I concluded.

“Yeah, and I kept sticking around because you're about the only man I've ever met who wouldn't break my skull open for being so honest with them,” Koyl laughed. If I had any good reasons to do it though, you would already be dead, I thought as I took a bite of the meat in my plate, however, you're also more useful to me alive.