Guild of Tokens: Trainee
Part 3
Editor’s Note: As discussed in the June 2022 open thread, I am doing a bit of a reorganization of the posting schedule now that we have come to the end of Guild of Tokens. To sum it up, here is the general monthly schedule going forward (and please see the open thread for more details):
Weekly
Wednesday: Comics
Friday: Fiction (new Guild of Magic chapters for paid and free tier subscribers)
Monthly
Tuesday: Interview/Building a readership series/behind-the-scenes-post
Thursday: Open thread
Floating: Monthly wrap-up
Today marks the finale of a short story starring everyone’s favorite morally gray mentor, Beatrice Taylor, entitled Trainee.
The wine was red tonight. A bottle of Carignan from their last trip to the South of France. Beatrice had mixed memories about that vacation. On the one hand, who could be unhappy lounging on a Mediterranean beach? But on the other hand, it was the last time that she and Garrett had had sex and the result of that act was quietly sleeping in the other room.
Garrett’s glass remained full, for no sooner had he poured it than his work phone had rung. That was two hours ago and he still hadn’t returned from the bedroom. Well, whatever. If he didn’t come back soon, she was going to be forced to drink his glass, as the bottle was nearing its end.
Her marriage might not have been firing on all cylinders, but at least Kate’s progression had been going smoothly. The girl had performed admirably on the raid, although Beatrice was glad that they hadn’t actually run into the Guild, not just because that was always a bad time, but also because she could just picture Kate inadvertently getting both of them killed. Maybe some krav maga and light weapons training was in order.
Beatrice took another sip of the Carignan and closed her eyes. She thought about the latest spoils of the raid. It was a little too perfect and that worried her slightly. Was the Guild that dense to have overlooked the mattress? Were they looking for something else? After all, if the old woman had the ink, who knows what else she was hoarding in that apartment? But Beatrice couldn’t dwell on such things now. Still, a test of the ink was in order before she made any more plans.
Doreen’s letter was currently soaking in alcohol downtown, which would separate the ink from the paper. That would give Beatrice a little bit to perform some trial runs without wasting the pure ink left in the bottle. Now that she actually had a sample in hand, Kate’s research with the diary would likely bear more fruit. Speaking of fruit, Beatrice made a mental note to start lining up preparations for the fall, as her apple stash was running low. But that was a longer term project and she hoped Kate would be ready in a few months with a little more seasoning.
The buzzing of Garrett’s phone on the coffee table brought Beatrice back to the present. Which was odd. Because Garrett was still in the other room. It vibrated again and she picked it up to bring it into the kitchen so she could get back to her brainstorming.
That ended up being a mistake. Because as she put it down on the kitchen counter, another buzz went off and Beatrice saw the string of text messages that had caused all the commotion.
“When is this call going to be over :(“
“If it keeps going any longer, how u going to come over 2night?”
“dont worry ill wait up for u :)”
Beatrice stared at the messages. She wanted to take the phone and chuck it out the window. Or smash it with a hammer. Or go over to that little tart’s apartment and shove it down her throat. Instead, she picked it up, walked slowly over to the bedroom, and opened the door.
Garrett was sitting on the bed in his boxers in front of a laptop, talking too loudly about shutting down some factory in Malaysia. He looked up at her and gave a half wave, and then when he saw the phone in her hand, his eyes went wide. Beatrice let the phone drop from her hand, and then, without another word, walked out of the apartment and escaped into the night.
The warm morning light washed over the bedroom. Well, it would have, if the one window in the room actually looked out onto something other than a brick wall. Still, a tiny ray of sunlight usually crept into the tiny “den” of Beatrice’s Bowery apartment and it was enough to rouse her from her sleep. Her reward for waking up was a pounding in her head and a dry throat. She sat up and opened her eyes, trying to remember why she was here instead of in her much larger bed uptown.
The half-naked man beside her let out a loud snore. Oh, right. She had stormed out of the apartment, hopped in a cab downtown, and then had started texting the Quester guys in her phone to see if anyone would meet up for a drink and then some. Let Garrett deal with Jack Jack by himself for once, she had thought. If he was going to be so blatant about flouting their marriage vows, then she didn’t feel bad at beating him at his own game. From the presence of whoever this guy was, and her own half-state of undress, she surmised that she had succeeded in some part of her plan.
Beatrice scooted down to the middle of the mattress. A set of built-in cabinets ran along the adjacent wall, with a clearance of maybe four inches from the bed. It made the tiny room feel even tinier and she had to move back onto to the bed to even open the doors. What clothes did she even still have here? The answer was one full-length black dress and one old down coat. Beatrice sighed and bent down to pick up her sweater from yesterday off of the floor, but it was nowhere to be found. She settled for the blue button down at the foot of the bed and walked to the bathroom.
Her reflection in the mirror could have been from ten years ago - the bags under her eyes, the hangover headache, the shirt that wasn’t hers. She had been a typical wild child living it up in the city: out most nights, a new guy every other week. That was before the Quests though, before the curtain had been pulled back and Beatrice had discovered a truth about the world, a truth that would have made most people curl up into a ball on the ground and never get up. Except she was made of sterner stuff. Working her way up from the bottom, grinding out Quest after Quest after Quest, piling up all those tokens. Sure, she had caught a few breaks along the way, the diary being one, but if anything, that had made her work even harder.
Beatrice turned on the tap and let the rust-colored water turn clear before splashing some on her face. It didn’t do the trick, and she tried to remember if she had anything in the other room that would help get rid of the throbbing in her head. She could deal with the aftermath of last night if she could just get in the right mindse--
Three successive pounds on the front door broke her train of thought.
Fuck.
It was Garrett, although she didn’t know how. She’d already moved to a different apartment by the time they started dating and she never told him where she used to live. Maybe he had tailed her last night after she stormed out of the apartment. She laughed at the image of Garrett racing out of their building with a sleeping Jack Jack in a baby Bjorn, and decided it must just be the annoying old woman from across the hall complaining again.
Beatrice walked back into the bedroom, where the mystery man was still asleep, and tiptoed into the living room. The front door shook again. Too loud to be the old woman, she thought. A flick of the peephole finally revealed the perpetrator: it was Kate.
She unlocked and unlatched the door, and the pounding stopped.
“Just a second,” said Beatrice, slowly opening it with a creak.
Kate stood in the hallway, her hair a tangled mess, her eyes bloodshot, and her mascara running down her face. The girl was visibly shaking, as if she had just been mugged.
“Kate, what are you doing her-”
The trainee pushed past Beatrice, walked into the apartment without saying a word, and sat down on the couch just past the large wooden bookcase. Her body continued to shake, and she stared unresponsively across the room. Beatrice walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water from the tap, so she could stall a bit before confronting Kate. She hadn’t told her about this place, had she? Was she stalking her? Whatever was going on, it was one less thing she wanted to deal with now, so hopefully she could steady the girl and send her on her way.
Beatrice set the glass of water down on the coffee table next to her pocketbook and waited for Kate to do or say something, but the girl didn’t respond.
“Kate.”
“Kate.”
“KATE!”
She shouted the girl’s name, but that too received no response. Beatrice wanted to slap her upside the head, but she settled for throwing the glass the water all over the trainee.
The girl stirred back to life, looking down at her soaked shirt and then up at Beatrice, before finally settling on Beatrice’s pocketbook.
It only took a split second for the thought to percolate in her head, but it was a second too long, and before Beatrice could react, Kate dove toward the bag and wrenched something free.
Once, a long time ago, Beatrice discovered that not only did her knife pierce through skin as if it were jello, but also that it had the neat ability to cause the person on the receiving end of the said piercing to turn to stone. Beatrice was as shocked as her would-be assailant was when he saw his forearm turning grey after she had slashed him in the dark alley, but she hadn’t had any occasion since to witness what the knife was truly capable of. That was, until the present moment, as Kate held the blade pointed at Beatrice, the girl’s hand shaking violently.
“More. I need more.”
Kate’s voice was barely above a whisper, which gave Beatrice some measure of reassurance.
“More what, Kate? You know, you could have just called. Now why don’t you just give me that-”
“The buffs. I need more.”
“Oh.”
“I made the last one into a powder, so it would last longer and you wouldn’t think I was an addict by asking for more so soon. Bought a mortar and pestle at Goodwill. Snorted a little bit to see what would happen and passed out. Woke up, did a little more, tried to finish a paper. Then it wore off again. But not before a thought occurred to me. I needed to inject it. So I went down to the health center, got into the exam room, and then took off with some syringes and tourniquets before the nurse came in. That did the trick. But I only had a little left, so I needed to find you.”
“Kate, again, you have my number. You didn’t need to come down here and-”
“Wasn’t expecting you’d be here. Took me all night at the city records department to find this place. Knew you wouldn’t keep the good stuff at your actual apartment. No. You keep your lives separate. Smart. So I’d like the stuff now, if you wouldn’t mind.”
On a normal day, Beatrice would have been able to handle the situation, if it were any other knife. But this particular morning, she was hungover, running on two hours sleep, and facing down the blade of a horrific weapon, and that left her with only one option.
“Ok. Fine. I’ll give you more. Just put the knife down first.”
The girl’s brow furrowed and her eyes went from Beatrice to the knife, as if she hadn’t realized that she was holding it. With a flick of her wrist, Kate rotated the knife around and presented the handle to Beatrice, who slowly wrapped her fingers around the ivory.
Beatrice looked down at the point of the blade. It would be so easy to just push it forward, to rid herself of another failed trainee. But as quickly as the thought arose, she quashed it. Too messy, she thought. And in any event, she didn’t have a garden in which to store a statue of poor petrified Kate. No. She would have to figure out another way.
Beatrice sheathed the blade and put it back in her pocketbook, which she slung around her shoulder. No sense leaving the bag unattended again and having to repeat the whole exercise.
“Now that we’ve dealt with that little situation, just sit here and I’ll get you what you came for.”
Kate nodded and went back to staring off into space, as Beatrice got up and walked over to the towering bookcase that stood right next to the couch. Her eyes scanned the multi-colored rows of books until she found the two that she was looking for. Not that she needed to look so hard. She knew where they were by heart.
With one hand, she grasped the spine of A Tale of Two Cities and with the other, the spine of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe on the shelf above, and pulled both at the same time. A satisfying click sounded behind the bookcase, which Beatrice pushed forward to reveal the hidden second bedroom. This was no bedroom though.
The musty smell hit Beatrice’s noise as she stepped inside, and she smiled. This was where the magic happened. The far side sported a long table that ran the length of the room, which was partially covered in wax paper. The rest of the walls were lined with shelving and bookcases, holding all manner of jars, books, tools, and other oddities that Beatrice had picked up along the way. Even the windows had been sacrificed on the altar of space, although she had left a tiny sliver of one window uncovered to prevent the room from being completely cut off from the outside world. As much as she wished she could have a nice little cottage out of the city, there was something satisfying about having this hidden nook right here in the Guild’s backyard.
Beatrice turned around to see if Kate had followed her into the room, but the girl evidently remained planted on the couch. That would make things go smoother. She had hoped one day to show Kate this room, to work side-by-side with someone who could become almost equal to her, but she knew now that her search would have to continue.
She started walking over to a bookcase on the right side of the room where she kept the full-strength buffs when something on the desk caught her eye. It was the green-tinted mason jar where Doreen’s letter was currently soaking, the second pen from the raid sitting next to it. Beatrice walked over and looked at its contents. The letter was still somewhat intact, but more importantly, a thin black film was visible at the top. A different idea now formed in her head. The perfect way to test the potency of the ink. It would solve at least one of her immediate problems, and if it failed, well...
No, she thought. She needed certainty, she needed closure.
Her pocketbook began to vibrate. No doubt it was Garrett, trying to find out where she had gone and whether she would be coming back soon and where did they keep the diapers, and it’s not what you think, I swear, blah blah blah. She’d heard it before, but frankly she didn’t actually care anymore. She had moved on long ago from the idea that her marriage was anything but a convenient front. Still, she needed to send a message to him that she expected a certain level of discretion. Which brought her thoughts back to the ink. Her eyes lit up. Now there was a good experiment.
Beatrice opened the drawers in the desk until she found one that had some paper, which she brought over to the jar. Pen in hand, she carefully unfastened the lid and dipped the tip in the black liquid, swirling it around counterclockwise, before withdrawing it. She quickly went to work, dipping the pen back in the jar as needed, and soon, the note was complete. Perfect. She set it down to dry and walked over to the closet, sliding the door open to reveal a pair of mahogany armoires. It had been a long time since she had crafted this particular item, and she hoped it hadn’t lost its potency in the intervening years. Well, only one way to find out, she supposed. The bottom drawer on the right armoire held what she sought and she brought the container over to the desk to assemble her little care package for tonight.
Beatrice emerged from the hidden room a few minutes later with a sealed envelope, and pulled the bookcase back in place. If Kate had noticed her prolonged absence, or even the hidden room, it didn’t register on the girl’s face.
“Here,” said Beatrice, handing Kate the envelope. Kate stared at the envelope with a puzzled look on her face.
“What’s this?”
“Your next task. Make sure this letter gets delivered and I’ll make sure you’re taken care of by the evening.”
The girl’s expression didn’t waiver as she considered the envelope, and Beatrice held her breath, steeling herself for another outburst. But somewhere the gods of fate and chance were smiling upon her, as Kate stuck the envelope in her pocket and walked out the door.
The girl was late. Ordinarily, Beatrice Taylor would not have cared, and this morning was no different. The baby was at her mom’s, Garrett’s little analyst had inexplicably been transferred to the West Coast office last week, and one story in the paper had particularly caught her eye.
“Kate O’Laughlin, 19, found dead facedown in dorm room,” the headline on page 14 read. Beatrice folded the paper and put it on the table, as a chipper redhead ran up the street and sat down across from her.
“Sorry I’m late! The subway was a complete disaster.”
Beatrice smiled.
“No worries. I take it you have the book?”
Next: A fork in the path appears.
You take the blue path, Beatrice’s story ends and you get chapter 1 of Guild of Magic delivered to your inbox this Friday.
You take the red path, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Did you think the ending of Trainee was nicely buttoned up for Beatrice? You only know one side of the story.
Grab the Guild of Tokens: Special Edition from my online store, which includes two additional prequel short stories starring Beatrice (Enforcer and Relic Hunter) and a prequel novella starring Kate and another character (Memoria).
And if you’re an audiobook listener, listen to the Trainee audiobook below and grab the full special edition audiobook at my online shop as well.