Chapter 22.2: Shame

Though that one step took no more time than any other he'd taken in his life, Minkus could swear it was the most grueling in recent memory. His foot hit the smooth stonework of the human capital’s Central Plaza, and he lurched forward, stumbling off the side of the path and into a tall planter. His head spun as though bursting and being crushed at the same time. His belly felt about the same. It had clearly been too long since he'd last traveled by asura gate.

“By the six,” an unfamiliar human swore, quickly stepping over to take him by the shoulder. This man wore the silver-studded leathers of a seraph, a local peacekeeper. “Are you alright there, friend?” he asked.

Minkus shook his head, reeling from the confusing assortment of sensations as his balance slowly returned. “Oh,” he groaned. “Yes, I— well, it’s been awhile since I— since I did that.”

“Must have been,” the man agreed. “I’ve seen plenty of humans react this way, but you may be the first sickly asura I've seen.”

Minkus smiled wanly. “Thank you.”

The man nodded, gently leaning Minkus against the edge of the huge planter and steadying him before returning to his shift at the gate.

For a moment Minkus watched the man and all those passing him. Periodically the line on this side of the huge stone ring would pause to allow another traveler through from Lion's Arch. Someone would slide out of the shimmering membrane of energy, casually walking on into Divinity’s Reach as though nothing in the world had happened, not as though they'd just stepped through a magical hole cut in reality itself. Minkus remembered when he used the gate between Metrica and Rata Sum often enough to be that easy about it. Today was not like that.

Collecting himself Minkus leaned forward from the wall and began his way out of the gardens and toward the Melandru High Road—wherever that was from here. He asked the guard, who pointed him on to the west, and in just a few tottering steps, he had his balance again.

It wasn't a long walk, per se, certainly not in contrast to the scale of the whole city. If he'd had to walk the whole length of the Melandru Road, that would have been something of an undertaking, as it stretched to the outermost edge of the massive city. Penny's shop, however, was somewhat less than halfway down the high road, and from this side, the road was entirely a downhill slope, making it that much easier to traverse. He walked the road in silence, focusing hard on everything he recognized about the places he passed. Each tiny remembrance of the place was better than what he was trying to forget, and each one for him one step closer to finding and clearing his human friend.

Before he knew it, he’d reached the most familiar of the high road’s landmarks: the only three buildings with signs on that middle stretch. Within a hundred feet of his destination, the signs for Horace’s tax-collection agency and Megda’s apothecary came into view. And finally he saw the hammer and gear of Penny's machine shop.

Penny's shop. Minkus stopped a few doors shy and ruminated on it a moment. It had been less than a season since they’d left. To be fair, they’d been gone many days more than they’d first intended, but it still wasn’t that long in the grand scheme of things; in fact it was only a fraction of even the overall time Minkus had spent traveling so far. Still, he couldn't help but realize how he'd missed it, this awkward, rundown little shop still sitting in the morning shadow of the upper city. Metrica would always be his first home, but there's something about Divinity's Reach, about humans, about Penny and this place that had sunk into him.

Someone nearby cleared her throat, drawing Minkus’ attention. He squinted at the door to Penny's shop, expecting to find her leaning out and shaking her head at him. But she wasn't there. No one was.

He glanced around, scratching his head, when he caught sight of Megda. The squat, round woman stood outside her door, arms folded around a broom as she smiled oddly at the asura. Most things the woman did were done oddly.

“Well, if it isn't our good friend Mr. Minkus,” she croaked.

He nodded, smiling in return. “Hello, Miss Megda.”

“Aha. You remember your manners,” she said, approvingly. “It's been ever too long since we saw you around here. We were afraid you might never come back. That would be a shame, a frightful shame.”

Minkus nodded. “Yes. It would.” he paused to look down the road again at the quiet machine shop. The windows were dark. “How are Frag and Tad?” he asked, letting his attention drift back to Megda.

She perked further. “Oh, they're in fine shape, fine shape, thank you. Flies all day, songs all night—happy as could be. And the secretions they're giving? Superb! Best I've seen from their breed. The wart elixirs have been  lovely, just lovely.” She paused, then rushed toward Minkus in a waddling frenzy, and took him by the face, inspecting far too closely. “Why? Are you in need of something? You are looking a mite pale.”

He stepped back, uncomfortable but still smiling, and waved a hand politely. “Thank you, Miss Megda, but I— my skin is fine.”

Acquiescing, she nodded. “Very well, but the discount offer still stands.”

For a moment the two stood quietly together, but before Minkus’ mind could wander too far, the plump, white-haired woman spoke again, looking over his head and back up the road he'd just come down. “And how is that machinist of ours? I assume she’s coming along soon as well?”

Minkus looked back over his shoulder as though there were something there to see. There wasn’t.

“I was hoping you— You haven't seen her?” he said, letting the words form into a question at he spoke them.

“Why, no,” she mused, resting a hand on her hip. “I thought the two of you were traveling together. Seems odd that you two should leave together and not return together. Did you get separated somehow?”

“We were. We did. I mean— we—”

“Gracious,” she gasped, seeming suddenly to apprehend something. “Did you have a falling out, my boy?”

Minkus sighed, shrugging. “Maybe. I— don't really know.”

For a moment, they stood there, the woman inspecting him and shaking her head absently. “Well, Mr. Minkus,” she said at last, “I've not seen the girl. Though if I do remember—and, mind you, my head is still as sharp a thing as it ever was—there was a note on her shop door just yesterday that no longer seems to be there. I would have thought her apprentice boy had collected it, but, come to think of it, I haven’t seen him in a few days either.” She shrugged. “Perhaps it wasn't him. Perhaps Penny took it and will be back soon. Who can say?”

“Yes,” Minkus agreed, “who can say?” Pursing his lips, he looked down the road at Penny's door again. The windows were certainly unlit, and there was no note on the door. Minkus twiddled his ear between forefinger and thumb, pondering the situation. Was this old woman's maybe the sturdiest thing he had to hold on to? Maybe Penny had taken a note from her door, indicating she was in the city, or at least had been recently? He could hear Jinkke's argument against— Yes, he recognized, Megda’s maybe was the sturdiest thing he had.

“Maybe I'll just wait outside,” he said.

Megda smiled sympathetically, leaning forward to pat his shoulder. “You just watch. You'll find her, and she'll apologize for whatever she’s done.”

Surprised, Minkus looked at her. “How do you know she did something?”

“Young man,” she said with a cackle, “if something came between you and that woman, only a fool would think you did it. Clever she is. Entertaining, sometimes. Delicate she is not.” She grinned again, taking his cheek in her fat hand. “Just wait and see. Arkayd will come to her senses. And, if she doesn't, you come work for me. Frag and Tad love that silly face of yours.”

Megda patted him on the back before waddling back into her shop, the broom still in her hand dragging along behind her. She tapped the hanging sign on her way in the door and set it to swinging in the morning air. It squeaked gently, above the distant noise of merchants at work in the Western Commons.

Minkus crossed the street toward the door of Penny's machine shop, his steps in time with that lonely squeak. Rising to tiptoes, he peaked in the window, but there was nothing there.

More accurately, there was no one there. There were plenty of somethings in the building, all the same somethings he'd grown so familiar with before they'd left. Sunlight streamed in through the window, illuminating half the interior, but even in the shadowed half, he could make out enough to say that little had really changed. The only things clearly missing were Penny and Eddie.

At the thought of Eddie, Minkus perked, suddenly remembering Megda’s comment about the boy not appearing recently. Minkus hadn't thought about it before, but she was right: Eddie should have been at the shop. Ventyr had seemed to think that, assuming her guilt, Penny was unlikely to be found in Divinity's Reach, taking the jade instead somewhere she could sell it in relative obscurity. Even if he was correct, and Penny hadn't returned to her old life, even if she hadn't returned to Divinity's Reach at all, Eddie was left in charge of the shop and all its business. He should have been there the whole time, and even if Megda hadn't seen him recently, he was a responsible apprentice and should have been there now.

Minkus reached and turned the handle on the door. It was locked. He knocked on the wood of the door, then on the window. Nothing. He hopped a few times to see farther inside, but nothing and no one moved.

Alone, and feeling more so by the moment, Minkus stood, his hands at the windowsill and his eyes glazed. He turned, backing himself against the wall, and slumped down into a seat on the ground. The backplate of his armor squealed as it rubbed down the wooden wall, and his leg guards clacked loudly when he extended them across the cobblestone. He looked up one side of the road, and then back down the other, hoping for something to have changed. Nothing had. He was still alone. Penny wasn’t there, Eddie wasn’t there, Ventyr wasn't there, Skixx wasn’t there (he felt a strange relief at that one), and Jinkke— Jinkke wasn’t there.

Once or twice since he left her, he’d nearly forgotten what happened, but never fully. In some wretched corner of his mind he wished he could have, but he couldn't really bring himself to commit to feeling that. With a heavy sigh, he had to admit to himself that it had been pulsing, aching in the back of his mind since the moment he’d turned from her on that platform in the Lion’s Arch harbor.

You remain as ill equipped as ever to face the mental challenges of the world around you.

That’s what she’d said. For the first time in their life, it was what she’d said directly to his face. She, the sister who had always said otherwise, even when he was the one claiming his own intellectual inadequacies, she'd said it.

He could remember so many times that he’d been the one to undercut himself, claiming his own inability, but she would never hear of it. Look at what you’ve done, Big Brother, she would insist. That’s not the work of a janitor; it’s the work of an apprentice. That’s not the product of an atypical; it’s the accomplishment of exceptional diligence. That’s not evidence of technical inability; it’s the sign of a graduate’s fortitude.

Minkus’ let his head fall, chin to the gold-plated steel at his chest. Had it all been the lie of someone too kind to be honest with him? It was hard to believe that. Kind she was, and definitely protective of him, but there was too much in their history that pointed to her genuine understanding of exactly what he was capable of—that itself was a deduction he knew she would be proud of.

Her sentiment at the gate hub? That was just a momentary outburst. Minkus could sense it—at least he thought he could. It was a protectiveness in his sister that had made her blurt it like that: you remain as ill equipped as ever. She was— Minkus rifled about inside for what he’d felt in her. Fear? Was she afraid, for him?

“Yes,” Minkus whispered, nodding to himself. He felt his ears perk slightly. “She’s always been afraid for me.”

Heavily, Minkus sighed, letting his hands fall to his sides. He thought about it, feeling it all still, and it ultimately wasn’t Jinkke’s remark that ached so deeply that he wanted to escape it. That he could easily replace with the memory of a thousand other things she’d spoken to build him up. No, it wasn’t what she said in a moment of fear. It was what she’d done at Dynamics; it was the cheating, the long, consistent lie she and so many others had told him. It wasn’t her recognition of limitations he himself was aware of and settled with; it was the steps she’d taken to make him look like something else, something he wasn't. It was— what was it? What was that feeling?

Staring down at the lines of collected dirt and grit between the cobbles of the road, Minkus closed his eyes. Shame. They’d all been ashamed of what he really was. Jinkke had been ashamed.

Minkus’ chest heaved inside his steel chestpiece, and a few, small tears ran down his cheek and onto the armor.