This isn't what I'm writing at the moment. This is what I wrote for NaNoWriMo 2012. I just rediscovered it and found I had almost 70K of novel just sitting there waiting to be tidied up and a few missing scenes put in! It's like finding money down the side of the sofa, no?
It's a fantasy as well, out and out, which I don't normally write. Although it is connected to my other books. Most of them reference each other somewhere.
So here's a bit of it - they're trying to make some money.
“Have
you finished yet?” Jin Feng glared at Orlando, who was
making his pie last.
“Why
does it matter?” Orlando asked. “I didn’t want a pie anyway. I
wanted cake.”
“It’s
apple pie, it’s just the same as cake.”
“No,
it’s not. It’s made a whole different way. If you had apple cake,
the apples would be part of the cake. In this, they’re separate.
They’re just in –“
“Yes,
yes, no thank you,” Jin Feng interrupted. “We don’t need a
lecture on bakery.”
“Baking,”
Orlando said. “Baking’s what you do, bakery’s what you do it
in.”
“Someone’s
coming,” Mallen said, forestalling what looked like a nasty
explosion on Jin Feng’s part.
“What?
Where?” Orlando peered around the wall. A young woman was coming
out of the brothel, looking around her before setting off in their
direction.
“It
can’t be her,” Jin Feng said. “She’s too small.”
“Then
why’s she got a big bag just like the big bag they take the money
to the banker in?” Mallen asked.
“Eh?”
Jin Feng looked again. “Are you sure?”
“That’s
the bag,” Mallen said. “I’d recognise it anywhere. They always
use the same one.”
“So –
she’s got the money?” Orlando felt vaguely discomfited. He didn’t
really like the idea of the three of them jumping out on one young
woman who was about the size of Jin Feng and scaring the life out of
her before stealing her money. “Maybe we shouldn’t –“
“Don’t
be stupid,” Jin Feng said. “We got rid of the big doorman so it’d
be easy to steal the money. Now it is easy to steal the money, don’t
start complaining about it.”
Before
Orlando could reply, Jin Feng stepped out into the road, practically
into the path of the young woman, forcing her to stop or have to step off the pavement into the dirty street full of slippery
cobblestones.
“Hand
over the bag,” he said as she paused, looking at him.
Orlando
also stepped out to back up his friend but he was starting to have
doubts. Doubts about why the brothel had decided to send their day’s
takings with only one small person to guard it. Unless perhaps they
hoped that nobody would suspect her of having it. But then, why put
it in such a recogniseable bag?
“I
don’t think I want to do that,” the young woman was saying. Her
voice was accented, though Orlando couldn’t place where the accent
was from.
“Well,
I think you’d better,” Jin Feng said.
“Well,
I think I don’t better,” she said.
“Just
give it here.” Jin Feng made a grab for the bag and was somewhat
surprised when, instead of snatching it away from him, the young
woman arced it through the air towards him, catching him across the
diaphragm and knocking him to the floor.
“Whumph!”
said Jin Feng.
Orlando
nodded. All that money had to hurt when it hit you in the middle.
“Would
you like some of this bag?” The young woman had turned to Orlando,
her eyebrow raised, her posture relaxed, Relaxed like a fighter
waiting for an opening. She had a bag of heavy metal her stance said, and she wasn't afraid to use it.
“I
think not,” Orlando said, backing up, hands held in front of him,
the universal posture of no thanks, no pain, not today.
"Look,
Miss, we don't want to hurt you," Jin Feng was saying as he got
up from the floor.
Orlando
rolled his eyes. What was his friend thinking?
"You want another bit my bag?" the young woman asked Jin Feng, seemingly quite unperturbed that there were two of them and
only one of her.
Two of them? Orlando thought. There should have been three of them. Where
was - there was Mallen, sneaking round the back of her. But she'd
notice him - wouldn't she?
"I
think there's been some kind of misunderstanding," Orlando
began. "You see we were expecting another person. A different
person. A, uh, a bigger person."
"You got me," she said, shifting her weight onto her
back foot as if in preparation for another swing. Orlando hoped she
changed her mind as he was now in her line of sight and didn't want
to be hit with a bag full of money. Or a bag full of anything, for
that matter.
"I'll
take that." Just as she adjusted her grip on the bag, presumably
to get a better hold for Orlando-bashing, Mallen reached over her
shoulder and grabbed it. And turned to run.
Unfortunately
for Mallen, when he ran, the young woman didn't let go of the bag.
Instead, she yanked on the strap of it. Hard.
Mallen's
feet flew out from under him on the slippery cobbles as his top half was pulled rapidly backwards. He ended up on the floor at the young woman's feet,
still clutching the bag like a hopeful beau presenting an oversized
gift.
"You
give me that back now or it's worse for you than you ever imagine,"
the young woman said. Orlando got the impression that she was about
to lose her temper. He decided he really didn't want to be in the vicinity when that
happened.
"Let's
go," he suggested.
"I
-" whatever Mallen had been about to say, nobody ever found out
as he took yet another flying lesson from the young woman's foot. She kicked him hard in the chest, propelling him across the road and snatched back her bag.
"There's no
need for that," Jin Feng said, taking a step towards her. "Why don't you just give us the bag
and we'll go away and leave you alone."
"What you say?"
The
young woman's face fell into the expression of incredulity that so
many people experienced when dealing with Jin Feng. She looked from
him to Mallen on the ground and finally ended up at Orlando.
"He
always like this?" she asked.
"Yes, I'm afraid so," Orlando said. "Come on, you two, we're getting
nowhere here."
"You
not very good robbers," she said.
"First
time," Orlando said.
"Try
some other line of work," she advised, swinging the bag onto her
shoulder and walking away.
"That
didn't go too well," Mallen said, getting to his feet.
"I
don't know," Jin Feng said. "We know now who takes the
money, what time they do it -"
"Jin
Feng, there's no way we're getting that bag off that woman,"
Orlando said. "She's obviously specially trained to defend it."
"We
could drug her instead of the doorman," Mallen said. "Jin Feng,
you can go seduce her this time."
"I
could do that," Jin Feng said. "Did you see the way she was
looking at me? She likes me, I can tell. I could seduce her in no time. I'm good with women."
