Chapter Text
Under the cover of Undermine’s semi-dark night, the Shiv made it to the outskirts, where a “hidden” smuggler’s route took him out of the city. He carried with him what few worldly possessions he had managed to keep over the years: the clothes on his back, his spare pair of socks and underwear, his knives, and the fancy new dagger he’d acquired from that weird idealist who’d stopped by the week prior. He reached into his pocket and reassured himself that the coin he was meant to give to a cheesemonger in Stormwind was still there. It was slightly larger than the money coins in his other pocket, of which he had very little. Most of what he earned ended up going right back to Mozzy Gloxscorn, who owned the apartments--a generous term--he had his employees live in.
Unbeknownst to many, Renzik was young. He was just a few weeks shy of his twentieth birthday as he crept his way through the near total darkness of the tunnel, listening carefully for any sound. But there were no sounds, and the dead silence unnerved him more than approaching footsteps might have. He suppressed a shiver, his vest doing nothing to keep the cold at bay.
His beloved overcoat was currently floating in the marina. Anything else, anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary, was still in the falling-apart shitbox he’d rented. The hope was that it looked like he’d died. Or, at the very least, people wouldn’t think to go looking for him until he was well clear of the city. There was only one person in Undermine who knew what was really going on, and he had gotten Jinzi set up as a gopher for the Crackslagger Cartel to buy her silence. It was a terrible job, but it would certainly pay her more than he ever did. Enough that she could eat every day, and maybe eventually get herself a new pair of shoes. The kid seemed to get bigger every time he saw her.
He had thought about taking her. He really, really had. Spatter, too. The Shiv was known for being brutally violent and a ruthless bastard, but even now he felt a tightening in his chest at the knowledge that he was abandoning those kids to the whims of a place that was even more violent and ruthless than he was.
He gave a slight shake of his head. He had to be that way. Ever since his parents died. It was the only way he was able to survive, a lesson he’d learned faster than anything else in his life. He could get drinks after work with people, crack jokes and trade banter. Gurgthock in particular was great to shoot the shit with. But there were no friends in Undermine, no one you could really trust.
He had also thought about trying to relocate his parents’ graves one last time, but that, too, wasn’t a possibility. Before the mines, he had tried to keep them tended to. Then he got caught, and brought before a judge bought and paid for by the cartels, and sentenced to a year of manual labor mining for kajamite. Unpaid, of course. As punishment. All his hair fell out from whatever chemicals they were using to refine the stuff, which probably wasn’t good.
Then again, he probably wasn’t going to make it to that cheesemonger in Stormwind, so the likelihood that he would live long enough to experience the repercussions of that year were slim. He was Mozzy’s top enforcer. The night was young, and more likely than not there was something Mozzy wanted from him. People would notice him missing soon, if they hadn’t already. They would go looking. Maybe they wouldn’t find his overcoat in the marina. Maybe Jinzi had ratted him out, angry that he had abandoned her.
His steps quickened. He had dug his parents’ graves, as best as a scrawny eight year-old could, and now he was digging his own. After that year, he had gone back to where they were and realized that everyone else in Undermine didn’t know that that’s where his family was. Instead, people had kept doing what they always did: finding an out-of-the-way place to dump their trash.
Fifteen year-old Renzik hadn’t cried that hard since he’d buried them there. All the horrors he’d just experienced in the mines, the truly evil people who’d taken advantage of him in every way possible… and that had been the final straw. He cried, and then he got mean. It hadn’t taken long for Mozzy to notice him. Mozzy liked mean.
“Play your cards right, kid,” he’d said, rolling his overstuffed cigar to the other side of his mouth, “and you could have a real future here.”
He started to feel a slight breeze. There was a patch up ahead that wasn’t as dark as the surrounding tunnel. The surface was close. His ears perked up.
A quiet snick of a dagger being pulled from its sheath was the only warning he got before the blade was stabbing towards his throat. He pulled out his new dagger, still coated with the purple lotus, and parried, then lunged. It took a few tries, fumbling in the dark as he was, before he sank his own blade into the eye of his attacker and didn’t stop until the hilt jammed into the socket, then ripped. He felt the spatter of gore on his own face and grimaced. But he had to send a message.
He turned his head slowly and pushed the body away, silhouetted against the night sky. There was a very faint, “Holy shit,” followed by the sound of retreating footsteps. Whether they were smugglers or someone sent after him by Mozzy, he would never know, but it didn’t matter. The survivor would report back to someone that might come looking, and so he turned and hurried up to the entrance.
Killing people by stabbing them through the eye was his signature move. It scared the hell out of pretty much everyone. It kept him alive. No one would’ve given him a second thought if they knew he was just some scrappy punk fresh off a stint on the chain gang. They took him seriously because they assumed he was much older. No one thought a kid could be that brutal. All of them thought they could be brutal to a kid. Monsters begetting monsters. The cycle continues.
I want a new cycle, he thought, and stepped out into the night.
Renzik had been on the surface plenty of times as a Crackslagger enforcer. The more he had worked his way up the ranks of the cartel, the more he was assigned tasks that demanded only the tightest security. Top-dollar shipments coming by boat into Kezan that needed escorting were the most common. He had seen the sky plenty of times…
… But he had never really taken the time to properly look up. Real stars twinkled above, too many to possibly count. And outshining them all were the White Lady and the Blue Child, the two brilliant moons. Some goblins spent their whole lives underground, terrified at the mere thought of not having a solid roof of earth over their heads. Renzik had never been afraid of it. Gravity kept him from falling up into the sky, as he’d heard people say. There were few things he thought were beautiful in life, but gazing up now, he decided that the night sky was one of them.
He had checked the cartel’s ship logs a week before dipping out and found a vessel bound for Booty Bay leaving at dawn tomorrow morning. It was their biggest cargo freighter, with a large crew and, hopefully, more than enough space to stow away undetected.
The town of Bilgewater Port ahead of him was still well-lit despite the late hour. As he drew closer he heard the usual din kick up. Sailing crews, some of less repute than others, drinking, fighting, dancing, and generally carrying on. He slipped into one of the back alleys and began searching around. He couldn’t ask for a job on his target ship--he’d personally met the captain not that long ago--so he needed a way to disguise himself. Lucky for him, these were sailors he was robbing. Lots of them wore nondescript clothing and were passed out drunk. He was able to find himself a loose overshirt, a cloak, and a scarf, all in dark colors that were less likely to stand out in a dark corner of the cargo hold.
That was one problem solved, but now he faced the other one: he needed to board the ship undetected. It was late, but not late enough for most people to be asleep, and besides that, he couldn’t swim, meaning he couldn’t sneak around the back side and crawl in through a port hole. His only option was to go up one of the two gangways leading up to the main deck. That meant avoiding not only sailors, but the night watchmen as well.
He still had a few hours before the graveyard shift, which gave him time to do some reconnaissance. The tallest building was a couple stories taller than the ship itself, meaning that as he slipped into a corner spot on the roof and peered over the edge he could study the guard patterns and learn of any weak points.
It was at half past two that he finally felt he had a decent chance. If he was caught, he could perhaps play it off as Mozzy being paranoid, as he was wont to do. Especially if he had smoked too much anchorweed. He slipped off his boots and held them in one hand as he stole up the gangway, keeping low and quiet. There was a guard that had just walked past where he ascended on the main deck. He didn’t stop to see if they noticed him. People tended to sense when there was someone watching them. Staring at them, even if only for a moment, greatly increased his chances of getting caught. He ducked behind the first pallet of crates he could find and hid under the canvas tarp covering it all. There was a sailor standing right next to the entrance to the lower deck, smoking a cigarette. It looked like he’d just lit up, too. Renzik settled into a position that, although uncomfortable, wouldn’t make his legs fall asleep, and waited. The guy took his sweet time, of course. The smell that wafted over to him was distinctly of menthols; the good kind, too, not the cheap crap Gurgthock smoked that smelled like a tire fire. He wondered absently if his friend would look for him, or if he would even notice Renzik was missing. He was always talking big about how he was going to be the master of ceremonies of his own fighting ring, with an act that was where all the action was.
More likely than not, he would assume that Renzik had finally broken the wrong guy’s nose and gotten whacked. Lots of people had it out for the Shiv, and there were about to be a lot more with the opportunity for payback if this asshole didn’t finish his cigarette.
Finally, blessedly, the guy went to go pitch the stub into the ocean below, and Renzik dove into the stairwell.
Down below, the place was practically deserted. The only sailors in the accommodations section of the lower deck were asleep, allowing Renzik to creep by without being noticed. The door to the cargo hold had a lock that was easily bypassed, and when he opened it, the soft creaking didn’t wake anybody up. It was almost too good to be true.
His heart began fluttering in his chest as he entered the hold. Little port holes allowed small amounts of moonlight to stream through, illuminating the vast space packed to the brim with product. He picked a spot by one of the windows, which thankfully opened to allow for some fresh air. The rations were right at the entrance to the accommodations, but there were multiple pallets with food bound for Booty Bay, mostly different kinds of culinary mushrooms. And, of course, there was lots and lots of kaja cola. He had experimented with the stuff a few times and found that the rush he got was too similar to the fear response at the sound of a foreman’s boot to be enjoyable. Give him a good gin and tonic any day over that.
He had never traveled by sea before. The slight rocking of the ship would have been relaxing were it not for his need to stay on high alert. Ears pricked, he waited.
And waited.
And waited.
He heard crewmen staggering up the gangplank throughout the night. Raucous laughter and drunken slurring. Every creak, every barest indication that someone might discover him, sent his heart skipping.
But as the first of predawn light bathed the world in blue, no one came into the cargo hold. Then dawn arrived. Still, he was left alone.
He heard the barking of orders from the captain and the footsteps of sailors scurrying about in preparation for their voyage. Finally, two goblins entered the cargo hold. Renzik retreated further into the shadows. He didn’t believe in any sort of higher power and wasn’t a praying man, but right then he found himself asking whatever cosmic force was out there in the universe to keep him hidden.
The crewmen spent the better part of an hour ensuring that everything was secured properly and their rations were accounted for.
“Some idiot left the hold’s lock open last night,” said one of them.
“Didya find out who?”
“Of course not! Everyone denied it, but it was obviously one’a’em.”
There was a pause. Renzik watched as the second guy looked around. Then: “Think we got a stowaway?”
He froze, his mouth going dry. Dammit, they know, they can sense me, I shoulda never done this dammit dammit dammit--
“We’ve been through the entire hold; if there was one we’d’ve found’em by now. Nah, just somebody bein’ stupid.”
That had been thanks to deliberate action on Renzik’s part. He had kept the two in his sights at all times, skulking away from spots they were headed to next in order to always be out of their own sight. When the crewmen at last felt satisfied that everything was in place and the lock was heard clacking into place on the other side of the door, he found his breath again, shaky though it was.
And just like that, the anchor was being pulled up and the ship’s foghorn blared, signalling its departure. Renzik dared to peek out of the porthole at the city slowly drifting by. He wondered if this would be the last time he would see his home. His thoughts went again to his parents, their bones somewhere underneath the mounds of scrap and garbage; of Spatter and Jinzi, who would probably be just waking up and trying to scavenge some breakfast; of gob-damn Mozzy Gloxscorn and every rat bastard in the Crackslagger Cartel.
Of the mines, and all the trouble they had caused him, the nightmares he still had that he was back there.
Of everything on that island that was growing smaller and smaller with each passing second. That wretched, miserable island that had thrown him to the hyaenas and couldn’t give a wit whether he lived or died.
He suddenly, desperately wished he was eight years old again, curled up in his mom’s arms while his dad made up a bedtime story to tell him. The world outside their little ramshackle home was dangerous, but in those moments, Renzik had felt as safe as could be.
Undermine, his home, had been a difficult place to be from. But it was his home. The knowledge that he may never see it again sat like a rock in his gut. It was too late to go back now, though; he didn’t know how to swim.
Soon enough, it was a speck on the horizon. Then it was gone, disappearing beneath the infinite blue of the ocean. It was then that Renzik finally pulled himself away from the porthole, sliding down the wall until he was sat with his knees hugged tightly to his chest. He sighed. That damn idealist had opened too many old wounds in him. It was making him soft.
***
The voyage from Kezan to Booty Bay took five days. Renzik had heard the South Seas were known for being relatively calm, owing to the warm currents and overall more hospitable climate, making for smooth sailing.
Renzik’s stomach begged to differ. And the only thing that seemed to give him the tiniest bit of relief was, unfortunately, sipping kaja’cola, which he had to steal from a sealed palette of the stuff. It couldn’t be helped. It was either risk exposing himself through the kaja’cola, or risk exposing himself from the constant seasickness.
All the cans featured a label that read, “It gives you ideas!”, which might have been true. Maybe if Renzik’s brain hadn’t been so preoccupied by his roiling stomach he might’ve been able to test that claim. One thing that he did know was that he would have to find a way to sneak off of the ship while everyone was unloading the cargo.
He peeked out the porthole at the dock below, and the gently-lapping waves below that. Swimming couldn’t be that hard, right? Looking closer at the water, and in particular the water quality, however, caused him to reconsider.
He shrank back into his shadowy corner at the sound of the door to the cargo hold swinging open.
“Alright people, let’s get this stuff unloaded! And if any of you idiots thinks you can get away with skimmin’ a lil’ off the top, you ain’t gettin’ paid for the trip!” the foreman barked.
Suddenly people were rushing into the hold. Renzik panicked. There was only one door out, and if he tried to sneak past, he would be caught. His last remaining option was just as likely to kill him, especially if he swallowed any of that nasty seawater, but he had no choice. Shedding his coat, he launched himself through the porthole and into the ocean. He heard shouts behind him of “Stowaway! Kill him!” and then he was plunging into the water below.
The water was warm, thankfully, but murky as all get outs. He was able to keep his eyes open just barely enough to see, but it took all his willpower to do so. The harbor and all its filth stung horribly. With a start, he realized that he was sinking. Then something brushed against his leg. He looked down, and wished he hadn’t.
Because the thing that had brushed his leg was a fucking shark. Panic greater than anything he’d known gripped him. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. He began to thrash, desperately trying to reach the surface, but swimming was, in fact, very hard. It was even harder when he was trying to get away from something that could very well eat him.
Suddenly, a pole was thrust into the water next to him. He reached out and grabbed it, and was pulled to the surface. A tauren was standing over him as he flopped onto the dock like a dying fish and gasped for air, vision going a bit starry.
“Oh, good, he’s not dead! I hate it when I have to revive people. Good work, Seahorn,” came a goblin voice.
Renzik’s eyes were stinging nearly to the point where he couldn’t open them, but he didn’t have time to ask for help. The captain of the cargo freighter was howling for his blood from the top of the gangplank, and several crewmen were rushing toward him with swords and pistols drawn.
The goblin next to the tauren laughed. “Oh-hoh, shit! You’d better start runnin’, bud.”
Scrambling to his feet, he did just that, racing down the pier and into the city proper. There were plenty of crowds along the docks, but that didn’t help in his case. He stuck out like a sore thumb, running for his life and soaked to the bone as he was. His pursuers were hollering for people to stop him as he struggled to make his way through the throngs of people, and he had to dodge a few grab attacks from people hoping to get a reward for bringing him to the captain. He knew they were gaining on him; he could feel the distance closing. He had to do something, and fast.
There were alleyways to duck into the further along he got, but all of them looked to be dead ends. He couldn’t find a storefront to hide in with his current bedraggled state. Then, up ahead, he noticed a few scantily-clad women hanging out in front of a nondescript building. It was not his first choice, but he was desperate.
He turned at the last second and went down the alleyway to the side of the bordello, then dove through the first open window he found, praying that he wasn’t interrupting anything.
As he rolled to his feet, he heard an indignant, “Hey!” and looked up to see a young goblin woman glowering down at him.
“You need to go through the front door if you--”
He dove for the corner and put a shaking finger to his lips, frantically shushing her. “I can pay, I promise, just please hide me,” he begged. Fumbling for his coinpurse, he dumped it out on the ground, being sure to snatch Shaw’s coin up before she could take it.
“Please,” he whispered.
Brow furrowed, she glanced down at the money, then back at him, cowering in the corner. Despite the amount of makeup she wore, she looked no older than he did. A thin but jagged scar on the crook of her neck told him that she had seen her fair share of hard times, just as he had. He hoped she would recognize that, or at least be willing to recognize that he was still paying for a service, even if it wasn’t the typical one.
After a grueling few moments, she reached out and closed and locked the window. “If my mistress finds you it’s your ass that’s gonna pay,” she warned him.
He nodded several times in rapid succession. “I understand. Thank you.”
In Undermine, he had only gone to brothels to shake people down for money. He had no taste for such things. The workers there would try and get him to stay for “a glass of wine”, clearly hoping to curry his favor, but the second one of them would lay a hand on him it was like being lit on fire. He would make a point of making a brusque exit, emphasizing his role as “The Shiv.” No one touched the Shiv, not if he could help it.
He could hear the crewmen outside talking amongst themselves. He knew that if he had to, he could find something to use as a weapon and take them on. Three against the Shiv usually wasn’t an issue when he was in tip-top shape, but Renzik was not in tip-top shape after five days of seasickness and barely any food or water.
The lady’s eyes flitted sidelong at the commotion out the window, then back at Renzik. He shrank further back into the corner to confirm that they were who he was hiding from, and she gave the faintest nod, lighting up another cigarette and taking a seat in her velvet armchair.
Eventually, mercifully, he heard the noise fade away. The lady gave him another nod, and he turned about to look out the window. The crewmen were gone; lingering there revealed that they weren’t waiting around the alleyway for him to pop out.
He scooped up the money and handed it to her. “Thank you,” he told her, pouring every bit of earnestness he could into the words.
She shrugged, taking a drag of her cigarette. “We’ve all had people we’ve had to run from,” she said simply.
He didn’t for the life of him know what possessed him to do so, but he jerked his thumb towards the door and asked, “They treat you okay here?”
She guffawed, surprised herself. “What, you gonna sweep me off my feet to something better, Mr. White Knight?” she laughed. Settling back in her chair, she said, “This is my better life. I’ve got round-the-clock protection and no one does anything I don’t want’m to. Now scram.”
He unlocked the window and slipped outside.
***
The problem with bribing that lady into hiding him was that he now no longer had any coin left with which to buy food or supplies. While he had come to be a very good pickpocket thanks to his youth, the folks around Booty Bay looked just as mean as they had in Undermine, and he didn’t particularly like the idea of getting caught. He did make a note of what different fruits and vegetables looked like, however; if they were local, he might be able to find them during his travels.
All he had to do to find Stormwind was stick to the coast and head north. Roads were not an option at this point; he still wasn’t entirely certain he wouldn’t get recognized by the wrong people.
It was a choice that made the next seven and a half days hard. Undermine was always damp and cold, so while he was used to the humidity, he was struggling to adjust to the heat of Stranglethorn’s jungle. What little coastal breeze managed to drift up the cliffs to him provided scant relief. He found a large, stiff leaf to fan himself, and occasionally found springs that looked clean enough to drink from--thankfully he was only wrong once--while he worked constantly to bat away biting insects always buzzing in his ears. Their bites itched like hell, and he found himself multiple times losing his patience and attempting to kill everything around him.
He had been correct about many of the produce sold in Booty Bay’s market being found locally, and was able to feed himself enough to keep moving. He found nooks to hunker down in at night and try to sleep, try being the key word. Though he never saw the creatures they were attached to, he could see eyes staring at him just beyond his field of vision.
During the daytime, he saw a lot of different creatures for the first time. Crocolisks were about as ugly as he was; there was one time where he saw a tiger, which he had only seen as a rug on Trade Prince Gloxscorn’s office floor. Snakes were new to him, too, as were the monkeys, which were not as friendly as he had been led to believe from childhood bedtime stories. They seemed to take pleasure in chasing him, too.
Exhausted as he was, he kept going. He hadn’t come so far already to just give up now, and besides, there was no going back. The only thing waiting for him in Undermine was his body getting dumped in the landfill.
Eventually, the jungle sloped up into hills that grew more arid and barren the further he walked. He must be coming up on Westfall. From what little he knew, this was an area overrun by a gang calling themselves the Defias Brotherhood. He doubted they would take kindly to a random goblin’s presence in the area, so when he reached the top of the hills overlooking miles of farmland, he took a moment to search for another way. In the very distance, he could see a large city. Stormwind was within his grasp at last.
His new route took him across the breadth of the hills, during which time he only encountered one spring he could drink from. The few pieces of fruit he had the space to carry with him would have to do until he could get to the city.
Descending the hills took him to a wide, fast-flowing river. A sun-soaked woodland lay on the other side. It required yet another detour to find a bridge crossing the water. He grimaced as his stomach twisted itself into knots from hunger. More detours wasted more energy he didn’t have. At least he hadn’t come across any Defias Brotherhood members.
He spent that evening attempting to wash his clothes in the river. The slimy bilge of Booty Bay had mixed with the buckets he’d sweat trudging through the jungle to form a horrid-smelling crust that he just couldn’t stand any longer. Besides, if he wanted to successfully sneak into Stormwind, the guards needed to be unable to smell him from ten feet away. Stripping down, he waded into the shallows and rinsed himself off as well until he at last felt something approximating clean.
When he found a hollowed-out tree to sleep in that night, there were no crocolisks or tigers or biting insects trying to make a meal out of him, and the sleep he managed to get was actually restful.
The next day’s trek brought him across another river and through another woodland area. By the time darkness fell, he was staring through the bushes at the towering stone gates of Stormwind. There were armored guards everywhere, meaning that he wouldn’t be able to just walk on through. And while goblins were neutral in the conflicts between the Alliance and Horde, he was fairly certain a lone goblin with no obvious business in the city would be as welcome as he would be to the Defias Brotherhood.
He skirted the edge of the city and hiked up even steeper hills than those between Stranglethorn and Westfall. Despite being better-rested he was not yet better-fed or watered, and two weeks of this were truly starting to wear on him. He felt like he was back in the mines, starving and exhausted day in and day out. His sorry state made him even more anxious about what awaited him inside the city. He couldn’t read Common, so how was he supposed to find this “Master of Cheese”? What if he had come all this way just to be killed for his efforts? What if Shaw turned him away? Where would he go? How would he survive?
He shook his head hard. No, he couldn’t let those thoughts get to him. He had to keep going. For once in his miserable life, he had to believe things were going to be okay.
Once past the gates, he kept to the rooftops, on high alert both for guards on the ground below and gryphon riders in the skies above. More than once he had to do some quick footwork to avoid being spotted, and nearly fell off of several roofs in the process. All the while, he had to keep an eye out for any sort of cheese shop.
At last, he found what looked to be a storefront that a “Master of Cheese” would set up. It was the largest one he had come across, with elaborate displays in the window. Renzik, faint with hunger, felt his mouth watering at the sight. He dropped down into the alleyway below. There was a side door to the building. Reaching into his pocket, he grabbed the coin Shaw had given him, took a deep, bracing breath, and lifted a hand to knock.
The door opened before he could. An older human man stood silhouetted against the faint light from inside. He arched one expectant eyebrow. “Well?”
Renzik, trying and failing to hide how he trembled, held out the coin. The man took it and closely inspected it. After a moment, he nodded, and Renzik let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
“Come in,” he said, stepping aside. His accent was more refined than the human pirates Renzik usually dealt with--maybe Gilnean?
Entering, Renzik followed the man as he led him down a flight of stairs and into a cellar. There was a table with a few chairs that he was invited to sit at, though the man did not take a seat himself.
Hands clasped behind his back, he evaluated Renzik for a moment before saying, “You look… unwell.”
Taken aback, he found his voice enough to reply, “W-what?”
“When was the last time you ate anything?” the man asked.
Renzik stared at him, mouth agape.
With a small huff, the man went on: “I’ll take that as a ‘not for some time’. Wait here, don’t touch anything.”
Renzik… was not entirely sure what to do with himself. He sat at the table, tapping his hands in random patterns to try and stave off the growing sense of dread. Looking around, the place looked like an ordinary cellar; were it not for the wood instead of metal, it would’ve looked just like any other cellar back in Undermine. But he was definitely not in Undermine anymore. He knew what to do down there, how to act and how to get by. This was an entirely different world than the one he had just fled. Literally and figuratively, he couldn’t help but feel small.
The man returned after an anxious few minutes that had felt like hours, carrying a pitcher of water, a pair of cups, and a sandwich, which he set in front of Renzik.
Despite his stomach’s desperate pleas, all he could do was stare at it, then up at the man. “I-I… I don’t have any money,” he said quietly.”
The man let out a hearty guffaw. “Why, whatever would you need money for right now? Go on, eat! It’s not poison.”
He’d stopped being fed decent meals like this when his parents died. From then on out, it had been whatever scraps he could find or, eventually, whatever bones people were willing to throw him for doing acceptable work. He hadn’t done anything for this man, and the mention of poison immediately put his hackles up in suspicion.
With an irritated sigh, the man remarked, “You know, it’s considered rude to refuse what your host has generously offered you. There’s some very enjoyable Alterac swiss in there, from a maker I hand-picked out of about fifty others.”
He felt a bead of sweat forming on his brow. Was it getting hotter in here?
But finally, after almost two weeks of starving, he couldn’t stand it anymore, and tentatively picked up the sandwich. It was incredible. The veggies were crisp and fresh, the meat didn’t taste like rubber, and yeah, the swiss was good. He stopped caring if it was poisoned the moment he took his first bite. He finished it in record time and followed it with a full glass and a half of water.
The man had taken a seat in the chair across from him and was watching with a twinkle of amusement in his eye. “I’ll give your compliments to my wife,” he chuckled lightly. “You know, from what little I’ve experienced of Undermine I’m not really sure how things are done down there, but up here, in Stormwind, we do our best to take care of our own. SI:7 is full of antisocials and ruffians, for certain, but that sentiment still rings true.”
I’ll believe it when I see it, he thought bitterly. People were people, no matter where they were from, and people always had the capacity to be bastards. Shaw had told him that he wasn’t a good man, and Renzik had no reason to not take his word for it. He was an assassin; of course he’d done some messed up stuff. So had Renzik. Hopefully that would help him blend in a little better.
Footsteps coming down the staircase had both of them turn their heads. Renzik recognized Shaw, who was out of his armor and in more casual clothing, but not the two others who flanked him. One, a woman, had short red hair and a red button-up vest. The other was a taller, bulkier man than Shaw, with jet black hair and a natural scowl. He knew there had been other SI:7 agents who had intercepted that lorrie; could these be some of them?
“Ah, Mathias,” the man greeted. “I’ve ensured our guest has been well taken care of while we’ve been waiting, though I’m not sure he quite matches the description you gave me of the face-cracking top cartel enforcer.”
Renzik very pointedly chose not to say anything to the man, instead keeping his attention fixed on Shaw.
“Appearances can be deceiving, Elling. I can assure you, he’s our guy,” Shaw told him. Turning to Renzik, he added, “I’m glad you decided to come. These are my colleagues, Sloan and Jasper.”
He nodded a greeting to each of them, who were watching him like hawks. After a brief pause, he asked, “So… how does this work?”
Shaw presented him with a piece of paper and a pen. “This is your work contract. Take your time to review it; you can walk away now, but once you sign it, there’s no going back.”
The sandwich and water he’d inhaled suddenly weren’t sitting so well. He swallowed hard. There were characters on the page he knew to be letters in an alphabet, but beyond that it was hopeless. Nothing he looked at registered as any sort of word to him. Did Shaw know this about him? He had watched this exact thing happen, once. Mozzy Gloxscorn had tricked some poor illiterate shopkeep into paying an exorbitant amount of money in protection fees to the cartel, and of course Renzik had had to go and shake him down when he couldn’t pay. That day had ended with him burning the shop down and telling the guy he was lucky it wasn’t him being lit on fire instead.
He grimaced at the memory, then nearly jumped out of his skin when Shaw prompted, “Do you have any questions?”
The dread of knowing what he would have to say made him feel sick. The room felt like a furnace now as, with a monumental effort, he managed to eke out the words: “I can’t read Common. Only goblin.”
He didn’t miss the bemused looks everyone was giving Shaw, who waved it off and came to sit next to him. “That was my mistake, I apologize.”
It took a moment for the words to register. They weren’t said in sarcasm; no, it sounded like Shaw actually felt apologetic.
Was this how Renzik died? Was this all some sick, elaborate joke played on an unsuspecting fool like him? The surprise he felt morphed into suspicion, and once more his guard went up. Shaw was tricking him. He was going to trick him into signing something he shouldn’t.
“I’m afraid my goblin isn’t very good,” Shaw admitted. “Since the contract is part of your permanent employment record, I want the wording to be precise. I can always just read it aloud to you if you’d rather not wait for someone more knowledgeable to translate it.”
Renzik eyed him, hackles fully risen. “How do I know what you’re sayin’ is what’s actually in the contract?” he wondered.
“Because I have no reason to lie to you. I asked you here because I genuinely do want to recruit you to my agency. The only test was seeing if you could get into Stormwind. This is just a bit of bureaucracy. A formality.”
Renzik’s skeptical gaze locked with Shaw’s perfectly calm one for a long while. Any attempt to read the man’s expression, to discern any sort of hidden meaning in his words or trick up his sleeve failed, either because Renzik was too stupid--because at this point he felt really stupid--or Shaw was that good at schooling his features.
Taking a deep breath, he nodded at the contract, and Shaw began to read it to him. It was humiliating, to say the least. Renzik felt his face burning the entire time. It was like being a little kid again, being taught how to read, only this time he was a grown adult who had just been the Crackslagger’s top enforcer.
When Shaw finished, Renzik found himself at a crossroads. He could never go back to Undermine and expect to live, but perhaps he could leave Stormwind and find another road to walk. He adjusted his grip on the pen. No, there were no other roads. He had nothing and no one. He had to either make it here, or die trying.
Trying his best to keep his hand steady, he signed the contract.
“Do you have a surname?” Shaw asked.
He shook his head. “No. It’s just Renzik.”
Shaw took the contract and signed his own name with a great deal more ease and confidence, then presented it to Elling, who stamped the document with a seal that he assumed was SI:7’s official mark.
Shaw extended a hand to Renzik, and the two shook. “Welcome to SI:7, Renzik. I look forward to working with you.”
“Y-yeah. Likewise,” Renzik replied, still feeling like the whole thing was either a cruel mistake or a fever dream.
This was it, then. This was his new life.
Shaw stood at that moment and gestured to Renzik with a grin. “Everyone, I would like to introduce you to Renzik, my new second-in-command.”