Private Tales For What Do We Bleed?

[Elijah]

Elijah, wisely, said nothing. It was one of those occasions where the little voice known as self preservation spoke up and he found it most often did about Lyssia. Trying to unravel her was like trying to unravel a spiders web. Each time he reached what he thought was the final stretch he suddenly hit another complicated branch he had to unpick. Thankfully, this one he had already unravelled. It was probably rule 59 if he had been listing them, which he hadn't, and rule 59 clearly stated not to point out she obviously felt the complete opposite and was lying to them both.

The captain let silence fall before them for another few minutes whilst he mulled over a safe response.

"You might have both arrived at this spot in different ways, but it does not change the fact you are both in the same spot. Your ideals match for the moment. At times it is best to befriend the friend of the enemy than have them foil your plans."

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

She sniffed at him in such a way as to leave little doubt what she thought about that statement, but said nothing. She had to admit to herself that this was the way she had been trained, growing up. Use the tools you had available to you when you had them ready to hand.

She had experienced the distaste of doing so before, but never before had it felt so profoundly dirty to engage in the practices of nobility.

"I'll use him," she said sourly. "But he'll use us too. Use you, anyway." She shook her head, and looked away quickly. "It is easy to see who is more valuable between the two of us." She looked back, and stabbed an accusatory finger in his direction. "You are worth ten of me, right now. Me? All I am here is to dig for information. I have no practical use to either of you."

It hurt to admit that. But then, her ego had been sorely bruised for years at this point. It was easier to admit those shortcomings when they were so obviously, objectively true. She completely discounted the fine mind buried beneath her fiery red head, but then again a fine mind was only worthwhile if you could stay alive to utilize it.

 

[Elijah]

"Is that what keeps upsetting you?" Elijah asked in a dangerously, quiet tone. He was struggling to keep a hold of his own temper now for though he was slow to rise to it once it was whipped into a flame it was an inferno that struggled to be contained in any short space of time. His jaw clenched with the effort of keeping his calm but his eyes betrayed the ice creeping in as he shot her a reproachful look.

"You keep lashing out at people because you feel useless?" He took a deep breath in and cast his eyes towards the sky as though he were praying for some inner strength from the ancestors that watched over them all. "You are the only person holding yourself back Lyssia. You have proven you are not useless, or I would not follow you. I would not risk my title, my home, my life for what you believed in if I did not think you were able?" He shook his head and looked back to her.

"People do not think you are useless because they measure you against me or Elliot or anyone else. It's because you're not being who you are. So, I will tell you this once, Lyssia, and once only. Get out of the hole you have dug yourself to wallow in and start being the woman I keep glimpsing in between the pity," and then he dug his heels into Gypsys side and spurned her on to the head of the column.

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

She watched him go in shocked silence, seated upon her oversized horse with her jaw hanging open. For a moment, at least.

That is not it at all, she wanted to shout at his retreating back as he rode away from her. But was that a truthful statement? Did she really believe the unspoken words? Or had that man cut through the fabric of all the lies she had woven about herself like a sword through flesh. Cut away the concealing layers that hid her fears.

Lyssia was replete insecurities that had not existed before the rough fall from grace. But rather than trying to scrape together the pieces and rebuild her shattered soul from the ground up, she had gathered those insecurities about herself and crafted a twisted armor of sorts from them. It would be so easy to lean on the crutch and blame all of her failures and faults on those failings she had gathered about herself.

But what of that which others had seen in her? And, more importantly, that which others had sacrificed in order for her to be here, now, in this place and at this time?

The smoldering anger that had threatened to flare into a wildfire of epic proportions guttered out in a moment, and was replaced with a profound sense of chagrin. She had been acting like a fool for quite a long while, and spitting in Elijah's face all the while. Him, and others. All of them could see the spoiled noble brat that she was when she put on her airs, and wore her grievances and her follies on her sleeves like they were some kind of grisly medals. To Elijah, whom had sacrificed the most in her name, it had to have been nothing short of slapping him in the face each and every time.

I am useless because I have made myself so. And, riding the coattails of that pained sentence: But I do not have to be that way. Even if I am, I can at least acquit myself well.

She had no idea when she had started to cry, sitting there slumped in the saddle. Awareness did not make anything better, and she scrubbed at her face angrily to clear the tears that would not stop.

But all things pass and so, too, did this. Eyes perhaps a little redder than they had been, she sat her saddle straight. She still looked like a porcelain doll perched atop a war charger, but there was something different in the way she carried herself.

Riding back towards the column, she vowed to herself to make his sacrifice - and all the others, barring perhaps Elliot - not one in vain. And maybe, some day, he would be able to see her for more than the addle-brained fool that she so often had been. Something more...

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Tsagaan Ereg. Like many small towns, it had not changed very much through all of the years of Elliot's visitations. Earthen berms surrounded the town, where ramparts had been built and the town's militia could take to at a moment's notice. Though now, in the peaceful afternoon, only a few men stood sentry.

The sight of the army (albeit rogues thereof) was something of a novelty for the townsfolk, and heads turns and excited murmurs started as the column passed through the gates and into Tsagaan Ereg's winding paths--it was a stretch to call them streets.

Elliot rode up toward the front of the column, trailed by Taros, and they joined with Lyssia and the captain.

"This way," Elliot said. "It'll be to the eastern edge of town, close to the shore."

He navigated the twisted ball of twine that was Tsagaan Ereg's pathways with the confidence of familiarity. Here he'd come to escape Dornoch and the whole of Erdeniin when first he'd become the most wanted man by the Dynasty. The larger ports along the Steppe side of the Strait were all too dangerous. They still were. Only the smaller, more remote ports, ones disconnected from and overlooked by the networks of trade, were suitable. And this was how he found the smuggler.

"This is your last chance to turn back if you don't want to consort with more of my types."

Elliot had spoken perfunctorily. He wasn't expecting either Lyssia or the captain to do so, even if they dearly wanted to. That was alright. What was coming next they will have volunteered themselves into at desperation's urging.

Lyssia D'avore Elijah

 

[Elijah]

Elijah had put as much distance as he could between himself and Lyssia to cool his temper. The men and women under his command knew when their Captain was in a foul mood and kept a healthy distance - even Nymeria - to let him breathe. None of them wanted to be riding as scout or lugging supplies so they wisely kept their mouths shut and heads down. Ironically it was thus Elliot who brought together their odd little trio once more when the town came in to view.

In a bid not to scare off the inhabitants and, most importantly, Elliot's contact Elijah bid the rest of the army to stop just outside the towns limits in the deep forests. They would be able to act as a warning should Stannis and her cronies catch up to them before it was too late. Once they had the information he would send back word.

He also left behind Gypsy much to her chagrin. A pegasus would only draw attention.

"In for a penny," Elijah shrugged and tugged the hood up of his cloak as he walked beside the other two on their mounts, his eyes darting everywhere.

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

And she did little to try to close the distance between them, taking turns at being angry and contrite with herself and with him. Right or wrong, she could not bring herself to get close enough to lay eyes on his face. Instead, she turned her thoughts to the task at hand. She could deal with all of that later, when the current task was done.

Unlike Elliot, her face was not easily recognizable, and so she did nothing to hide it. With the main host left behind, the four were of some passing note - the company they had arrived with had hardly gone unseen or unnoticed - but nothing to cause alarm. This was Dynast territory after all, and patrols were common. The riders with it could have simply been travelers escorted here; she could have been what she was - a noblewoman with an escort.

Or nothing.

She comported herself like the noblewoman she had been, sitting the saddle tall and proud while everything beneath the surface was anything but. Here, they were at Elliot's mercy; unfamiliar territory and, by the way the rapscallion moved through the cow-paths, very familiar to him. If there was any place that he could betray their trust, such as it was, it was now. He certainly had no loyalty to them.

"It won't be the first time," she said cooly as she came up along the drow. She did not look to Elijah. She felt ice creeping up her spine, but ignored it. She had made this particular bed, and she would have to sleep in it. "So long as it goes better than the last..."

She shrugged. The affectation of indifference was exactly that; she was knotted up inside, a coil wound to the point of rupture. Something hung in the air, and had hung in the air, since they had escaped Stannis. She did not know what it was, but a sixth sense spoke of caution.

And aside from Elijah, she was on her own in the event that things did go poorly.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Elliot nodded after each gave their assent. And wasn't that something, Lyssia with a small, if unintentional, jest of her own. Soon enough though, provided the negotiation went well, she would be getting her wish, and their ways would be parting.

"Very well then."

He led the four of them to the house. A modest home, much like the others scattered about the town. A small barn was behind it, and a small field to match, where a few young men and a few older men were tilling. Some idle glances from them, but they seemed altogether unconcerned. A long stone-lined path winded its way from the house down the slope to the shore, where another building sat (if one could count canvases stretched across struts on two piers a building). Elliot dismounted from his horse, as did Taros.

"I certainly hope," Taros said once he feet touched the ground, "that I won't need to earn my sum of coin the hard way in there."

"It's fine. You can watch the horses."

"Splendid. Well, do try not to die in there."

Elliot flashed a ghost of a smirk. "That'll be the least of our worries."

He walked up to the door held up his hand and rapped his knuckles on the wood. A second or two passed, and then a voice from within the home called out to him, saying to come in. Elliot gently pushed open the door and stepped inside, waiting for Lyssia and the captain to enter.

A very elderly woman was inside by herself. She was in the small kitchen area of the house's main room, tending to a pie she'd just pulled out of her stone oven. Wisps of steam rose from it and the smell of blueberries filled the home.

"Oh..." said the woman with a cordial smile after she looked up and saw them. "Come in, come in. Do be a dear and close the door, will you?"

Elliot let out a breath, and then turned and closed the front door and faced the old woman again. As soon as the door was shut, the woman's smiling, genial expression twisted into anger and she picked up in her mitts the pie she had just baked and tossed it as hard as her ancient arms allowed at Elliot. Elliot, with seeming prescience that something like this would happen, jerked his head to the left and narrowly missed being splatted in the face; instead the pie smacked into the wall behind him, the splatter and streak of blueberry filling making an incredible mess.

The old woman stalked forward, a hand raised. "You gray-skinned, knife-eared, son of a bitch! I ought to break both your kneecaps and feed them to you! What did I tell you, hmm?"

She swatted at Elliot with that raised hand, Elliot casually blocking each attempt. The woman then abruptly pointed to Lyssia. "NO! CHILDREN! What, is there too much wax in those dingy drow ears of yours and your mother couldn't be bothered to lick it all out this time? No children! It's one of my three rules!"

Elliot cleared his throat, and said to his ostensible companions, "Let me introduce Merissa."

Merissa was indeed an ancient human woman. Her hair was thinned and white, skin deeply-tanned from a century spent out in the sun, and wrinkles creased every inch of her body. Despite her short and hunched over stature, her fierce blue eyes defied the venerable nature of the rest of her, timeless in a way with their undimmed spark of life.

"Merissa Harrington. Now close those gray lips before I sew them to a donkey's ass."

Her eyes found their way over to Elijah, and her demeanor changed quickly. "Ohhhh, well, at least you brought me someone handsome." She shuffled over to him and reached up and cupped his cheek, smiling delightedly. "And what's your name, sugar?"

Lyssia D'avore Elijah

 

[Elijah]

Elijah was rather enjoying himself. At least, to begin with. Elliot was having pie thrown at him, Elliot was being yelled at by a woman and not him. Life was looking surprisingly up in that moment. There was also an odd sense of nostalgic home in this place. Not too dissimilar in fact to the home he had grown up in with its small, cozy rooms that he knew from experience could squeeze a good 40 people into it. The scent of home cooked food, now splattered up the wall alas, and the sounds of others bustling about their day in one of the other rooms. An odd laugh came from somewhere out back. He could imagine his sisters both on his own back porch, peeling potatoes and discussing which man at the market they had had their eye on.

Lost in the rose-tinted past it was a shock to slam back into the present with the angry woman touching his cheek. It took his years of training not to jerk back from her hand in an offensive manner and instead took her hand gently by the wrist, and flipped it bow over and kiss the back of her hand in formal greeting.

"Elijah, my lady, and Lyssia here is no child," he smiled faintly and gestured to his companion. "In fact, if you would believe it, she is likely older than yourself."

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

For once, the flow of power was quick to come to her beckoning call; the sweet flow of the prim surging, swelling into life within her at the first quick movement from their host. It was a measure of how on edge she was that she even reached for that ephemeral power as quickly as she did.

And with that power humming in her veins, she bore witness to what came next. Almost unconsciously, her back stiffened and her chin tilted just a little at the finger-pointed accusation of childhood leveled by the elderly woman. She bit her tongue, certain that speaking out of turn would only enhance the image of a child playing at adulthood - never mind the full figure, however meagerly endowed or short of stature it might be, could only be that of an adult - and embarrass her further.

She'd had enough of that.

At least, until Elijah's offhand comment. She fairly bristled at the remark, but rather than erupt into a tirade over it - which he was unlikely to react well to right now, let alone their guest - she simply kept it to a cutting remark. "It is impolite," she said as she folded her arms beneath her breasts, "to speak of a lady's age," she said flatly. I am only fifty three, she wanted to yell. Still very young among her kindred, little more than a child in truth...but the woman who boldly approached Elijah with platitudes and compliments had to be eighty or ninety. Ancient, by human lights.

She made a visible effort to get her temper back under control, and forced her hands to her sides. "While I do not think the donkey would appreciate the gesture," she added, "the lack of inane prattle would be a boon to my psyche." She cast an unreadable look at the grey-skinned cretin, disapproval clear on her features. "A pleasure, Mistress Harrington," she said, dipping in a shallow curtsy. She did not offer her last name, and for obvious reasons. She added little else, as she felt it would be wiser for the men to take the lead here and detract from any unnecessary attention to herself.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Merissa, if one judged by the thrilled giggle, thoroughly enjoyed herself when Elijah kissed her hand. It was short-lived. When he said that Lyssia was no child, that she was likely older than her, Merissa batted her other hand in the air dismissively, muttering lowly, "Oh, one of those."

She slid a sly eye over to Lyssia. A throaty chuckle here, when she mentioned speaking a lady's age, a fiendish grin there, when she tag-teamed with Merissa at Elliot's expense.

Then Merissa looked right back up to Elijah. "A lady, she says. Ha! Of course she's a child. Look at those hips. Sugar, do you expect anything alive to come out of there? Oh, but fine. Fine! Enchant me with tales of how this broomstick has blood that predates the Great Horde in the Age of Wonders."

Her attention whipped around to Elliot. "You know what kills me about you elves and whatever the hell else on Arethil lives longer than they honestly ought? Where's your Great Horde? Hmm?" That intense gaze, cunning and with vivacious energy belying her years, snapped to Lyssia then. "Hmmmmm?"

Back to Elliot. "I'm a great-great grandmother now. Isn't that delightful?"

"Congratulations," he said, spreading his hands genially.

"Thank you, Elliot, I needed something to wipe my ass with and the congratulations of a dingy drow will suit just fine. In any case, my great-great granddaughter was born just last week. Maryanne is her name. I should have invited you to the celebration so my entire family could punch you in the face."

Merissa sighed blissfully. "It's been a good hundred years. Good enough for this old bag, ha! I've done more in my hundred years than what you stinking elves do in a thousand. Why on Arethil's green fields would I want to live longer than this? Oh, just imagine the sort of rotting crustacean I'd be hauling around between my legs given another hundred!"

Merissa indulged herself with some self-deprecating cackles for a moment, then abruptly stopped and turned a sharp glare to Elliot. "Now what the hell do you want?"

Having weathered the familiar storm that was Merissa, Elliot was unperturbed, and spoke as though he and the fast-talking centenarian were having a normal, cordial conversation. "We need to cross the Strait."

Merissa looked to Elijah, speaking in a sweet-talking manner to him, "Ohhh...is this true, sugar? Something you'll give me the privilege of helping you out with, handsome?"

Lyssia D'avore Elijah

 

[Elijah]

It was like flying in a storm, trying to keep up with Merissa. Her mood, her topic of conversation, her whole manner... It was dizzying. He was simply glad he could watch for the most part with her focus of dislike settled firmly on what she seemed as other. Elijah, human and Dornoch stock through and through, met with nothing but approval. His lips curled somewhat as she proudly talked about the Great Horde that had rampaged across this lands, that many of them could trace their bloodlines back to. He shared her pride in his own quiet way but her pride reminded him of the old widows who used to hang out at the fish market. They'd cackled and harassed in much the same way.

Perhaps it was why he was handling it so well.

"If you would be so kind, we have... matters to deal with which are safer done across the sea," he winked and threw her an easy smile. To his companions he probably looked nothing like the Captain they were used to.

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

Lyssia stiffened at the casual condescension, but it was hardly anything new as these things went. She was young for her people, but there was no need to point that out. All things considered, she didn't really know much about 'her people' to begin with; her parents had been reluctant to speak of the courts they had once traveled in, even to their progeny. It had been hundreds of years at the least since they had been in the company of the fae.

Her family was dead. The answer to the questions - her heritage, where they had come from, all of it - were buried and gone. Maybe it would have hurt to consider it, but she had never known anything of the Courts, of the tricksome fae-folk from which her blood flowed.

"I don't know," she replied to Merissa, stiffly. "The only others of 'my kind' I have ever known are my family, and they are dead," she said. The words were flat as a planed board, devoid of any inflection that might hint at her thoughts on that fact.

She found herself growing irritated at the advances the old crone offered to Elijah, regardless of the over-the-top quality of them. She held her peace, though; if the old woman had taken a shining to Elijah, then she was content to stand back and let him lead the way. She might even gain a side benefit from that, too; Elliot seemed to be attracting most of the centenarian's barbs, and what little attention wasn't spared to slicing the criminal with verbal knives was directed at buttering Elijah up.

All in all, it was a good feeling to not be an object of attention. All of those experiences, recently at least, had left her bleeding and broken. Had helped to nurture a solid case of self-pity, too. Even thinking of it, and of the stern tongue lashing she had just received not a few hours ago, was enough to make her cheeks burn with renewed chagrin.

And so she held her peace.

And ignored a growing sense of unease, a sixth sense of things to come.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Merissa tittered and fanned herself with a hand, lapping up the attention from Elijah. Her wrinkles seemed to multiply from the broad smile stretching across her expression. "Of course you do, sugar, but don't leave Dornoch behind for too long. You'll be breaking a lot of young ladies' hearts if you do."

Finally, she deigned it time to wheel around and regard Elliot and Lyssia again. Particularly Lyssia in this moment. "All dead, you say? Really? And you didn't even have the godsdamned common courtesy to join them? Mwahaha! I'll have you know, you red-haired dwarflet of an elf, that I rap my grandchildrens' knuckles with a switch if they so much as show up late for family dinner. If I had a switch handy and handsome Elijah here wasn't pressed for time, I'd beat the whites out of your knuckles for such an astounding lack of loyalty!" And she flashed another of her fiendish grins to her.

"How much fare for four passengers?" Elliot asked.

Merissa ignored his question. Didn't even comment on him saying four when there were only the three of them in the house. Instead, she looked to Elijah and while pointing at Elliot. "Do you know what he did?"

It didn't take her long to answer her own question.

"This ungrateful prick murdered a Dynasty member. Can you believe that? Dornoch and the Erdeniin Dynasty has the good grace to let in a filthy pack of dingy drows and one of them goes and does something like that. Damn my impeccable work ethic to hell, ah ha, for I still do business with the gray-skinned rat, don't I! What was her name, Elliot?"

"Karaliene."

"Mwaha! At least he had the good sense to kill the one I liked the least! Karaliene was a flaming-hot cunt, wouldn't you agree, Elijah?" Merissa, inexplicably, pre-emptively shushed Lyssia. "And you shut up, grown-ups are talking. But if you admit Karaliene was a bag of unwashed twat hairs, then I'll allow you to speak."

Lyssia D'avore Elijah

 

[Elijah]

Elijah pinned his smile into place but for the more observant it was clear that it had faded from his eyes. Kara's murder had happened just before he himself had risen to Captain, when his fiance had instead held the title. It was the search for her killers that had resulted in Samantha's own death. A small bit of information that perhaps afforded him a reason to hate this drow stood beside him even more than Lyssia did. A piece of information neither were likely to know. The old woman's jibes and laughter over this seemingly frivolous bit of Dynast history was, for Elijah, some of the most painful.

"I wouldn't want to comment on any Lady in such a manner, my mother would switch me if she ever thought I had," he glanced sideways to Lyssia then back. "Our business is sadly time sensitive though, Lady, if you could be so kind to help us with passage for four..."

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

It was becoming increasingly difficult for her to keep her temper in check. That she had not erupted already was a testament to how hard she was clamping down on it, albeit the increasing redness in her face did not help her hide the fact that she was growing quite angry.

She had no opinion on the death of Karaliene. She had not liked the woman, for what little she remembered of her. The workings of the Bursars and high-ranking women of the Dynast were certainly things of import to her, or had been before...everything had happened, but she could hardly have kept track of all of them while dealing with tutors and instructors of this, that, and the other thing.

She did not respond to the hag, as much because she wasn't about to agree with her as because if she did speak, her tongue was likely to gain a life of its own and the vitriol would not stop until either the old woman knocked her to the floor, or else she ended up dead. She was a smuggler of some repute, and therefore as much a criminal as Elliot was. Someone such as she did not operate alone, and likely had plenty of 'hired hands' to make problems disappear, likely into the waters with stones tied round their feet.

The sideways glance from Elijah was met with pure wintry ice, her jaw clenched so tightly she thought it might cramp. She wished these two men would finish their dickering with this woman before she could not contain her rage any more.

***

What was there to do while they waited?

The column had slipped their saddles and were taking their ease, in so much as a unit in their circumstances could take their ease. Nymethia ran a tight ship, and even in repose there were people on watch, people at the ready. Although on their own soil, there was a reason why they had come here, and she as well as they were well are of the kind of people the Captain and the others were dealing with.

Which was why it was such a surprise when the three riders appeared at the edge of their group. They had been seen by none of the sentries, and seemed entirely unsurprised by the presence of several armed soldiers. Not surprised, and did not react to the challenge of the sentries as they approached.

"We do not need to identify ourselves to a bunch of traitors," the woman at the front of the trio said as she approached. They walked in, not riding. The speaker wore clothes of fine cut, dark in color and of clean lines that spoke of a trained fighter. She had a hood up, hand down on the pommel of a heavy bladed knife that was unseen beneath her cloak.

"I come under orders of Gloria Stannis, acting under the authority of the Dynast herself. Stand down, and surrender yourselves to justice. None shall be harmed." Among the soldiers, the true traitors stirred uneasily, sure of their own safety but shameful of their part in this.

As if reading the minds of the soldiers judging their odds against three women, other shapes came into view. There were enough to make a fight unwise, but only enough to hold and keep their guests occupied. With that thought in mind, the lead woman sneered at them, asked: "So, now that the only introductions you are going to get are out of the way, do tell were the good Captain, the traitorous bitch, and the murderer have gone off to..."

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Merissa clapped her ancient hands about one of Elijah's forearms and gave it a small shake. "Such a gentleman! See, this is what Dornoch does, Elliot. It civilizes men, you charcoal twit. Oh, but do carry on. Be a savage. You missed your chance at being educated by your betters."

Elliot smiled, a mild geniality to it. He and Merissa had traded a torrent of such barbs at one another the first time they had met, and eventually, in a turn neither of them truly expected, they had come to respect one another. Their mutual animosity fell to the wayside. There were things that they would never agree on--never--but it came to not matter. He couldn't speak on Merissa's behalf, but Elliot suspected it was the same for her as it was for him: respect for the honesty and directness on display, and respect for the commitment to one's convictions. And thus a most unlikely friendship had been fostered.

Right now, though, the old crone needed prompting. "Don't forget to tell them your three rules."

"I was getting to it, go comb your hair. Better yet, bend over, I'll wash it for you, I had a lot to drink today." Merissa let out another belting laugh that again belied her years with its vitality.

Then she looked to Elijah and Lyssia. "I only have three rules: first, no children; second, no refunds; third, I'm the captain. That's it."

"And the fare for four?"

"Oh, of course." Merissa told them the specified amount of gold. Then a smile that was both coy and devilish crossed her expression. "Yes, the coins...and a kiss from Elijah." She tapped her right cheek. "Right here."

Lyssia D'avore Elijah

 

[Elijah]

It was getting harder to keep the smile in place but he managed it. He reprimanded himself internally for being sour that an old woman wanted a kiss but this wasn't the first time a woman had wanted him physically in repayment for something. He wondered at times how men could even demand the same thing in these kingdoms and empires where men had the upper hand. It was barbaric and dehumanising. Swallowing his pride because time was off the essence, however, he leant forward and placed a kiss against her leather cheek.

Then smartly pulled back before she could tug him into something more. That had happened before too.

"Your terms seem fair, my Lady. When can we depart?"

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

Seething on the inside, but desperately trying to keep her temper under control, Lyssia continued to say nothing. This was quite different from the withdrawn, self-pitying silence, though; if she opened her mouth, it was not likely to produce anything even remotely productive. Better to hold her peace and let people with calmer dispositions deal with the harlot.

It did not lessen the strangely sharp, caustic feeling that ran through her veins watching Elijah kiss the crone. Odd, that, but there wasn't time or inclination to dwell on it. Rage had the reins right now, born of humiliation and degradation. The things she had endured without cease since being cast into the same mud this woman wallowed in willingly.

She folded her arms beneath her breasts and stood in frigid silence, looking at Elliot with something unreadable. Shared that look with Elijah as well, but of Merissa she would not even cast a glance.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

Elijah paid his part of the fare, and Elliot had a moment of thanking whatever divine power cared to listen that Merissa had such an interest in Elijah rather himself. Beneath this, on a level far more serious, Elliot--unbeknownst to him--stood upon the same ground as Elijah on the matter, to where if the man had voiced those verbatim thoughts aloud Elliot would have agreed with him wholeheartedly and felt a certain rapport developed.

Merissa, meanwhile, shivered with delight and made the girlish gesture of hiking up her shoulders and swinging her straightened arms in a sweet little rocking motion. "Oh, you really are something else, Elijah. Curse Aionus for having me be born far before your time!"

Merissa saw the look Lyssia was giving Elliot, this in the same moment Elliot had returned a look to Lyssia (pondering as well what the sidhe's overall impression of all this was, and coming up with a few likely conclusions). Merissa, perhaps entirely on purpose, misread the look. "Now I know why you're so grumpy, broomstick. You chose the wrong bedmate! Hee!"

Elliot's lips pressed then, the only outward evidence of his mighty struggle to keep from snickering. He didn't mind the constant whiplashes of Merissa's words, but Lyssia, by his lights, was guaranteed to be vexed.

The centenarian shuffled toward the door. "Well then. There's preparations aplenty to be made. What floats out at the pier is just a normal fishing boat, you see, with none of the extra 'enhancements' that keep my little voyages across the Strait covert. I'll round up my sons and my grandsons and my great-grandsons--boys, how they love adventure. And my daughters do better work around the farm anyhow."

"Don't break anything along the way," Elliot said as she crossed through the front door.

"I'll break both my feet off in that mudhut between your buttcheeks if you don't shut..." Merissa's voice became indistinct with distance as she kept shuffling on her way outside and toward the fields behind the house.

Elliot smiled, a small and perfunctory gesture. Then he glanced to Elijah and Lyssia. Said, "That went better than I had estimated."

Elijah Lyssia D'avore

 

[Elijah]

Elijah's placid smile vanished as soon as the old woman was out the door. The simmering anger that had been burning like hot embers beneath the surface caught its first, brief flame.

"I need a drink," he muttered under his breath and stalked towards the small, humble drinks cabinet in the corner of the room. He didn't think the crone would mind if he helped himself. Maybe if Lyssia or Elliot did but not him, and for some reason that fact made him want to drink even more. Tugging the door open he clanked around as he found a glass and a sake he might be able to keep down without vomiting.

"How long does it usually take her to sort this kind of thing out?" he asked as he poured himself a good three finger measure then knocked it back with barely a grimace.

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

Some well of inner strength. That had to be what it was that kept her from going into an apoplectic rage at the ancient smuggler; the fact that they needed her assistance was not reason enough for the former noble to keep her tongue in check. In fact, Elijah's scolding was not enough.

"A knife and five minutes alone with Merissa would do better," she said in a low hiss. Well, at least she hadn't said it straight to the smugglers face. Her face had gone nearly purple after the comment, and it was scarcely less so right then. Really brought out the red of her hair, did that color in her cheeks. "If this takes longer than a day, I don't know..."

She shook her head, dispelling decidedly unsavory thoughts. "Anyway, she can break all her bones for all I care. We just need to get across the water, and then we can deal with our informant." She cast a sidelong look at Elliot. "And ditch this ruffian," she added.

Elliot was a thorny problem that she had no solution for at the moment, and without an opportunity to speak to Elijah privately - assuming he would allow that, now, after their confrontation earlier - she could come up with no definitive course of action. It was likely the scoundrel would simply waltz out of his problems here in Erdeniin and get up to no end of mischief in Oban.

Scowling, she took a seat, and waited.

***

They numbered seven. They were renowned across large swathes of the world - in the right circles, of course, and never in the public eye - for their skill and their efficacy. Services offered only to the wealthy and the powerful, or those in service to such, they moved through the world like a shadow.

Leaving death in their wake.

The Cardinals, as they styled themselves, had not been summoned by Gloria. Gloria Stannis was neither rich nor powerful enough to even know of their existence, and only came into the fold because of whom had hired them, and her close association with the people who had the real power in Erdeniin. And even with the weight of authority calling upon their services, not all seven of them had been summoned; only two had deigned to answer the summons and the coin offered.

In Tsagaan Ereg they walked, now, closing in on the farm at its edge with the placid, unhurried steps of people who knew they had all the time in the world. A common soldier, a dispossessed noblewoman, and a wild card criminal were no match for one of them, let alone two. And while Stannis had been insistent that their marks be taken alive, Wrath and Sloth had no intention of leaving any of the three alive. Their orders did not come from Stannis, but from higher up.

Kill them, the voice that had spoken to them from the shadows, not even showing their face to the Cardinals, them, and anyone else they are associating with. Make an example. What you have asked of us for payment will be doubled if you succeed. No one else has.

Doubled. Well, that might have worked for lesser assassins, but the truth was that the Cardinals did not do their work for money. Oh, ostensibly they did, but they had their own designs on the world. This contract worked to serve those designs...and the challenge of marks that had managed to elude others? Well, that might have been payment in its own right.

Blood was to be shed, and in this, at least, all was well with the world.

 

[Elliot Aldmar]

That guarantee held true, and Lyssia's vexation came out in a low hiss. With Lyssia he didn't relish in it--her vexation just made flat, logical sense. The House of D'avore enjoyed a certain standing in Dornoch before, a standing which would have excluded her from the manner of coarse treatment, good-natured or no, found in the lower rungs of the ladder of civilized society. Elliot's personal thoughts on all of that--the idea of nobility, civilization and the people of the societies it creates--were irrelevant to the truth of it.

How long does it usually take her to sort this kind of thing out?

"For a drow like me," Elliot gave a little shrug, "the better half of an afternoon."

He went to the stubby counter partitioning off some of the kitchen area, and he held onto the edge and leaned in a idle manner, head bowed in brief contemplation. Outside, the vague sound of Merissa calling to her sons of various generations--her "Great Horde," as she had lovingly referred to them.

Elliot didn't have too much time to ponder his next move upon reaching Dalriada. Lyssia caught his attention with a comment. He flashed a small, perfunctory smile, and then reached up and tipped a phantom hat to her.

Then a little thought struck him, and his smile became more than merely perfunctory. "The Rogue, the Ruffian, and the Ragamuffin. It's got a ring to it."

Lyssia D'avore Elijah

 

[Elijah]

Elijah glanced between Lyssia and the Drow then back down at his glass between his hands.

He poured another measure - a double one - this time and tipped that back too.

It would simply be a miracle if all three of them arrived in Oban alive let alone in one piece.

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

"Only if you are an uncouth, idiotic...idiotic...man!" The snap in her voice was almost audible, like the crack of a great stone, and all the anger rolling round in her gut seemed to be poured into that one word. The stiff, prim-and-proper attitude just could not coexist with the lower class and their idea of humor. Or perhaps it was a thing of men, irregardless of their station in society. But, then, the soldiers also partook of this style of tomfoolery. Among the Erdeniin, that host was comprised mostly of women.

Class, then.

"Half the damned afternoon," she muttered under her breath, the temper swiftly shoved back below the surface where it could fester some more. She cast a look to Elijah that screamed her inability to suffer much more indignity than had already been delivered.

The door opened. "That was a lot quicker then-"

She paused as she turned.

"I am pleased to announce it will not take the entire afternoon," the fellow at the door said in a voice like silk. He wore a black silk waistcoat over a white collared shirt. He stepped clear of the door and closed it behind him quietly, and then clasped his hands at his waist, running cold eyes over everyone in the room. Eyes like polished obsidian, black as the void and inscrutable. At his waist, a pair of knives - small seeming - lie sheathed on his belt.

"Who are you?" She asked, knowing the others would have the same question.

"You may call me Sloth," he said, and spread his hands. "You've no need to know more. In either case, it will do you no favors. I am here to see all three of you dead. I would just like to know, before I have to do my work, what it is that has made you so fascinating to your enemies that they would send one of our ilk to lay you out by the heels?" Or, as it were, what it actually is that has earned your death warrant. It always pays to be sure that those you are killing are not actually working towards the same goal, realized or not. The fact that he had just said what it was he was here to do, came right out in the open and said it, spoke of either suicidal confidence....

...or more chillingly, genuine lack of concern that they knew. That they outnumbered him three to one, in close quarters, with potentially a dozen souls within shouting distance to come to their aid (probably).

He smiled a benign smile in a face that was as unremarkable as it was uncaring.