A Traveller in Trouble

[Cathal]

Cathal gave a slow, gradual nod as Tamaya spoke. It was clear that understanding was just underneath the surface. If this woman had stepped in a bear trap.. Why, a bear trap had to have been too large to do such relatively little damage. Unless of course she stepped in it, got caught, and then tried to pry her foot out? But such a long gash, too high up her body..

Cathal recalled the bear form he had seen before he had seen her. He couldn't, of course, be sure of what he saw. He didn't even know if what he was thinking was possible. And in fact, what was he thinking? He knew very few things for sure. He had seen a bear. And he had seen this woman. Those two observations yielded several extravagant assumptions, yet none that he was entirely comfortable with.

His speculations were interrupted by the screeching of his teapot. He reached into a cupboard and grabbed two wooden cups. The tea hissed quietly as Cathal poured into the cups. An earthy smell filled the room. It was a sort of bittersweet, thick aroma that smelled like a grove of trees and lavender bushes. Strange. Cathal inhaled deeply, allowing the scent to envelop him. Again, he smiled.

He crossed over to where Tamaya sat, and set the steaming cup down in front of her. "I'm sure that you're tired. I'll go make my bed and you can sleep there. I'll sleep on the floor nearby in case you need anything. We'll need to rebandage your leg soon probably. If it starts to bleed through, let me know."

[Tamaya Ayashe]

Tamaya sipped her tea, studying Cathal over the rim of the cup. "That's very kind of you." Her voice was curious. "Are you always this nice towards complete strangers? Aren't you worried?"

Of course, the apartment was small and untidy, and carried all the signs of absent-minded researcher. Perhaps Cathal was lonely. And Tamaya in her current state wasn't anything to be afraid of. Especially if the healer truly didn't realize that there was more to her than met the eye at the moment.

She moved her leg a bit, experimentally, and grimaced at the stabs of pain. No, she wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. It seemed that she and Cathal would have plenty of time to figure each other out.

[Cathal]

Cathal tilted his head slightly to the side as his collected gaze met Tamaya's. He raised a brow as a coy smile played across his lips. "Should I be worried?" Cathal took a moment to glance around his home, realizing that perhaps it wasn't the most orderly or clean, or.. Inviting? Not that it mattered. He couldn't remember the last time when someone besides him had seen it. Not that that mattered either. It was just an observation.

Cathal placed his mug on the table, and stood without waiting for a response from his guest. "Let me go make you a bed. I'm sure that you're anxious to rest." Cathal pushed in his chair and left the table, ascending the staircase near the door into the loft where his bed was. He could be heard moving things around and otherwise busying himself, but he was out of sight.

[City Guard]

The city walls were well under construction, if you deemed lots of workmen underfoot during patrols to be 'well under' anything. For Guardsman Tasza, they were an unaccounted for source of trouble that he just couldn't bring himself to like. Oh sure, he enjoyed the prospect of actual walls, because having defensive anything was preferable to the battlemages. One thing they brought to the table, the workers, that is, was extra eyes around the city. Especially on the periphery. Not because of the workers, because Tasza doubted they really cared for anything but their masonry, but because guards had to be assigned to see to their safety. The Captain cared deeply about what it meant to guard the city, and making sure the city's workers got to and left their work alive and more or less undamaged meant guards. Because the Captain knew he could trust his guards. With important jobs.

So it was that Guardsman Tasza had been entrusted with one of those tasks. Tasza didn't like trouble. He liked routine. He liked it when no one was murdered, nothing stolen, and nothing destroyed. He didn't even like missing people reports, and he had nothing to do with those. Three years ago, when he'd first joined the force, he'd been a healthy young man. Now, to go along with his important work and position as a trusted member of the guard force, he had a chronically sour stomach and frequent hives. Like now. Under his uniform. He scratched at the ones beneath his collar, because he could reach those. Then he adjusted his helmet, and his gloves, and brushed down the front of his uniform, as he did a minimum of five times a day, twice in the morning, once on his break, once at the change of the guard, and once typically during his duties.

It occurred to him that, standing before the door of the accused harborer of the magical person, he was stalling. The self accusation didn't particularly bother him, because truthfully he hated confronting anyone. He got nervous when a child was lost. Being asked for directions was a nightmare of stuttering and sweaty palms. The idea that he should look for another job was not new, but he was not good at anything in particular outside of dealing with threats to the safety of the city, and he had won the Captain's hard-earned praise before. That discharging his duties meant he sometimes had the runs for a week straight, and he sometimes had sores from scratching too frequently at his hives was just a . . . no. Honestly, it made him want to quit. But he hadn't. He was good at what he did. He just had a nervous disposition. And, well, he was stalling.

Tasza's stomach gurgled. He grimaced. He knocked.

[Tamaya Ayashe]

Thoughtful, Tamaya watcher after Cathal as he disappeared on the loft. It occurred to her that she hadn't been cared for like this since separating from her brothers on the western coast, and never by someone outside her people. It felt odd, but good.

There was a knock on the door. She glanced upwards, biting her lip. Supposedly she could have called for Cathal, and saved herself from the walk to the door, but it wouldn't do. She couldn't decide to become completely helpless, not after everything Cathal was doing for her. Besides, she had a sudden image of Cathal rushing down the stairs, falling and breaking his neck.

"I'll get it," she called out, grasped Cathal's staff and pulled herself to her feet.

She managed to get to the door without knocking over any tomes. She fumbled the door open - and came face-to-face with a gleaming armor. Yeah. Definitely should have let Cathal handle this.

"Um. Good evening?"

[Cathal]

Cathal busied himself removing the sheets from his bed and getting new ones from a small cupboard to its right-hand side. The pillow was.. firm, to say the least. It was old. It had never bothered Cathal but he hadn't ever wondered if it would bother someone else. He hadn't ever needed to. The floor creaked as he moved around, but he was so familiar with the noises that he hardly even noticed them.

Then came the knock. 'Odd,' he thought. He couldn't remember the last time he had heard a knock at the door. That was a sound that he wasn't familiar with at all. He heard Tamaya calling from below, and shook his head, chuckling. For some reason, it felt as if he'd known her for a long time. Certainly longer than.. the hour or two that he had.

As he stepped down the stairs, Cathal strained to see around Tamaya to see who was at the door. It was impossible, except for a glint of some bright light. The sun was reflecting off of something, but he couldn't quite see what. As he arrived at the bottom of the stairs, he saw that it was a guardsmen. Someone he'd never seen before - not that that was strange. Well, it was kind of strange. It would've been strange for any person to be standing at his doorstep, but especially this person.

"Can I help you?" he asked.

[City Guard]

Tasza shifted, having no recourse for the sudden dribble of sweat down the back of his neck that taunted his hives and caused a most intolerable wave of itchiness. He was a professional; he didn't quiver or flinch even though his soul shriveled at the unbearable sensation. Such was the determination and quality of the Guard's force. That the woman who answered the door was the accused magic user did not phase him; distaste at her chosen life calling and blatant shifting ability did ripple through him -- he was a Puradyne, after all -- but he did not allow it to alter the businesslike manner with which he conducted his duties.

"Um. Good evening?" The woman said, as though she had no idea she was a soulless magic user.

"Would the proprieter of this residence be -- "

"Can I help you?"

That certainly made it much easier. Tasza was used to people religiously running away, or shouting at him upon first sight, or doing other unnecessary things that he typically retaliated to with any number of techniques that tended to draw blood. When it came to brass tacks, he was really much more comfortable dispensing justice with his fists; one had no need to attempt civility when one was forced to action, after all.

He paused for the briefest of seconds as he adjusted to this new paradigm.

"You may." He opened his writ to double check that he had the correct address and name. He was not in the habit of making mistakes. The idea of making a mistake made his stomach churn painfully. As before, he ignored it.

"Cathal, you are hereby accused of harboring an illegal magic user within Marn's city bounds. The woman you have harbored is accused of performing illegal magical acts within Marn's city bounds. The two of you are to report to Justice Hall immediately, without delay. I shall escort you. Resistance will be met with force."

With that, Tasza stepped to the side and gestured for them to precede him out, hand on his mace in nervous, slick-sweat anticipation of violence.

[Tamaya Ayashe]

Tamaya's stomach joined in the flips. An illegal magic user? Performing illegal acts within city bounds? She had been warned about Marn's anti-magic attitude on the road, but she hadn't expected this.

"I - I haven't done anything," she managed. "I o-only just got here. Cathal w-was with me all the time."

The shifting. Surely the man must mean the shifting. But it wasn't magic as such, was it? It was just what she was. It couldn't be illegal to be something, could it?

"I did s-shift into human form." She glanced briefly at Cathal. "I'm a bear shifter. B-but I was well outside the city walls. I wouldn't come into a city in bear form. I'm not stupid!

Her leg ached, and this man was going to make her walk somewhere again. And Cathal was in trouble because of her. She'd thought she'd been so lucky, how had it now come to this?

[Cathal]

The guard's words hit Cathal like a bucket of water to the face. Harboring an illegal magic user? But suddenly, it all made sense. He was stunned into silence. It was like there was a vacuum inside his chest, creating a void of air. He felt choked.

Cathal heard Tamaya stuttering with her words, and suddenly he snapped out of it. This woman had nearly died today! If he hadn't been there just in time, she might not have made it. She would have bled out, all alone. He met her glance with a look of confidence and assurance that everything would be all right, soon.

Cathal returned his attention to the guard and gave her a nod and a grim smile. "Very well. Lead the way." He wasn't worried about what would happen at Justice Hall. At least, he didn't seem to be. He should have been. But he wasn't. He raised his chin, relaxed his shoulders, and left his house behind a guard who he didn't know.

[City Guard]

Tasza's face hardened. There it was, the denial and start of the refusal to comply with his law-abiding order, but before the woman's act of shrinking could turn into something nasty the man took the lead and smoothed the potential into something prickly, like a carpet of twigs. Tasza's neck itched. He lead the way.

It was surprisingly easy. So much so that professional paranoia kicked in, and he kept his hand on his mace in an easy way of someone who knew how to use it and knew he was good at using it. He walked with the brisk assurance of a guard on duty, and his lowered visor assured people gave him some bare form of respect. Not that it mattered. Some of the streets they tread were crowded, and no one on a busy day was likely to clear the streets for a single guard on some unknown mission. Where it suited, he paced his charges like a shepherd's dog, ready and able to do whatever he needed.

Their walk went pleasantly, if such a word could be applied. Tasza was surprised, though he kept it as well hidden as any other emotion he might feel, hornet nest within his stomach non-withstanding. The itchiness had subsided somewhat, in the sense that it was more of a nagging reminder and less of the piercing painful need than it had been. He continued to ignore it as he lead them into the no-nonsense Justice Hall, striking with its white walls and subdued grandeur.

The Ministry of Civil Obedience within the Civic Court was a place where important things got done, and the sense of that regality had leaked into its floors and walls, coloring it severe. The floors and walls were white stone, discolored with the day's tracking of dirt; unavoidable between cleanings. It represented the city in more ways than one. Tasza walked past the public-facing clerks with their overbearing wooden desks, nodding to one he was on friendly terms with and bypassing the others without acknowledgement. They were engaged in business, and raised no alarm at his entrance with the two people trailing behind him. He in turn offered no reassurance to Tamaya or Cathal: no guide was he to give them any form of bearing within a strange place.

He turned them down a corridor, and knocked on a heavy door that was no more or less imposing than any of the others. The whole place stank to him of intimidation, but it had become normality over the course of his years in the guard.

"You may enter." A voice spoke, muffled behind the weight of quality construction.

Tasza opened the door, revealing a small and severe room. A desk took up the majority of the space within, built of a metal that had the mark of gnomish tinkering. Wood was too expensive to be used for anything beyond the display in the front of the building and the most important men and women within the building. However, the lowliest clerks would never hold an office of their own, marking the man and his room as being somewhere in between.

He was middle-aged, a sprinkling of grey and the beginning of wrinkles deepening the skin in cracks that branched at the corners of eyes and lips. His was a stern face and build, solid without running too heavily to fat, though that had begun as well. He was obviously not poor, to lay claim to that extra weight, and that meant something within Marn. His eyes were a pale hazel of a color that a generous poet might call golden without too badly warping the truth. But for a man like him, settled like a hawk behind his desk, the warping of truth was not an altogether unheard of thing.

There he perched, pen in hand, eyes lifted to stare with impatience at the small group who'd interrupted his day.

Tasza stood at attention against the open door. "Lord Cottrel, these are the criminals from this morning."

Cottrel's eyes flicked to Tasza, reptilian quick, and after a brief and stony silence Tasza continued:
"This is Lord Luc Cottrel, Senior Magistrate of Civil Obedience, Civic Official within the Lower Hall."

[Tamaya Ayashe]

Cathal's behavior did little to ease Tamaya's nerves, but she had no choice but to follow the men, again leaning on the healer's shoulder. The bear within made several suggestions how to solve the issue, but she strictly vetoed all of them. She was too weak to even consider shifting, and she doubted she'd ever make it out of the city in bear form, even if she wasn't wounded.

He is ill, the bear said. His sweat smells of sickness. She ignored it.

The walk went in a blur. She was barely aware of the passing people glancing at them, or of the guard ushering them onwards. Combined tears of pain and fear misted what was left of her eyesight.

She tried to pull herself together when they reached the Justice Hall, but with little success. By now she was wincing at every step, and had no control over the tears. She tried to meet the gazes of the clerks, but she couldn't see.

By the time they reached the Senior Magistrate's office, her field of vision had turned bright red. While Tasza introduced the man, her knees gave in and she collapsed against Cathal.

[Sinuvarakoon Tasza]

Cathal, surprised, caught Tamaya. For a moment after that, no one moved within the room. For both Couttrel and Tasza, it was a purposeful stillness. Neither was very much interested in the fainting of a probable criminal, except how it might affect the ongoing troubles of their day, and that disinterest showed on Couttrel's face. Tasza's own was still masked by his helm, and he stood regulation stiff against the boundary of the doorway.

"She needs aid," Cathal said finally, when it became apparent no one was willing to take immediate charge of the situation. It was quite as if someone had explosive flatulence within a polite social gathering, but no one was willing to acknowledge it or continue on as if nothing had happened.

A few more beats passed before Couttrel finally sighed, very loudly, and waved a limp-wristed hand at Tasza. His dramatic play was over, and he was disappointed his audience had become distracted.

"Fetch Guardsman Uldna to attend me, and take the girl to the hospital. You may schedule another appointment for her to see me. I shall deal with the other in the meantime."

Couttrell had a particularly oily way of ordering people about. There was a tone he took when speaking, especially when giving orders, that was at once conciliatory and patronizing. It was as if he was apologizing for such a degrading task, while doubting the person's competance in completing that task, and then being chummy about it. It was, to Tasza's way of thinking, like patting a lame animal reassuringly even as you looked at it with distaste and pity. It was not something any man would take easily, but those were the circumstances under which Tasza worked. He was often, through proclaimed practicality, at the beck and call of the Magistrates within the Justice Hall, and filing official complaints about it would not do anything worth mentioning.

Tasza gave a slight bow to Couttrell, turned on a heel to Cathal and took the girl. He then went to find Guardsman Uldna, who was a fawning bitch if nothing else, and then took Tamaya to the hospital. The world had decided he was not sweaty, and itchy and pulling enough difficult duties as it was, it would seem.

Tamaya and Tasza continue here: http://www.tharshaddin.com/rp/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=2777