Private Tales All or Nothing

[Irari]

While Travaun explained the broad strokes of the job to the grifter, Irari kept her eyes on the remainder of the trio. The boy she’d fleeced looked to be the fixer with a knife in every boot; it was the girl she couldn’t get a read on. Irari hid the edge of her gaze behind a dreamy haze – Hera didn’t bother with any of that. She just stared.

Her fine brows twitched into a little arch of surprise at the blunt order. Or was it a prediction? She couldn’t tell, and then the girl was leaning forward to grab at her sleeves.

Irari resisted the urge to snatch her arms away. If they were going to be working together, some respect was due – so she maintained her serene composure and watched with restrained delight as her sleeves turned up precisely nothing.

“Satisfied?” She winked and rolled the tunic up to her elbows to rub it in. “Now—” she clapped her hands, “if we’re all done measuring our peckers, shall we move to the backroom? I’d like to get some work done before the night is up.”

 

[Jeriah Thackett]

They moved into the back rooms and away from prying eyes. The few moments of silence were enough for Thackett to start feeling a deep swell of embarrassment at being played himself.

"Let's lay it all out then. We have established that the faun is a diabolical cheat..."

Silently, he added that he might slit her throat later.

"...that Count Ounday's estate manager is going to take an involuntary trip on a ship headed west tonight and that we are going to then sell Count Ounday back his own gold mine. How we we get between the last two points because I don't think an exceptional forgery on its own will do it?"

 

[Hera]

"South. The ship will go south," Hera corrected, rubbing at her temple the moment their blasted planning begun. Every time, why couldn't they just wing it for once and save her the headache?

Her predictable grumble overtook her as all the minds in the room started thinking and muddling up a perfectly good future.

She left them to it, moving with purpose to a cabinet by a sofa. Jack pot! She served herself up a nice cup of wine, drinking it heavily.

 

[William de Courcey]

Hera's talent was useful but sometimes William wished it wasn't so bloody specific. It put him more on edge trying to make sure it matched up with her prediction. You couldn't shake the feeling of dread if the details didn't all match up. There was no point in tempting fate.

"I'm going to have my hands full trying to git said estate manager onto that boat while youse are working on the rest" he pointed out. "What's he like with the taxman? It could have been seized. Does he even know what the place looks like? You said it yourself that one mine is going to look like another. Samples of something else found?"

 

[Jeriah Thackett]

It started as a bubble, worked its way into a chortle and became a full belly laugh. He had been trying to keep his frustration on the outside as he watched Galdo and his people.

The issue was that the plan tickled him just too much.

"We're going to give him a tour of his own gold mine and then we're going to sell it to him."

 

[William de Courcey]

William stared at him but his mouth slowly began to curl into a smile. Jeriah's laughter was infectious. The thief found himself grinning and then chuckling. "It's ballsy but it could work" he admitted. It'd be a brilliant coup if they did pull it off. And if it didn't....well it wouldn't be the first time that they'd high tailed it out of town a half step ahead of the watch.

"Fifty gold pieces says you can't pull it off" he challenged. He didn't have fifty on him but that wasn't the point.

 

[Irari]

Irari twirled a goldpiece between her spindly fingers. It rolled over her knuckles like the waves lapping down in the harbor.

“The estate manager won’t be keeping the deed in his house,” she chimed in as a brief silence settled in the conversation. “Count Ounday may be a nimrod, but Riid al-Bayil isn’t. He’s from Khashkaraz. They keep their purse-strings tight and their records straight down in Amol-Kalit. Because of all the succession wars, no doubt. Do you have any idea how ludicrous the interest is for loans with that kind of risk?” Irari gave an airy laugh. “Most of the money we make is from indebted kings and nobles. Oh, you think you turn a pretty penny selling a goldmine, but the banking business… that’s the real con.”

She blinked her doe eyes, then cleared her throat with a faint blush. “As I was saying. It would make our lives a lot easier if you found out where the deed is stored… before you send him on a trip around the Spear. If I can work with the original, the forgery will pass clerk inspection at the bank. Perfect job. You won’t even have to take a long vacation in Elbion.”

 

[Hera]

“Deed?” Hera echoed. She seemed to gain interest in their conversation then, her gaze growing alert and falling on Irari from over her wine glass.

Despite her abrupt interruption, she said nothing else for a solid pause longer.

“Oh, shove it for a moment, will you?” She quipped at Jeriah, despite his verbal silence.

He was the worst offender of them all. How he could stand his own inner chatter, she never knew. She stood up and started to pace, her fingers massaging into her temples.

“Bank. A bank... his bank... He always turns right, why right? East side? Bells, bells... church... market! Do you smell that?” She turned on them, grinning.

“Fish.”

If that wasn’t enough to work with she was leaving them. Hopeless.

 

[Jeriah Thackett]

"William, you remember what Hera just said. Hera, go and get another drink. Faun, I appreciate the honest career advice."

Jeriah rattled off his little messages with a smile before turning to Galdo. The large man who had fixed their game of cards did not receive a smile.

"Exactly how are you helping in this little job if we have to go and retrieve the actual deed to the gold mine we're going to sell back to the owner?"

"Careful now," went Galdo, knowing how much muscle he had within earshot. The Noble Vagrants hadn't brought theirs by the look of it. That in itself gave him pause.

"I think that maybe taking all our money in the match might be a little unfair," Jeriah said softly. He did not look to Irari who seemed to have made it vanish. "I think we might need some expenses up front for this little operation. Cash up front to keep us liquid and we start by abducting his estate manager by the fish market."

Galdo didn't reply. He stared Jeriah down, gaze rising and falling to the rhythm of his broad chest. Suddenly he gave a brief nod. No one went to get coin from the faun but a new bag was placed on the table.

"Grand. Right then, shall we go prepare for an old fashioned abduction. Going to come help...what was it?" he asked Irari.

 

[Irari]

“It wasn’t,” she replied, blithe as ever, and slipped through the door like an apparition in black. “But you can call me Pagat, if you’d like.”

Irari led them towards a side exit – by the bustle filtering through the whitewashed walls, a brawl of some kind had broken out in the main room.

“A job is a job. Besides, I’d hate to see that fine payday go to waste when you get caught breaking into the vault.” She stopped at the backdoor to blink at the lot over her shoulder, doe eyes large and innocent in the low light. The latch sighed open at the unseen bidding of her fingers, and then they were four shadows crossing a courtyard, all but invisible in the overcast night.

Further down a side street a small tailor shop admitted them inside. A trapdoor behind the workdesk – well disguised under the layer of straw that covered the cold ground – yawed open, and soon enough the faun was busying herself lighting wall-mounted candles to reveal a longtable littered with plans.

“Make yourselves at home.”

Somehow, she managed to maintain the expression of a child at her first fair even in a basement thieves’ den.

 

[William de Courcey]

A wince as a particularly loud thud sounded, most likely someone's skull being clattered off the wall on the other side. It sounded like events were heating up back in the main room. Thank the gods they were on their way elsewhere.

They followed the tiny figure out into the shadows. The streets were quiet, only the brave or foolish risked being caught out in the dark where footpads and worse lurked. A moonlit jaunt lost its attraction when a truncheon or sap could brain you.

He bit back his foreboding as the faun opened up a trapdoor but they didn't have much else choice. His eyes blinked as the candles came into light, casting shadows over the table strewn with diagrams and other papers. "So this has been on tha cards for a while then?"

 

[Hera]

Hera snorted. “Puns,” she commented to no one. She flopped into a sack clearly once used as a seat, stretching out and sipping at the stolen wine bottle of before.

She draped her cloak out over her legs, hands wordlessly reaching out at Jeriah in expectation of either his or his body heat. Both worked.

“A faun in a dirt den, she really does meet expectations.”

 

[Jeriah Thackett]

"Just be glad we can all stand straight," Jeriah mused. There was just a hint of edge to his voice. As if maybe, deep down, he might not be ready to forgive and forget for the deception. He rarely showed much anger. Revenge was something that Thackett planned with even greater calm. It was a meticulous thing but rarely pleasant to see unfold.

"Let's just make sure we all agree of the three main things we need to have planned out?

"Firstly we need to make sure his estate manager is distinctly elsewhere for the duration. Then we need to break in and steal the deeds to his gold mines. Then we need a way to meet him, entice him and sell him his own fucking mine."

Jeriah still grinned at that. He could hide his own anger easily enough, but never amusement. Bastard Galdo had known that the notion would take his interest before he must have planned the card game.