“Ah, you npoyt, you ruined my shirt,” the man growled as he carried out another desk from the back room of the office. It had only been a few minutes since the fight between us stopped, but the remnants of the fight were already mostly cleaned up. Well, out of sight at least, I said to myself, thinking of how the man threw the broken wood through a door into what looked like a storage closet before shutting it and dusting his hands off. He set the new desk down where the old one was, then retrieved a hammer and some nails from the room he got the desk from. “Burgundy dye is expensive you know,” he lectured as he nailed the desk to the floor. I suppose it's more of a podium, I thought, but it's wide and flat. Maybe a counter? I think “podium” was the word I was thinking of before.

“Tell me about it,” Koyl laughed. The man looked up at him and his eyes saw the hasty repair Koyl had made to his own shirt.

“He did it to you too?” the man laughed. “Is it just how he says hello or what?” Koyl laughed at the joke, though from his tone I could tell he was only doing so to be respectful. Rather, he probably thinks this guy can help him improve his standing, I reasoned. The man finished up with the nails and threw the hammer into the room behind him, then leaned against the desk and faced the both of us. “So, where're you two from exactly?” he asked. “What office I mean.”

“Central eastern office,” Koyl replied.

“Ah, the west slums office then,” the man nodded. “It's a little bit less exciting over there than it is here you know. Wait a minute, I think I know you.” The man squinted at Koyl, then grunted. “You're the idiot Dawpvaol banned for nicking a sword from-” he began.

“I assure you, that was simply a misunderstanding,” Koyl said, interrupting him as politely as he could. The man scoffed and let out a low groan.

“So I'm guessing you actually came over here because you think I'm stupid enough to give you a temporary work authorization, right?” he jabbed. “Dawpvaol is like a brick wall, so you think you'll just try out Thaajh instead because he's a soft old man, is that it?” Old man? I wondered. The man was certainly heavily scarred, but nothing about his face indicated any kind of age. Come to think of it, everyone I've seen looks either young or extremely old, I recalled.

“Old man?” Koyl asked, echoing my thoughts. “You don't look very old to me.” Thaajh barked out a number of laughs, then slapped the surface of the desk hard enough that I thought it might break again.

“I'll have you know I'm sixty-eight this year,” he grinned. “The last guard I had working for me would constantly joke about how she was going to come in one day and find me looking like a dried-up berry.” Is that old? I wondered. Warbreed humans had an average lifespan of thirty years, but when taken out of combat roles they could easily reach one hundred years of age before their bodies broke down to the point of failing to sustain life. But warbreed mature in five years, I thought, these humans take... twenty? I seem to remember that being the number. So sixty-eight is more like fifty-three, which isn't that old.

“You don't seem a day over thirty,” Koyl complimented, once again making me wonder if there was some indicator of age that I was missing when looking at people.

“Doesn't mean shit coming from someone who's even younger than that,” Thaajh grumbled.

“I didn't see a guard when I came in,” I interjected, “where did she go?” Thaajh's expression darkened, and I knew what he was going to say before he said it.

“Dead,” he stated matter-of-factly, “found her chopped into bits and strewn all over this room one morning. Jhehwseytay Hatchet Crew ngaazmayjhb must have figured out where she lived and kidnapped her.” While I still had no real direct translations for the curses the man was using, I understood their intention well enough. This job has the potential to be a threat to me outside my working hours, I noted, I should keep that in mind when determining appropriate pay.

“You did a good job with cleanup,” I replied. It was true, there was no hint of bloodstains anywhere on the floor. Koyl flashed me a look that I knew meant that I had misspoken, and Thaajh glared at me. “What I mean-” I began.

“You'll have to forgive him,” Koyl interrupted. “Yuwniht is from a very different culture, as you can probably tell from the way he speaks and his appearance.”

“Yeah, he's a big one too, like me,” Thaajh replied. I took note of Thaajh's size again, measuring it more accurately now that both of us were standing up straight and not moving. I think he's still a centimeter shorter than me, I estimated, but that in itself makes him the largest human I've met on this island, though in mass I'm sure that Frahmtehn innkeeper outweighed him. “Where'd you learn how to use sehpztaazmoydh so well?” Thaajh asked.

“Does it matter?” I asked back, bringing out my standard set of evasive answers.

“I've been asking him that for a while now,” Koyl said, “he never wants to talk about it.”

“How old are you?” Thaajh asked, seemingly out of the blue.

“Old enough,” I replied.

“Actually, how old are you?” Koyl asked with genuine curiosity. In subjective experience, far older than both of you, I wanted to answer. “Usually you can tell by the way someone acts and speaks,” Koyl continued, “but in your case, I just have no idea.”

“Thirty... one,” I replied with a bit of hesitation. I quickly gauged the reactions for shock, ready to try to come up with an explanation if my answer was somehow strange. It was, of course, a lie.

“Huh,” Koyl grunted, “I would have bet closer to twenty-five than thirty.”

“I was thinking older,” Thaajh countered. “He's not twitchy like you are, brat, and a young man wouldn’t be so cool-headed in a fight.” Koyl recoiled in a dramatized fashion, exaggerating as though he was hurt by Thaajh's words much to Thaajh's amusement. “Okay 'Yuwniht', what do you know about the Hatchet Crew?” Thaajh asked.

“Nothing,” I replied flatly, “besides that they killed your previous guard as you told me, and that you believed that I was a member of the group when I entered for some reason.” Thaajh curled his lips in tightly, looking like my answer displeased him somehow.

“You got a ngoywngeyt on you?” he asked, holding out his hand. The question threw me off for a moment while I processed it. Some kind of fee? I thought. “I'll give it back, it's just for a demonstration,” he added.

“Here,” I said, placing a coin into Thaajh's outstretched hand, “you will give it back after the demonstration.” It wasn't a question, and Thaajh made no protest. Instead, he drew one of the daggers on his waist and brought it up to the coin. The blade was about twenty centimeters long, double-sided, and polished to a shine. The shape was standard for knives, simple but effective. I watched as Thaajh used the tip of the blade to scrape a small amount of the metal from the coin before placing it down on the counter in front of me. The metal that had been removed revealed a dark yellow-orange metal beneath it.

“So that's a real one,” Thaajh said, “know how I know? Don't answer that, rhetorical. Normal ngeyt coins up to six are made of solid copper. The eight and twelve are copper with an iron core, so that if you test them with a yaawleym they'll stick to it. Above that, they're three metals: iron core, bronze body, and then a loyteyv plating to keep the bronze from tarnishing with use.” I intuited the meanings of yaawleym and loyteyv to be 'magnet' and 'nickel', though for the latter it could have been any number of alloys or other materials. I assumed it was nickel because of how common nickel was.

“Interesting,” I replied, “how is the plating applied?” Looking at the coin I would have assumed it was electroplated, but I had seen no evidence of electrical technology so far. Thaajh found my question entertaining and laughed.

“If I knew that, do you think I'd be working here?” he joked. “It's a well-kept secret, which is how I know this coin is real. The fakes are nickel all the way through, and we've been seeing more and more of them since about a year ago now. The Hatchet Crew are the ones making them, or maybe bringing them in, we don't know. At first, we had guards going through and burning shit down every week looking for the presses, but eventually the Crew got together and pushed them back.”

“So that's why there are no guards,” Koyl said.

“Exactly,” Thaajh agreed, “for around three-quarters of a year now guards won't even set foot in this part of town. Instead, we've got Hatchet Crew on every corner watching everything. Before all this coin business they were a small-time 'mercenary company' that took on jobs that were a bit below the, uh, ethical standards of companies like ours. Now they're the biggest kid on the block, and well funded too. New weapons, good armor, and they pay off anyone and everyone to look the other way from their business.”

“I don't see how this makes them your problem,” I interjected. “Surely you could just take their money and look the other way if you didn't want trouble.” Thaajh looked at me like I was crazy, a sadly common reaction I had come to expect when pointing out the obvious.

“You think they're just going to let us operate on their turf?” he laughed mockingly. “Damn you really are a young one. I had you pegged all wrong. They want us gone, not shut up. Steelheart contracts with the magistrate to provide official guards for long durations. In their eyes, we might as well be the law itself, and they hate us for it.”

“Why not just abandon the office then?” I asked.

“Steelheart gets paid to have this office here, by the magistrate,” Thaajh explained. “If we just leave it behind there will be trouble. We can't jeopardize the employment of our members, as you should know if you do work for-” Thaajh stopped and looked at my chest. “Wait a minute, you're a freelancer?” You shot at me thinking I might have been a member of your own organization? I thought as I was momentarily speechless.

“I've only done labor work for the Steelheart Company,” I replied, as Koyl winced. Thaajh put a hand up to his face and covered his forehead and eyes, leaning forward onto the desk even more.

“I was just joking about the training,” he mumbled quietly, “she sent me a gods-damned shit hauler. I'm going to strangle that stupid ngoyth next time I see her ugly face.” Koyl and I both looked at each other, then back to Thaajh who took his hand off of his face. “Okay look, I'll take what I can get,” he said in his normal volume towards me. “What makes you think that you can kick enough ass to be a guard here?”

“I could have beaten you had our earlier fight not stopped,” I stated bluntly, “is that not enough?”

“You can't possibly think that fight counts for anything,” Thaajh scoffed. “I was just having some fun with you is all, it's a scarce resource around here as of late.” While I disagreed with him, I had no intention of doing something which could damage my chances of getting the guard position any further. “Though I have to admit that you being able to swing around that hunk of metal is a bit impressive,” Thaajh added. “There's a small yard out back, why don't you follow me and we'll see what you can do.”

With that, Thaajh walked to the door behind him and opened it up, directing me to follow him into the filthy storage room. He waved his hand past a lantern on the ceiling, lighting it, and we stepped over various items and broken pieces of furniture making our way to a door on the other side. Thaajh opened the door, letting sunlight pour in, and I saw a patch of grass that looked to be about forty square meters in a wide rectangle, upon which some wooden dummies were planted.

“Okay big guy, pick a dummy and let's get started,” Thaajh commanded.