The Thing About Regrets

 The Thing About Regrets

Liam shifted the door, centimeter by centimeter, until it was just wide enough to slip a leg through. His pulse pounded in the silence. Behind him, from the darkness, Kyla let out a thunderous snore, and he exhaled. God bless the deep sleepers of the world. The pilfered pouch of coins nestled snugly in the secret pocket beneath his arm, a comforting weight, a burning anticipation.

He'd regret this, he knew, when the money ran out, and the alcohol wore off, and he awoke face down in the gutter. Or later, long after he left this shitty excuse for a village for someplace grander and richer, when he'd imagine Kyla's face, all scrunched up in hurt and disbelief. But regret came later and the coin came now. A good woman, Kyla, but it was time to move on, and he already had a pile of regrets and a hell of a thirst, so this seemed like a fair bargain.

He laid one foot onto the cold mud outside, and began to shift his weight, wriggling his hips through the slit, nice and easy, just like he was shimmying through a window. 

"You there." A voice growled at him from the murky street outside. Liam's knee slammed into the door, sending it wide, hinges keening like a scorned banshee. He stifled a curse.

The man in front of him was a lumpy thing, broad shoulders, bulging muscle, and bare menace. Moonlight gleamed off the bald pate of his head, and he rested one meaty hand on the grip of the machete in his belt. A nasty scar ran over one eye. God made some men to be thugs.

"You with Kyla?" The man grunted.

Just as others were made to slip away at the first sign of trouble. "You must have the wrong address. Good evening." Liam said, and reached over to shut the door. 

Two-hundred pounds of ugly gristle interposed itself between frame and latch. And as if to punctuate the point, two more men emerged in the dim alleyway. The first, a lad with a weasel-y face, rested a cudgel over his shoulder. The second was a squat fellow whose girth bulged against the impractical number of knives lining his belt.

"No, I don't." Lump's breath reeked of rotten meat and cheap booze. "Kyla owes protection"

"Well then, I'll leave you gentlemen to it." Low, even by his standards.  But that's the thing with regrets -- they don't leave you dead with a knife in your belly.

Lump shifted his bulk to block him.

"You've wasted our time."

Liam chuckled nervously. "A simple understanding between men. You know how it is with, you know, women."  He waved his hands to illustrate whatever it was he was trying to say, glancing from face to face. Lump glowered. Knives stared. Weasel looked confused. Fair, on his count. Weasels weren't known for their empathy.

Lump stuck out one big hand, palm up. "Pay up," he rumbled, as if the shakedown wasn't obvious enough.

"Any chance you lads could come by next Friday?  My aunt in York is sending me --" His words cut off with a squawk when Lump took another step forward, boxing him into the shack.

"No aunts. No later." Framed by the moonlight, the big man lumpily filled the doorway. One hand gripped the machete on his belt. Plainly, negotiations had failed. But Liam wasn't about to give his hard-earned -- well, stolen -- cash. He groped in the darkness behind him for something he could fling or swing. His hand wrapped around a long, smooth handle.

Lump growled something, low and threatening, reaching for him, but Liam was already whipping his arm down. The broom splintered on Lump's head with a delightful crack. Lump knit his jutting brow, swayed, and crumpled to the floor.

Giddiness bubbled up in Liam. "Ha! Next time, you should --" 

Knives's fist knocked the remaining words straight out of him, and Liam looked up just in time to see Weasel's cudgel whistling down.

---

A throbbing headache. The stink of tobacco. Hoarse laughter. A long, dim hall, sawdust on the floor and rough men sitting around stained and splintered tables. From the dais, a man watched him with piercing blue eyes, a man sitting on a chair of polished darkwood and royal red cushions so out of place in the squalor that Liam blinked twice before he believed it. Those icicle eyes skewered him like a pin through a bug.

Liam tried to rub his head, and found his hands tied. He tried to stand, and found his feet bound. Bile tickled his throat. The night's events rushed up like vomit after a dicey sausage. 

"Fuck," he said. 

"Liam. Nice of you to drop in." Voice resonant with authority, the man on the throne spread his hands like he was welcoming an old friend. A hush fell on the room. All eyes on him. "I'm Brother Bartholomew."

Didn't look like a man of the cloth. Liam cleared his parched throat. "Do I know you?"   

"I know you."

"Oh? By which of my deeds?" 

"You stole from us."

"Oh. Me? Not likely." Liam snorted like it was the most ridiculous thing in the world.

Bartholomew waved his hand and chuckled. "What's a little petty theft among _friends._"  He leaned forward, as if confiding. "Truthfully, I was more impressed that you climbed a third-story window in the rain at night. You're a skilled man, Liam."

That rang a bell. "Whitsby, about nine months ago? A few cheap rings and a gold locket, was it? Got a nasty bump on the way down, but still, tidy work, if I say so myself." Liam blinked. "I mean, shit, I'm sorry. I had this debt due, and --"

"As a word to the wise, learn who owns your pawnbroker. Not to worry. We're not a vengeful bunch, right lads?" Assorted guffawing from his coterie of henchmen. Knives sniggered; Weasel squealed. Lump not in attendance. 

One thing about crowds, they love a good grovel. And the thing about leaders, they love a happy crowd. Liam bent at the waist, ropes tightening around his wrists and ankles, and lowered his head to the floor. "Give me a chance to make it up. Believe me, if I had known it was you, Brother, then I would have crawled through that window just to leave you an offering." 

Bartholomew waited for the jeers to die down. "Normally, we'd kill you, or press you into the crew." He continued, conversation-like.

Liam raised his head. "That sounds delightful. The crew part, not the killing part. I've been thinking about joining a nice crew." Next to the casual threat of murder, his humdrum life with Kyla suddenly didn't seem so bad. 

"Knowing your reputation, neither would stick. Instead, I have a small favor to ask of you." 

"I'm listening," Liam said, as if he had a choice in the matter.

"There's an object that I want that's in someone else's possession. Get it for me, and you're a free man. No hard feelings." 

Liam swallowed. “Sounds simple enough.”

Bartholomew gave a good imitation of a benevolent smile. "Your friends from last night will join you. I've arranged a carriage."

---

Liam stared out the cabin window at the rolling fields of wheat.

“This Chesarak, is it a religious thing?" he said.

Lump shrugged. "Dunno. Boss wants it." A nasty bruise bloomed on his head, blues and browns and purples. Didn't seem to bear a grudge from the knock Liam gave him. In fact, he didn't seem to bear any emotion outside the range of sullen to saturnine.

"So it's a sex thing."

Weasel tittered a laugh. "Not everything's a religious thing or a sex thing. Could be a money thing."

"What good is money if it doesn't lead to God or fucking?" Liam said.

"There's drinking."

"Amen to that, and what do you get to after drinking?"

Weasel looked on the verge of an epiphany, but Knives put an end to their musing. "It don't matter what kind of thing it is, 'slong as you get it. Our asses are on the line, too."

Lump grunted in agreement.

"How am I supposed to steal something when I don't even know what it looks like, don't know who owns it, don't know where it is in the house?" Liam ticked his fingers, one, two, three. "Oh God, why did I ever leave Kyla for you three? She cooked for me every morning, you know?"

Knives frowned at him, unmoved. "The boss says you'll know it when you see it, and he doesn't want you talking if you get caught."

"So it really is a sex thing," Liam said.

Weasel squeaked. Knives sighed. The carriage rattled on.

---

"I'm not doing this." Behind the pickets of the fence, through the rows of manicured hedges, and over the expanse of emerald grass, the stone walls of Winshire mansion loomed in the fading light. Guards liveried in red and yellow stood at attention beside the impressive portcullis. More roamed the gardens. "I won’t even make it to the building. This is crazy. This is suicide." 

Lump turned to him and raised one eyebrow.

"Okay, okay, it might take a few weeks to plan a route. To learn the movements of the guards, scope the site, locate an ingress.”

Lump continued to stare at him.

“A few days? Tonight?”

Lump nodded slowly.

Knives rubbed the bridge of his nose. “We’ll create a distraction. Find a way in.”

---

Liam dug his fingers into the rough bark of the oak tree and dragged himself another agonizing foot. A few meters above him, the second story window of the mansion was dark and still. 

In the distance, footsteps and shouts rose into the night. Whatever those three had done, it had worked, and making it here had been as easy as creeping through fifteen feet of prickly hawthorns. Better thorns than spears. He could have been lying next to Kyla right now, but here he was, grateful for thorns.

Gripping the branch tightly, Liam nudged the window open with an outstretched foot. He patted Kyla's pouch for good luck, still tucked under his arm, and with a final wrench of his aching arms, he swung from the branch and through the frame.

He rose to his feet in a long, lavish hallway. Plush red carpet underfoot, a line of dignified oil paintings to the side, and vaulted ceilings above. Best of all, not a soul in sight. 

Knives had said that he'd know the Chesarak when he saw it, which meant that it'd be in plain view. And who knew what else he'd find lying around unattended. The familiar tingle of anticipation ran down his fingers. He crept past a dining room, crystal chandelier sparkling over a mahogany table. A sitting room with Oriental curios in glass cabinets. Room after room, each with enough wealth to live on for the rest of his life, however long that ended up being.  

Then, the muffled sound of footsteps from the end of the hall. Liam flattened himself in the shadow of an alcove.

A middle-aged man in fine robes scurried by in the gloom. Plainly, the fellow didn't want to be seen or followed. He'd rush a few steps, peer into an adjoining room, and then furtively slink past the doorway in a comical pantomime of stealth. 

So Liam watched and followed, amusing himself when the man paused by leering grotesquely from the shadows. He trailed the figure to the end of the hall, then, down a flight of ornate stairs, the sound of the man's lumbering tip-toe masking Liam's practiced midfoot pad. 

The man slipped into a room, and furniture scraped softly inside. Liam counted three seconds of silence, and peered around the corner. Grand flowing tapestries of knights and mythical beasts covered the two closest walls, and a row of taxidermied deer heads stared sightlessly from across the room. No sign of his mark. Plainly, he'd slipped down some passage -- but where?

There were no carpets to conceal trap doors; no shifting antlers on the stags; no bookcases to rotate.

Liam lifted behind the tapestry on his right and found a small, recessed door. Shuffling under the heavy cloth, he tried the handle. Locked. A grin spread across his face. He loved being right. 

---

Picking the lock was quick work. A staircase, hewn into the rock, led into inky darkness. Down and down, in the pitch black, moisture trailing beneath Liam's fingers as he steaded himself against the uneven steps. A faint glow bloomed in the distance, and the passage widened into an antechamber.

In the tenebrous light of a single candle, Liam watched the man disrobe, and prance, naked, into the next room, expectation and ecstasy written on his face. He caught a whiff of sulfur. Unease gripped Liam's stomach.

It was definitely a sex thing.

The man's ring, a simple gold band, sparkled where he had left it on the sconce by the candle.  As Liam crept past, he swept it into his pocket. When he got out of this, if he got out of this, perhaps Kyla would fancy it. Now that'd be an apology.

He stood at the end of a long, subterranean church. It appeared to be hollowed from the ground itself, with unbroken granite walls and pews of black gneiss rising from the ground. And there was his mark, on his knees, bare as the day he was born, prostrate in front of... what? Liam squinted at the object on the altar, the centerpiece of a whorl of sigils, but his head was full of bees and his eyes seemed to be looking in two different directions at once.

He turned and retched.

It was definitely a religious thing, and not the forgive-your-sins kind. Liam squeezed his eyes shut, and grit his teeth against the roiling nausea. God, he hated being right.

"Come, pilgrim, creeping in the night. Stand with me and find your salvation." The kneeling figure rose, and turned. Something wearing the body of a middle-aged man faced him, as proud as sin, dark as a moonless night.

Liam spun around, and tried to flee. The world warped, twisting, all lines spiraling back to that horrible, writhing mass at the center of the room, and Liam was again at the threshold of the church, facing inwards.

"You came for this, didn't you? I am Rofocale. You, too, heard the call? And now that you've found it, why do you avert your eyes?"

"I'm not much for religion," Liam croaked.

The being called Rofocale laughed, a horrible, crackling sound, like flames devouring a log. "Don't compare me to your dusty books and hymns."

"I prefer my communications with the divine to be one way only, thank you. I'll show myself out." His eyes kept creeping up from the floor, to glance at the fascinating object and its steward. 

"Why do you consign yourself to other men's designs? Why do you drown your nature in wine?"

"That's because..." Liam muttered. He couldn't remember why, if he was being honest. He'd lived a life full of unhappiness, and no doubt a great deal more misery awaited him when he left. If he left. 

"Whatever it is that you seek, you will find it here. Women? Wealth? Status? All that you saw tonight are trinkets compared to my glory. Submit to me, and never regret anything again."

It drifted toward him, clawed hand outstretched. Liam reached out to meet it, and to serve with his mind and body and soul, now and forever.  

But the thing about regrets, a life without them is no life at all. Better to face them head on than pretend they weren't there.

His instincts kicked in. With his other arm, he flung Kyla's pouch at the altar. It clipped the pedestal, and the Chesarak teetered and toppled, spinning free of the twist of runes, hitting the ground with a dull clink.

Rofocale let out a gasp, deflating, at once a frail, naked man. Liam's haymaker collided with his nose with a crunch and a spray of blood. He crumpled to the floor.

Lightning quick, Liam sprang over his body, grabbed Kyla’s pouch, and dropped the burlap sack over the Chesarak. It shuddered and whined under the cloth, like steel quenching in water, but Liam was beyond caring for the complaints of gods or demons.  He fled from the cursed chapel, as fast as his feet could take him, half stumbling, out from the bowels of the Earth, past the watchful eyes of the deer, up the winding staircase. 

A maid saw him as he tore past, face morphing from drowsiness to surprise to horror, letting out a shriek of alarm. Without slowing, Liam leapt from the window and landed crunching, scrambling, blundering through the hawthorns, barbs tearing at him like the fingers of the damned, tears streaming from his eyes, until a pair of strong arms wrapped around him and bundled him away.

---

Bartholomew accepted the sack without looking inside.

“There's a place here for you, if you want it. We can always use a man of your talents.” he said. 

"To be honest, I'd sooner gut myself than to have anything to do with you, or that -- whatever it is -- again." Liam shuddered. "I'm done with slinking and thieving. It's an honest life from here on out."

Those blue eyes appraised him. Bartholomew gave a curt nod and patted him on the shoulder.

"If so much as whisper a word of this, I'll find you and cut your tongue out,” he said mildly.

---

Liam stood at the end of that drab, muddy alley staring at the hut that, a lifetime ago, he'd snuck out of that moonlit night. It wasn't grand, not rich, but an honest, wholesome place far from unholy idols or holy men. It was a place for the new man, the better man he'd become and he was here to do the right thing. Make amends, turn a new leaf. Maybe even find love. 

Liam squeezed the ring in his pocket, took a deep breath, and rapped on the door. The hinges whined, and Kyla stood there, frowning at him. She was more beautiful than he remembered.

"I didn't think I'd see you around here again. What do you want?" She said.

All the words he'd had stored up got tangled up in the unfriendliness in her voice and caught in his throat. 

"Um," he said, feeling very foolish, "Well."

She squinted at him with suspicion.  "This isn't a sex thing, is it? Because the answer is no, even if you didn't try to steal from me."

"Well, that's the thing. Not the sex thing, I mean, the stealing thing."  He dug out the pouch and thrust it out. "Here, I brought it back. Sorry."

She didn't move. "Open it."

Liam pulled the cord. The leather was packed with flat pebbles.

"I knew your type the moment I saw you." She shrugged. "You're not bad looking, and a woman has her needs. I saw you were looking for a way out, so I gave you one, placing that pouch in plain view. Then those lads turned up at the right time, and I figured that was the last we'd see of each other."

The words stung on the way in, though Liam had to admit that they were fair enough. But he hadn't come all this way to give up.

"I thought maybe we could, you know, try again. They offered me everything, but I came back for you." He said, faintly, plaintively. He squeezed the ring until it hurt his palm. It didn't seem to be the time anymore.

She scrunched her forehead, the way she did when she was puzzled. 

"No," she said. Her voice was firm. She shut the door.

Liam stood there, and stared at the rocks in his hand, alone as the afternoon faded to dusk.

That was the thing about regrets. They were all you were left with in the end.

Not the only thing. At least he could pawn the ring.