On the other side was a much more modest office than Coal had expected, given what he’d heard about the city’s Garnas. They were men of extreme wealth and ego, who yearned for extravagance. The office, however, was humbly decorated with simple furniture. A plain redwood desk with a small lamp atop it, two half-filled bookshelves, and a couple filing cabinets. There was also a door that probably housed a private bathroom, which was seemingly the one luxury Dend allowed himself here. Otherwise, he apparently did not want to bring much attention to this place.
The two did not speak as they began their search of the room. Coal circled around the desk, setting his gun down atop it and quietly pulling open each drawer.
In the topmost drawer was a collection of documents that seemed to list real estate holdings of Dend’s, along with the names of the establishments on those properties, the monthly rent costs, and the renters’ names. None of the pages included much detail beyond that; Dend could afford to employ a trained accountant to handle all the more complicated tasks and these pages were likely just for his reference. More importantly, there were no illicit photographs alongside the sheets, so Coal gently closed the drawer and moved down to the next one.
It held nothing more than a canister of chewing tobacco and a mostly-empty bottle of rum with a label Coal recognized from Baoa, a treetop village in central Ruska that Coal had stayed in for a week on his way south. The thought flittered through his mind to drink the last of Dend’s bottle out of spite—there was only enough left for half a glass, maybe—but he dismissed it for the same reason he declined to drink in the Starlite, wanting to remain alert. He shut the drawer, listening to the bottle smoothly rolling around inside.
His hand was already wrapped around the handle of the next and final drawer (on the left side of the desk, anyway) when he heard the flush of a toilet.
He glanced up and saw that Zank was indeed still in the room. The rabbit was rifling through the Garna’s meager collection of books, checking for photographs hidden between the pages, but he had stopped to turn and stare at the bathroom door.
Their eyes locked with each other then back toward the door, which swung open to reveal a macaw yawning while he buckled his belt. He stopped to stare at the fox and rabbit before him.
Zank was fast. In a split second his pistol was aimed and cocked, filling Coal with dread. The macaw leapt backward into the bathroom, ducking around the corner. Zank’s bullets burst through the door in a shower of splinters.
“What happened to no—”
Before Coal could say “deaths,” there were confused yelps of alarm from Venny and Marl in the other room. They could be heard scrambling around the desks, knocking over chairs, trying to reach the Garna’s office.
Coal shoved himself against the wall the office shared with the bathroom. It only took him a couple moments to realize it was the worst position he could have chosen if the bird started firing through the wall, but he also had no idea if the wall was too thick for bullets to burrow through.
He felt woefully out of his depth.
Instinctively he ducked down, as if that would protect him from a spray of bullets. At that point, he realized his own firearm was still resting on the desk several feet away. He swore softly.
Venny then appeared in the doorway almost instantaneously with Marl, who evidently had much more speed in that bulky body than Coal would have predicted. The two shoved themselves through the doorway at the same time, effectively stopping either of them from breaching the room.
Which turned out to be a good thing, as the macaw peeked out from the bathroom and commenced firing on the office doorway. Still, Venny let loose a harsh shout of pain as she disappeared back out into the main room.
Zank ducked behind Dend’s desk and yelled, “V! You okay?”
“Just a graze,” she called back. “Fine.”
Marl cautiously rounded the doorway, which elicited more gunshots from the cornered macaw, so he immediately retreated. Coal saw Zank peering over the top of the desk, but he did not act. The bird must have had a line of sight with the office door without needing to move.
“You’re fucked,” Zank taunted the bird. “There’s four of us and we’ve got you backed into the shitter.”
“I’ve got backup,” said the macaw with a cough.
As if on cue, there came more shouts from Marl and Venny, followed closely by gunfire. Zank and Coal looked to the doorway, but could not see any of the action. Coal assumed the fox guard from downstairs had joined them. Hopefully there were not in fact more guards with him that Zank’s informant had left out.
The gunfire ceased, followed by grunts and thumps, and Marl’s voice shouted out, “No more backup.”
“Okay, now you’re fucked,” said Zank.
On the other side of the wall, Coal heard the bird curse to himself.
Suddenly something small and round flew through the air from the bathroom, out into the area where Venny and Marl had just taken out a fox (hopefully by knocking them out rather than killing them). Then another careened toward Zank’s position.
The rabbit stood and sprung forward, slamming into Coal and knocking both their heads into the wall as the item exploded in a controlled ball of flame that miraculously did not catch any of the Dend’s furniture or carpet on fire. The scorch marks would be tough to deal with later, though.
Coal clutched his pounding head, his eyelids fluttering. Zank lay prone on the floor next to Coal’s gun, which had been propelled off the desk by the explosion and had thankfully not fired.
But he did not have a chance to grab the weapon before the macaw took a confident step out of the bathroom.
Without thinking, Coal rushed the bird’s body and sent him sprawling, knocking his head into a vase sitting in the corner of the room. The swirly purple-and-blue ceramic shattered on the macaw’s black beak, momentarily stunning him.
All of Coal’s weight was on the bird’s body. He felt the guard start to shift underneath him, so he grasped the bird’s arms in either hand, pinning them to the ground. Stray feathers fluttered to the floor and the bird’s gun tumbled a couple feet away. Not very far, but out of reach for the moment.
“Some help!” Coal yelled to his companions.
Venny and Marl entered the room, the latter kicking aside the abandoned handgun. “Get up,” he ordered Coal.
Coal did as the wolverine instructed, pushing himself up off the macaw. The bird stood shakily, brushing himself off, and opened his beak to say something when Marl shot him in his right knee.
“Vyru above!” the bird screamed.
Marl closed the distance between them, only a few steps with his long stride, and slammed the butt of his gun into the bird’s head. He crumpled like a paper doll. Coal took a second to check and noted that the bird was still breathing.
With both guards out of commission, Venny rushed to Zank’s side.
She shook him and his eyelids fluttered open, his pointy ears twitching. He sat up, his eyes instantly looking over the bird.
“Good,” he said.
“You alright?” Venny asked him.
Zank nodded. “Mighta got a little singed from his Fireball, but I’m fine.”
Coal looked at the spot where the round object had blown up in the office. Unfortunately, he’d had a few run-ins with Fireballs before, so he knew a little about them. They were specially crafted using technology developed by the Palace and caused very limited explosions (their radius depending on the model) that somehow did not spread fire. Larger ones had a much more visceral impact, splattering bodies and destroying buildings; the one the macaw used had to be the smallest and least deadly variety, a Fireball-S, given how little damage it had actually done to the desk and wall.