The scent of roast chicken didn't belong in the Gutters.
It curled through the air like a lie, thick with garlic and dripping fat, spitting quietly over the rigged fireplate Kazan had propped on two uneven bricks. Outside, Varentis stank of piss, ash, and wet stone, but inside the old watchtower room, it smelled like victory.
Or close enough.
"Y'know," Kazan said, squinting into the fire as he prodded the crackling chicken with a bent iron fork, "if I closed my eyes, ignored the mildew on the ceiling, the cracked walls, the smell of blood that never quite washes out of the floorboards, Bren's piss-scented bedroll, the rot under the stairs, the black mold on the back wall that I'm fairly sure is becoming sentient, the rats that hiss like they've read poetry, the broken window that whistles like a dying mule, and the strange moaning noise from the fifth floor no one's checked in weeks…"
He inhaled theatrically.
"…I could almost believe I'm dining in the Noble Quarter."
Bren, curled like a paranoid squirrel in his nest of rags, scratched at a patch of flaky skin on his forearm. "Why would you close your eyes? That's when the lizards get in."
Kazan blinked. "Still on about the thumb-lizards?"
"They evolved," Bren whispered, as if the walls were listening. "They have tools now."
"Last week it was wings," Kazan said.
"Last week they had wings. Now they've got thumbs. It's a timeline."
Kazan looked over at Darian's empty seat and shook his head. "I swear, he fights in the pits for coin, and we live in one."
Bren kept muttering to himself, brushing redleaf flakes off his blanket and picking at a satchel of loose teeth and half-melted buttons he insisted were currency in the undercity.
Kazan leaned in and sniffed the bird, grease hissing as it spat across the firestone. He grinned. "Smells like opportunity. Or maybe salmonella in a dress. Either way, we're feasting."
Bren barely looked up from his rags. "Smells like evolution, that's what it smells like. They've grown thumbs. That's how they open locks now. Thumbed little bastards."
Kazan groaned. "By Basst's crusty arsecheeks, Mole, do you ever not chirp on about the lizards?"
"They're real."
"You sure it ain't just your crusty sock colony finally declaring independence? I saw one movin' last night. Had a limp."
Bren narrowed his eyes. "You're jealous 'cause I attract women with depth."
"You attract rot, Mole," Kazan shot back, flipping the chicken with a bent fork. "If you got laid half as often as you trip balls, we'd have to start soundproofing your corner."
Bren went red. "I get laid."
"Yeah?" Kazan leaned in, grinning wide. "By who? That poxy widow from Pig's Cross with the fog-eye and the breath like boiled turnips?"
"That was one time," Bren muttered. "And she was sweet. Smiled at me with both gums."
"She was half in the grave you ginger bastard."
"Better odds for me," Bren mumbled.
Kazan barked a laugh. "You ever done anything tender in your whole sorry life?"
Bren thought about it. "I pet a dog once."
Kazan shook his head. "We live in a piss-stained tower with lopsided floors and dead stairwells, and somehow you're still the strangest thing in here."
Bren looked smug. "You sayin' I stand out?"
"I'm sayin' if I wake up with your socks crawlin' across my chest again, I'm feeding you to the pits."
Bren clutched his satchel protectively. "You touch my socks, you start a war."
"Thumb-lizards can have you," Kazan muttered. "Just hope they're into bad hygiene and worse choices."
Bren nodded. "They respect intellect."
"You mean voices in your skull," Kazan said.
"They pay rent," Bren shot back.
Kazan cackled and stabbed the chicken again. "Gods save me, this tower's cursed."
The curtain lifted and in stepped Darian, bruised and worn but walking straight. His boots were scuffed, his knuckles bandaged, and his face still swollen on one side.
"Speak of the cock-scarred devil," Kazan said. "Pit Pup returns."
Darian's hair was still damp and clinging to his neck from the bucket-shower he'd taken behind the watchtower. Steam clung to his skin in the cool air. He moved with that loose, boneless ease that came only after pain had been washed from the flesh but not the bones. His shirt clung to his back, clean, for once, and he tossed his worn coat over the crooked chair like he was throwing away a bad memory. Boots thudded off one by one, and he lowered himself onto the low stool by the fire with a satisfied grunt, like a man who'd earned every ache and didn't plan on letting them win.
Kazan glanced up from his chicken-turning with a cocked brow. "You hungry or just dead on your feet?"
"Starving," Darian muttered. "But I've got worse things to handle first."
"It's divine," Kazan said, fanning the chicken like it was sacred. "Smoked over actual wood, not rat bones. You're lucky I bought it before Vassik showed up."
Bren, curled in his usual nest of rags and dreams in the corner, perked up towards Darian. "You mean the salve?"
Darian reached into his belt pouch and pulled out a squat little jar. The clay was dark, the seal broken but still damp around the rim. "Cray the Stitcher gave me this after the fight."
Kazan's head snapped up. "Cray the Stitcher mate? The back-alley madman with one eye and a hand made of crowbone?"
"That's him."
"Like the One-Eyed Midwife or the Horse That Talks in Dreams." Bren quipped.
Kazan gave Bren a long-confused look and leaned in towards Darian, skeptical. "What's in it?"
"Didn't ask," Darian said, unsealing the lid.
The moment he did, a stench punched the air, rancid herbs, something sour and wet, maybe mint, maybe mold. The kind of smell that settled into your bones and made you wonder if it had thoughts.
"Gods below," he muttered, pulling his shirt up. "That smell should be a crime."
"By Bas—fuck!" Kazan choked, waving his hand in front of his face. "That thing's sentient."
Bren scrambled over, curiosity outweighing self-preservation. "Let me see. Let me see. Gods below, it's chunky."
"Do I rub it in or let it bite me first?" Darian muttered, pulling up his shirt to reveal the bruises spanning his ribs, purple, red, and the kind of yellow that meant something inside might still be deciding whether to give out.
"By Basst's teeth," Kazan muttered, leaning over. "You look like someone used you to test bricks."
"Shovel," Bren corrected, poking one of the worse bruises with the back of a nail. "Like someone flayed him with the flat end."
Darian hissed. "I will knock your last tooth out."
"Not before I fix you up," Bren said sweetly, scooping a dollop of the thick, murky paste onto his fingers. "Now breathe deep. Through your mouth. Not your nose. Never your nose."
Kazan peered over his shoulder. "I think it blinked."
"Just put it on," Darian hissed. "Before I pass out from hunger and smell."
Bren dabbed the goop against Darian's side.
The reaction was immediate.
Darian sucked in a breath through his teeth and clamped down on a shout. "Son of a blistered priest!"
"Still want me to keep going?" Bren asked, eyes wide, fingers hovering mid-smear.
"No—yes—just—fuck, do it fast!"
Kazan froze, blinked once... then doubled over in laughter, nearly dropping the chicken into the fire.
"Oh, gods," he wheezed, coughing through the smoke. "Keep your rhythm, Mole, he sounds close!"
"Get bent." Darian grabbed a crust of moldy bread and flung it at him. Kazan caught it with his mouth, still laughing.
"Can't! I'm too busy listening to you moan like a dockwife on payday!"
Bren, oblivious or maybe just too into his work, dabbed another glob on Darian's ribs with all the gentleness of a sadistic healer. "Hold still. If I miss the bruise, it doesn't count."
"You've got two men groaning, one kneeling, and the third cooking meat," Kazan howled, pointing at the door. "If someone walks in now, I'm never explaining it."
Darian growled low in his throat. "I swear to Basst, if this shit leaves a rash, you're both getting it back in your porridge."
"I hope it does," Kazan grinned, wiping tears from his eyes. "Then we'll have matching scars. They'll know we died like a bunch of idiots together."
The salve spread like fire. Whatever Cray put in it, it worked quick. Darian's skin felt like it was both hardening and peeling at once, nerves screaming at the violation.
Bren kept going, careful but quick. "You're gonna be right as rain. Or dead."
"I should've asked for instructions," Darian groaned, sweat beading on his brow.
Bren capped the jar, smearing the last of the sludge into a linen scrap and patted the last bit into place like sealing a letter. "There. Good as new."
"Good as stitched leather," Darian muttered, lowering his shirt with a wince. Darian slumped back, breathing hard. "Feels like someone lit my ribs on fire and pissed it out with vinegar."
"So it's working," Kazan said cheerfully, handing him a slab of roasted chicken. "Eat up, pit pup. You earned it. Pain tax included."