In for a Bishan

[Iarei]

Boy crouched over his stuff, his things, and watched Jester with the eerie stillness of a cat watching prey. Of any predator, really, watching prey. Her actions and contemptible ease at home in his room did little to soothe the dangerous curiosity that caused him to shift his weight so he was balanced perfectly on the balls of his feet, arms hanging loose and easy. She was caught by something, from the way she moved it was a weakness, a hurt that would cause her to limp behind those who were healthy, and would let her be caught.

But then he realized she was hurting.

He slid upwards, coming to his feet in a move that defied any reasonable grace, but the steps he took towards her became more awkward and less sure. He cocked his head at her, a movement that was quick, and suddenly he was deflowered of the smooth instinct that held him upon wakening, and he blinked rapidly at her before looking away. Shy.

"Y'okay, lady? Sometimes Iarei says patrons make her head hurt. I think it's sommat happens ta old people." The last was thoughtful, precocious, and utterly unaware of the distinction more mature individuals put between 'healthy adult' and 'enfeebled grandmother' . "Well, she'll skin me if I dint help so you can sit if yer bones're achin' and I'll dig under the bed."

Unconcerned with her, he turned with the bonelessness of youth and immediately dove to the floor, scrabbling around for anything that might resemble something useful and proplike.

Iarei slept on, blissfully unaware.

[Dirken]

Naive patsies were useful. Naive patsies who refused to do what they were told were dead weight. Nevertheless, Dirken's shrug was indifferent. "Fine. You hang around within shouting distance, then, and I'll do all the work." If you want something done right...

Dirk was poking around in his second alley when he heard something. That wasn't right; not only because he wasn't nearly the mug-bait that Erryl should be abd shouldn't be pulling anything by this method, but because it was far too soon. Dirk's luck was never that good.

His hand went automatically to the hilt of his knife, but he lowered it. Coming out aggressive against an ambush would get him killed. He forced himself to appear at ease as three men appeared around him, but he was a little surprised when one immedieately tackled him from behind and put a knife to his throat.

"Can I help you gentlemen?" Dirken croaked. He recognised them, although even if he hadn't he would've known what they wanted. They had to have followed him.

Silence. He couldn't move his head much, but he felt hands patting down his pockets. He had to force himself not to fight back as his pack was torn from him.

"You're out of luck, boys, I don't have them." He reflected that this would be a really nice time for Erryl to show up, but didn't betray his insecurity by turning to check if he was nearby.

They would have known that of course, because taking the statues into such a situation would be very stupid, but the man with his pack still cursed angrily as he flung it to the ground. Dirken winced as he heard something inside break.

"Perhaps," the man hissed as Dirken felt something sharp press against his ring finger, "we should just send bits of you back until your ladyfriend helps us?" Where the hell are you, Erryl, you useless sack of meat?

"You could do that," Dirken drawled as indifferently as he could manage, "but it's probably not goin' to help. In fact she'd probably be glad, since if I'm dead that's one less cut in profits. 'Course, you can get anything cheaper if you deal with one person than a group who all want a cut..."

The man frowned. His offer had been understood, but even Dirken would admit that it was not his best opening line. The pressure on his finger disappeared, though, and that's what mattered.

The man didn't waste words critiquing his sales pitch anyway. "How much?"

"Well, with such a rare and valuable and obviously in-demand item..." the pressure on his finger reappeared and the knife against his neck started to dig in... "I mean, since you guys are obviously incinvenienced by this situation that would have to be taken into account to mitigate the price... fifty bishani?"

The bewilderment in the man's eyes, followed with the 'this man is a naive idiot' glance he was apparently sharing with the men holding Dirken, showed that he had undershot their value by a lot. Good. Dirk liked money, but he liked having a head more, and the only reliable way to avoid being killed after selling out your team was to look really really valuable to someone in the future. Looking like a cheap and easily manipulated runner wasn't Dirk's first choice, but it would have to do.

"Done." The men released Dirken. "Get the statues, then we'll find you again. If you have to kill anybody, don't expect us to help you with the guards." They walked calmly out of the alley.

Dirken took several deep breaths and rubbed his throat. That went okay. Really well actually. Yeah, this town would be a piece of cake.

He left the alley and glanced around for Erryl. "And that," he said as calmly as he could, "is how it's done."

[Erryl]

"Fine. You hang around within shouting distance, then, and I'll do all the work."

And with that, Dirken was gone, leaving Erryl feeling alone and somewhat bemused. After his unlikely partner had disappeared into a nearby alley, Erryl looked around him at the few businesses nearby, walking along the street on the opposite side to Dirken and glancing down a couple of alley ways as he passed them.

It was only a few moments before he noticed a business he recognized from a year or two ago, an old store that sold even older artefacts and curios. He had questioned the owner about several interesting pieces he believed to be connected to books he was reading at the time, regarding events relating to the history of Marn. Not much had come of it, but he had learned that the man knew quite a lot about historical objects and various items of value.

Perhaps, if he still works there, he might know something about these statues. I should tell Dirken... wherever he is.

He checked the first alley he had seen the man walk into, but there was no sign of him there. As he approached the second, however, he heard low voices, and there was a strong feeling of frustration and unease. Moving closer, yet not quite willing to risk making his presence known, Erryl tried to make out what was being said.

“...that would have to be taken into account to mitigate the price... fifty bishani?"

That sounds like Dirken. What is he talking about?

The silence that followed Dirken’s proposition stretched a few moments longer than Erryl was comfortable with, but then another voice, with more than a hint of a threatening tone, broke through the quiet.

"Done. Get the statues, then we'll find you again. If you have to kill anybody...”

Realising the mysterious dealings were over, Erryl quickly turned the nearest corner, waiting out of sight for the men to leave the scene. Feeling rather bewildered, he tried to make sense of what he had just heard, but the obvious answer left him feeling like he might lose his breakfast.

Putting it aside for a moment, he sighed and composed himself, before calmly walking back out into the street. He noticed Dirken a moment before Dirken noticed him, and tried not to look too nervous as he approached the man. His thoughts, however, were all over the place.

“Did you... uh, find anything useful? I... noticed a, uh... a store... over there. It... sells... old things... uh, antiques and other valuable... items. I thought the... Well, I know the owner. He could tell us... something about the... statues?”

Without thinking, he took a step away from Dirken. Realising he might betray his new feelings towards the man, he took another step back, trying to make his movements look more casual. He pointed across the street, in the direction of the old store. “It’s right over there. We can go right now, if you want.”

[Aniseed]

Well, damn. All the simple-minded, selfish, pompous brats in the world, and she had to get one that had been brought up proper. She let the remark about her supposed decrepitude slide with only a dark scowl - just one more annoying trait she'd accepted as belonging to children, assuming all their elders had been about since the Changer's War - tried to think about a way to make him stop helping her.

Unfortunately, while she had (reluctantly) encountered many, many, many children over the course of her travels, she had made sure not to spend very much time in their company, lacking in good conversation and table manners as it was. They'd never been a group she'd had to court favor with before now. Her head was too busy curling in on itself to find a good place to start.

So. Start small. What did she know about children? About this boy?

They were self-centered; the boy too, he had only offered to help her to avoid punishment. They couldn't understand higher concepts like Cleanliness or Not Running Into Other People; she couldn't remember enough at the moment to count him one way or another. They seemed to be geared specifically toward mischief; and who, exactly, had taken the statues and gotten them into this mess in the first place?

The boy, then, was self-centered and mischievous. She couldn't use the second (and it was so hard to focus on a thought for any length of time, ideas blurring together and fragmenting around the vicious fog filling her mind) so. The first, then. She'd have to... distract him, with... a conversation about himself, then find some excuse to get him out of the room. So she could search (so she could curl up in a ball and whimper the nausea away. In a dignified fashion).

Only, she didn't know anything about him. This paralyzed her already limited thought process, until, who knows how many minutes later, the drowsy notion made its slow, clunky way into her head that this way was better. She couldn't be expected to remember things about him she didn't know. She was allowed to start fresh.

Still. She didn't know what to ask. There were no questions left to her. Her head hurt. She wanted to sleep. The world could go and hang for all she cared, except it really couldn't, and that was the whole problem.

Start simple meandered into her head. As she was one more inconvenience away from bawling like a child, she didn't bother to question it. Okay. Simple it was.

"What, um... what's your name?" she asked, voice thick and small. She didn't care if she offended him, she just wanted him to leave.

[Iarei]

Boy dug under the bed, stuck in face-furrowed concentration as he focused on being useful. He liked being useful, and proving that he was more useful than Iarei said he was. Besides, there was usually interesting stuff under inn beds, and he didn't need much encouragement to search under them. If he didn't have a good reason Iarei would usually frown until a line formed between her eyebrows and call him base and uncouth, and then make him get out from under there. It was unfair and stupid, in boy's opinion, and didn't make much sense. He wasn't hurting nothing by looking for stuff, and he doubted anyone would care too much about it.

He was rewarded with a striped ball, which he fervently hoped was not Jester's and had in fact been left behind by someone else. He was backing out of the bed when Jester suddenly blurted her question, and he didn't turn to answer, instead giving the ball a critical inspection. It was quite dusty, and he felt a mild sort of triumph that it was not, in fact, Jester's.

"Iarei calls me boy. Is this yours?"

[Dirken]

Dirken blinked at Erryl and realised what must have happened. The poor kid had seen the men leaving the alley, and they'd frightened him. Did he think that they were in danger?

Dirken grinned and balled his hands, hiding the small cut they'd inflicted on his finger. "Good idea. They've got to be a better prospect than those idiots; their offer was too low to be worth consideration." He strode towards the shop that Erryl had pointed out. "You'd better do the talking here, if you know the owner."

[Erryl]

Erryl quickly followed after Dirken.

"Uh... offer? What offer?" He knows I saw him? "Oh, and I only came here once, really... I don't actually know if the same person is still even there."

[Aniseed]

No good. It was no good at all. Jester knew Boy's name now - and it wasn't as unusual to her as it might be to some, for an apprentice to lack a proper name of his own - but that still left her with nothing. She'd hit the point where even the soft daylight filtering in through the dirty window was unbearable. So it was a struggle for her to look at the object Boy was holding up for her inspection, a round brown thing swimming in and out of focus until her eyes started working and it suddenly turned into a ball. Well made, but by the scratches and pits also well used, and painted brightly if a little sloppily. Something she might use in an act, even, though if she told him that he'd never leave. Or maybe he would. She didn't know anymore.

"Boy. Ah, um, I see. Iarei, she's - a good master then?" words flitting messily, thoughtlessly from her lips like drunken moths, no real rhyme or reason. "I mean - that doesn't look like mine does it - she teaches you things? Maybe..." with a real effort her brain sparked an idea, and she spoke before it could sink back into the fog. "it might ... probably could be out in the hall too, if it isn't... here in the room. I don't think that's mine, right there."

[Iarei]

Jester's breakdown of normalcy was enough to give boy pause, though he was not so much concerned for Jester as he was for his own time. He'd been around enough adults, especially drunk ones, to understand signs of an elongated conversation that he likely wouldn't enjoy. And what's more, Iarei's insistence that he attend in some superficial way these adults was enough to make him seize on just two of the parts Jester had said:

The ball was not hers. Probably.

The missing prop might not be in the room at all.

"Better jiffin splitting up then, yea. I'll off for ya then!" He did not acknowledge her other words, or even give any sign than a semi nervous expression that he'd heard them. He was out the door and down the hall before Jester would have the time to exhale and inhale, and from there he went outside to play with his new toy when the residing clerk at the front desk gave him a steely glare.

Outside, where the thugs were likely to be waiting.

[Dirken]

Dirken shrugged. "Well, you're more local than I am. It's a simple business transactiion, I'm sure you can handle it." He glanced to either side before heading for the shop, hoping that the thugs weren't still hanging around. It could be bad for PR if they saw him continue to try to fence the things. "A quick negotiation and we can head back. You want me to come in with you or lookout here?"

[Erryl]

At first, the thought of going back to the inn filled Erryl with a sense of relief - being out on the streets was making him feel nervous to the point of nausea - but then he realized that maybe the inn wasn't as safe as it seemed.

He already knew that Dirken was up to something which, from the sounds of it, was likely to cause a lot of trouble. Were Iarei and Jester in on it too? After all, it was that annoying kid who stole those statues before dragging me into this whole mess...

He considered Dirken for a moment, wondering what exactly the man might be hiding while pretending to think over his question. "Hmmm..." Probably better to keep him in sight.

"I suppose you should come with me... uh, just in case I forget something important? And if we're inside, we're not as likely to be seen. Even if they already know where we are, best not to risk anything, right? We should be safe in there, though. Last time I was here, he had this huge dog in the back room. He said it was in case of thieves, with all the expensive items he has in his shop. If it..."

His voice trailed off as he noticed the weird feeling he kept getting around Dirken, as though there was something missing. It seemed almost like he was only half there, in a sense. There was definitely something odd about him, and it was distracting enough for Erryl to suddenly become lost in his thoughts, trying to figure out what this weird feeling was and unaware of the fact that he was openly staring at the man.

[Aniseed]

Between one blink and the next the boy had vanished - not that that meant he'd gone quick, because Jester's eyelids were things of slow creeping stone, and every blink seemed to last for hours. The important part was that he was gone.

Thoughts about finding the second statue had vanished somewhere during her conversation with him, and she didn't wait for them to come back. With what amounted to speed and skill in her current condition, she agonizingly fumbled the statue out of her clothes and crawled over to the bed, stuffing it between the mattress and the frame. It was not a particularly elegant job, but the statue was hidden from most angles unless you really looked, and it was away from her. Finally, it was away from her.

Even the danger of Iarei waking up from her inexpert shufflings was as far from her mind as she was from thinking clearly. She only wanted to curl up away from the sun and sleep. Later, later she would deal with the rest of the world and all the problems it wanted her to solve. But for now she closed her eyes and let it slip away.

[Iarei]

Iarei's awakening mirrored Aniseed's slow collapse, for all the space that separated them. By the time she was fully conscious, Aniseed's form had long been slumped against the wall, and a fair amount of daylight had been burned. Her hair bristled as if from restless sleep, and she steadily unplaited the long braid, shifting about for a comb to dress it back properly; she appeared before the outer world with certain decorum. Anything less was a breach to her old lessons learned at the knee of a master liar. That was almost enough to make her chuckle.

But she was oddly unbalanced, and even as she ran the comb through the total length of her hair she had to hold her neck stiff against the heaviness in her head. Almost, almost that of a drunkard's reckoning in the morning, though she knew full well that she hadn't been drinking that heavily in a long while. It was not until her hair hung in a neat curtain down her back that she became aware of a short series of plinks upon the floor at her sudden movements. It took a moment longer for her to recognize these as bishani, and bishani from her purse, as well.

She was cursing then, as she fumbled for the purse that only she knew existed on her body, deep enough in the shelter of her clothing for any casual fingers but hers to find.

There was a hole, that had not been there before the day had started. She knew her own inventory well enough, as well as any cautious, bishan-pinching, wary traveler did. She knew the weaknesses in her clothing, and certainly well knew all of the purses that carried her meager enough wealth. She probed at the hole with her fingers, too angry to actually look at the damned thing even as her mind spun away for reasons.

Boy. Boy had seen her dress before, as a page or maid might watch with defiance an unloved mistress arm herself with the day's wear. Boy knew what she carried on her body, and she had even shown him a few tricks to hiding money. Boy had started the mess. Boy was not in the room. Boy was going to be skinned alive.

The side of her foot caught Aniseed in the shin before she reigned in her temper enough to bend and shake at the woman's shoulder. "Wake up, wake now. We've a problem that might be costing us dear. Wake up."

And all this, unsuspecting that one of the restolen items was tucked safely behind her back.

[Dirken]

Dirk followed Erryl into the shop. This would be a perfect opportunity to observe the man's negotiation skills. If he turned out to be a decent bargainer, well, he might be a useful contact in the future; if not, Dirk could always swoop in and salvage the deal. It wouldn't be the first time he'd lured somebody in with a less experienced partner before robbing them blind with a good deal at the last minute.

[Erryl]

As he entered the shop, Erryl noticed the familiar scent of old books, and saw that there were many shelved along the wall nearest him. I should come here again soon, if I live long enough... The clutter of objects made the room appear smaller than it was, although the path to the counter at the very back of the room was completely clear, for which Erryl was glad; now would certainly not be a good time for his slightly clumsy nature to surface.

Once he reached the counter, where a man sat back in a cushioned chair, silently reading through another old book, Erryl stopped and glanced back over his shoulder. Dirken was close behind him, peering at a strange piece of, what appeared to be, jewelery. It seemed he wasn't about to offer assistance anytime soon, so Erryl turned back to look at the other man, still sitting and reading.

"E-excuse me, sir, I..." He hesitated for a moment as the older man - perhaps in his 70s - looked up from his book with a questioning expression. It took a few moments to find the words he was searching for. "I was wondering if you could tell me anything about... well, my friend and I are researching various types of art and culture..." He gestured towards Dirken, indicating he was the 'friend' of which he spoke. "During our r-research, we noticed some particularly interesting artifacts, but we have so far been... uh, unable to find any information... on them. We had heard the owner of this particular store was quite knowledgeable regarding such topics, and so we decided to come here to ask for your assistance in our own... quest for knowledge."

The man placed marked his place in the book he was reading, placing it on the table before speaking. "I think I remember you coming in here once, for another project of yours. You're quite an intelligent boy, if I recall correctly," the old man said, standing slowly and reaching out his hand. "My name, in case you have forgotten, is Maloardin Lerrit, but you can call me Mal. If I can help at all, I would be glad too. Do you have one of these artifacts with you now, or perhaps a sketch?"

"No, sorry, we only saw them briefly," Erryl replied, and realized he wasn't even sure what the statues looked like. "They were small... wooden figures, I think... uh, Dirk?" He turned to the other man, hoping he could recall the finer details.