The Cost of Gold

The gold rolled in and out of his fingers, stealing some of the dirt from them as it gave back a bit of shine. He really shouldn’t have been doing that. It was a full moon at midnight, and not a cloud in the sky to block the rays of silver light sticking to everything. At least in the day, noise and movement shielded the average person from the sad sights of Knicktown’s back alleys. One would walk, keeping one eye on their coin purse and another on everyone else’s, and the metaphorical third poking out the back of their dirty heads to watch for knives. And in the darkness, shadows laid their blanket lovingly over a sleeping city, covering it with mercy as if it could wake up as a better place. 

But now. All the filth, blood, shit, and rot were laid bare. No people to talk over it, no darkness to cover it. Except for one untouched object. 

The gold coin, spinning round and round as Dog flaunted it without a care. The full moon did not close out a particularly kind month for him. Nor a kind year. It had begun simply. A pure want for a life spent by his own rules. The arts had always called him. The shape of a face in the simple brush of charcoal on a wall, the spray of colors in the cheap dyed chalks his parents had bought one year, that he’d worn down till they were nothing more than dust on his fingers to wipe on anything he could find. 

That had been the last art-themed gift that he’d received. Now, he thought he knew why. They could see the light of madness in him even then, his dear parents. His father made a living as a rope-maker, and they all lived well. Quietly, but well. They’d wanted the same for him, but no. To hell with that! Take your pauper’s twine and hang yourselves with it! I am going to paint kings and heroes and live among the great and powerful!

Those had been real words, set loose on his parents to rip and tear as they were supposed to. A wealthy aunt, doting but simple, had died. Looking down at her in her coffin, he’d ignored the cold, wrinkled flesh and gazed greedily at the expensive robes, his tears plentiful but faux. As he’d suspected, her inheritance left him a sizable amount. Enough with ropemaking, enough with foolish oldsters who don’t know the talent in front of them. He’d set off for the city and left his town behind, a set of paints bought with weregild silver and the clothes on his back the foundation of a new legend, the legend of Dog. The name would have to be changed at some point, of course, but it would do for now. 

The first apartment had been shabby but clean, small but safe. It had become his studio as he lived as a man should, free. No tiresome work or nagging parents. Wholesome food, a moderate amount of fleshy pleasures (as befit an artist of such future renown), and the painting. Oh, Lord, the painting. How it consumed him in those days, the rays of the sun gleaming through the westward window. Faces from his new existence filled it in the touch of a jaw, the jaunty tip of a city hat. The square, bland faces of his hometown were angrily discarded, and one day, it was done. 

To the market! With his masterpiece, he would attract crowds to marvel at the unknown genius that had presented himself. He would bask in their adoration, then sell, begrudgingly, to the highest bidder. And then, who knows? Connections, fame, fortune, recognition. It lay within the canvas he lugged from his room. 

It died in the dust of the market. 

“Derivative.”

“Quaint.” 

“Rough-lined.”

“It’s like someone took Pheonixwright’s work and drew it with their feet.”

“Promising, but sloppy.”

“Give ya a quarter copper for it.”

In his room, he ripped the painting to shreds, and tears mixed with the scraps on the ground to make multicolored mud. 

Now his money went to booze. The pleasures of the flesh disgusted him, but he partook in them nonetheless, grunting and heaving his anger out, only to be rewarded with brief exhilaration and shame. 

A new canvas sat empty, and he painted no longer. 

From the apartment, he was forced to relocate, as he could no longer pay for it. It would be a wake-up call, he promised himself. He would start again, paint something larger, better, more inspiring. This time it would work. This time he’d be right. 

The same empty canvas moved again, and again, and eventually, he looked around a rat-gnawed pit in Knicktown, and realized he’d forgotten it in the last shithole. He wanted to race through the streets to find it. And to his credit, he did start. But someone was selling a bottle of rum at a half copper, and that seemed to be a better use of time. 

Money ran out. But he was smart. He‘d never lost his pride in that. There was a moneylender who owned the building his hovel was nailed to the side of. The man was huge and scarred. Nose twisted from too many breaks, a pair of brass knuckles hanging around his thick neck and shaved head. He never spoke, only roared and spat and waved at everyone, even the almost-as-savage bodyguards that never left his side. Went by the name of Big Bones. Uninspired, yes, and that’s why Dog chose him. A big brute, too stupid to know he was being conned. Dog bowed and scraped and begged, and into his hands it came flowing. Coppers. Sweet, round, shining coppers for everything from rent to booze. Due back with interest in a month. Of course, he agreed, hiding a smirk. 

A month blazed by. Probably the amount of it spent in a drink-fueled fog had something to do with that. No matter. Here was where the second part of his brilliant plan came in. 

Another moneylender named Gibbon plied his trade farther down, in the docks area of Knicktown. Even worse, if possible, than the shacktown Big Bones ruled. Yet Gibbon was just a slight man. A wincing figure hunched over a permanently open book of records. The hands that counted out the coppers were veined and wiry, a quavering voice mumbling something about interest. Interest? What a lark! Where Big Bones was too foolish to stop Dog, Gibbon was certainly too cowardly. He’d never dare invade Bones’ territory just for one man. This time, his smirk was unhidden. 

And so it went. When anyone asked, which was rare, Dog told them he was a courier. And he fancied it was true, in a way. Coppers moved from Big Bones to Dog to Gibbon to Dog and back to Big Bones. Only the amount changed. And it was changing upward. When coppers became silvers, he remembered feeling shock and just the tiniest amount of trepidation. But no matter. Silvers were a problem for Gibbon to solve. Coppers would buy more rum. 

Except Gibbon wasn’t there when next month rolled around. Frantic, he asked around, and after several hard looks and cold curses, he got his answer. Gibbon had gone to the shacktown. 

Horror. The old fool. He’d committed suicide! Big Bones would tear him limb from limb. 

There was no other choice. He had to talk to Big Bones and ask for an extension until he could find another moneylender to do his dirty work. Cursing, he walked inside the unmarked door that was the entrance to Big Bones’s office, not even noticing the lack of a guard outside in his misery. 

“Ah, Dog. I’d say it’s surprising to see you here, but, well.” It was Gibbon, sitting at Big Bone’s scarred desk. He looked up, a splash of blood across his chin. “I think we both know it’s not.”

Dog didn’t know where to look first. At the tall, tough-looking men standing behind Gibbon, with more blood on their clothes. At Big Bones himself, lying on the floor with glassy eyes staring directly, accusingly at him. But really, his gaze was drawn to the book. The records book. Open as always in front of Gibbon. This time, of course, it was Big Bones’s. 

“It looks like you owed this creature money. Around half what you owe me. How peculiar.” He looked up sharply. Dog just quivered, knowing any moment he’d be joining Bones on the floor. “Well, no matter.” The moneylender looked back down as if unconcerned, and Dog breathed a sigh. Looks like his debts would be forgotten with the changeover. 

“If you hadn’t noticed, I’ve taken over this practice. I’ll expect my payment by tomorrow morning. What you owe me, and what you owed him. A hundred twenty-two coppers in total.” He gestured to the body. “Good day, Dog.”

So he’d walked. Seemed like nothing else to do. Come the morning, Gibbon would kill him. Any idea of Gibbon’s cowardice had evaporated. If Big Bones, the brutal and terrifying loanshark, had failed to escape, well. What damn chance did he have? 

Memories of his painting and its amateurish content filled him, and he moaned and cried. His parents, once demonic figures, now seemed his only salvation. A salvation he didn’t deserve. And besides, they were a week’s travel away. No help. Passerby laughed at him, or spat. The night came, and his legs tired. He hadn’t walked this much in months, and he was weak and fat from a diet of rum. 

He fell. And before him, there it was. Buried in the shit of Knicktown, a treasure most here could only dream of. What passing merchant or generous god had placed it there, he couldn’t know. One gold coin. Enough to pay Gibbon and more. Enough to flee, to start again. He scrabbled at it, scrubbing the grime from it to make sure it was real.

And now he rolled it between his fingers, strolling under a midnight moon. Salvation. A chance to start again. To start what? Drinking again? To go back to godforsaken rope? To buy another canvas for staring at?

There was a bridge that crossed a grime-filled canal, and he leaned on its piss-covered railing, looking at the stars. What did he have when he came here that he’d now lost? Was it really money? Was it that bloody canvas? He asked the stars for an answer, and they gave him one. 

Pride. Pride he’d drunk away, forgotten, traded from one murderer to another until it had been lost in the grease of their fingers. 

He held up the coin till it covered the moon. Then it was just a black circle. Worth no more than his shadow. 

It glinted one final time as it arced out over the canal before falling into the water, and for a moment, Dog thought what a wonderful sight it would be to paint. The bright yellow he could use for the coin, to stand out against the blues and browns of the nightscape. He smiled. “If only I still had that canvas,” he said to the moon. “What a picture I’d give to it.”