Chapter 5: The Wild Heart Bar
When Angel wakes up, she finds that the sun has sunset outside her window, and the setting sun is slanting down, enveloping the entire bedroom in a golden color.
After the "tarot meeting" was over, Angel, who felt that it was not yet dinner time, was ready to make up for sleep, she tidied up the room belonging to Lily Granger a little, and after removing the dust cover, the bed below was surprisingly clean, so she used it as her bedroom and fell asleep.
She looked up at the wall clock, and the short hand had passed five o'clock in the afternoon.
With the tempting suggestion of "I'm going to sleep" in her head, Angel went to the kitchen and made her first meal in the world using pickled lamb, chopped potatoes and onions.
"Isn't that more humble than breakfast?" Looking at the potato stew and mutton in front of her and the sliced white bread, she involuntarily recalled the sour and salty Fenerport noodles and the creamy mushroom soup in the Silver Crown Restaurant, and sighed that it was easy to go from thrift to luxury, and from luxury to thrift.
The money has to be kept to buy a fake identity and meet other possible needs, and at present, I have no income, so I can save a little bit.
Thinking of this, Angel took a bite of the white bread, then picked up the spoon, and despite the fact that the soup had not yet cooled, scooped up a spoonful of mutton broth, and drank it with a symbolic blow.
Too much salt...... It may also be that the mutton has been marinated for too long, and the mutton soup has a salty taste, mixed with the fishy taste of mutton, but Angel, who has not eaten lunch, still gulps the hot soup into his stomach, and the unleavened bread has become delicious.
Sure enough, when people are hungry, they feel delicious about what they eat.
The mutton soup and bread were solved in three or two clicks, and the strong feeling of satiety made Angel squint her eyes in satisfaction, and if she didn't have to go out at night, she even wanted to go back to the comfortable bedroom and continue to lie down immediately.
"Alas, even if you change the world and change your identity, you still work hard after all......" Angel sighed secretly and began to prepare for the evening's actions.
She first went to Cole Granger's bedroom on the second floor and found a set of clothes to change into, which was a bit larger but better than a dress.
Then I went back to the study, took out the revolver, withdrew all the bullets, disassembled the gun into parts, and began to maintain it before use.
The tool is from Cole Granger's collection, and he bought the pistol at the time of purchase on the recommendation of the clerk, and it has a complete variety, but he never used it.
"Sure enough, the rifling is worn out...... "Carefully checking the state of use of the revolver, Angel pouted, the barrel is not of good material, the bullet is too hard, coupled with the lack of maintenance, this is simply an inevitable result. The damage had a great impact on the accuracy of her shots, and the tools at hand could not be repaired, so she had to clean the chamber, wheel, and hammer of the remaining gunpowder, lubricate the receiver, and polish the wooden grip to restore the weapon to its best condition.
The bullet wrapped in oiled paper and neatly placed in the box is 0.45 inches, and the huge recoil will drastically reduce the accuracy of the burst, but for the pistol, which is essentially a "melee weapon", greater lethality and stopping action are its unique advantages.
After picking twenty and checking them one by one, Angel loaded the revolver with bullets, and loaded the rest into a rapid loader in a group of five.
Then there's the real melee weapon, Cole Grant's dagger that the Assassins prefer.
It is a short steel dagger with bleeding grooves on both sides, a reflective coating on the surface, and a leather dagger sheath. Angel, a former Templar, was not proficient in daggers, so she tried to swing them a few times, remembering its weight and length, and retracted its sheath and tied it to her left thigh.
Putting on her cloak and hiding her face and her weapons, Angel counted fifty pounds from the drawer of her desk, thought about it, and added another twenty pounds in case she needed it.
Fully armed, Angel stood quietly in the living room until the hands of the wall clock reached nine o'clock, when she opened the back door and stepped into the brightly lit streets of Tingen in the face of the red moon.
……
There were no rides in the ubiquitous mercenary carriages, nor did they use the cheaper and more crowded public carriages. Angel walked along Daffodil Street to the adjacent Iron Cross.
As its name suggests, Iron Cross is not just a street, but two vertically intersecting streets, divided into Upper, Lower, Left and Right streets, where Daffodil Street and Iron Cross Left Street meet, and Angel's target, the "Wild Heart" bar, is located on Lower Iron Cross.
Walking slowly through the town square at the intersection of streets, avoiding the circus clowns handing out leaflets, and along the Iron Cross Left Street, where six carriages can pass at once, Angel came to the lower street of the Iron Cross.
It makes sense to divide the Iron Cross Street according to "up and down, left and right", and the lower street is obviously much more dilapidated than the left street just passed, not only because the street is narrower due to the large number of hawkers who occupy the road, but also the paving stones are uneven because no one has maintained them for a long time, and even the clothing and spirit of the pedestrians are obviously different from the left street, let alone compared with the daffodil street.
Almost all of the three or four-story apartment buildings along the street, with no independent balconies, clothes hanging out of the windows to dry, sewage flowing at the door, and miscellaneous debris littered, as the main street, it is more dirty than the back alleys of Daffodil Street.
Walking here, Angel even has the illusion that there will be garbage thrown on his head at any time.
At night, Iron Cross Street is no longer as lively as it is during the day, but there are still many vendors trying to solicit the last of their business, and there are no fewer pedestrians than elsewhere. Angel clutched her pockets to guard against possible pickpockets in the crowd, bypassed the noisy stalls, smelled the scent and stench of the air, and struggled to walk through stagnant water and garbage.
After a long journey to Wild Heart's slightly pompous roaring wolf's head emblem and a greedy puff of alcohol-rich air, she felt like she had been reborn.
In Angel's inherited memory, Cole also visited the "Wild Heart" bar a few times, sometimes to meet with the mission client, sometimes to inquire about the news, and in his mind, this place was a news distribution center, a paradise for drunkards, but it was not a dangerous place.
But in Angel's eyes, "Wild Heart" hides far more dangers than it seems.
She only walked around the bar's exterior wall to catch the attention of the burly man standing guard at the door, the shirtless, muscular janitor staring at the "hooded man of unknown origin", seemingly ready to call for backup.
The window on the second floor of the apartment across the street was always open, but there was no light inside, and Angel could feel a faint line of sight sweeping over her from the window, which was supposed to be the dark whistle of the bar.
There was a horse-drawn carriage parked by the back door of the bar, the driver was napping in the driver's seat, and the horses were also haltered, and as soon as the owner got into the car, he could set off immediately.
It could be the car that was parked at the back door out of privacy by a powerful person, or it could be the way an important person at the bar fled the scene, which Angel believes is the latter.
The street in front of the bar is also flooded more than elsewhere, and a closer look reveals that several of the drains near the bar have lost their function, and if it weren't for the lazy municipal workers who blocked the drains, the sewer on the street would have been repurposed for other purposes.
Back at the bar, Angel has a deeper understanding of the nondescript bar, and she hesitates to take the risk for a piece of identification, but ultimately decides to believe that the Tarot will be the "hanged man".
"If I'm caught, I hope Mr. Fool will punish him."
After complaining secretly, Angel strode into the bar.
It's late at night, but there are still a lot of customers in the bar, most of them residents of the neighborhood, who have a drink here after work, and unemployed workers who have nothing to do and numb themselves with alcohol. In dark corners, sneaky interlocutors are brewing new conspiracies. In the middle of the hall is surrounded by a group of excited drinkers, sometimes yelling, sometimes bowing their heads in remorse, two half-collapsed cages are playing a game of "dog with mouse", gamblers are staring at the dog they bet on, eager to incarnate themselves into the cage into the cage, killing all sides.
The bartender wiping the wooden wine glass from behind the bar had already set his eyes on Angel as she entered, and her cloaked was out of place in the environment, even if it was a conspirator in the corner, it was basic etiquette to show her face and hands.
Sweeping her eyes over the chaotic bar, Angel eventually turned her gaze to the bartender, who rounded the kennel and made her way to the front of the bar.
"What to drink? Rye beer for 1p, South Wie beer for 4p, new arrival butterbeer for 7p, ice-cold! The bartender saw the approaching man and skillfully pitched his business.
"The 'captain' introduced me here, and he said that you can help people with identification here." Angel didn't order any wine, and explained the meaning directly.
The bartender stopped wiping his glass, and he looked up at the broken outer glass of the clock, which hung high up, and showed that it was five minutes before ten o'clock in the evening: "It's not time yet, you're early." ”
"I can wait."
The bartender put down the glass and rag and said, "It's okay, I'll call you when the time comes, do you want a glass?" ”
"Then let's have a 'half and a half', add more sugar." Angel then remembered the "hanged man" and confessed a code.
The bartender who had the secret sign nodded, turned around and mixed the wine, and in a short time, a glass of beer and wine mixed "half and half" was served to the bar.
"Isn't it a code? Are you really drinking? Angel looked at the bartender with a frown.
"Earn some money horizontally, this cup of 1 sole."
Angel counted out 12 pence and threw it at the bar, took her glass and sat down at an unmanned table.
She thought that as soon as ten o'clock came, the bartender would come to call her, but she didn't expect to sit until a quarter past ten without any news.
Seeing that the bartender actually started talking to the other guests, she finally couldn't help it, and when she was about to get up and go to ask, the bartender pointed to her location, and the "guest" turned around, and Angel realized that this was the person she was looking for.
"New here?" The person who came was wearing a black windbreaker, he couldn't see his figure, his messy black hair was covered with grease, and his face looked like he hadn't washed it for half a month. He took the huge wooden cup, sat down opposite Angel, and without waiting for her to answer, he continued: "I'm Hagrid, and everyone knows that I'm always late, usually at half past ten, and only a novice like you will be early. ”
Angel ignored the other party's implicit sarcasm of self-introduction, and directly put forward his own request: "I need an identity certificate, all the information is provided by me, and there must be a verifiable file." ”
Hagrid took a large sip of his beer and gave a satisfied "ha" before replying, "Forty pounds, in a week." ”
"That's not what 'Captain' said, thirty pounds." Angel wasn't distressed by the extra ten pounds, but based on experience, such concessions would only make the other party more emboldened.
"Hmph, you tell the 'captain' guy to stop taking advantage of me with the price of a few years ago, and he can't save my life." When Hagrid heard Angel's offer, he was extremely angry, "Every time the kingdom changes parties, we have to buy the people on Beckland's side again, the asking price of these moths is getting higher and higher, how much do you think we can earn?" Besides, Tingen has not been peaceful recently, many students have disappeared in the university, I heard that there were a few suicides yesterday, and the police are checking for outsiders everywhere, you don't want to be arrested as a black household, right? ”
"Thirty pounds."
"You can't do business like that...... Thirty-five pounds, that's the lowest price, and I'll get it for you in three days. Hagrid backed down.
"I can give you forty pounds, but I'm going to get it tonight." Seeing that the other party had given in, Angel changed his needs at the right time, and handed out a diary paper full of words, "The identity information I asked for is here, and you can make up the other vacancies as you like, but don't be too outrageous." ”
Hagrid was obviously surprised by the extra five pounds that had been "lost and recovered", he subconsciously took the paper handed to him, pondered for a moment, and nodded, "Yes, I'll help you cut the line, you wait here for two hours, and have some wine," he pointed to the untouched wine glass in front of Angel, "or go see the dog scratching mouse." ”
Angel shook her head: "I'll just wait here." ”
Although she is not averse to alcohol, it is not a good choice to consume alcohol in this kind of place where you may need to fight at any time.
And the boring gambling of "dog with mouse", she can't arouse any interest.