“Where’d all the damn nails go? You lot better not be running them through more clubs,” Hastur shouted as he held a board in place with one hand and a hammer with the other. He’d come up empty when he felt for the sack of iron nails but now he felt it press against his fingertips with a little assistance from a skinny boy with painfully world-weary eyes.

Most of the kids in the crew had that look about them, and they weren’t the first Hastur had ever seen it on. Children brought up in extreme poverty often wound up older than their years and carried that weight on into adulthood.

Granted, some of those people made the most skilled of gang members, but it still gave Hastur’s heart a little pang every time he saw it.

A kid five summers into life shouldn’t act like he’s seen fifty, Hastur thought and accepted the proffered nails with a smile. “Guarding them for me?” he asked the boy lightly.

“You want me to? Jasna says we should do what you say since you’re her boss now. All our bosses.”

“Might be a hard job but if you’d do it I’d be grateful. Can’t fix all these rutting holes in this place without ‘em. Just pass me one whenever I ask, huh?”

The boy nodded solemnly and took the bag back, ready to pass them to Hastur as needed.

Before they could do anything else, Hastur had decided his crew needed a place to sleep that could actually keep the rain off, let alone the chill. They wouldn’t do him any good at all if they were constantly coming down with colds and half-starved.

So he’d sent Gavrail, the only one he halfway trusted not to run off with his coin, to the market with a few helpers to carry supplies, then dragged Jasna and the sturdier crewmembers down to the docks. You could get lumber there for dead cheap if you didn’t mind prying apart old crates yourself— they’d even let you keep the nails. Hastur wasn’t made of money so he’d put them to work and joined in himself for the sake of getting what they needed.

By the end of it they’d ended up with a big cartload of rough-planed wood and slightly bent nails ready to be put to use shoring up the crew’s dilapidated squat.

The place was full of holes, but its bones were solid and had yet to succumb to rot so he decided not to move them for now. Not only had Jasna and her crew set down roots there, they’d established enough of a presence to keep away anyone else looking for a roof to sleep under, so it’d serve for now.

They’d done their best before ever meeting him, but their lack of resources and know-how was pretty clear in the haphazard methods and materials they’d used to keep out the weather. Parts of the second story were beyond Hastur’s ability to fix, but they made a lot of progress everywhere else and simply closed up what wasn’t safe for the time being.

Jasna had wrangled her brother into helping them gather wood down at the docks, but Zelimir had since disappeared again— not that Hastur minded. The boy was going to be trouble, he could tell already, but he knew just telling Jasna that wasn’t the way to go. He was her blood, she’d balk and kick Hastur to the curb long before she did her admittedly troublesome brother.

Better to wait until the inevitable day the younger man screwed up irreparably so Jasna would exile him herself.

“Nail,” Hastur said and held his hand out. A nail was dropped into it— one of the nice straight ones he’d purchased after realizing half the nails they’d salvaged from the crates were too bent to be useful for most of the work that needed doing.

He hammered the length of iron home then pushed himself up to his feet with a groan and stretched. The vague scent of burning reached Hastur’s nose and the man turned to yell down the hall, “Pup, you had better not be burning that food I just paid for!”

“I’m not!” Gav shouted back defensively, then, “Er— yeah. No. No, I’m not!”

Hastur rolled his eyes then looked down at his little helper who was still carrying his bag of nails. “Sounds like a bluff to me— what do you think?”

“What’s a bluff?”

Hastur considered. “A bit like a lie, except it winds up true if people believe you.”

The boy’s face twisted in confusion. “Isn’t that just a lie?”

“You’ll figure it out as you get older,” Hastur said then walked back towards the kitchen. There was still more work to be done, but he was hungry, and judging by the crowd gathered around the doorway to the surprisingly large kitchen, so was everyone else.

Hastur bodily moved a few young folks out of his way and entered the kitchen. It was one of the least damaged rooms in the squat and was also where most of the crew had been sleeping thanks in large part to the large hearth that dominated one wall. They hadn’t always had proper wood to burn, but you could find all sorts of things to set fire to for the sake of a little warmth if you set your mind to it.

Now, though, a proper wood-fire burned under an elderly but mostly functional pot they’d unearthed from the old midden heap in the yard and scrubbed clean. Gavrail had mostly lead the charge in here, though Royko and a few others were hovering around helping where they could.

Not that any of them in particular really seemed to know their way around a cooking fire.

Hastur sighed through his nose and looked at the freshly patched ceiling as if asking it, rather than the gods, for patience, then waded into the chaos.

“Alright, what’s the damage?” he asked and used the hem of his coat to swing the pot off the fire so he could observe its contents without losing his eyebrows to the heat of the fire.

“It’s not burnt, I told you!” Gavrail objected, tone bordering on the plaintive.

True enough, nothing had burned, which was a good sign, but the ‘soup’ they were supposed to be making didn’t seem to have much…well, broth.

“Where’s the water? Need water for soup, last I checked,” Hastur pointed out blandly and turned to look at Gavrail and Royko, both of whom looked at him, confused, before coming to join him.

“I did put it in, I swear! It was boiling and everything!” Gav said, baffled.

“Yeah, for ages though so it all boiled off,” one of the older members of the crew said from the door.

He was probably twenty-three with blond hair and a build that would probably be classified as ‘sturdy’ once he got some meat on his bones. He had a strangely honest look about him for a gang member, but then that was one of the most valuable assets a criminal could have, in Hastur’s experience.

“You know so much you get in here and help, then” Hastur told him. The young man winced when he was called out but stepped into the kitchen and rolled up his sleeves regardless. “What’s your name?” Hastur asked him.

“Artem,” the man said and took the knife Gavrail had been inexpertly wielding and started chopping vegetables with startling speed and accuracy. “That’s my boy, Kolya,” he added and jerked his head towards the little boy that had been helping Hastur manage the nails.

“Your son?” Hastur asked, surprised in spite of himself, though he wasn’t sure why. Artem was more than old enough to have a child, but to Hastur’s eyes he barely looked like more than one himself.

Shit, I really am getting old, Hastur groused silently. Out loud, he asked, “You’re good with that knife— you cook much?”

Artem shook his head and moved on to parting out the salted pork Gavrail had bought. The meat was cheap and dry by nature, but Hastur knew from experience it’d do well in something like a soup or a stew while any meat that didn’t get used would keep for some time in the pantry. “Never. Normally I just use knives for… well, the usual sort of thing.”

A normal person might argue that cooking was the ‘usual’ sort of thing to use a knife for, but both men had used them for far too many other purposes for that to be the default to them.

“Good to know.”

Hastur left the rest of the prepping to Artem while Gavrail and Royko did their best to help and Hastur called out instructions. Eventually they were rewarded with a very serviceable stew they ate out of rough bowls made of hard, dense, unleavened bread. The stuff was made with rye flour and nigh impossible to eat on their own without chipping a tooth, but after soaking up broth they softened and became edible by the time you’d managed to eat the stew from them.

Cheap but filling, the meal was a feast for the gang and soon the younger ones were all nodding off on the floor by the fire while the elders made themselves comfortable on various chairs, barrels, and crates found around the place.

Hastur lit his pipe and enjoyed the quiet after their raucous supper, though in truth the noise of it hadn’t bothered him much. It was the first time since returning to his home world that Hastur had enjoyed a meal in company— it was nice.

“So, what are we calling this gang?” Jasna asked from her perch on a rickety bench close by. Her brilliant red hair was pulled back from her face with a bit of string, the light of the fire leaving her eyes even more golden than usual as she watched Hastur closely.

The man blew an idle smoke ring while the others looked on. Memory of a familiar, much-loved face surfaced in the calm of the evening and Hastur smiled as the answer came to him. “The Harper gang,” he said confidently, and while his answer was met with confused look, Hastur didn’t offer any explanation. He couldn’t, not really.

John Harper had been Hastur’s long-time friend— the first he’d made on Earth when he’d found himself in Mike’s body and assigned to the same squadron in France during the war. They’d soon become thick of thieves and they’d carried that back home to the states where they eventually started a gang together in hopes of making ends meet for themselves and men like them.

They’d been Detroit’s notorious Smith-Harper gang, and while John had died five years before Hastur returned to his home-world, he’d kept the gang name despite being the sole leader. Naming his knew crew in memory of his old friend felt like the right thing to do.

He wouldn’t have made it this far without John Harper, after all.