Never to Let Go [Memory]

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Anaxas' main trade port; it is also the nation's criminal headquarters, home to the Bad Brothers and Silas Hawke, King of the Underworld. The small town of Plugit is nearby.

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Niccolette Ibutatu
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Fri Jul 19, 2019 11:18 am

Evening, 21 Intas 2716
The Ibutatu Residence, Quarter Fords, Old Rose Harbor
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Uzoji Ibutatu was thoroughly sick of resting. He’d never been terribly good at stillness. As a boy he’d rarely been sick, but those few times stood out vividly, stark in his mind, remembered boredom and that sense of being trapped viscerally painful. He’d never done well confined.

So when the distant knock on the door echoed through the house, the Mugrobi galdor didn’t take much convincing. He tried. He did try.

“Darling?” Uzoji called, his voice echoing through the empty house. He closed the book he’d been reading, holding it on his lap. Silence. He’d sent the servants away a few hours ago. It was hard enough to keep any servants – he grinned at the thought of some of Niccolette’s more creative tantrums – and he knew better now than to ask them to stay through an evening when she intended to meditate. Predictably, more silence. Uzoji thought wryly that it was best not to interrupt her anyway. He’d count himself lucky if the bell hadn’t. Better to get up now, keep it from ringing again. He set the book aside.

With a grunt, the slender Mugrobi eased himself out of his blankets and his bed. He wore a pair of soft warm pants, although nothing but bandages on his upper body, wrapped around his torso, down over his hip on one side and up to his armpit on the other, over the shoulder to keep everything in place. What chest still showed was dark and muscular, well-defined, smooth, almost sleek, if a little thinner than it had been before.

Uzoji finished standing, carefully. He winced, faintly, brushed one hand over the side of his chest, and kept moving. He pulled on the thick robe hanging from the stand near his bedside one arm at a time, but left it hanging open. It was warm in the house, warmer than it should have been, especially given that no one had stoked the fires in hours. Having the use of both hands again was a welcome relief, even if he didn’t particularly need to tie the robe closed.

His normal loose, easy stride was still more like a shuffle than anything else. Uzoji thought he was getting a little better, at least. Anything faster than a snail’s crawl still seemed to leave him breathless, and he couldn’t move his torso too quickly, couldn’t twist from side to side at all. Even looking over his shoulder had to be done slowly and cautiously. The healers said it would continue improving. Something about not pushing it; Uzoji didn’t dwell over much on that part.

Uzoji shuffle-walked towards the door, his hands gripping at the edge of a convenient table or clock more than once. He took a few moments to rest and collect himself once he reached the flooding thing, checking his forehead. No sweat – a considerable improvement, he thought, pleased. Silence from outside, now. Had he imagined the knock? Just an excuse to get himself up? Well, Niccolette wouldn’t be pleased with him. Uzoji felt a smug little smile on his face at the thought.

Still, better to check. Uzoji flexed his ramscott field, opened the door, and raised an eyebrow at –

Tom Cooke?

The Mugrobi galdor grinned, flashing white teeth glinting in his dark face. He was thinner than when Tom had seen him last, the bones in his face starker against his skin, but considerably more cheerful than when he’d been barely alive on the warehouse floor. Much calmer too, especially relative to those frantic first moments after he’d woken up. He’d turned his head to the side and seen Niccolette, and he’d thought she was dead. He remembered the feeling of breathing, suddenly strange because he could have sworn he’d drowned. Uzoji hoped he hadn’t actually cried; things had gone fuzzy fairly quickly. Maybe Tom would do him the courtesy of forgetting about it as well.

After that, Uzoji had woken up again with the healers – no sign of Niccolette at all then. He remembered that better, the panic of it, until someone had told him she was alive, unconscious but alive. It was rare to die outright from backlash, of course, but Uzoji thought he could be forgiven for not thinking clearly.

“Tom! This is a surprise. And a pleasure. Unless – ” Uzoji raised his eyebrows. “Ah, Niccolette said something about work for Hawke, but I didn’t realize…” he had not, Uzoji thought, given her much chance to explain. He’d been angry when she’d told him across the dinner table. Then she’d been angry too, finally. He hadn’t been sure he could take much more of her fluttering attempts at solicitousness. That wasn’t his wife. Bright sparking anger between them, that rush of hot feeling – even her tears afterwards had been welcome and cleansing. For both of them, he thought. Anyway, he’d never much liked those plates.

“Come in, please,” Uzoji offered. “I think I know where my wife is,” he grinned at Tom, exhaling slowly, feeling the breath moving smoothly through both lungs. “Hulali’s tits, but I am grateful to you,” Uzoji shook his head, clasping Tom warmly on the arm and letting go. The inside of his right hand was odd and pale and pink across the palm, but there wasn’t more than the slightest stiffness to its movements. He used them both, freely, as if nothing was wrong with it.

With his clear refusal to take no for an answer set on his face, the Mugrobi galdor shuffled back from the door. He held it open wide, leaving plenty of space for Tom to enter his home.

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Last edited by Niccolette Ibutatu on Tue Jul 30, 2019 2:14 pm, edited 5 times in total.

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Tom Cooke
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Sat Jul 20, 2019 11:29 pm

The Ibutatu Residence Quarter Fords
during the evening of the 21st of intas, 2716
Hadn’t been far – not in terms of walking, anyway. In terms of birds, he’d walked miles and miles away from his and Ish’s little house, tucked into that tiny back-street in the Fords. In terms of birds, he’d crossed the godsdamn Tincta Basta, a season’s worth of sailing, and he’d only gone a stone’s throw. That was Old Rose for you, though. Pockets of wealth, if you knew where to look. Seeds of prosperity planted in a fallow field.

Tom’d been in this neighborhood before, though. Not far past his twelfth or thirteenth summer, somewhere round there, he’d run messages between Carlisle in Voedale and a Mugrobi merchant who lived hereabouts; much later, after Carlisle’d bent the knee to Hawke, he’d paid old Katirci a visit on less friendly terms. He knew the landscape well enough. He knew where the walkways broadened out, where the beggars turned meek and few, beating their bowls at the shadowy mouths of alleyways instead of plucking at your hems in the street. Here, the drying laundry didn’t hang on rickety frames, dragging in the dirt. Here, the air breathed out through the bark of trees, through their shivering boughs – and in the spring and summer, the streets were thick with shadows and dappled with light.

Not today, ’course, with it still so clocking cold. Tom pulled his coat closer around him, drawing his shoulders right up to his ears. Ordinarily, he reckoned this walkway would’ve been verdant, all rustling leaves and shade from the heat, flanked by shrubs brimming with green just below his eye level. Now, all those trees were bare, the gnarled fingers of their boughs tangling overhead. Tom kept looking up through that snarl of branches, up toward the windows, dark and glassy against the old, vine-clad brick and the darkening grey sky.

He’d knocked a minute or so ago, and being honest, he wasn’t sure what he expected. Two dead gollies, he reckoned. When he’d got the message earlier that evening, he just about didn’t believe his eyes – and he wouldn’t, not ’til one of those moony toffins answered the door in the flesh.

As if in answer to his thoughts, the door came open.

The first thing Tom noticed was the wave of heat that rolled out to greet him. His cheeks’d been numb, and now they tingled, life creeping back into them. Wasn’t half that warm in Ish’s house this time of year, he thought, something bitter twisting in his gut. Then he looked down. Surprise flickered across his scarred face – then, when he felt a hand clasp his arm, he laughed. “Wo chet,” he exclaimed. “Uzoji Ibutatu. Fuckin’ look at you, livin’ an’ breathin’.”

It was true, of course, that Uzoji looked more than a little green around the gills. That angular, dark face was looking more angular than Tom’d ever seen it, with more shadows round his eyes and under his cheekbones than he could count. He looked thinner all around, and though he still held that spare frame like a fighting man’s, it seemed like the act of holding it might’ve been more of an effort than usual. Underneath his open robe, his chest was all wrapped up in gauze. Tom gave those bandages only the briefest of glances, but even then, he pushed down a wince: he remembered the way the blood’d bloomed through the fibers of his sweater, the way Niccolette’d torn it open to reveal the messy, dark gash underneath.

The odd, pink scarring on his hand wasn’t lost on Tom, either. He remembered that, too: how she’d pressed that hand to her chest and then to her side, how she’d let it brand her. Like it was worth it, like it was necessary to whatever poetry she was speaking, whatever the mona were doing. He wondered if he’d be able to do that for Ish, then put the thought out of his head. Of the two of them, he was planning on dying first.

“Benny seein’ you up an’ about, hey? But aye, it’s business that’s brought me,” he said, maybe a little hasty. Tom liked Uzoji well enough, well as you could like any golly; that gratitude, warm and thoughtful, had caught him off-guard. Still, the air around him was just as woobly as it’d ever been, and the fact that he was up and about at all spoke of what golly poetry could do. This shit was best held at arm’s length.

Tom raised a hand, ready to tell him he’d be happy to wait outside, to let him get his rest. Then the golly invited him in, opening the door wide.

Ah, hell, he thought, sucking at a tooth. Rather not, kov. But there Uzoji was, all shuffling and wrapped-up in bandages in the first place, and in the second, with that brick shithouse of a field still round him like a godsdamn suit of armor. There wasn’t any way he could refuse.

“Boemo,” he said instead, offering the galdor another crooked-toothed grin, easy as you like. “Mujo ma.”

Then he shouldered his way in. Standing there, he wasn’t sure what to say; he felt big and ragged, a dark, hulking human in a galdor’s house. He did his damnedest not to gawk around him. Turning back to Uzoji, he raised his heavy brows. “How’s the rosh, then?”
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Last edited by Tom Cooke on Tue Jul 30, 2019 3:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Niccolette Ibutatu
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Sun Jul 21, 2019 12:30 pm

Evening, 21 Intas 2716
The Ibutatu Residence, Quarter Fords, Old Rose Harbor
The exterior of the house was nothing too special, at least not in the growing, looming dark. There were trees overhanging the walkway, the house pulled back off the street to give its inhabitants further privacy in this already quiet, private corner of the Rose. This was Quarter Fords, yes, but it was the Quarter Fords of the Mugrobi elite and those who chose to live among them – not only galdori, though perhaps mostly, especially as few Mugrobi passives would willingly choose Anaxas.

The entryway was well-polished wood, a gleaming side table, a coat stand. The furnishings still had an almost new look to them, as if they had just started to be worn in, and it was all flawlessly polished. There were gas lights on the wall, mostly unlit despite the growing dark, and it meant Tom couldn’t see much past that entryway, just hints of glowing light up ahead and the faint echoes of doorways and space.

“She’s well,” Uzoji’s grin now was all fierce pride, warmer even than the house’s interior. “This way, then, come on. We’ll check on her ourselves.”

It hurt to pull his back up and his shoulders straight, more than he might have wanted to admit, but Uzoji found a compromise between pain and dignity, and followed the shuffling line of it down the thick rug on bare feet. He didn’t go left or right, but straight back from the door, deeper into the house. They followed the hallway down, past an open door on the right, a glimpse of a large, handsome wooden table and a chandelier glittering over it, forgotten plates with white glistening edges lying half-covered in the center of it. Another open door on the left, a flash of bookshelves, chairs, heavy clean rugs and an unlit fireplace. A few more here and there, closed, no hint of the secrets behind them, all smooth and well-fitted into their frames despite that tendency of Old Rose Harbor to warp and bulge even the loveliest wood.

Warmer and warmer as they went, with a thick, almost greasy feeling in the air.

“It feels like she’s not done,” Uzoji said, thoughtfully. He could hear the faint strain in his own voice, but his field flexed as easily as ever in the air around the two of them. “We’d better check, all the same – but – ah, quietly, if you please,” he grinned at Tom, conspiratorial, beckoning him on through any hesitation.

The hallway ended in an open door that led to a small room. More bookshelves, here, with a desk off to one side, notes in a bizarre alphabet that bore no resemblance to estuan on thick, creamy paper spread about it. Uzoji stopped in front of a door at the back of the room. It was so warm inside as to be almost unpleasant, even with the coldness of winter behind them. The heat seemed to throb and pulse from behind this door, as if a furnace lay inside.

He had not, Tom might realize, seen any fires lit inside the house

Uzoji didn’t hesitate; he pushed open the door, slow and careful, wide enough that he could easily see into the room – and Tom too, without even much in the way of effort.

It looked like a sea of candles – there must have been hundreds of them, laid out in a strange intricate pattern across the floor, stretching out from a small circle in the center of it, all alight. There, amidst the flickering, glowing flames, Niccolette knelt, head bowed forward, dark hair tumbled forward to hide her face. Soft murmurs of monite echoed from her, tucked between deep, rhythmic breaths; they seemed to whisper off the walls and dance through the candle flames, filling the air with heat and energy and light.

With the door open, Uzoj and Tom could both feel the bright pulsing vibrancy of her field, stretching outwards from her small, slight body as if all that candlelight was feeding into it, or perhaps it was her own breath she was pouring out. For Tom it was an impression, a feeling, a sense. For Uzoji, it was more than that; he reached out, exploring her field with his own, searching for its boundaries – feeling the rising renewal of its strength. The meditations she’d been engaged in almost nightly gave it a strange feeling, subtly different than what he was used to, but not unpleasant, he’d have said. There was something lovely in it. He didn’t try to merge his field any deeper with hers, not now.

Niccolette’s small pale face lifted, slowly, the soft monite coming to a gradual halt, although the steady smooth count of her breaths never faltered. With her head raised, her eyes shone greenish-brown in the dim light. She too was thinner than before, cheekbones nearly as sharp as Uzoji's. Her gaze drifted a few moments, then focused on Uzoji, clearing slowly.

Uzoji let the silence stretch on a little longer, until he was sure she wouldn’t speak again, and he grinned at her. “Nearly done, dear heart?” He asked, lightly. He let a pulse of love, of admiration, seep out into his field, pride suffused through it all; the air around him shifted a faint pleasant pink, just a flicker of it.

Niccolette nodded, once. Her whole body shivered, and her field responded, something fierce and wonderful sent back to him. She rose, slowly, a single, oddly boneless movement. She wore only a thin, nearly translucent white cotton shift, revealing slender bare calves and forearms and beneath it the outline of her whole slim body in the light. She was no more than the suggestion of a shape beneath it, pale and soft, except for an odd dark patch wrapping around her waist – smooth at the edges, with a rounded extension stretching up. Her arms lay against her sides, the fire dancing against her pale skin, caught and glittering in the gold of her wedding ring.

Niccolette poured a little more whispered monite into the room. She inhaled deeply, her whole body rising and expanding with it, and the candles strained, flickering towards her, the flames growing. Niccolette exhaled, long and slow and steady, and spoke a last phrase; a warped stream of energy pulsed out from her, wavering through the air. The candles flickered out in a steady cascading ring with her breath, leaving her almost glowing in the near-dark.

Uzoji, heedless of the vast height difference between them, closed the door, grasped Tom’s shoulder in a friendly enough way and steered him away from the room. If a bit of his weight leaned on the human, he hoped Tom’d be too polite to mention it.

“Remember her too well, my friend, and I’ll cut your eyes out,” Uzoji said with a brightly cheerful possessiveness. He gave Tom’s shoulder a firm, friendly squeeze, firm enough that it sent a throbbing ache through his torso, and shuffled away, slowly, leading the human back away from the furnace of a room, putting that almost painful heat at their backs. Back out of the little study, back down the hall, over to that small sitting room they'd passed earlier.

With a soft, painful grunt, Uzoji settled into one of the plush armchairs. Now inside, Tom would be able to see the two bookshelves, the heavy rug, the small table at the far end with a glass bottle of some dark, inviting liquid and empty glasses. Uzoji gestured with an open hand to the rest of the room, encompassing the second armchair and the soft-looking couch for Tom. There was no sign of a fire having been laid in this room; there was wood stacked for one, but not even the faintest hint of leftover ash.

“She’ll come when she’s ready,” Uzoji glanced – more slowly and carefully than he wanted to - back at the hallway, his gaze lingering back towards the end of it, then turned back to Tom, smiling, open and friendly. “You’re well? Nose not troubling you still?”

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Last edited by Niccolette Ibutatu on Sat Jul 27, 2019 10:16 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Tom Cooke
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Mon Jul 22, 2019 7:40 pm

The Ibutatu Residence Quarter Fords
during the evening of the 21st of intas, 2716
Being honest, Tom couldn’t see much of anything. The fading light outside gave everything in the entryway that sheen that polished wood had – not that Tom saw a hell of a lot of polished wood on the regular – but that light was fading fast, and it didn’t look like the Ibutatus’d lit many candles. From a quick glance round, he located a coat stand with a couple of empty hooks, burdened with various hanging shapes. He thought about unburdening himself of his own coat, but then thought otherwise.

Felt funny in here, it did. Tom didn’t like it much.

Still, he didn’t seem to have any choice but to follow Uzoji – and follow he did, lumbering slightly behind the little galdor like an enormous shadow. Uzoji’d pulled himself all ramrod and proud, and that grin was a flash of white like lightning in the dark, but Tom still felt like they were moving at a snail’s pace. Down the hall they went, flanked now and then by doors open and shut. When they’d been left open, Tom got glimpses of rooms: a scattered, disarrayed-looking dining room, palatial, with that chandelier dripping from the ceiling in the dark like a flower glittering with dewdrops; a sitting room with a carpet that could’ve paid off all Tom’s debt; more spaces, large and small, well-furnished but quiet and empty. What he didn’t see behind those closed doors worried him more than what he did.

Tom wasn’t an expert on galdor houses, but he noticed two things right off. The first was the lack of servants. He could’ve put it to Uzoji’s Mugrobi heritage; he didn’t know how shit worked there, but he knew Uzoji and Murko both treated humans all right, far as the gollies went. That, and the Ibutatus’d never seemed like the kind of soft toffins that’d need coddling for their every whim.

The second was that he hadn’t seen a single fire. Some of the gas lights’d been on dim, dim enough they didn’t help much with the growing dark, but he hadn’t spied a single candle. More baffling was the complete absence of any fire. All the hearths they’d passed had been cold, full of nothing but dust and ashes; not a single coal’d glowed in any of them. But somehow, Circle clock it, somehow it just kept getting hotter. Tom couldn’t figure it out.

One thing he did know was that he was regretting not giving up his coat at the door. Stubborn as a kenser, Ish’d always said, and it was true: he tugged at his collar occasionally, squirmed under the heavy old thing, but he refused to take it off. Sweat was already beading on his brow, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Be out of here in no time, he kept thinking.

So it was. By the time they got to the little study, he was feeling faint, but he grit his teeth, determined not to let it show. Gods damn it, but was the air thicker in here? It was like a thin layer of grease’d settled over his face, like he’d been working in a kitchen in the summer. This whole place felt like a bizarre nightmare. When he cast a glance over at the desk, he double-took, thinking something’d come loose in his brain; the squiggles on all those papers didn’t look like Estuan, didn’t look like anything he’d seen before.

Feels like she’s not done? Not done with what? Tom could only nod when Uzoji reminded him to be quiet; he reckoned there wasn’t much else he could do. When he opened the door, Tom stood stock-still as his eyes tried to tell his brain what he was seeing. Blinking in the sudden light of – candles. So many fucking candles. And in the middle of them, in the middle of that moony vodundun-circle –

What the floodin’ fuck?

A figure crouched in a sea of echoes. Poetry, poetry – speaking poetry. It didn’t stop, not even when she lifted her head, not even when Tom saw the candlelight lick the shape of Niccolette’s face out of the darkness, leaner and stranger than he’d ever seen it. Her chest rose and fell, the motion stark against that thin white shift.

He couldn’t seem to tear his eyes away from her lips – they still moved, those murmurs spilling out of them, filling the heavy, sweltering air – but when he did, they moved down. He was frightened, for a moment; he thought he might see the shape of a handprint bleeding through the muslin. When he looked, all he saw was the dark blot of a bandage.

The Monite guttered out. Uzoji said something, but Tom didn’t register it. (Wasn’t drunk enough for this. Wasn’t drunk enough, by the Circle.) She whispered again; like she’d summoned up a breeze, the candles bowed and died.

Then Uzoji shut the door, turning away. Tom felt the galdor’s lean hand on one of his shoulders, felt a little more weight on him; he looked down, returning Uzoji’s cheery look with an oddly blank one of his own. As they walked back together, Uzoji’s threat sank in, but Tom’s head couldn’t seem to do much with it. Remember her too well? Tom didn’t think he was likely ever to forget that sight, but you couldn’t argue with that. Somehow, he didn’t think the cutting out of eyes was the worst thing these vroo could do to you.

The air’d cooled back down by the time they got back to the living room, but it was still, to Tom, unpleasantly warm. When Uzoji sank into the armchair, Tom finally took off his coat, folding it over a big arm. The galdor’d already gestured, and that sofa looked soft, but he hesitated. After a moment, he obliged, dropping awkwardly into a seat with a muttered, “Mujo ma.” He sank into the upholstery.

At the question, he raised his brows.

“Well as any of us, hey?” he replied, scratching in his beard and shifting in his seat. The frame creaked rather loudly underneath him. “Uh. Ne, ne” – he gestured at his twisted nose – “still hurts like a fuckin’ hatcher, bein’ honest, but it wouldn’t be the first time. I can tell you when it’s goin’ to rain, but that ain’t new. Not that you an’ your pretty face’d know anythin’ about that.” Tom offered him another crooked-toothed grin.

He cast a glance at the decanter and the glasses, then over Uzoji’s shoulder. When he looked back at the galdor, it was with curiosity glittering in his dark eyes. Might’ve scared the hell out of him, oes, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t got the gears turning in his head.

With a soft, incredulous laugh, he asked, “What the fuck’s that rosh of yours doin’ in there, anyway?”
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Last edited by Tom Cooke on Tue Jul 30, 2019 3:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Niccolette Ibutatu
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Mon Jul 22, 2019 10:24 pm

Evening, 21 Intas 2716
The Ibutatu Residence, Quarter Fords, Old Rose Harbor
Uzoji laughed at Tom’s joke, touching the bridge of his own broader nose. “It’s been broken a time or two,” he said, wryly, and there was something pleased and almost soft in his smile, as if the memories were pleasant. “If Niccolette offers to fix it,” something in his voice acknowledged the unlikeliness of it, but he kept on “you should be warned: her healing hurts as badly as the injury,” Uzoji grinned to himself, leaning back in the chair. "Sometimes worse."

Sitting was a considerable relief. Uzoji’s head was as smoothly shaven as ever, but now he was aware of the moisture that had collected against his skin. The heat? The exertion? He’d need to be careful; if he let on, Niccolette might not want to go out, might worry about leaving him. The Mugrobi took long, slow, careful breaths, testing the edges of his lungs. The air moved in and out as smoothly as it ever had, but not as deeply. Not yet, Uzoji told himself. Not yet. Diminished lung capacity, the healer called it. He wouldn’t notice it in everyday life, only when things were stressful in some way. Probably, the healer had said, not necessary to regain his former capacity fully and not easy either, unless he planned to push himself.

Uzoji had thought Niccolette would tear the healer’s head off; instead, she’d gone stiff and silent. That had been before their fight, of course. Uzoji had shouted at the healer for both of their sakes, and done it until he’d used up every bit of breath in his diminished lungs and more besides. They’d had a new healer from Vienda three days later, one who had come with a plan for lung-strengthening exercises. Like flooding hell, Uzoji had said, he’d be any less than he had to be.

Tom’s question surprised him – not just the words, but the tone too, and most of all his own reaction to it. Uzoji’s eyebrows lifted, then settled back down again. He thought to himself, for a long moment, studying the scarred human sitting opposite him, the mass of bruised and twisted nose at the center of his face. Thought, too, of Tom’s voice calling to him across the warehouse – Uzoji! – and the knife that had nearly been in his back. Of Tom running at him as he’d dropped to his knees not long later.

“There is a word in Mugrobi, ohante,” Uzoji said, thoughtful and open, straightening up a little more again, even if it pulled at his aching torso. “There isn’t really a translation for it in Estuan, unfortunately. It’s often spoken of as honor, but that’s not quite…” his burned hand waved through the air, dismissing the translation.

“Two men can have honor between them,” Uzoji said, finally. He ran his hand lightly over his bare shaven head again; it was only sticky now, not outright wet. Getting up to wash it clean of the salty residue of his sweat would be best, but he wasn’t entirely sure he could. “Well, men or women,” he grinned at Tom, casually, well-aware that this was one of many points where Anaxas and Mugroba seemed to diverge. “If you mean to fight alongside someone, then it is best to trust them and be trusted in return. The act of fighting in itself creates that trust too – it means something, when a man fights beside you, when he saves your life,” Uzoji looked squarely at Tom, but didn’t interrupt the flow of his words otherwise. “It’s not as if you cannot fight without that trust, but it will not go as smoothly. When something goes wrong, as something often does, you’ll regret that lack of trust, what I would call your honor. Both of you will. It’s not only fighting, of course,” he grinned a little wider. “Marriage also comes to mind.”

“It is almost like that with the mona,” Uzoji said, simply, smile fading as he approached the more serious subject. Although he spoke with much less of an accent than Niccolette, his words were still tinged with the edge of something sonorous, that faint lilting up and down that many Mugrobi seemed unable to shake. “At least, in part. Ohante is how we Mugs describe that relationship. The mona must trust you, and you them. When Niccolette saved me – brought me back from the edge of death – it pushed the mona to a place they did not wish to go. They did it,” he grinned, bright and fierce and unafraid, “they bent to her will – and who’d dare do otherwise? But they had signaled to her not to do it, and she did it anyway, and so that trust was in need of repair.”

“With a person,” Uzoji continued, almost casual, “you might – take them out for a drink, perhaps talk. Perhaps fight, if that is your way, or sleep together – depending on who they are to you. Perhaps only time can heal your breach, or perhaps it cannot be healed. It would depend very much on the man or the woman. For the mona, of course – we speak to them, but they do not speak back. Still, it is known that, once broken, these relationships can be rebuilt, mostly through meditation and ritual. What Niccolette was doing tonight is a part of her rebuilding. It is rather specific to her, of course. Mine, if I ever suffered such backlash, would look very different.”

Uzoji cleared his throat, suddenly dry. “I am sorry, my friend. You asked a simple question, and I have not given you a simple answer,” he wondered where the nearest water was; wondered, looking at the bourbon glittering in its glass decanter, whether it would do the trick instead, but he didn’t get up to try it. “Niccolette is apologizing to the mona,” he grinned at Tom. “Perhaps that is all I should have said.” He raised an eyebrow, turning the statement into something like a question - but not, he thought, one that needed an answer.

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Last edited by Niccolette Ibutatu on Sat Jul 27, 2019 10:16 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Tom Cooke
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Wed Jul 24, 2019 4:41 pm

The Ibutatu Residence Quarter Fords
during the evening of the 21st of intas, 2716
Admittedly, he’d snorted at Uzoji’s comment about Niccolette fixing his nose – and then immediately regretted it. Couldn’t quite stifle a wince and a little groan.

He watched Uzoji steadily as he spoke, his eyes keen in the shadow of his brow. It would’ve been hard to tell much about his expression; above his beard, his face was a mess of bruising, purple and green and sickly yellow against his skin, flowering out from his swollen nose. He sat leaned on one side of the couch, his elbow propped up against the cushioned arm.

Ohante, he mouthed after Uzoji. Tom knew well enough of such things as honor between men. Men and women, as he’d added; Tom smiled at the clarification. Wasn’t lost on him, either, that Uzoji afforded him that honor, that the golly seemed to think he’d saved his life. He reckoned it was true, after a fashion, and he knew it was also true that in a fight, without that kind of two-way obligation, you’d find yourself in deep shit; they’d seen that with Breda and his moashit brother.

The idea that you could have that kind of obligation to the mona, and it to you, was new to Tom. He peered across at Uzoji, a little suspicious. It was hard enough most days to wrap his head around gollies and wicks using a special language to speak to invisible things in the air, hard enough to understand that they could bend the laws of nature by doing so – hard until you saw it, and then easy, horrifically easy. He could still see Uzoji laid out, the snow melting in his torn, bloodstained sweater, one whole side of his chest limp and dead; he could feel the air grow hot, hotter even than it was right then, full of the smell of burning flesh. They’d bent to her will, but even Tom had felt the weight of the request. Like Niccolette’d asked them to carry something much too heavy, and they’d strained something, broken something.

So she was spending time with them, in her way, and they were learning to trust each other again.

Hard to wrap your head around until you saw it, but he wasn’t sure seeing made it any easier. Carefully, Tom nodded. He thought hard, his eyes wandering away from the golly, alighting on the decanter and glasses. His nerves were all on end, and he needed a drink, needed something to make it matter less that none of it made sense. At the same time, another part of him was telling him he needed to ask a dozen questions. Dozens. Hundreds.

If they don’t talk back, how do you know what to do? Do you feel them? What does the mona’s trust feel like? How long does it take? Can you ever break it beyond repair?

He also knew that Uzoji telling him all this’d been an act of trust in and of itself, and he didn’t know if that trust – tenuous as it was, and maybe one-sided – could bear the weight of any of those questions. Gollies, in his experience, didn’t usually tell natts this much about their poetry, not seriously and in detail. Not like they thought they were being understood. This meant something.

As if in answer to his thoughts, and with as much grace as he’d explained the concept, Uzoji walked it back. Tom tugged at his beard, and his expression soured a little under its mask of bruising.

Not that any of this was his business, anyway. He was on the job, and he was here to work, not speculate about fucking jibber. If they’d been regular folk, they’d’ve already left by now, and Tom was getting restless. Hawke didn’t pay him to sit on his erse in gollies’ fancy parlors and talk vodundun he’d never be anything but too mung to understand.

With a creak and a pop, he sat up in his seat. He showed the galdor what he reckoned was a good-natured, apologetic grin. “Mujo ma. Maybe so, Uzoji. I appreciate it, but, hell,” he replied, “shit’s beyond me, hey? I jus’ know it’s hot as floodin’ fuck in here. An’ speakin’ of ohante, or the lack of it, might please you to know our Breda an’ his ugly brother’re havin’ some regrets. Speakin’ of bendin’ to your rosh’s will, too.” The good-natured grin became more than a little cruel.

He sat still, watching Uzoji clear his throat, cast a glance over at the bourbon. Tom raised an eyebrow.

“Can I get you somethin’ for that?”
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Last edited by Tom Cooke on Tue Jul 30, 2019 3:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Niccolette Ibutatu
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Thu Jul 25, 2019 2:41 pm

Evening, 21 Intas 2716
The Ibutatu Residence, Quarter Fords, Old Rose Harbor
Something flickered across Uzoji’s face when Tom spoke - relief? disappointment? Uzoji couldn’t have said himself, but he was as glad as Tom to let the topic go. He laughed without thinking at Tom’s mention of Breda and his brother, then let out a quiet groan of his own as the movement pulled at something in his chest, and sank back a little against his chair.

“Yes,” Uzoji thought of Niccolette across the table from him, fire and steel in his voice as she told him without the need for words what she meant to do to Breda’s brother. He grinned a little more, and it wasn’t any less cruel than Tom’s. “I believe they’ll have more, before it is over.”

“Yes, thank you,” it went against the grain, a bit, to let Tom pour - but Uzoji couldn’t deny that a bit of bourbon would go a long way just now. Not surrender, he told himself, sternly. Just - accommodation.

“It’s Thul’Amat bourbon - you’re welcome to some, if you like,” Uzoji said, casually, shutting his eyes for just a moment. The cold, clammy feeling crawling over his skin was deeply unpleasant. He opened them at the sound of Tom returning, and it took him long enough that the larger man had nearly reached him already.

Uzoji cleared his throat, sat up a little straighter, and waited until his hands had stopped shaking before taking the glass from Tom. He didn’t apologize for his weakness, not with manner or word, no signs of shame on his face. Weakness, Uzoji told himself, was something to be born with honor - the same as strength.

“Thank you,” Uzoji took a sip, letting the liquor burn his throat, tasting the wood and spice, tempered with a faint note of sweetness. He exhaled, slowly, feeling the edge come off of the weariness; it settled deeper into his bones, but it felt more manageable at the same time.

Uzoji didn’t try to fill the silence that had settled between them, didn’t search for words or reassurances, comfortable enough for them each to sit and think. The skin of his face was drawn a little tighter now, but it seemed to loosen somewhat with another sip of the bourbon and a slow shifting settling of his body against the chair. He lowered the glass to the small table beside him, going as slowly as he needed to to keep even a drop from spilling out over the edge.

In time, Uzoji promised himself. In time.


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Niccolette had always worn the mona like a second skin. From the moment she had begun to feel them in the air around her, even as a little girl, she had welcomed them close. Not for her the headaches that others had complained of, the quiet whines of discomfort in their first years at Brunnhold. As she grew, she had never hesitated to give the mona something to remember; she had learned and fought and cast and listened, brought her will to bear but never unyielding.

And then - in that infinite aching moment outside the warehouse, kneeling on the ground that had been once snow-covered, she had held Uzoji to her with every drop of bloody strength she had, and be damned the rest. Be damned the mona too. Waking up had felt numb and strange, as if someone had wrapped her skin in some invisible cloth, lined every inch of her with it - because she could still reach out to touch, but she could not feel.

Never, never, had Niccolette felt the faintest regret. Even in those first moments of dawning awareness, when she still had not known if everything she had to give had been enough, she had regretted nothing.

The candle flames stirred the air around her, little tongue lapping at the dry heat. Niccolette knelt in the center of it all, the mona around her channeled through the confines of the ritual circle. Each deep breath opened her lungs, drew in life from the world beyond and mingled it with her own. At first, Niccolette had needed to concentrate on the breathing, sometimes to the exclusion of all else. It had been enough, then, simply to be and to breathe and to begin to feel again.

When she had felt she was ready, Niccolette had brought the grimoire into her meditations. On those early nights, she had held the book in her lap and had let her gaze drift across it to remind her of what was written, almost reading aloud. But as she repeated the phrases, not just over hours but across nights again and again, slowly they had become her own. Now she needed no guide; now the words echoed from her center and rippled through her and out on her breath into the world beyond, tying them all back together.

And now, even as she snuffed the flames out with a word, Niccolette’s own connection didn’t falter.

As she dressed, Niccolette thought of the night to come - thought of vengeance and conquest like fire in her blood, thought of making them both whole once more. She smoothed one last time the bandage that covered her side, fastened the last of her buttons, and made her way towards the sitting room.

Niccolette went straight to Uzoji when she entered, long dark green skirt swishing softly over the quiet clicking of her shoes on the floor. She stopped inches from him, seeing the drawn look on his face, the slump of his shoulders, and her hand hovered over his, not quite descending to the arm of the chair.

Uzoji’s hand turned beneath hers, lifted and squeezed, hard enough that Niccolette felt the ache of it pulse through her bones. He looked up at her, and nodded, once, faintly. Niccolette reached out, letting her field envelop his, and felt him return the embrace with all his glorious strength.

“Let us go, then,” Niccolette looked at Tom, raising an eyebrow, as cool and demanding as if he were the one who had kept them waiting. She gripped Uzoji’s hand with hers, hard enough that the pale skin over her knuckles shifted, visible even in the faint light – then let go.

Uzoji’s hand lowered back to the arm of the chair, and he picked up his glass again with his other hand, taking what looked, to Niccolette, like a sip of bourbon. “Good hunting,” Uzoji said, quietly, his voice following them both from the room.

Niccolette kept her gaze forward as she and Tom left. There was a moment, in the hallway outside – only once they were out of sight from inside – that she stopped, trembling, arms gripping one another, and glanced back over her shoulder at the room behind them. Niccolette took a deep breath, secured her hold over her field – not that she had let a flicker of emotion she didn’t wish to be there out, but it was worth making sure she wouldn’t going forward – and kept walking. She didn’t look at Tom.

At the door, Niccolette took a cloak from the coat stand, the same heavy black one she had worn the last time she had seen Tom. There were no marks on it; if it had ever been bloody, it was impossible to see against the thickly woven fabric, warm enough to serve as a shield against the cold. She settled it over the shoulders of the dark green dress – in the faint light of the entrance way, one could only tell it wasn’t black by the contrast – and swept outside, making her way onto the quiet street beyond.

There, finally, Niccolette stopped and looked at Tom, sizing him up in the pale light of the moon, the evening well progressed now into dark. She made a little face at the sight of his nose, gaze lingering on it. “You are ready?” She asked. Something in her tone turned the question into the faintest of insults.


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Last edited by Niccolette Ibutatu on Sat Jul 27, 2019 10:17 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Tom Cooke
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Fri Jul 26, 2019 5:49 pm

The Ibutatu Residence Quarter Fords
during the evening of the 21st of intas, 2716
Reckon they will.”

That grin didn’t fade, though it flickered for just a moment – gave just a little downward tug when Uzoji’s eyes fluttered shut, when he pulled himself upright in his seat. Tom didn’t say a word about it, though. Leaving the bundle of his big old coat draped over the arm of the sofa, he moved through the gloaming of the sitting room, a great shadow against the faint grey light that trickled in through the drapes. He poured two glasses of bourbon from the decanter and brought the fuller of the two over to Uzoji; he hung back, waited ’til the galdor’s hand was steady enough to take it.

After that, he turned away, but he didn’t sit back down. Instead, he stood looking out the window, brushing the drapes aside with a hand. A swirl, a sniff, and he took a sip. Little sweet for his tastes, but it had a good bite, and it went down smooth as silk; he doubted he’d have bourbon of this quality for awhile, so he thought about it and he savored it.

Stirring behind him. He turned, face a neutral frown. Niccolette’d come in, and she was standing over by Uzoji. She was significantly more dressed than she’d been last Tom had seen her, but he couldn’t help the incredulous glance – up and down – he shot the long green skirt of that dress. ’Course, he didn’t think she’d be doing much physical fighting, but he still couldn’t imagine going into a job like this in anything other than a pair of trousers.

To each their own, Tom reckoned. Maybe all that swishy shit helped her do magic. Well, he wouldn’t dispute it. He wasn’t going to dispute much of anything, after what he’d seen her do. Wasn’t going to argue with that tone, either, or the arch of her eyebrow, though he found himself grinding his teeth without meaning to.

With one long drink, he drained his glass, setting it delicately over beside the decanter. He took his coat off the couch and swept it round his shoulders, giving Uzoji one last brusque nod, along with a brief flash of that cruel grin, as he followed Niccolette out. Behind her, his steps were surprisingly soft; though the hardwood creaked under his weight even beneath the carpeting, he walked carefully, toe-to-heel. When they broke out into the street, his boots didn’t make much noise on the stones.

It was dark by now, and the moons’d already risen, filling the street with soupy-thick shadows. Benea’d made a ghost-pale mask of the little galdor’s face, her green eyes glittering in their kohl; Tom watched them flick over him, flick over his face, watched her mouth set, imperious. He studied her in turn, up and down, face a blank.

Not even that high-and-mighty golly attitude could wash the last sight of Niccolette Ibutatu out of Tom’s head – last sight before today, that was. Out like a light when he left her and Uzoji with Barlow, wan as a winter sky and limp as a ragdoll, her field all sparse and weird. Now, her field was fuller but her face was thinner, and so was she. Somehow, the sharpness of her bones didn’t seem at odds with the sharpness of her voice, that rolling accent strong as it’d ever been. It was a kind of sharpness he knew to be wary of.

Not that he could help a little sharpness of his own.

“Ne, madam, I ain’t,” he replied after a moment. His lip twitched. “I’m jus’ standin’ out here in my coat for ne fuckin’ reason.” It twitched, and then it curled. “You know where we’re headed? All I know’s that he’s in some shithole in Berret Park; I was told you’d have the rest.”
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Last edited by Tom Cooke on Tue Jul 30, 2019 3:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Niccolette Ibutatu
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Fri Jul 26, 2019 7:02 pm

Evening, 21 Intas 2716
Quarter Fords, Old Rose Harbor
Niccolette went utterly still at Tom’s words; she had been shifting slightly before, sharp and impatient, almost fidgeting, but the motion drained out of her. Her chin flicked up; her gaze fixed on that slow curl of his lip. For a long moment, she regarded him in absolute silence and stillness.

Niccolette looked Tom over again, slowly and carefully, the softest motion of her chin. She looked at his nose again - very differently. It was so much easier to coax the mona into breaking something already half broken. She dropped her gaze to the scars on his hands, seeking out the pale white lines on them, finding the most recent easily enough, the seams where his body had split once and would split again, if she wanted it to. Where else, Niccolette wondered. An easy enough quantitative cast, to learn what lingering injuries that poor excuse for a coat might hide. Ribs, perhaps? Perhaps once he had broken a collarbone; she might find a crack to dig the mona into.

She didn’t know if she had the power to ask the mona to break a leg for him - and that would keep him from their work. A cracked rib, perhaps? Not so difficult to manage. A dislocation; he could fix that, if she so chose.

Whatever she chose, it would need to be quick, Niccolette thought. He was large, this human, but not unwieldy. He knew how to move that heavy body of his, and she did not think he would yield willingly. That was good; Niccolette liked it better that way.

Niccolette lifted her gaze back to Tom’s face again, looking up to meet his gaze. Never had she let any emotion seep into her field; it was still and motionless in the air around her, not drawing tight or flexing or pulsing. It simply was. Neither had her hands clenched to fists; her arms were loose at her side, small hands flat and open against her skirt.

“I hope you find amusement in your words,” Niccolette said, coldly, her voice no louder than it had been. “As for me -“ she made that same little grimace. “Uzoji likes you,” something in her tone betrayed more than a slight disappointment with her husband’s taste, “and Hawke has said you are to come with me,” skepticism, now, beneath the thick notes of her accent. “So.” She shrugged her shoulders, the thick heavy fabric of her cape shifting over the dress, a quiet swishing noise in the night.

“If you cannot think of something worth saying,” Niccolette said, finally, a certain heaviness creeping into her tone. “Then you may be silent.”

She didn’t give Tom time to respond; Niccolette simply turned and walked away down the street, cloak swirling softly behind her, the soft click of her shoes against the ground just audible against the quiet street.

The wealthy silence of the Ibutatu’s corner of Quarter Fords gave way to the Rose before long. The rest of Quarter Fords first - snatches of lilting Estuan mixed with Tek and Mugrobi on the air, spilling forth with bright winters light, out of the edges of doors first and then from windows which - had they ever enclosed the world within in glass - were not now. Here and there faint smells, pepper and saffron and, once, memorably, the thick smell of kofi har over the faint sounds of laughter.

If any of it touched Niccolette, she gave no sign of it. She walked with slow and steady purpose, her path never straying from straight for even an instance, unyielding. And even here, in the Rose, no one troubled at her. Once she lowered her gaze to a clutching grasping beggar muttering about the cold; he snatched his hand back, a choked epaemo drifting through the air. More than once, a human or wick edged to the side around her, skirting the edges of her sharp bright field.

From Quarter Fords along the edges of Cantile, with its shops shut and shattered against the cold winter night. More Tek here, less Mugrobi, and the smells less spicy, but not so different. Down one street they heard the echoes of voices raised in screaming anger, some male and some female and all mixed together - distant, through the night, the sharp crack of a pistol’s retort and then an even sharper silence followed by a distant wail.

Niccolette’s head never even turned.

Up, then, into Castle Hill. Soft light and the sour smell of stale beer poured into the streets from open tavern doors, shouts and laughter trickling out with them. Figures walked or stumbled between the openings, sometimes held stiffly apart and sometimes leaning on one another as if nothing else held them up. The acrid smell of urine drifted into the air from more than one alley, and there were too many beggars to count, enough to empty your coin purse a dozen times over. Children too - quick-fingered dirty little things, lurking in the shadows with or without small knives, often with even larger shadows behind them.

Down into Berret Park, then. Niccolette stopped abruptly, holding at the edge of a dark corner - no light above but the moon, no lights in any of the ramshackle wooden messes above and around them. Silence, here, other than a faint groan which drifted out through some mysterious hole nearby.

“There,” Niccolette glanced back over her shoulder for the first time, as if to check that Tom had made it there with her, and turned back forward, lifting to gesture at a building a block down - a mess that had once been an inn, or perhaps still was, with a half-collapsed wooden porch and a second story to call its own, the faintest of flickering light shining out through the gaps in its boards and shingles. As they watched, the front door creaked uneasily open and a shadowed figure stumbled out onto the street, turned and wandered away.

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Sat Jul 27, 2019 7:46 pm

Berret Park Old Rose Harbor
during the evening of the 21st of intas, 2716
Couldn’t see her eyes in the dark, save that faint glimmer, but he knew she was studying him. Studying him hard. He kept his head up, and he felt his lip curling, curling even further back over his crooked teeth. He felt a lick of fear, white-hot, then (as always went with fear) anger, up from his heart, which’d started beating hard; he wondered if she could feel it with that voo. Didn’t care. Didn’t matter if she bent or broke him. He’d had his erse beat by golly poetry before, and he had the scars – and the aching bones – to show for it. He’d looked them in the eye then, and he’d look her in the eye now.

But she didn’t. With a few more sharp words, she turned away, declining to answer his question in favor of setting off down the street at a clip. Tom would’ve let out a derisive snort, if he and his stinging nose hadn’t known better. As it was, he muttered, “Boemo,” under his breath.

And so he followed her, followed that sun-bright field like a light through the dark streets of the Rose. Some places were more crowded than others. Lights in windows, chatter from warmer places – once, he breathed in the scent of kofi, and he wondered if Ishma was sleeping or if he was spending another night up, waiting. He imagined he could hear snatches of a winding melody plucked out on an oud, drifting out from some quiet alleyway, and though they were nowhere near the corner of Brewer and Cavell, he pictured hama smoking and playing.

Then the heavy hems of that cloak led him out of the Fords and into Cantile and then Castle Hill. The walk was a blur, drifting between the night-bright bars spilling out their slurring clientele – one or two staggering kovs stopped and gave the galdor and her hulking shadow a wide berth, skittered out of the way like startled rats – and quieter, dimmer places, streetlamps unlit, wails and shots fired in alleyways draped in dark. Tom paid about as much attention to this as Niccolette, if a little more. Before a job like this, he liked to try and write everything he saw in the folds of his mind, just in case. The bite of the cold air in his lungs, the smells of stale beer and piss and something good roasting, the occasional whiff of hash. He tried to write it all down in his head, but he feared it’d join the blur of a hundred other night walks, a hundred other snippets of quiet-before-violence evenings.

Then they were in Berret Park. She stopped at the edge of a street that looked familiar, and as he followed the line of her pointing finger, he tensed with grim recognition. “Floodin’ Penley,” he murmured, peering across with narrowed eyes. As they watched, a figure stumbled out, meandering down the street and away.

Tom shut his eyes for a moment. He only vaguely registered another groan as it slipped out of the alleyway behind them and off into the night. He set his jaw, grinding his teeth and rolling his shoulders, feeling his back crackle what felt like a dozen times.

“Madam,” he said quietly, dead-serious. He took a deep breath, stepping up beside Niccolette. “Best let me go first – I know this place, hey?” He glanced over at her, meeting her green eyes in the dark for only a handful of seconds; then he nodded brusquely and slipped out of the shadows and into the street.

Didn’t take long to get across to Penley’s roost. The stoop was in even worse condition than Tom’d seen it last, and he stepped carefully, feeling like the rotted old boards would break underneath him. With a glance back at Niccolette, he opened up the door – the hinges squealed; the door wobbled like it was going to fall off, its bottom scraping the hardwood – and stepped inside.

The first floor was cramped and poorly-lit by just two oil lamps. The air was thick and sour, the wall papered in peeling patches with smoke-stained, moldy yellow; the bitter-dark scent of opium leaked out of the walls all around, lingered round the rafters where it’d sunk deep in the wood. There were a few unsteady tables, rickety chairs set too close together, a poor excuse for a bar. A narrow stairwell leading up to the second floor, swallowed up in dark. The ceiling was low enough that Tom had to slouch to keep his head from brushing the beams.

The common room was mostly empty. An old man lay passed out on a bench against the wall closest the door, snoring, his tattered clothes reeking of cheap whisky. A tall, lanky man, all gristly muscle, sat on a table near the stairs; he’d been whittling at a stick with a mean-looking knife, but he looked up as they entered, frowning deeply. It was hard to tell in the dark, but there was something funny about the way the light picked up the shape of his face, and Tom realized he must be missing some of his jaw.

A third man had been smoking at one of the tables. When Tom entered, he barely spared him a glance, but at the sight of the slim galdor behind him, his eyes widened. With an apologetic glance at the bar, he got up and made for the door, weaving, his steps a little unsteady.

“Barnabas,” said Tom.

The man behind the bar was undeniably arcane, slight and delicate-featured. He was staring at them steadily from behind a pair of spectacles whose frames were so twisted that they sat on his nose at a ridiculous angle. The low lamplight faintly illuminated a shock of red hair. The bar, somewhat surreally, was a spread of open books and parchment covered in a spidery handwriting. Penley’s glamour, as he came closer, was surprisingly strong for a wick’s – even stronger, maybe, than he remembered, but it had been years. He was looking older, too. He stood up, fanning long, delicate fingers out across the papers.

“Tom,” he said in a reedy voice. “What a surprise. What can I do for you and, ah –” He shot a glance behind Tom. Something frightened came into his expression, mingled with something cruel. His words were biting-sharp. “The company of a woman, for a change?”

Tom cut him off: “Where’s he at?”

“Epaemo,” Penley replied, even more softly.

“Tonight’s not the night to fuck with us, Barnie.” Tom shot a meaningful glance at Niccolette, but then he heard a whisper from the wick’s tongue, felt the air thicken, grow heavy, and feared it was already too late. The tall man with the knife stood up from the table.
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Last edited by Tom Cooke on Tue Jul 30, 2019 3:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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