Page 118 of Code Bound
“This room is for Tier Three or highers,” he says. “The peasant section is below deck.”
“Yeah, well the food is gross down there, so I came up here to eat,” I tell him. “There’re seats available. Just let us through and?—”
“The peasant section is below deck,” he repeats, staring at me. “Come back when you’ve leveled up, lad.”
I shrug his hand off me and glare at him. “If there weren’t rules about punching you in the face?—”
“Come on,” Vesper says, rolling her eyes. “They’re not letting us in.”
“This is bullshit,” I growl, letting her drag me backward. “I hope you?—”
“Knock it off,” Vesper whispers, dragging me across the lobby and glancing around. Quietly, she pushes through a small doorway I hadn’t seen and we find ourselves in a massive cooking room. Waiters move around, picking up plates and carrying them out to the tables. Cooks rush around the room, shouting orders at each other. “We don’t have to go into the eating room,” she declares with a grin.
“Fuck yeah,” I say, reaching for a plate one of the cooks sets on the counter. “Grab what you can.”
The two of us stack up plate after plate, stealing what was meant to go out into the other room for the assholes to eat. Neither of us care about chaos we might be causing and none of the NPCs say anything to us at all, like they can’t see us stealing the plates.
“No borscht,” Svetlana says sadly. “But what did I expect from a ship flying the British flag?”
With out arms full, we rush out of the room and up the fancy staircase, laughing as we try our best not to drop any of the food. Still, a few rolls of bread are lost to the adventure, rolling off of plates and disappearing with the rocking of the ship. We only slow down once we’re up on the deck in the blistering cold, the wind whipping our hair around our faces.
“Oh fuck!” Vesper says. “I forgot we’re in the middle of the Frostbit Sea.”
Laughing, I gesture for her to follow me and we find our way to a small secluded room at the front of the ship out of the cold. It’s there we spread out our spoils across the table and start to pick at them. Svetlana immediately leaps down from Vesper’s shoulder and starts slicing up meat with gleeful shouts before she picks one up and starts to nibble at it. I avoid her plate and stick to the ones she’s not focused on. I hide my smile, preferring to pretend I still hate the thing.
But she’s growing on me.
“Look at that,” Vesper whispers, pointing out the small window.
Outside, we watch as a woman in a blue dress slowly walks toward the front railing. Her hand is laced with a man’s. The two of them are clearly from different levels, the woman from the rich and the man from the peasants.
“Are they NPCs?” I ask curiously, watching as they reach the front of the ship and then climb over the safety lines.
“Not sure,” Vesper says. “They look like they’re in love.”
I lean closer to her, both of us watching as they stand at the very front point of the ship. The man braces behind her and together, they spread their arms out to the sides, letting the wind whip at their clothing. Like they’re?—
“Flying,” Vesper breathes. “They’re pretending they’re flying.”
I can tell that Vesper thinks it’s romantic by the way her expression softens.
“They’re from different Tiers,” I point out. “Look at how they’re dressed. He’s clearly been in the lower levels of the ship with us.”
She shrugs. “Maybe love can transcend Tiers?”
Because she says that, we both look back out the window. Because we’re looking, we catch the proof of how wrong that is. The man lowers his arms, encouraging her to keep hers out, and then he rears back and shoves her as hard as he can. She screams and falls over the railing, disappearing over the edge of the ship and plummeting toward the water below.
My mouth falls open in surprise. I hate to be wrong but?—
“Well . . .” Vesper starts, “I’ve suddenly lost my appetite.”
“More for me,” Svetlana declares. “Too bad she did not have wings so she could really fly. A shame.”
And then she continues to eat as if we didn’t just witness a murder between what are clearly NPCs. Nothing happens to the man. He simply turns, tucks his hands into his pockets and strolls away. He whistles an upbeat tune as he goes and even tips his head to us as he passes.
“Yeah,” I say. “I think it’s time to get off this boat.”
She nods, but we take the leftover food with us back to our healing room and spend the rest of the time making sure we have everything we need to leave.
