closed | go home to your mother and tell her you're brilliant.

[murderbaby]

WHO: Mhavos, Mharcoulf, and Ahnna
WHAT: Mhavos bonds with new friends in healthy and exciting ways.
WHEN: August, nowish.
WHERE: The Gallows, and the outskirts of Kirkwall, respectively.
NOTES: Violence, possibly murder, probably not graphic. If anything else, will add, etc.

ANNA

Mhavos is up late. The candle by his desk is burning low, but he has another ready. It will be a long night, configuring sums and transcribing letters, but it's nothing he minds terribly. It's good, he's finding, to have work that feels... meaningful. Or at least, not meaningless.

Still, it's not absorbing, mentally. Mhavos notices the occasional noise of others wandering through the hallways, the sound of gulls outside. And the sound of... rustling fabric. There's a shadow near his window. He considers it carefully. How to act? Surprised? Prepared?

Normal clerks would normally be surprised. Normal clerks are also normally better at dying.

He snuffs out his candle, and picks up a spare broom, using it to unlatch the panes before ramming it into the metal grate. No glass is broken, only the window opens quickly, the metal hinges screeching.

And then Mhavos waits.

MARCOULF

Mhavos knows that this Marcoulf fellow an asset enough to be assigned this mission. This Marcoulf fellow likely knows the same. What Mhavos does not know is how to ride any sort beast, hoofed or no.

He climbs upon a very tired mule with an expression not unlike that of a cat that knows this bath is beneath its dignity. It's been tied to Marcoulf's horse, so Mhavos doesn't have to worry about the creature (named 'Bets', either for 'Betsy' or a lost game of cards, Mhavos has no idea) careening off, only staying on its back.

How droll.

They're going to the mansion of Georges D'Anjous, disgraced nobleman who decided to retire in a villa outside Kirkwall proper. He sells wine and does rather well for himself, by all accounts. He also may be involved in some unsavory practices that could be used as blackmail... or simply stopped. The details are fuzzy and unresolved. That is, presumably, why Mhavos is being sent with Marcoulf; neither of them is particularly high ranking or important, but it's a fine way to prove themselves.

Mhavos struggles to stay off the ground as Bets navigates a particularly unimpressive rock jutting from the road. He speaks to his companion in Orlesian, because there is precisely no reason not to. "I've- dammit. I've never been required to stay ahorse before. Amule? Shit."

He grips the reins for dear life.

Comments

[notched]

A small, wry smile curls on her mouth. She likes the extra rules, she needed to be challenged.

"Yes, I can do that."

[murderbaby]

A smile. That's good. It doesn't comfort Mhavos, not really-- it's not a comforting smile, and the woman who wears it seems the sort who wouldn't like it to be. The important thing is that it sets the pace. Both of them know better where they stand.

"What should the other conditions of winning be?" He says, "remember, I cannot appear for work the next day battered and broken."

[notched]

She hadn't forgotten, but something about that makes her smile pull a little further. Much like her other social graces, her sense of humor was not well-developed. She often did not laugh at jokes, but then she could be found smiling at times like this, she had even found their initial meeting a bit humorous while he had genuinely been afraid of her intents.

"Your armor will take much of it," much of her whip's ripping and tearing. Still, that doesn't quite answer the inquiry and she knows, "Flag on the body, forces coming in close. Flag on a hill, forces more stealth."

That makes it so much more like a game, but she's not going to complain about that. It was a compromise, play-acting the thing she wanted most in a world that didn't support her notions.

[murderbaby]

Mhavos nods. "No strikes to the face, then. Doing so accidentally is an automatic loss for both parties. And for now... winning conditions are first blood? Or knocking the other unconscious, one would assume. When I'm more skilled, we can move onto higher difficulties, but you must pity me, for I am but a poor novice, rogue and peasant slave."

The last few words are quotes from poetry, said with the sliding sarcasm one deploys when making fun of themselves.

[notched]

Anna is more than dense to poetry, or at least the mortal kind. When things began to be written into the ugly and lyrical runes of the Great Ones, she had an unfortunate ability to understand despite her dearest wishes not to.

"Every Hunter was once new," all in all, a mild opinion. Although the implication that she was training herself another Hunter so she could be less lonely was also tucked there into the mildness.

[spongebob voice] twenty years later.

[murderbaby]

Mhavos doesn't laugh, but something quizzical forms over his expression. "I don't intend to be a hunter," he says. "But... I do need to hone my skill. Thank you for the opportunity."

[notched]

"You should go back to your rooms," she says, instead of acknowledging any of those points. Nothing particular in her bearing has changed but she pulls the mask over her face, puts her hat down over her matted hair. "Before anyone notices you've gone."

Wasn't she meant to be keeping your secrets safe?

[murderbaby]

Masks, he knows. He'd always wondered if he'd ever get one. Mask of the Assassin. So dramatic.

Instead, he nods, standing. "Thank you," he says, "I did not expect kindness." And then, deft as a flash, he's running down the rooftop, avoiding the light.