WHO: Fitcher, Flint, Wysteria, Cassius & Co WHAT: Ye olde catch all WHEN: Now-ish WHERE: Various NOTES: Don't have anything open, but feel free to snag me OOCly if you want to do anything and I'm happy to slap something together.
It's one of those lovely little sounds entirely defined by its context. Wishing to be appealingly mysterious or intriguing? Underscore the thing with a raised eyebrow or a coquettish head tilt and the shameless bat of dark lashes. Short on more articulate threats? Accompany it with the glint of a knife's point. There is nothing Fitcher appreciates more than versatility.
Take for example this moment in the darkened study of an Antivan merchant prince, long past the hour in which respectable guests have retired to the rooms graciously afforded them by their generous host.
"Hm," Fitcher says, as between their four hands and the clever application of a few picks and wedges, the hidden compartment in Ramondo Caliara's desk finally falls open with the tell-tale lyrium whiff of an enchantment activating. In that context, it sounds very much like 'Well, fuck me.'
And then the glyph on the base of the compartment glows red hot and the papers inside the compartment begin to catch fire.
The answering hiss of dismay through Silas’ teeth fails to resolve into a swear, his flinch caught out in the flush of firelight through the gap. He’s quick, at least, pick dropped in exchange for the dagger at his back so that he might rake burning papers pell mell out onto the floor between them. The updraft from within the compartment carries a few burning sheets further, sparks swept adrift.
“Is it just the fire?”
Are there even alarm spells in this world? He asks while smothering his boot over licks of flame, quiet, terse, sacrificing speed for stealth.
"That a very good question," is light and breezy. In that tenor under these circumstances, it must mean, 'I wouldn't bet on it.'
Fitcher has twisted to get a better look at the sweltered interior of the compartment, allowing the softened stamp of Silas' boot to continue unabated for a moment. The residual heat is already fading, the red hot brand of the glyph deteriorating—
"There's something else here."
A plate lodged at the top of the compartment. She can see the switch to release it, warmed hot by the expulsion of magic. Caliara, you clever little weasel.
Fitcher straightens abruptly. From one of the evening's hip pouches, she produces two things: a sturdy pair of gloves and a skein of trip wire with a sharp peg at either end. She passes this second one to Silas.
They might also give the window and its modest drop to the paved veranda below some consideration here shortly. Surely between them it would be easy enough to drop down, leave some sign that the intruder had slipped off into the grounds, then double back into the villa and there make themselves snug in their beds once more.
A thief in the night? You don't say, makes for fine gossip over breakfast.
A good question but not one he’s thrilled to contemplate, tension bristled up the back of his stoop, smoking papers snatched, glanced at, and folded over to tuck away with his pick.
There’s a phantom pang in his glance to the hall as his fingers curl through the offered skein, reaching for feedback from a cat who’s out of touch halfway across the continent and currently a finch besides. Instead he has to listen, the lighter leather of his own glove smearing over a burning scrap that’s threatening to set an end table alight.
Then he’s gone, out the door.
The further away any eventual encroaching thump, the more time they’ll have to slither out the window.
When he returns, after a glance to check her progress, he’s swift to cross the office to unlatch it, careful this time to feel around for hidden switches as he goes. Business, business.
The latch has stuck. Fitcher waits until Silas has slipped back into the room to strike it once with the butt end of her knife, the sound muffled by its position inside the compartment. When the plate reveals itself to not be a plate at all but a fist sized suspended lock box which falls heavy and hot out of its niche, Fitcher only just manages to catch it in her gloved hand. Pitching it out onto the thick carpet where it may smolder and scorch a square into the fibers is more quietly done than allowing it to fall with a crack to the compartment's bottom would have been.
Still, she pauses after—listening hard. Waiting for a thump or the soft sound of careful footfalls. Watching for the hint of a light in the corridor as the glow from the compartment's security features dims, flickers, and at last dies.
(A glyph would need refreshing, she thinks in the softened dark. Caliara must have someone hired someone on.)
There is a dented tin flask in her hip pouch. Standing very straight and watching the door with a quiet sense of expectation, Fitcher gently hinges back the stopper and splashes a measure of the flask's contents onto her knife.
Pressure lifted carefully into the hinge stifles the start of a rusty squeak; Silas’ breath smudges into steam when he leans just across the threshold to see.
He’s still as a log for a long moment, no movement past the brisk stir of salt air at his hair and through his breath. The family claim-to-fame is a veil of shadow sprawling across the yard to blot out neighboring properties at a distance, towering, hard-cut hedges sizzling in waves with the breeze.
“Clear.”
When he tilts back in, it’s with the start of half a grin, crooked on the order of suggestive in the dark. Fitcher’s found a secret box. They’re making good time. The house is quiet.
Maybe they don’t have to go straight back to separate beds when this is done.
As if in reply to the slow beginning of that grin: the soft creak of a step nearby. Or maybe it's the gentle scrape of a latch being shifted. Or—
In rapid succession, the life sized portrait of a historic Caliara swings away from the wall to admit a tall, slim figure to the study. And then Fitcher throws her knife, still dripping with magebane. If there is a wet thwack as it pegs somewhere below the shadow's ribs, it's swallowed by the liquid flash of some half formed and entirely reflexive casting gone wild, a tongue of mage fire spilling ineffectually hot across the stone ceiling of the narrow hidden passage as the largely unseen mage stumbles back into the dark.
Fitcher snatches the still smoldering box off the rug and scrambles to join Silas in the window. Time to go.
That lash of mage fire picks Silas’ eyes out like coals against the gape of the window behind him, confusion for the painting’s slow pivot sublimated into -- not animal fear. More a rapid practical recalculation of the survivability of this mission, sudden clarity clicked cold into place.
Hm.
Here comes Fitcher -- his hand twitches up as if in offer before he turns to monkey himself over the sill first instead.
Easier to offer to dampen the hit to her knees from below than to dangle her over the edge, surely -- he's already craning a look up after her, jaw grit against the protest of his own bones against a hard landing.
It will be the mage who set the glyph, woken by the awareness of its triggering. Maybe they noted the trip wire and had rerouted on account of it. Or maybe that little back corridor had always been their intended approach. What does it matter? They'd had time enough to get something dangerous in their hands and the window open, and the magebane will give them a running start even if the knife hasn't planted itself somewhere especially delicate. It will be good enough, she decides (which is not optimism but experience) as Silas goes out the window ahead of her.
The heated lockbox is jammed unceremoniously in her hip pouch as she steps up onto the sill after him. It's only because he hasn't yet fully dropped down onto the veranda and found his footing (—that leg of his was given such a lashing at Satinalia—) that Fitcher glances back over her shoulder at all.
Silas is looking but given the waning moonlight, it's hard judge exactly the rate at which the color drains out of Fitcher's face. But there is something to her expression which is not well reasoned confidence held rigidly in check when she comes down after him with a flap of her dark coat's long tails.
The night itself is still peaceful beyond the manor walls, scattered trees rattling their last leaves, the countryside awash in shades of blue. The air is crisp and clear and cold -- he’s warm for the beat he’s close enough to mark the box kept at her hip, the look on her face.
Then there are options to consider: following the hedge line to the carriage house, an open dash for the property fence line on foot, the bulk of the building behind them to circle around.
He’s keen enough on the carriage house to break that way without much more than a glance to her for consensus. There’s an opening in there, a flicker of a dare. They can turn and fight, but he’s run the numbers and it seems very unwise.
They aren’t getting out of here alive without a ride.
The sound of their footsteps is strikingly loud across the veranda. And then they are slicing down the lovely marble stair with its scrollworked end cap columns, each topped with a stone basin in which is planted a miniature corkscrew topiary. Here is the darkened lawn. The looming hedgerow, the moon shining at such an angle that the shadow at its foot is too narrow to secret themselves into.
He'll be in the window shortly. She's certain of it—can feel the tingle under her skin. An itching instinct between her shoulder blades. How far can he reach? It will depend on how well she buried her knife. If he was wearing his night clothes, or was had come ready for a fight. If, if, if.
She should have brought her crossbow along, silly cover story be damned.
"We need to break his line of sight," she says before one of the basins with its little tree still in it is ripped from its post and hurled after them. It narrowly misses, scouring a seam into the lawn at such force that it outpaces them.
There’s a break in the steam of Silas’ breath, a catch at his calf that sees him planting a hand down to keep his momentum. And then the impact, displaced earth, a trench channeled out of the lawn ahead of them --
Breathless, he cuts her another glance. He’s already hurting -- it’s nickel bright in his eyes, coarse in his voice:
“If I’m killed, I trust you to make the report more dignified than the reality.”
Dismembered in a hedge maze has more the makings of a funny footnote than an in memoriam. But there’s a break in the hedge just ahead, and with it the promise of cover. They even took a tour of it earlier.
She doesn't reply, the dark and the nature of their pursuit having swallowed up that natural spark of humor. Instead, from that half step behind, she zags after him for the break in the hedge.
And instantly catches him by the elbow to steer them left into the pitched shadows of the maze and to insistently check their pace down to a brisk walk. She's breathing high. They can't run the whole way, and their pursuit may very well guess at them fleeing like loons at speed. If they are patient and lucky, what are the odds that he will course far past them and they may simply double back and make their way back across the lawn like sensible cat burglars?
"It's Ramondo Caliara. I marked him before jumping down," is an even whisper. Fitcher has clapped her spare hand down on her hip pouch to keep its contents from shifting or jangling. "He saw me."
Inconvenient—to give the man such excellent motivation to pursue them.
He’s all too ready to be caught, stinging breaths stifled to a whistle behind his nose and then through his teeth, spent fog whirling over the high turn of his collar as they walk. Briskly. The pull to his gait has hitched up into a limp while he can enjoy the luxury, the hood of his brow pinched hard over his shoulder, craning back until they’re deep enough in that it makes more sense to listen.
He registers the news about Caliara late accordingly, resistance to the common sense of it lending a crust of salt to his next exhale.
Of course.
With one hand free, he threads the misericorde from its place at his back.
But no sooner has he answered the question than he’s set to plucking invisible chords around the grip of his dagger -- a ritual carried out in miniature while they walk that seems to iron some of that unevenness out. She’ll have seen the evidence before if not the open act of his casting, knife wounds and the like touched up in transit.
Speaking of knives: the number of them he has secreted on his person is as egregious as she may have grown to expect.
"If I want to be rid out you, I'll just kick your knee in," has the shape of good humor if not the tenor. Her large hand with its long fingers hasn't left his arm.
They've arrived at a point where the path diverges. Here, a brief halt to listen to the sway of the evening around them. For the crunch of footfalls or to see if its possible to taste the ozone burn of magic under the salt of the air. After a long beat of quiet, quiet, quiet—
"A shame Barrow isn't here. We might try that trick of feeling each other up in a corner again."
Fitcher flicks a sidelong look at him, reaching with her open hand to delicately fetch free one of the bundled trip wires.
He scoffs warm over her ear as she draws them up short to listen, the only soft sound amidst the sandpaper rustling of world-renowned hedgework. His gasping has slowed into a steadier flow and ebb of steam, something something about this particular snake feeling more secure in a close space with plenty of shadows to secret into.
He’s never seen a Thedosian mage fly.
The sidelong look she sends him is returned in kind, a slant at his brow inclined to agree for all that he’s otherwise short on scenarios that might be improved by the presence of Ser Barrow.
“I can take the box.” Slide it into his waistcoat, close beneath the muffle of silk and the jacket over that. Free her hands for further scandal.
"I'll trade you for the papers," is agreement and prudence all at once. There are interior pockets of her coat better suited to those than the lockbox. If one of them is going to get splattered all over this maze, then the other one had better be able to slip away with something to show for it.
After a brisk exchange of prisoners, Fitcher releases him to uncoil the trip wire and stretch it across the marginally more moonlit direction of the forked path. A little spit applied along the length of it makes it gleam unobtrusively. If Caliara follows this way, then he may as well be made confident of their chosen route.
"We should only need to lead him along a little longer. He'll return to the villa for reinforcements once he feels his connection to the Fade wane past use."
It’s a deal, unspoken agreement in his reach to shuffle folded, blackened filings from within his coat. Bits of ash and soot tatter after them. He’ll have to trade her a knife to make room for the box in turn, eyes and ears turned alert to the bend in the path at his back. There’s a wide notch in one of them for stars to dust through, marking shrapnel’s exit trajectory across his turned cheek.
Provided they survive, this might be his last outing as a no one of note.
In the meanwhile, she’s the expert -- he nods, assured by her assurance, turns the dagger in his grasp, leather wrap silent under glove.
Listening, ready.
Edited 2021-11-29 20:18 (UTC)
i know you're on hiatus/god this is old as hell judges @ myself
With his loaned dagger in hand, the papers from Caliara's desk comfortably wedged against her side within her coat, and confidence that they need only be both patient and a little lucky (two things she excels at), Fitcher gives him a last sidelong look—'Oof, what a day'—and then moves softly down the branching path opposite the tripwire. She keeps to the more shaded portion of it, trending as closely to the hedge can be managed without dragging against and rustling the greenery. The shells which have been used to line the pathways are less dense there and marginally less crunchy under her boots.
(In her head, she is doing a series of figures. They will go a little ways into the maze and then wait for the tell-tale sound of pursuit, and if they're fortunate the labyrinth will simply do it's work. They can double back easily then. And if all else fails? The whole hedge maze is peppered with little nooks and crannies, pathways with open to secret courtyards with statuary and what have you. If they could reach one of those, they might have the opportunity to get Caliara in the open and—
It's usually a matter of speed and a certain willingness to forego negotiation which wins the day in any fight with a mage.)
For all that, it feels like both an eternity and only scant moments before the night air is punctuated by the sudden sound of hurried footsteps. The gait is faintly uneven. Someone's breathing is ragged.
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silas.
It's one of those lovely little sounds entirely defined by its context. Wishing to be appealingly mysterious or intriguing? Underscore the thing with a raised eyebrow or a coquettish head tilt and the shameless bat of dark lashes. Short on more articulate threats? Accompany it with the glint of a knife's point. There is nothing Fitcher appreciates more than versatility.
Take for example this moment in the darkened study of an Antivan merchant prince, long past the hour in which respectable guests have retired to the rooms graciously afforded them by their generous host.
"Hm," Fitcher says, as between their four hands and the clever application of a few picks and wedges, the hidden compartment in Ramondo Caliara's desk finally falls open with the tell-tale lyrium whiff of an enchantment activating. In that context, it sounds very much like 'Well, fuck me.'
And then the glyph on the base of the compartment glows red hot and the papers inside the compartment begin to catch fire.
no subject
“Is it just the fire?”
Are there even alarm spells in this world? He asks while smothering his boot over licks of flame, quiet, terse, sacrificing speed for stealth.
This is only a stage 1 disaster so far.
no subject
Fitcher has twisted to get a better look at the sweltered interior of the compartment, allowing the softened stamp of Silas' boot to continue unabated for a moment. The residual heat is already fading, the red hot brand of the glyph deteriorating—
"There's something else here."
A plate lodged at the top of the compartment. She can see the switch to release it, warmed hot by the expulsion of magic. Caliara, you clever little weasel.
Fitcher straightens abruptly. From one of the evening's hip pouches, she produces two things: a sturdy pair of gloves and a skein of trip wire with a sharp peg at either end. She passes this second one to Silas.
They might also give the window and its modest drop to the paved veranda below some consideration here shortly. Surely between them it would be easy enough to drop down, leave some sign that the intruder had slipped off into the grounds, then double back into the villa and there make themselves snug in their beds once more.
A thief in the night? You don't say, makes for fine gossip over breakfast.
no subject
There’s a phantom pang in his glance to the hall as his fingers curl through the offered skein, reaching for feedback from a cat who’s out of touch halfway across the continent and currently a finch besides. Instead he has to listen, the lighter leather of his own glove smearing over a burning scrap that’s threatening to set an end table alight.
Then he’s gone, out the door.
The further away any eventual encroaching thump, the more time they’ll have to slither out the window.
When he returns, after a glance to check her progress, he’s swift to cross the office to unlatch it, careful this time to feel around for hidden switches as he goes. Business, business.
no subject
Still, she pauses after—listening hard. Waiting for a thump or the soft sound of careful footfalls. Watching for the hint of a light in the corridor as the glow from the compartment's security features dims, flickers, and at last dies.
(A glyph would need refreshing, she thinks in the softened dark. Caliara must have someone hired someone on.)
There is a dented tin flask in her hip pouch. Standing very straight and watching the door with a quiet sense of expectation, Fitcher gently hinges back the stopper and splashes a measure of the flask's contents onto her knife.
"No one waiting on the veranda?"
no subject
He’s still as a log for a long moment, no movement past the brisk stir of salt air at his hair and through his breath. The family claim-to-fame is a veil of shadow sprawling across the yard to blot out neighboring properties at a distance, towering, hard-cut hedges sizzling in waves with the breeze.
“Clear.”
When he tilts back in, it’s with the start of half a grin, crooked on the order of suggestive in the dark. Fitcher’s found a secret box. They’re making good time. The house is quiet.
Maybe they don’t have to go straight back to separate beds when this is done.
no subject
In rapid succession, the life sized portrait of a historic Caliara swings away from the wall to admit a tall, slim figure to the study. And then Fitcher throws her knife, still dripping with magebane. If there is a wet thwack as it pegs somewhere below the shadow's ribs, it's swallowed by the liquid flash of some half formed and entirely reflexive casting gone wild, a tongue of mage fire spilling ineffectually hot across the stone ceiling of the narrow hidden passage as the largely unseen mage stumbles back into the dark.
Fitcher snatches the still smoldering box off the rug and scrambles to join Silas in the window. Time to go.
no subject
Hm.
Here comes Fitcher -- his hand twitches up as if in offer before he turns to monkey himself over the sill first instead.
Easier to offer to dampen the hit to her knees from below than to dangle her over the edge, surely -- he's already craning a look up after her, jaw grit against the protest of his own bones against a hard landing.
no subject
The heated lockbox is jammed unceremoniously in her hip pouch as she steps up onto the sill after him. It's only because he hasn't yet fully dropped down onto the veranda and found his footing (—that leg of his was given such a lashing at Satinalia—) that Fitcher glances back over her shoulder at all.
Silas is looking but given the waning moonlight, it's hard judge exactly the rate at which the color drains out of Fitcher's face. But there is something to her expression which is not well reasoned confidence held rigidly in check when she comes down after him with a flap of her dark coat's long tails.
no subject
Then there are options to consider: following the hedge line to the carriage house, an open dash for the property fence line on foot, the bulk of the building behind them to circle around.
He’s keen enough on the carriage house to break that way without much more than a glance to her for consensus. There’s an opening in there, a flicker of a dare. They can turn and fight, but he’s run the numbers and it seems very unwise.
They aren’t getting out of here alive without a ride.
no subject
He'll be in the window shortly. She's certain of it—can feel the tingle under her skin. An itching instinct between her shoulder blades. How far can he reach? It will depend on how well she buried her knife. If he was wearing his night clothes, or was had come ready for a fight. If, if, if.
She should have brought her crossbow along, silly cover story be damned.
"We need to break his line of sight," she says before one of the basins with its little tree still in it is ripped from its post and hurled after them. It narrowly misses, scouring a seam into the lawn at such force that it outpaces them.
no subject
Breathless, he cuts her another glance. He’s already hurting -- it’s nickel bright in his eyes, coarse in his voice:
“If I’m killed, I trust you to make the report more dignified than the reality.”
Dismembered in a hedge maze has more the makings of a funny footnote than an in memoriam. But there’s a break in the hedge just ahead, and with it the promise of cover. They even took a tour of it earlier.
Maybe they’ll remember the way through.
no subject
And instantly catches him by the elbow to steer them left into the pitched shadows of the maze and to insistently check their pace down to a brisk walk. She's breathing high. They can't run the whole way, and their pursuit may very well guess at them fleeing like loons at speed. If they are patient and lucky, what are the odds that he will course far past them and they may simply double back and make their way back across the lawn like sensible cat burglars?
"It's Ramondo Caliara. I marked him before jumping down," is an even whisper. Fitcher has clapped her spare hand down on her hip pouch to keep its contents from shifting or jangling. "He saw me."
Inconvenient—to give the man such excellent motivation to pursue them.
no subject
He registers the news about Caliara late accordingly, resistance to the common sense of it lending a crust of salt to his next exhale.
Of course.
With one hand free, he threads the misericorde from its place at his back.
"Is he poisoned?” he asks. What was that?
no subject
Or maybe he'll bleed to death. And then they'll have a Merchant Prince's corpse to contend with. Wouldn't that be nice.
"Your leg?"
There are two skeins of wire left in her hip pouch. The unused contents of the flask. A wicked dagger jammed down her boot—
no subject
Who could have foreseen this.
But no sooner has he answered the question than he’s set to plucking invisible chords around the grip of his dagger -- a ritual carried out in miniature while they walk that seems to iron some of that unevenness out. She’ll have seen the evidence before if not the open act of his casting, knife wounds and the like touched up in transit.
Speaking of knives: the number of them he has secreted on his person is as egregious as she may have grown to expect.
“Do you always carry magebane?”
If they’re going to die --
no subject
They've arrived at a point where the path diverges. Here, a brief halt to listen to the sway of the evening around them. For the crunch of footfalls or to see if its possible to taste the ozone burn of magic under the salt of the air. After a long beat of quiet, quiet, quiet—
"A shame Barrow isn't here. We might try that trick of feeling each other up in a corner again."
Fitcher flicks a sidelong look at him, reaching with her open hand to delicately fetch free one of the bundled trip wires.
no subject
He’s never seen a Thedosian mage fly.
The sidelong look she sends him is returned in kind, a slant at his brow inclined to agree for all that he’s otherwise short on scenarios that might be improved by the presence of Ser Barrow.
“I can take the box.” Slide it into his waistcoat, close beneath the muffle of silk and the jacket over that. Free her hands for further scandal.
no subject
After a brisk exchange of prisoners, Fitcher releases him to uncoil the trip wire and stretch it across the marginally more moonlit direction of the forked path. A little spit applied along the length of it makes it gleam unobtrusively. If Caliara follows this way, then he may as well be made confident of their chosen route.
"We should only need to lead him along a little longer. He'll return to the villa for reinforcements once he feels his connection to the Fade wane past use."
Promises, promises.
no subject
Provided they survive, this might be his last outing as a no one of note.
In the meanwhile, she’s the expert -- he nods, assured by her assurance, turns the dagger in his grasp, leather wrap silent under glove.
Listening, ready.
i know you're on hiatus/god this is old as hell judges @ myself
(In her head, she is doing a series of figures. They will go a little ways into the maze and then wait for the tell-tale sound of pursuit, and if they're fortunate the labyrinth will simply do it's work. They can double back easily then. And if all else fails? The whole hedge maze is peppered with little nooks and crannies, pathways with open to secret courtyards with statuary and what have you. If they could reach one of those, they might have the opportunity to get Caliara in the open and—
It's usually a matter of speed and a certain willingness to forego negotiation which wins the day in any fight with a mage.)
For all that, it feels like both an eternity and only scant moments before the night air is punctuated by the sudden sound of hurried footsteps. The gait is faintly uneven. Someone's breathing is ragged.