Chapter Thirteen

The sound of crackling sticks roared in the raging fire. It almost had a rhythm to it. Or at least, Secrat took a liking to it. With his legs out stretched, he sat down on the grass, feeling the warmth of the fire in front of him. It was dark outside now. The night air vanquished the blaze, the blackness and smoke traveling up with the stars. All of it felt very necessary to him. It was a sanctum for his wearing bones.

He gnashed his teeth into the side of the cooked fish. Brutus Ess was a skilled fisherman. A crunching sound happened with every bite he made. Perhaps it had been in the fire for a little too long,, but Secrat didn’t mind in the least. It was a different kind of taste to what he had become accustom to. Fish wasn’t something he had eaten many times before.

“I don’t see why none of you joined me in the creek, would have been able to catch your own fish. It would have been a nice bonding moment for all of us!” Brutus spoke with such an unsteady enthusiasm that Secrat hardly recognized him.

Brutus took a swig out of his flask. It was not as nice as the one Secrat had. Ess’ flask had a brown and fuzzy looking fabric wrapped around it. The flask was likely hand made by Brutus.

“The leeches you will discover on your more sensitive areas might help you figure out why no one wanted to bond with you,” Samuel commented dryly.

Samuel wasn’t wrong about the leeches either. When Brutus arose out of the water, his legs were covered in them, and because his leg hair, he was still finding more as the night progressed.

Brutus, now dressed, scratched at his leggings, the fire having long since dried his body.

“Toucan’s sense of time and distance don’t seem to be what they used to be,” Brutus let out. “We wasted a whole day doing absolute nonsense and we will still arrive at Italina with time to spare.”

“I don’t have a problem with it,” the round-faced thief exclaimed. “I am only happy it has gotten me a day off from cleaning the latrines.” An obnoxious laugh followed that sealed the chubby fellow as a new target for insult.

Ah, yes, cleaning the latrines, Secrat thought.

It was among the simplest of tortures for new prospects in The Red Flux. The bathroom system in The Red Flux was, perhaps, a little outdated when compared to the major cities, but it followed a simple logic. A little ways away from their campsite were the latrines – essentially a row of outhouses that were used by troupe members to do their business with a little bit of privacy and a certain level of hygiene.

The objective of cleaning them, however, was open to interpretation and, unfortunately, it was forbidden to offer them guidance on the matter. The thing was, the latrines ultimately didn’t need cleaned. They were rows of wooden toilets that ultimately led to holes in the ground. If one were to try and shovel the shit out of them, the only result would be that a person would end up with a large mountain of said shit. Rather than that, cleaning the latrines meant either one of two things – either that the holes in the ground were filled or the outhouses themselves needed to be washed down. If the former was true, the easiest remedy to ‘cleaning’ the outhouse would be to simply pry up the wooden stakes and move said outhouse to a different location and dig a new hole. The torment and humor of the exercise was in how literal Prospects would take such a task and how creative they would get.

“He wanted for us to establish a rapport before we actually made it to Italina. He wanted for this added day to make everybody a little bit more comfortable with each other and help us all function together coherently.” Samuel answered back fast.

“But we are all comfortable with each other,” the chubby thief responded.

He threw a glance over to Secrat and then to Lukas, figuring it out for himself. A laugh from Brutus Ess shortly followed. His body was leaned back against a hollowed tree trunk covered in dirt and moss. This left nothing about his heavy protruding stomach to the imagination. Some might have been insecure about such a figure. Maybe they would have even felt the need to hide it or live a little bit more modestly. Brutus didn’t see things like that. Although it had previously been something to Secrat’s dismay, it was now becoming something he respected about the man. He wasn’t ashamed of anything about himself, and he let his gut hang out proudly to show it.

“That’s right, Father Veras doesn’t want Lukey Luke or Secrat over there,” Brutus began, motioning at both as he spoke, “Ripping into each other. He ‘specially doesn’t want it to happen in somewhere as big and as crowded as The Aer Festival. Me, personally, I don’t think we got nothing to worry about. You two ain’t about to go killing each other, are you boys?” Brutus asked, looking forward over at Secrat, who was now feeling a little uncomfortable.

Copé gave a polite smile as a distraction. It was a distraction so that he had time to find a team-building and diplomatic response that would benefit him more than work to his own detriment.

“There are no feelings of ill will for me toward Lukas Lewis. He did nothing wrong and I can only hope his anger for me subsides over time,” Secrat replied.

The words felt awkward as they came out of his lips. They had no inflection in them or no emotion, like he was reading a bit of dialogue from a storybook, however, nobody seemed to catch onto his phoniness.

Brutus chuckled aloud some more, laughing at a joke that nobody but him seemed to be let in on.

“That’s right,” Brutus said, both his hands resting on his belly.

Secrat found himself with an odd mental picture of Brutus playing the drums on his stomach.

Brutus looked through the fire at Lukas Lewis, “And what about you?”

Secrat threw his eyes over to Lukas also. The fire was in front of him, making a slight discoloration on Lukas as well as bringing him into the light. Lukas looked like a demon, but Secrat Copé knew better. He knew that Lukas wasn’t a demon and he knew that when Lukas looked through the flames at Secrat, he must have thought the same thing. The only difference was that, at times, Secrat wasn’t completely sure that he, himself, wasn’t one of the devil’s men.

Lukas looked at them with cold eyes and replied, “I am not the one that kills people.

Nobody said anything for a moment.

Leave it to Lukas to end a wonderful night on such a somber note, Secrat thought, but didn’t say aloud. After all, that wouldn’t have been very team building. Instead, it was Brutus Ess, per usual, who was the one to break to break the silence among them.

“I don’t ‘spose any of you has any smokes,” Brutus blurted out, coming off a little sadder sounding than usual, perhaps out of empathy. “I think I dropped all mine somewhere near the creek.”

Then again, it was likely not empathy that made Brutus sad, but his own inconvenience. He dug his finger nails into his teeth, scraping the pieces of fish out from the gaps between them. Brutus had already finished polishing off two of the fish he had caught, whereas Secrat was still chomping at the bits with one of them and thought it was unlikely for him to be able to finish it.

“Do you think it will be difficult, you know, stealing at the Aer Festival,” the round-faced thief asked.

Like Brutus, he had already dug into two of the fish by himself, while everyone else was still digging into their first.

Secrat reached into his leggings. Cigarettes were almost always on him. He used them so little. For all he knew, they may have been stale by now, but he doubted that Brutus would mind. Copé threw one of them onto Ess’ lap, for which Brutus responded with a grateful nod. Leaping up to his feet, Brutus leaned forward toward the brewing flame, lit it, and then flopped back down against the tree trunk.

For a brief moment, Secrat could see himself in Brutus. It was a sad thought, ever having to see himself in such a burly and crude man, but it had more to do with how he lit his cigarette than anything else. It reminded him of his altercation with Christique, which, in return, made him think of The Hunter, and all the other things he had to go through to return to The Red Flux. He needed things to go right at the Aer Festival. He couldn’t go back to being exiled from The Red Flux. Never again.

“I mean, there will be a lot of people around and that makes it easier for us to blend in, but that also means more eyes will be on us,” Taison said, as though trying to reassure himself.

“If we don’t do anything foolish then we will all be fine,” Samuel answered. “Most of us know exactly what we are doing and the ones that don’t will be watched over carefully. This heist isn’t about just plucking everything we see. We are after what is worth the most, not the quantity or bulk of items stolen.”

“Who will I be watched over by?” The round faced boy asked, looking around them like a child in search for his parent.

Brutus chuckled at the thief’s lack of self-confidence.

“You have the least experience. Lukas Lewis might very well be on the cusp of becoming a member of the Elites in his own right, and Secrat was almost one before his … dismissal.” Samuel explained, showing a careful choice of words for how to explain Secrat’s departure. “And I hope that all these factors keep my next statement from sounding too much like an insult, but I won’t be having you assist any of us in the heist. Your contribution will be to watch over the wagon as the others scavenge throughout the Aer Festival. Make no escape about it, that is an important job,” Samuel Syi’s voice got serious, but Secrat heard another chuckle from Brutus.

Samuel’s expression broke for a subtle moment, but he regained himself at once, “All the items stolen from the Aer Festival will be in that wagon, which means if anybody finds the wagon or anything else, our entire expedition will have accomplished nothing. I would even venture to say that you have the most important job of all of us.”

Secrat saw Brutus bite his lip in an attempt not to laugh, and Secrata couldn’t help but smirk by how thick Samuel was laying it on for the boy’s sake. The wagon would be far enough away to keep any of the guests of Italina from stumbling upon it, and even if they did, it would be covered with a tarp and would look like an ordinary wagon.

“Can you handle this responsibility, Taison?” Sameul asked.

Secrat made a mental note of his name. The round faced thief’s expression looked confused and stupid. Secrat couldn’t tell whether or not he was bothered and frustrated, or if he didn’t understand the words that were said. The chubby boy smiled with a big grin, at last.

“I will, that is, if nobody else wants to take on the responsibility,” he said.

Bastard, Secrat thought. Nobody was that stupid.

Once Secrat finished his fish, he felt filthy and disgusting, like he wanted to jump into the creek like Brutus had done only hours prior. Of course, he didn’t, the leaches kept him from actually acting on his intentions. Instead, after scraping the gunk out of his teeth with his finger nail, he walked down to the creek and dipped his clothes in the water. He did this to all of him except for his under leggings. After that, he rung them out, making for certain there were no bugs or insects embedded on them. It made him feel better. He hung them up over a tree branch, well near where the fire still brewed. The fire would have to be put out sooner or later, but hopefully it would still help his clothes dry in the night.

Secrat left his clothes and begun to search for somewhere to sleep. Brutus had already fallen out of consciousness against a hollow tree trunk. He snored and carried all the grace of a dying elephant as he slept. Looking at the fire, Secrat flinched at the sound of rustling leaves behind him and turned to see Lukas Lewis stared back at him.

Lukas’ face didn’t demonstrate anger or frustration, but it wasn’t forgiveness or anything painstakingly obvious either. Secrat didn’t know what it was.

“I have been talking to Samuel,” Lukas said, speaking soft.

He glared at Secrat with his wannabe tough guy disposition, but he soon relented, feeling, for one, at ease: “People die, and you are right, The Red Flux has been the cause of more than a few of them. Father Toucan Veras makes himself out to be a man of peace, all while he is lugging around his giant sword. We call ourselves thieves, but we are more than thieves, we are also killers, and, at times, I feel like I might as well be a Carver.”

Secrat’s expression changed, sudden surprise, he responded: “We aren’t Carvers, Lukas. Father doesn’t go around chopping people in twos and threes, and we don’t torture for the thrill of it all. We do what we do because we have to survive, and, like it or not, this is how we do it. Don’t ever compare us to them and don’t you ever compare me to them. I made a mistake and I know that, but that doesn’t make me like them.”

Lukas Lewis smiled at him, enjoying that he had managed to strike a cord with him. “I don’t think you are like the Carvers, Secrat,” he said plainly. “But I don’t think you are good either, and I will never be able to trust you again. What I saw, when you killed Elson, I saw a side to you that I had never seen before. I saw a side to you that was mirthless and didn’t care. It is for those reasons, above all else, I don’t want you to be in The Red Flux.”

Lukas’ comment irked Secrat some, and he knew it was visually apparent, but he didn’t want Lukas to have the small victory, “I am sorry to inform you of this, but I won’t be leaving The Red Flux anytime soon.”

“Maybe, but I will see to it that you are always nobody here,” Lukas Lewis fired back fast. “Veras told me the only way you will ever be made an Elite is if I offer you my forgiveness. Well, unless he goes back on what he said, that means you will never be an Elite in The Red Flux.”

Lukas Lewis’ words sounded less and less like that of anger or bitterness, and more and more like somebody who realized he had full control of the situation. Secrat didn’t like that, but, for now, he only smiled.

“I am sorry you see it that way. I hope I will one day be able to have your forgiveness.”