faderift | MOD PLOT ↠ Wings of Death

Entry tags:

MOD PLOT ↠ Wings of Death

WHO: Everyone (more or less)
WHAT: A trip to Rialto, in pursuit of convincing Antiva to give up its famed neutrality, just this once, pleaaaase.
WHEN: Cloudreach/Bloomingtide 9:48
WHERE: Rialto, Antiva
NOTES: OOC post here. Remember to use warnings in your subject lines for gore, sexual content, or anything else people might not expect to find while casually reading this log on a work computer.

YOUR DESTINATION

Rialto is Antiva's second city in importance and in population, but in many ways it is first in sheer Antivanness. When foreigners imagine Antiva, they often conjure images of graceful bridges arching over turquoise canals, lovers on a romantic gondola ride serenaded by a soprano's aria, fiery young men in vibrant leathers dueling for the honor of their houses in the piazza while down at the docks pirates share tales over bowls of seafood pasta. All of this is to be found in Rialto. While Antiva City is a teeming, bustling center of world commerce, with all the clamor and diversity that creates, Rialto is popular more with the city's uppermost classes than its vast mercantile middle, particularly the old aristocracy who prefer Rialto for its relative peace and its proximity to King Fulgeno's favorite residence. This is not to suggest that Rialto is a Hightown without any Low—like all major cities, for every palazzo-lined canal where the wealthy rest are ten more waterways packed with delivery boats and shops and taverns of every degree and description, from the broad spans edged with rows of fashionable tailors and jewelers to narrow, winding alleys of water overhung by leaning buildings of smoke-stained stucco. The docks, though neither as large nor as busy as the capital's or Kirkwall's, are still large and busy by any other measure, packed with merchants and sailors and fishermen, along with some who—uniquely common in Antiva, a kingdom founded by pirates—skirt the line between honest seamen and buccaneers.

Antivans will argue it's always a good time to visit their country, but everyone else agrees that spring is the ideal. The weather is consistently mild and pleasant, warmer than Kirkwall but without yet edging into the heat of summer the way it is in Tevinter to the north. In the city's parks and piazzas, flowers and shrubby add a few splashes of greenery and warm breezes send occasional showers of petals down from the cherry and citrus trees just finishing their blooms. Climbing flowers and arbors of grapevines are common adornments.

For the king's birthday celebration the city's elegant pale stone buildings are all decorated, with public buildings and bridges hung with bunting in the crown's favored purple and banners depicting the arms of Antiva and the royal house Campagna: a golden ship, sails unfurled, beneath a crown, the shield supported by a seahorse on one side and a stallion on the other. Along the grand canals every palazzo is bedecked in some combination of the occupant's colors and the kingdom's purple, and the theme continues throughout the city, every district finding some means to demonstrate its festive mood. The effect is only slightly diminished by the few areas where graffiti conflicts with the decorations, and Riftwatch, at least, will be pleased to see it mostly takes the form of anti-Tevinter sentiment, ranging from a scrawled FUCK THE VINTS to a few choice quotes from certain popular pamphlets and puppet plays, to a large and surprisingly skillful mural of a dragon and a caricatured merchant prince sitting together on a heap of gold playing with toy ships and dolls while behind them a fire rages.

The king's birthday is always an extravagant occasion, even more so when he hits any age ending in a 0 or a 5, as he is this year. A full week of revelry has been decreed, with each day marked by pageants and parades and games of all sorts, and every night new and fabulous parties in his honor hosted by various houses, guilds, and societies. Knowing the king's love of masquerades, many of these balls are masked, with themes ranging from House Campagna's most celebrated ancestors, to sea creatures, to all gold everything. (While fancy dress is of course always encouraged, many will simply attend in their best finery, with the intention of visiting multiple parties in the same night.) The city is lit with lanterns, torches, and even the occasional bonfire, as the bacchanal spills into the canals and piazzas each evening and continues long into the night.

YOUR MISSION

Riftwatch arrives on this scene by ship, which garners a few approval points from the merchants and pirate-descendants populating the city. The ship remains anchored in the harbor for the duration of their stay, reachable by tender and doubling as a temporary home for the selection of griffons who have accompanied them north.

Griffon riders will make the trip back and forth from the ship most often, as they'll be assigned to shifts that keep one or two of them in the air at all times, day or night. The outward justification for this is to entertain the Antivans below them; they're encouraged to fill some of the time with acrobatics over busy squares or particular parties, at times with banners and streamers to trail behind their mounts. Those with griffons who don't startle easily might be entrusted with a few fireworks to set off from the air. But the real purpose is surveillance, of course, and to serve as emergency back-up or ambulance for anyone who finds themselves caught in a tight spot and calls for help. Riders will be equipped with vials of antidotes to some common poisons, and particularly at night, anyone with healing magic or medical skills might be asked to ride along.

Meanwhile, down on the ground, a steady stream of influential merchants and socialites will want an interesting Riftwatcher or three at their dinners and private parties, each presenting an opportunity to impress upon influential people the importance of the war. These gatherings will range from stiff, formal affairs to wild bacchanals, depending on the host. Of note: a moonlit evening with a chamber quartet on Antonio Luppi's pleasure yacht, famously large enough to have a croquet pitch on the upper deck, a days-long Wicked Grace tournament with rising stakes where Marco "il Calabrone" Molinari defies anyone to beat him, and a race through the canals on gondalas owned by Antiva's who's-who. There are no rules, so finding ways–even magical or new-technological ways–to improve the odds of the more invested racers may win some favor, and a number of competitors are eager to see if Riftwatch has some arcane way to give them an edge.

Outside the city gates, on a grassy cliffside that overlooks the Amaranthine Ocean, there's a faire for the workers and peasantry. There's dancing, a series of field games (tug of war, footraces, horseshoes, wrestling, hammer throwing, blindfolded stick-dueling, mob football, and whatever the heck wallop is), a bonfire each evening, and young people goading one another into cliff diving and climbing back up, sopping wet, using stairs and handholds carved into the cliffside. While no single one of the participants is as influential as the better-heeled set hosting gathering elsewhere, it's still good politics to put in an appearance, play some games, and dispel any lingering perception of Riftwatch as a weird heretical sect or pack of wild demons.

They'll find similar opportunities scattered throughout the streets of Rialto: full tables at taverns who might listen raptly to their accounts of the war further south, minstrels and players who might be persuaded to change their tunes to whip up sympathy or anger for Corypheus' targets, and lower-level independent tradesman who might be persuaded to stop doing business with Tevinter or push for such an agreement within their guilds.

Riftwatchers who are especially active in outreach in these working-class quarters may find themselves approached quietly by representatives of I Figli Della Brace, an underground network of agitators that sprung up in the wake of Riftwatch's prior propaganda efforts and has been wreaking minor havoc by destroying Tevinter goods, carrying on the tradition of vandalism, and hassling those who do the most business with Tevinter and the Anderfels. They're loosely helmed by Vieri Fontana, who already trusts a few members of Riftwatch, and in exchange for Riftwatch's assistance with a few sneaky favors and quick but rowdy demonstrations of disobedience, they'll promise a strong showing of angry common folk outside the palace when it's most needed.

And through all of this, Riftwatch members will need to be looking over their shoulders, watching their drinks, avoiding dark alleys, keeping an eye out for snipers on rooftops, and staying wary of alluring strangers, because an untold number of Antivan Crows are out for their lives and/or anchors.

The purpose of all of this hobnobbing and sneaking around and dodging of murder attempts awaits at the end of Riftwatch's stay: King Fulgeno the Merry and all of the Merchant Princes have agreed to give a contingent of Riftwatch diplomats a moment, the day after the king's largest birthday feast, to plead their case against continuing to trade with Tevinter and the Anderfels. Winning them over would strike a significant blow to the enemy, already cut off from trade with much of the rest of Thedas, and bring Antiva that much closer to actively assisting with the war effort.

Should this meeting involve the support of a few more Merchant Princes, the dramatic unmasking of a traitor among the Princes and a conspiracy among the Crows, and shouts of support from people in the street echoing in through the windows, there's a good chance they'll pull it off.

YOUR ACCOMMODATIONS

The canal-side palazzo where Riftwatch is residing during its visit is the summer property of Merchant Prince Amancio Vivas. Unlike some questionable accommodations provided to Riftwatch in the past, Palazzo Vivas is roomy and lavish, brimming with expensive decor and labelled artifacts and comfortable seating. Anyone needing space to work or plan will find multiple nooks and tables in the library, and Riftwatch has collectively commandeered a secondary dining room (there are several) for meetings.

For those needing a break from work, actually, Palazzo Vivas is well-stocked with books and all of the necessary equipment for parlor games, plus an echoing ballroom equipped with a pianoforte. There's a cabinet of decent wine and spirits available, or a locked cellar full of the very good stuff for the particularly enterprising. The palazzo encircles a central courtyard garden with enough tall hedges and trees that someone might disappear into it. Currently it's in full bloom, including some rare night-bloomers, and at all hours bustling with some combination of insects, birds, and bats. Also featured: two small fountains and a canal-fed wading pool.

The beds, unlike most of the Gallows', involve feathers rather than straw. The sheets are soft. Everything smells like lavender. Everyone can have a bed if they're willing to share with at least one other person; those who are unwilling will find themselves on the floor or a settee.

Everyone will be asked to take on some additional tasks in the palazzo. Most important is guard duty, including some overnight patrols to make sure there are no intruders or disturbances. But as only a skeleton staff is present in the palace, idle Riftwatchers might be sent out to Rialto's bustling markets for food and supplies and/or pressed into making vats of porridge, pasta, or seafood stew to keep everyone else fed while the single cook is attending festivities elsewhere.

YOUR LEISURE

Between assignments, Riftwatch members may find moments–or even several consecutive hours!--to enjoy Rialto. Cautiously, on account of the assassins. But still. In addition to partaking in the merriment, entertainment, and games purely for fun, there are street performances to watch, gondolas to hire for leisurely floats, markets and shops stuffed with goods from throughout Thedas, bath houses, and, only a short hike or shorter griffon ride away from the city, a pristine white sand beach on a calm cove, littered with sea shells, without a single decomposing shipwreck in sight. It's not something they're going to find in Kirkwall, so no one can be blamed for wanting a peek.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Even having put himself up against the wall, there is only the scantest cover: the lip of the door, the over-packed shelves, the counter that just between rooms. There is no real space to hide unless he cares to put himself on the floor, and the loss of mobility that would come with that isn't worth it.

He can hear the scrabble of possession from the floor, along with the slowing gurgle from the dying Crow.

"Get ready," is a hiss of warning, right before John follows Flint's example. He stretches out a hand, and flings the contents of the shelf after that first strike. Maybe not all will provoke that same pain yelp, but the shower of powders and herbs should be sufficient disruption to allow Flint an unobstructed shot.

One would hope, at least.

It's time and cover enough to shove his foot into the crossbow stirrup and haul back on the lever to crank back the string. Whether it's time enough to set the bolt and fire clear—

He tries it anyway. Straightens and clamps down on the trigger in the same motion, and is rewarded by a heavy thump and the ungainly crunch of a person staggering back, a further series of containers rattling hard and threatening to jump free. A scrabbling of boots over shards of things suggests further stubborn momentum, though in that split second it's impossible to guess in which direction: to meet them or to retreat out the back door.

Still up.

It's a frustration. So is the calculation of whether or not this assassin might be allowed to leave, if he ever makes up his mind to do so.

Of course, John comes to a predictable conclusion. It gnaws at him, just as the bandit on the road, just as any loose end carrying the whisper of truth would do.

"Once more," John instructs; in the dark, there is no clear sense of whether or not they are firing at a man's back.

John borrows from Marcus Rowntree; this second volley is not just the contents of a small display table, but the table itself. It feels unnatural, not the usual approach John might take. But he cannot grasp what he cannot see. This must do.

Edited (enter key betrayal) 2022-05-30 03:47 (UTC)

His foot slips on the crossbow stirrup—kicks the bar instead of stepping into it. He's corrected it in the following fraction, but it feels like a murderous delay even as the table is flung through the doorway.

It's impossible to say what it strikes, only that that table hits something. Once more, John directs, and Flint doesn't think to consider an alternative despite the hot bite of the bolt in him. The squeal of the crossbow lever is as stark as shattering glass.

Ka-thack! The punching force of the crossbow firing pops loud. Nearly in the same beat, something in the store room bursts to pieces. John Silver isn't the only one who finds it challenging to find a target in the dark.

The answering volley is just as aimless; they are trading on the narrow layout, the close quarters, the inevitability of hitting something simply out of lack of places to aim. A bolt catches John's hip, progress blunted by the thick leather of his belt. If he were inclined, he might be able to tear it out.

He leaves it. The fresh burn of pain is of better use to him than anything else.

"For fuck's sake—"

Has nothing to do with Flint's aim, and everything to do with the interminable luck of this man, still standing, still armed, still groaning in Antivan despite their efforts. Crows. Yseult had warned them.

Sweat is prickling along his skin. (Whether from the exertion or the pain or both, John has not tried to determine.) Fresh blood is running, blotching beneath his belt and the gathered fabric of his tunic. John reaches out, and pulls, dragging this assassin forward out of sheer frustration, for lack of anything else to hurl down the length of the store at him.

Edited 2022-05-30 04:55 (UTC)

The assassin's boots scrape over the floor, shards of broken glass and pottery squealing between shoe soles and floorboards. He clips the edge of the doorway as he's yanked through it, an absurd injury on top of the chilling indignity of being yanked from the storeroom like a child's doll from a toy box. Nonetheless, it fails to strike the crossbow from his grip. And then they are three men in the macabre parody of a festival shooting gallery, unlit shapes jerking after whatever sharpest points are most readily available to them.

Flint hardly bothers to aim and fully doesn't straighten at all from where he's bent to loot a last bolt from the dead man underfoot. Overhead, a pot bursts. Below the dusky cloud of powder, Flint squeezes the trigger lever.

The thump they earn in return for it is promising. The sag of the Crow's crossbow is more so.

The vise-grip of power doesn't dissipate until the crossbow finally clatters all the way to the powder-smeared floorboards. Whatever paste has been made between the contents of smashed jars and shards of clay pots and blood, it can hardly be made worse by the addition of a little more blood. John lets go, and the heavy thud of one more body confirms for them both: they are momentarily finished with the night's butchery.

"Fuck," is hardly eloquent, but it seems an apt summation.

The door is still open. That sticks in John's mind more readily than the crossbow bolts jabbed into his body.

"Would a third participant have caught up by now?" he questions, muted as he considers the scant distance between them. It's followed quickly by, "Did they manage to hit you?"

"Yes," is somewhere between a growl and a pant, and may stand as an answer for either question in the dusky dark. He throws down the crossbow with no fanfare (its heavy and his appendages are startling to go clumsy from the blind surge of adrenaline), and wrenches the falchion free with less—shoving over the dead man with his boot to lever the short sword out from under him.

Yes, probably a third Crow would have gotten to them by now. Maybe they paused prudently in the back doorway and thought better of it. Or maybe they never existed to begin with. Or maybe they're waiting—

"We should leave the way we came."

Backtrack rather than slipping out onto the front street. If he were a third man, it's where he'd be stationed ready to receive his prey.

It's too dark to rifle through anyone's pockets, so he doesn't linger over the corpse and instead lurches through the narrow space toward the counter. Some blind feeling finds a section of it that unbolts and swings up to allow them easier passage.

"Here. Take my hand."

The floor's slick and there's a body to navigate over.

All these possibilities have rattled in John's head, wary even in the relief of a concluded fight. It's a favorable outcome, for the moment: both assassins down, unable to accomplish their work. (And unable to bear back any tale of the Commander, traveling back to the palazzo in the company of a mage.)

But that hardly precludes the possibility of finding others waiting for them. They still have the journey back to the palazzo to complete.

John's fingers reach down and across, find the nub of the bolt where it still protrudes from the belt. The scorch of pain is bouncing back and forth, hip to shoulder and back again, but he is not any more inclined to linger than Flint. John knows very well that the foolish instinct to stay holed up in a momentarily safe place is not going to keep them from harm.

Finally, for the first time since they crashed into this little shop, the dark is of some use to them. It masks John's progress across the floor, the cautious hop and levering of his weight along Flint's wake so that his boot nor his crutch betrays him. His grip flexes tight in Flint's hand. They manage, with one close call that sends John lurching hard against the counter but thankfully sees neither of them on the floor.

"Antiva," John spits, somewhere between genuine and mock aggravation, thumb absently working the smears of knuckles across Flint's hand into nothingness as he catches his breath. It's been an agonizingly long night, even before they were set upon. "Where are you hit?"

"Right thigh. Either a graze or the bolt passed through," he says, steady in the way that only nerves alight with adrenaline can be. If something vital had been struck, he'd be dead on the floor next to that first Crow by now. He's seen it happen before—an incidental puncture making a corpse out of a man.

His hand is firm too as they navigate carefully back into the storeroom, the contents of his boot squelching. In the morning, an apothecary is going to find bloody shoe prints tracking back in this direction and out through the back door slouching off its hinges. The trail will run a long distance down the back alley until finally the dredges of the blood from the young man's hacked through neck wears from the soles.

(But give it a few more blocks, and the trail may pick up again as Flint's blood starts to ooze out through the seams of his shoe.)

Fucking Antiva.

Before they stagger out into the alley, Flint pulls down a jar from the storeroom shelf and lobs it out ahead of them. A pause. The quiet that follows is either a good thing or isn't, and there's no telling which.

"Can you make it back to the palazzo?"

The question is given due consideration. John looks past him, out into the alley. It is marginally lighter, moonlight brightening the way. The crash has summoned no one, for the moment.

Flint's hand is warm in his own. John will cede it back to him once they cross that threshold, if only to find some more solid support. He has to consider the bolt in his hip, the one in his shoulder. The pain is held at a distance now, but experience tells him that that distance will winnow down to nothing sooner than he'd like.

And yet—

"I certainly can't stay here. Can you imagine what it might cost to make amends for all this?"

Levity. Covering up the more relevant truth: what else is there to do but go forward? They might be able to summon one of their own on a griffon, but who knows how busy the Crows are keeping them this evening?

"Care to bind that before we go?"

In which that is the wound Flint has divulged, which does not have the benefit of a bolt keeping it more or less plugged.

In the fringe of moonlight, the glint of the look he slides in John's direction is only just visible, the twitch of his whiskers an impression more than it is a fact.

"Not here. It needs flushing. I suspect they mistook which one of us was more dangerous."

Magebane doesn't reduce the sharp edge of pain, but it does make the limb feel slightly out of his control—pins and needles lurking under the hot spike that drills along the length of it in answer to the flex of muscle or the application of weight. Beyond that, there's little in the way of effect. Nothing to be sapped out of him by the lyrium laced concoction.

Bad luck for the Antivan Crows. An even chance bet always feels like better odds when you're making it.

Speaking of: With a grunt, Flint steps out into the alley. That he isn't immediately reduced to a pin cushion in the moonlight is something of a relief. It affords him the ability to help John along the slight step down out of the apothecary's back room.

The absence of immediate retribution loosens the tight knot of apprehension in John's chest. It leaves a little space to consider all the usual aches and pains that settle into his body after a long day, compounded by the bolt in his arm grinding against bone each time he resettles his weight on the crutch, or the needling dig of half-embedded arrow in his hip.

And exhaustion is creeping in, the telltale warning that he has flexed near to the limit of his ability.

Having descended, John reaches for Flint's shoulder. The weary procession back stretches out before them. (It stirs memory of another march, years ago, when John had been in a different kind of agony.) He draws breath to say something, some nonsense thing in acknowledgment of their good luck, but—

But their good luck extends only so far, apparently. There is the faintest grinding of boot on grit, stirring a scattering of small stone before a body launches from the rooftop, knife in hand.

So John says, "Fuck," with extreme feeling instead.

Posting up on the roof would, in fact, mitigate the possibility of losing track of them escaping out of either exit.

Still, there's a split second of absolute exhaustion and irritation (helpfully underlined by that "Fuck!") that meets it—an absurd wave of pure annoyance that briefly drowns out fears both rational and animal. They're both tired. John can't have much left in him. His leg feels both like it belongs to another person and like it's being stripped for a tannery rack. All the hairs at the back of his neck have come up, and maybe they die clumsily in a back alley in Rialto.

But here is the falchion sword still bare in his hand, dark with a Crow's blood. That seems like the more logical end point toward which to argue.

The clash happens quickly. Is defined by a scrape of boots and a clatter of metal as sword meets knife and the former leverages hard against the latter. Only the Crow is small and quick and spry and Flint is none of those things. A second short murderous blade blooms in the her offhand for emphasis, slashing out and under with the intent to eviscerate.

(Later, he'll find the long gouge carved across his belt.)

It's so clever as to be infuriating. Yseult had warned them, yes, but the full scope of the Crows operations are quickly becoming blindly aggravating. This absolute relentless drive towards retribution is highly inconvenient, and at this moment too much of a frustration to really stir up fear for either of them.

The alley is brighter, yes, but there is only minorly more room to move. And they had been standing very close, so once John considers the predicament, it is not complicated at all to grasp whichever part of Flint is closest (elbow, shoulder) and push what he has left into him.

Borrowed vitality. No, John does not have very much in him. He hoards some small piece, enough to do something violent and vicious and costly if needed, for himself, but the rest is given on loan. Not as much as it might have been at the start of this walk, before John spent all this time bleeding into his coat, but perhaps enough to buffer Flint's exhaustion so he might put his sword into this woman's throat, or gut, or whatever soft spot presents itself first.

And then, having done that, John simply attempts to shove his crutch between her legs. It's petty, trying to trip her, but John's tenuous acknowledgement of fair play vanished somewhere around the time he flung an entire table at her partner.

The burst of vigor is a tangible thing—hot metal taste like a coin between the teeth or blood in the mouth. It, or the weight of the sword, or just Flint's weight properly thrown serves to shatter the Crow's guard in the same moment that the crutch racks hard across one of her ankles. She staggers, forgoing any chance at catching her balance for keeping both knives in hand so that when Flint turns the heavy falchion and makes to stab down after her, she may yet punch up—striking his wrist hard with the pommel of her dagger and popping loose his grip on the sword.

If not for that spark running through him, he wouldn't be quick enough to retaliate with a hard kick to her off elbow. The Crow's second knife might have slashed hard across the back of his thigh and dropped him. Instead the elbow cracks with an involuntary pained cry. The knife skitters away to the same ungainly clatter of metal as the falchion, and Flint falls on her rather than away.

The alley permits little room for swordplay, but plenty for viciously grappling after the remaining knife between them. Allegedly. Engaged from the ground, the Crow strikes her heel once on the uneven paving stones. The trick knife in her shoe blooms at the toe of her boot, and with the deftness of a circus acrobat—

That little knife might have made it's way into Flint's thigh, or his side, or his stomach, or wherever else this Crow is certainly dexterous enough to reach. There's nothing that could have been done to stop it, were the two of them alone.

But Flint is not alone here.

(And the moral of the story... everybody needs a partner.)

The use of his crutch had sent John tilting backwards, knocking hard against the wall. He had been thankfully able to brace there, rather than topple all the way down to the ground where he would have simply been in the way. John does not see the knife, nor grasp the full danger of the Crow flipping up onto her feet other than she is a Crow and she is upright. John does what he would have done anyway, the most reliable thing to hand.

He reaches out and squeezes, drawing the air around her like a vise with what strength he has left.

It is not a perfect hold. It is more like trying to hold a wriggling eel, to crush the life from a thing while it fights tooth and nail against his grasp. Clammy sweat breaks across his skin, prickles at his hairline and neck while John strains, forces the manipulation of gravity further along as this woman thrashes against him.

When something breaks, it happens so painfully slowly.

"I can't hold it," is a barked out warning. If there's a knife, it had best be put to use before John's strength fails him.

There is a knife, though it isn't the one in the Crow's rictus tight fist, or the one in her boot, or the one that's gone sprawling somewhere down the length of the alley. It's Flint's belt knife ripped free in the brief moment of luxury that John's vice grip affords. Turning in the hand, the dirk does as it's designed to do: thrusting. Driving with a harsh punch through leathers and fabrics and into the first soft flesh it can find. It does it a second time and a third before his leg crumples under him. Or John's hold collapses and so too does the Crow, and Flint merely twists to keep up with her and so be certain of the work. There on the uneven paving stones, his elbow draws back and then stabs in again. It makes for a vicious unrelenting shape in the barely there haze of moonlight, repetitive as the drive of the tide against some stubborn rock until over some muddled length of time he becomes abruptly aware there is nothing left worth battering.

Flint wrenches back. He nearly makes to rise from where he'd come to clumsily halfway straddle the dead Crow, and then instead merely twists to sits hard over down in the alley beside the corpse.

John has seen this before.

Not in an alley. On a deck at sea, with a cannonball and not a knife. But the end result is still the same.

A person turned to meat and pulp, more or less. Flint all over blood. The abrupt cessation of motion.

And John, a handful of steps away. Watching. Unable to interrupt the looped flow of motion, the steel of Flint's intention brought to bear and obliterate.

When he maneuvers forward, it's a delicate, hopping procedure. More boot than crutch bearing his weight, with brief pauses after each landing to recenter himself, palm scraping the wall. There is so much blood. There is a corpse. There are crossbow bolts grinding against hipbone and the join of his shoulder. John's given up so much of his own strength that every single forward motion sets off tremors.

He cannot crouch without falling. But John reaches out, fingers seeking Flint's face in the near-dark.

He is made aware of the ragged pull of his breathing only when in proximity to the shape of that hand—the gust of air that slides off it and back to him in the brief moment before John finds what he's looking for. The shape of palm and fingers is very hot against his skin. Or his face is hot and the hand is shockingly cool. His shirt is sticking to him with sweat, and he can feel the tremor in John's wrist, and he can still taste the metal of that desperate surge of power in his mouth even though all its other effects have been poured into the working on his belt knife.

(Or that taste is just blood.)

Flint breathes out once, hard, and practically into the very palm of John's hand. He doesn't lean into its shape—the fact that John is upright is adjacent to a miracle, and it seems the smallest pressure might alter that state—, but he doesn't draw free of it either as he makes to feel around in the pockets of his coat before he recalls his sending crystal must be in the usual one.

"All right?"

(It's a struggle—to work his hand into the right pocket and extract the rock in question.)

"We can say with some certainty that neither of these bolts were coated in poison."

Because their exertions would have seen any kind of toxin carried to the heart and through the body by now. John has nothing but the dull pain of these projectiles embedded in him, no feverish chill or sickly nausea kindling in him.

A bit of luck. Just like the magebane bolt sticking Flint and not John, a misstep that might be the reason they are alive at present moment.

His fingers adjust their trajectory, ceding ground to make way for the inevitable appearance of the crystal. Follows the tacky spatter of blood and sweat along Flint's cheek as he considers whether to be very frank as to his own condition, and decides—

"Can you stand?" is followed by, "Should we leave a note?"

Are three dead Crows enough explanation for whoever owns what's left of the apothecary shop? (Ha, ha.)

There's the rough outline of an adrenaline fueled laugh in Flint's next breath, though it fails to fully form. Fuck the note.

"I'll manage."

Their escape can't have left entirely no trace. He imagines there must still be signs of chaos in the street they'd vacated to flee into this bird's nest of a little alley way. He can hear some commotion elsewhere. All the same, it will take some minutes for the griffon of whatever rider he manages to contact to locate them in the great tangle of side streets which branch away from Rialto's port. It would be best to find their way to some obvious landmark. Or to a rooftop, though that much seems beyond John's abilities at present.

"We shouldn't stay here. There will be a better place to be fetched from further along," he decides, and the unfounded conviction of it gives him the motivation to untangle the lines of his legs, to withdraw from the shape of John's hand, and to claw his way up onto his feet. Once upright, he cuts a limping but considerably more able figure as he collects his knife and unearths the falchion sword from under the hip of the dead woman.

The possibility of the rooftop has presented itself to John as well, judging by the upward trajectory of his gaze as his hand falls again to his side.

Maybe if they cared to make their way back through one of the shops, hope for a balcony with an attic that opened out—

A waste of time.

"The far end lets us out onto a main street, if I recall correctly," does not get them to a landmark, but it is a start. There is nothing to be done about the bolt in his shoulder here. Cutting it out will make a mess of his arm rather than grant him full mobility. "How long?"

Standing in the open feels like a gamble. John would prefer they time it as closely as possible.

"Ten minutes. Fifteen, if we're exceedingly unlucky."

Which seems to be something of a theme for the evening, though he hardly need say as much. Instead, upright and with all his scattered detritus reclaimed, Flint offers a point of contact—evading his usual target of John's elbow given the jostling it might require of his injured shoulder and settling instead for a vice grip on a fistful of shirt and waistband, his knuckles a firm plane against John's side.

To the credit of the Crows, it takes them an extraordinary number of those fifteen minutes just to work their way back toward the mouth of the alley. They only have to linger in the cast shadow for a short interim, during which the adrenaline buzz under his skin may rollover into sharp, unrelenting awareness of the pincushioning John has been subject to and the sound of his pulse in his own ears and to deny himself the impulse to constantly reassess his grip. Instead, he shifts his grip along the unsheathed sword's pommel, fidgeting quietly where it will be least intrusive.

By the time they make it back to the palazzo gardens, griffons dropping heavily out of the sky to land amidst the groomed shrubbery and extensive flower beds, it's very late indeed. One of the healers must be roused from bed. The act of separating John from his collection of crossbow bolts is one of those nervy, tedious things—less morbid than the work performed on a ship's stinking orlop deck, but no less gruesome. Flint's leg, victim to the magebane bolt slashing deep along the outside of his thigh, is more easily addressed with a stinging salve and a combination of patchwork healing and perfunctory needlepoint.

And after, in the room they've been given to share and with a myriad of scrapes and bruises and drying blood left to tend to, Flint wrings out a cloth in the basin of warm water left behind.

"Should I tell Averesch about the blood sooner, or save it for later?"

It's flecked all over the bedclothes. The white linens will have to be lyed and bleached within an inch of their lives to recover.

Judging on what's bequeathed to him, John assumes there are some others within the palazzo who had an equally tiresome night. The extraction of bolts is messy, bloody, and what follows does not wholly cleanse the deep punctures from his body.

The white bandages slapped over his shoulder and cinched around his hip are shockingly white against the remaining smears of blood. John's entire arm is coated red. The leather belt spread across his thigh is similarly mangled, though John considers he might make use of it sooner or later. A battle-marked item is always good for something.

His fingers press over the hole, hold place there as he watches Flint's ministrations.

"We might ruin his breakfast," John suggests. "So we receive fresh sheets sooner rather than later."

They are certainly accustomed to sleeping in worse conditions. But the bed is lavishly soft, so why squander the occasion with a reminder of the absolute annoyance of nearly being murdered in an alley?

It will be a blessing to lay himself down after they've sponged off the worst of the gore. Tremors are running up and down his leg, cycling through his body, the aftermath of their exertions rattling through his body after having been held at bay for so long.

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