Chương 112: A New Life

After Lloyd finished eating, he left the Guild and made his way slowly down the stone steps, worn smooth by countless footsteps, turning over in his fingers that very first copper coin he'd earned a week ago and had stubbornly refused to spend since, keeping it at the bottom of his pocket like some sort of good-luck charm.

The cool evening air immediately soothed his face, still flushed from the food and the stuffy heat of the tavern, while high above, somewhere far beyond the edge of the city, that same starless, gray haze kept swirling, wrapping the whole floating island in a dense, impenetrable dome.

He headed straight down the main road, passing a couple of narrow, winding alleys lit by scattered lanterns swaying in the wind, their flames flickering and nearly going out with every gust, throwing restless, dancing shadows across the pavement. Gradually, the bright, well-kept signs hanging over the shops in the city center gave way to shabbier, more worn-out ones, and the cobblestones underfoot grew uneven, chipped in places, sprouting patches of scraggly grass between the cracks.

Before long, he came out onto a street where the houses no longer looked as bright and cared-for as they did downtown — peeling paint that had once been colorful, shutters hanging crooked and hastily nailed shut, cracked walls stained with mold — and the street itself felt almost deserted, lit only occasionally by the dim, flickering glow of a lone streetlamp fighting a losing battle against the encroaching dark.

Somewhere in the distance a dog barked lazily, and from behind one shuttered window drifted the muffled, monotone murmur of someone's conversation.

After walking on for another minute, he stopped in front of a three-story wooden building that looked utterly poor and run-down — the boards of its façade rotted and blackened in places from years of dampness, whole patches of the walls covered in a greenish film of moss, and a flimsy, cracked sign above the entrance hanging on by a single rusted, bent nail, creaking miserably with every gust of wind sweeping in from the edge of the island.

"And there it is. My five-star hotel." He clicked his tongue and went inside, pushing open the heavy, swollen-with-damp door, which let out a long, ear-grating creak that echoed through the empty lobby, startling a rat lurking in some corner, which scurried off with a faint squeak.

The small room held a handful of tables, empty and coated with a thin layer of dust, their legs crudely bound together with rope where the original joints had broken off, and in the far corner a single lamp burned dimly, casting long, trembling shadows across the peeling wallpaper.

Behind a roughly hammered-together wooden counter stood a fairly elderly woman, maybe fifty by the look of her, deep lines etched around her thin, pursed lips and a sharp, unfriendly look in her eyes, which she immediately turned on Lloyd as he walked in, showing not the slightest hint of pleasure at his arrival, simply sizing him up from head to toe, as though weighing whether it was even worth the trouble.

"Same as always, basically." Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings. Stepping closer, he spoke up, trying to sound polite, though exhaustion had long since started winning out over what little patience he had left. — One room, single. The woman just gave an irritated snort, looking him over with quick, disdainful eyes, as if she already knew a kid this beat-up, covered in dust and dried blood, wasn't going to bring in much business. — A hundred.

Lloyd raised his bracelet again toward a small, worn-out device sitting on the counter next to a stub of candle — one considerably more crude and battered than the sleek, polished one used at the Guild, its glass cracked along the edge, the paint chipped in places to reveal dull, tarnished metal underneath.

A short, rattling tone confirmed the payment, and the woman, without a word of thanks, silently shoved a heavy metal key on a worn leather cord into his hand, and the two of them parted ways in silence, not even bothering to wish each other goodnight.

"Alright, room twenty-two." Climbing to the second floor up a narrow, creaking staircase whose steps sagged and groaned pitifully under every step, the railing so unstable he decided against touching it at all, he wandered a bit through dark corridors reeking of damp and mildew, lit only by scattered, dimly flickering lamps behind whose glass a few small, disoriented moths beat their wings, and finally found his door, marked with a crooked, peeling "22" nailed unevenly to the wood.

The door swung open with a long, pitiful creak, letting him into a room that immediately greeted him with stale, stagnant air and a faint, barely detectable smell of mold.

He was met by a fairly plain, nearly bare little room: an old wooden bed at the far end, its thin mattress sagging so badly there was a deep, uneven dip right in the middle; a small, lopsided nightstand beside it, on which sat a lonely, half-burned, drooping candle in a tarnished metal holder; and a battered, scorched-in-places wardrobe at the other end of the room, its door hanging on a single, pitifully creaking hinge.

The one narrow window, draped with a thin, torn-in-places curtain, looked straight out onto the gray, swirling emptiness beyond the island's edge.

"Well. Not much. But for the price, it's exactly what I need." He took off the black suit his father had given him, folding it carefully, almost reverently, and laid it gently on the nightstand, smoothing out every crease with his palm, as though afraid of wrinkling or dirtying it even slightly in this damp, musty room.

Sinking onto the bed, which groaned pitifully under his weight with a wooden creak, he wrapped himself in a thin, slightly scratchy blanket that smelled faintly of mustiness and long-overdue washing, but which still brought a long-awaited warmth to his exhausted, chilled body.

"Ahh. What a nice feeling." That feeling — of warmth, of softness, however conditional — was clearly one of Lloyd's favorite things these days, if not his absolute favorite. Even here, in this shabby, run-down little room, it brought him a whole wave of simple, uncomplicated pleasure, the kind he never would have given a second thought to before everything that had happened, back when he took such things completely for granted.

Tucking his hands behind his head, he stared up at the cracked ceiling, stained with patches of brownish damp, a long, branching crack running from the corner of the room nearly to its center, and all sorts of thoughts began drifting through his mind, one after another, in his tired, half-asleep consciousness, while somewhere beyond the wall a loose shutter kept banging dully in the wind.

"Alright then. Let's tally up the first week..."