Chapter 1.11 - In which Percy is fired

Percy

Month 9, Day 28, Tuesday 7:25 a.m.

“Are those Gilbrathan healer prices, or did we get ripped off?” Percy asked as they left Healer Clements’ house. “It didn’t seem like he really even did anything.”

Dad shook his head with frustration. “With your luck, if I refused to pay him, you would soon be injured and he would refuse to help.” Without even thinking about it, he stepped between Percy and a carriage moving a little too close to the sidewalk.

Percy’s leather gloves creaked as he clenched his fists.

Dad pointed at a raised cobblestone that someone could trip on, which Percy had already seen and noted.

“I have to get to work,” Percy said. “I’m already late, actually.”

Dad looked up at the sky. “Oh, we forgot your umbrella,” he lamented.

The sky was lit in pastel pinks and oranges, the last hint of stars fading under the light of the sun. There were only a few wispy clouds. “It’s not going to rain. Red sky in morning, sailors take warning,” Percy recited.

Dad shook his head silently, as if he wanted to argue but didn’t have any reasonable way to do so. “You have your emergency coin purse?” Percy nodded, and kept nodding as his dad continued, “And your backup emergency coin pouch? You remember our home address, right? And my business address? Any signs of a quick-onset fever?”

Percy was already nodding by the time he understood the question, and then, when Dad’s eyes widened, shook his head quickly. “No! I’m fine. I’m not a little kid anymore. Of course I’ve got my emergency supplies. I also have several cards I can show to strangers explaining different emergency situations and giving instructions on how to help me and who to contact.”

The man crossed his arms. “Potentially useful, if you can find someone who can read.”

“Gilbratha’s literacy rate is the highest in the country.”

“It’s one in five.”

Percy opened his mouth, but closed it again as he couldn’t find a way to argue with that.

Dad sighed, clenching and unclenching his fists at his side as he did when he needed to relax but couldn’t quite make himself do so. “I’ll stop by the nearest copper dispatch station to check if they have any information about the hag that gave you the talisman.”

Percy gave Dad a quick hug, re-checked the direction he needed to go, and made his way carefully. A few blocks down the road, he glanced back to find Dad still standing on the sidewalk, watching him leave. “You really do cause so much trouble, don’t you?” Percy murmured to himself, clutching the straps of his leather emergency pack, which was stiff and slightly smelly from his dip in the canal. Dad hadn’t had a chance to see to it yet.

Something in Percy’s chest grew tight as he approached the pastry shop. Normally, he helped mix and knead—the more labor intensive parts that didn’t always require special skill, just persistence and attention to detail. This would last for a couple hours, and then he would do cleanup. If there was a special delivery, he might work a couple of extra hours.

But there was no room for laziness or incompetence in a bakery, and no matter the extenuating circumstances, Percy had failed to make his delivery yesterday.

As soon as the boss saw Percy’s nervous smile, the man’s face flushed red, his thick cheeks quivered, and he opened his mouth wide to yell. “The Browns’ bruncheon was ruined!” he bellowed. “The madam herself came to complain about how embarrassed she was, missing an entire category of food.”

“I’m really sorry. There was this thief, and the coppers were after her—”

“You let the pastries get stolen!?”

Percy flinched away from the sheer force of the man’s voice, instinctively shuffling to the side as if his boss was a bull about to rush.

“Madam Brown had to supplement with unleavened cookies and candied fruit!”

“No, not stolen.” Percy spoke quickly, hoping to get his story out before the man could stop him. “They were tossed and trampled while the thief was fighting with the coppers, and I kind of got caught in the middle. I tried to save them. And I was going to come back and tell you about it, but there was this hag who sold me a talisman—”

The boss chopped his hand through the air as if it were a knife. “I don’t want to hear your ridiculous excuses. Do you know how much business we got from all of the Browns’ summer garden parties? And yes, I mean got, because we’ve lost them as a customer!”

“I’m really sorry,” Percy repeated. “But I’m not lying. You can ask the coppers, they took my statement.”

The boss fumbled blindly at the counter until he grasped one of yesterday’s rolls. He threw it at Percy just as the door was opening behind him.

Percy ducked, and the customer who had just entered let out an “uck!” of surprise and pain as the roll hit them right between the eyebrows.

The boss’s face grew even redder as he bustled forward, apologizing profusely not for hitting the customer with a roll of bread, but for his incompetent employee, Percy. “My former employee, I assure you,” the boss blustered.

Shoulders drooping, Percy sighed. “Can I at least get my final paycheck?”

The boss scowled as he passed by Percy. “Get. Out,” he growled under his breath.

And that was how Percy lost yet another job.