OLD ROSE | EVENING
Charity looked around at the docks as she stepped off the steam boat that had carried her to Old Rose Harbour, keeping her black cloak drawn tightly around her face and field simmering slightly, Diaxio’s words echoing in her head. Comfortably tucked in her pocket was a small pouch of the strange Hessian drug that was peddled by the Blackhand wicks in Vienda. It was wrong, she knew it was wrong, but the blonde galdor had taken the pouch from her partner in crime with no intentions of consuming it.
This was stupidly dangerous.
The King’s Crop, her personal opiate of choice at present was a highly addictive and deeply sought after drug. Thanks however to the recent arrests by the Seventen of the Drake’s Tongue crew, almost all of the narcotics in Vienda had become unbelievably hard to find.
Except Charity had contacts, and a father who brought his work home with him. So whilst Vienda might be dry, she knew that the Rose was not.
Knowing she couldn’t tell Rhys or her father when she was going, the petite pianist stole away in the early morning of the thirty fifth, buying her passage on the steamboat that ferried people up and down the Arova. In and out, she would offer the Drakes Tongue as a peace offering, in turn for hopefully being able to buy a few vials of King’s Crop. Diaxio had a contact in the Rose that had mentioned a seller by the name of Eon, who offered up what had been dubbed ‘performance enhancers’. The directions to this Eon’s place of business had been quite clear, and quite careful, and so Charity did her level best to follow them too the letter.
Moving away from the docks, the woman kept to herself, avoiding eye contact with any of the people that she passed lest one of them try to talk to her. Passing through side streets and places of shady business, Charity blushed deeply as scantily dressed women tried to proposition her outside of a huge ship that appeared to have become a brothel. Gods, what the clock was she doing. Picking up the pace, she looked at the paper again, getting her bearings and taking a sharp left.
A few more turns and twists, the blonde reached a small dwelling, not entirely in an easy to find location tucked amid the filthy muddy dark streets of the maze that was the Harbour. The Viendan looked around one last time, before reaching up to knock on the door gently, heart hammering in her chest. This was a stupid thing to do, a stupid place to be. Her father and her lover were both Seventen, and whilst one would be a little more understanding than the other, neither would overlook the law for her.
Then don’t get caught you moony woman.
She could just stop, cold turkey. Just use the lull in Vienda to stop drowning herself in the opiates that might one day end her. But she’d tried that, she’d held off for days after reuniting with Rhys and by the love of the Lady it was too much. Cold sweats, nausea, headaches and shaking. Charity should have just turned to the taller Seventen for help, admitted her weakness, but...after years of bad habits she couldn’t help herself. She wasn’t a good person, and Alioe he deserved someone better.
Just get it done and go home. It’s a once off.
Lifting her hand, she knocked again a little harder, nervous that any minute someone would appear and arrest her on the spot.