Free The Night Market by Zachary Rawlins Page B

a... a train. It will take us about five days to get to the
station at Hastur,” Yael said, considering her memories of the dream map. “From
there the rest of the trip won’t take that long.”
    “I’m sure you’ll be fine, not eating for five days
while you trek across the Waste. Most people can go a couple weeks without food.
You probably won’t die.”
    Yael stared at the fire so Jenny wouldn’t see how
embarrassed she was. She had left home with nothing to eat other than a
half-sandwich saved from her lunch. She had brought along her credit card and
money she had saved over two months, planning to buy food on the way. But she
had never had the opportunity in Roanoke, and the platinum card with imprinted
holograms and the modest roll of cash tucked into a rolled sock in her bag were
little more than paper and plastic here.
    “I had to leave in a hurry,” Yael lied, not wanting to
admit that the whole issue had slipped her mind. “There was no time to worry
about food.”
    Jenny fidgeted constantly, poking at the fire with a
stick, turning the can of stew on top of the cooking grill, scuffing the soles
of her shoes in the poisonous dust of the Waste. Yael found her fidgeting
grating, but she was too smart to complain. She didn’t have many options as far
as company was concerned.
    “I’m sure you had your reasons,” Jenny acknowledged,
unexpectedly matter-of-fact. “Must have been damn important to skip food.”
    Jenny tore open the stew tin with a fork and obvious
enthusiasm. The metal was certainly hot enough to burn, but Jenny didn’t
flinch. Or bother to spit out her gum before she started eating. She must have remembered
it when she tried to swallow, though, because she coughed and then spat everything
into the fire.
    “Disgusting.”
    “Sorry,” Jenny said, mouth already full with the next
bite. “Not used to company.”
    “How long have you been out here, Miss Frost?”
    “In the Waste?”
    Jenny didn’t say that exactly, of course, because she
had her fork wedged in her mouth when she spoke. Yael nodded her affirmation.
    “Not sure,” Jenny said, wiping her mouth with the back
of her hand, her eyes distant. “A couple weeks? All I remember was the last
place I found enough water to take a bath. I was probably mostly walking in
circles. Me ‘n Fenrir tripped over this area last week and we’ve been hanging
around ever since. A few people come through, a trade route or something. How
did you get here, anyway? No way you crossed the Waste with clothes that
clean...”
    They were far from clean, but that was all relative.
Jenny’s clothes were uniformly coated with a layer of dull white dust the
consistency of chalk. In any other context, Yael would have thought of her own
clothes as embarrassingly filthy, but by comparison, she was no more than
dusty, thanks to the frictionless surface of her tights and windbreaker.
    “I came up from the Underworld,” Yael said, trusting
that honesty was the best policy. “I was brought across the Vale of P’nath by a
very brave cat named Tobi, who stayed back to fight a monster that was chasing
us. He is a very strong cat, so I am certain that he won – though the monster
was rather large, and I expect it was quite a battle. After we parted, I
climbed a long stair to the surface, and partway up, an Eater-of-the-Dead told
me about you...”
    “Eater-of-? Oh, you mean a ghoul. Yeah,” Jenny said,
hunkered over her bowl. “I remember that guy. Seemed like the nervous type.”
    “You might just have that effect on people. Well,
ghouls and people.”
    “Didn’t understand a word of your story besides that.”
    “I am not surprised. Why did you come here, Miss
Frost?”
    “God, you manage to be polite and a bi – a brat at the
same time. Back off, I said brat. Besides, I thought you already knew. I’m
going to that city, wherever the Unknown Kadath Estates are.”
    “Unknown...?”
    “Yup.”
    “What... what is that, exactly?”
    “It’s an