Fantasy RPG Forum - Standing Trials

Fuck, she's in that sort of mood.

The assassin blinked. Had he been drugged? Poisoned? Was the mist rolling off the sea impregnated with some ethereal property that was making him forget who the fuck he was dealing with? Given the world he lived in, the latter was as likely as the first two. But it took Kasoria a moment to realize it wasn't the thought itself that surprised him. It was the tone, that his own mind had whispered it. Almost with a mental grumble and a sigh, as if he were talking to his-

Fuck. Well, that definitely isn't the case.

The emissaries from the underworld and the in-between world (for that was what Zipper's nexus in the Black Guard always seemed to be to Kasoria's eyes) continued to parlay. Kasoria stayed silent and listened. Even when Ilos made some smarmy, oily attempt to dump a wagon-load of shit on his head, his only response was to stare at him for a trill or three, then turn back to his duties.

Unauthorized. That had been the word that sparked a brief, molten spark in his heart. That was when Ilos stepped over an esoteric line that Kasoria toed into the sand. He did not do anything without the authorization of his master, of their master, Bangun Vorund, Lord of the South. Shifting blame was one thing, but implying... betrayal? Hinting at the actions of a renegade?

Kasoria's hands tightened into fists for just a moment. Hard enough for his callused knuckles to glow white as they clenched... and then he relaxed again. The boy was learning, and he was paranoid in the way that only the supremely selfish and hateful could be. He assumed treachery from all, because he was capable of it; he throw his fellows to the wolves without qualm or even need, because he assumed all would do the same to him.

The little man with the beard sighed softly, and kept watching.

Watching. Scanning the mist and shadows. Noting and logging every creak of wood and call from bird and beast and man. Using the sounds to guess locations and mayhap intents. But half an ear, at least, was always cocked towards his betters, negotiating on the edge of the continent, with the sea rolling out into the blackness of the horizon.

Charon. Cheval. Renks. He didn't forget the names, and wouldn't... for a while. But eventually they would become grey, vague, and hazy things in his mind. The arcs would wind on and he'd need to frown and rack his memory for a recollection. How many had it been? Could he even begin to guess? Fifty? A hundred? Two hundred? Too many? Too few?

Kasoria blinked. A ragged little man on the edge of a pier, looking like everything but what he was, and the substance of his thoughts. He forgot them, because they did not matter. But the ones that came back, to haunt him in the circumstances of their passing... they got to live a little longer.

"Madam, our business with the Charon was, I can assure you, purely a one-time misadventure-"

"So you admit it was a misadventure? You admit that sending an assassin to Foster's Landing - at this time, in this period of turmoil - was bloody stupid and fucking dangerous for all concerned?"

"I... We... Mister Vorund," Kasoria winced again. Shifting blade with every sentence was not a good way to get on Zipper's good side. Especially when she was eyeing Ilos like a mouse she wanted to swallow whole. "Saw the opportunity to settle an old grudge against a man who would threaten his life and position, if allowed to roam free. As you doubtless know-" he gestured to the scruffy man at their side "-he sent only his best to settle that score. I am sure Kasoria left no loose ends."

He admitted it: he was taken by surprise. He couldn't remember the last time the pompous, selfish little sod had every tossed a compliment his way. Any chance to denigrate to criticize, and Ilos was all over it like perfume on a whore. But such glowing praise... that was unusual. Thus is made Kasoria frown a touch, and just as he was about to take it as some sign Ilos was finally growing up, finally understanding the benefits of displaying a united front, even to their allies... he sighed again.

Still hanging it all on me, just making it sound sweeter. Build me up into the best, so if anything turns up that could trouble us, it's still my fault. Fate's and Fucking, boy...

"Are you deaf, or imbecilic?" Kasoria's jaw twitched crazily under his beard for a moment. He could not laugh. Not here. It would bloody well ruin the mood of the meeting. "Because if you're not one or the other, or both, then you simply don't respect me. And that will do nothing but put me in a mood that will seem like this one look like unbridled fucking euphoria."

She did not ask about the Charon, he noted to himself. One of the things Zipper and he had in mind: they did not waste words, for they enjoyed language. Thus, they did not ask questions they cared not to know the answers of. She did not speak of the past, or reasons, or excuses, or loose ends. She looked to the future, and asked of it. And you, boy?

"I... Madam?"

You wasted her time.

"How fucking old do I look to y-"

"There'll be no further mortal business in Foster's Landing."

Once again, it was the hired help that provided those calm, level words. Wanker that he was, Ilos looked about fit to burst a carotid artery, rather than grateful the scruffy little bugger had saved his stuttering arse from Zipper's continued verbal evisceration. Instead he seemed ready to lay his knuckles across Kasoria's face, like he would a disrespectful servant.

Kasoria paid him no mind. The lady was his concern, not his peacock of a ward. She was the one that needed to be appeased and reassured, not Ilos' fragile ego. Even as she replied to him, bubbling tar dripping from her every word, he ran though the faces and names from those days two seasons ago. These... Turkeys, whoever the fuck they were and whatever madman thought to name them as such, were on the trail. But if there was no trail, if there were no witnesses or evidence, no stories to be told or pieces to put together...

"Five bodies, Kasoria," Zipper said, voice harder and denser now. Ilos managed a smirk, assuming utterly the wrong thing from her tone. He heard scolding and blame; Kasoria heard her talking to a man, not berating a boy wasting her time. "This isn't Etzos. You can't just sweep five bodies into the catacombs and whistle on your way. This is Foster's Landing. It was the talk of the town for most of a season."

"And yet," Kasoria said, making sure she was finished before trotting out his reply. "I see no wanted posters bearing my likeness, or the name of Bangun Vorund. No-one knows the why, just the what. This place is a haven for pirates and scum washed up from the coast. Captain Renks could have incurred the wrath of more than some gangster three days up-river. There were five bodies, because four of them were in my way. I wish it could have been just the man I was sent for."

A shrug. A bob of his shoulders, and the lives of four men seemed to be shaken off like a mug of spilled ale.

"It was not to be. So four witnesses were removed, and now there is nothing to link them, or anything else from the Charon, to myself, to our master, and certainly not to you."

"I would suggest you make sure of that."

That seagull still had something caught in his mouth. Now it was trying to suck it out. That wet, bizarre sound was all that could be heard for a few trills, as the neat, cold young woman and the ragged, stoic old man regarded each other. Water lapped gently but even that seemed still by the unspoken implication, the hinted order that had just touched the air. Ilos' fidgeting told Kasoria that the younger man had missed it. He made a mental note to talk to Vorund about the boy; if he couldn't pick up on stuff like this, he needed to go back to his desk until he fucking well could.

Faces. Names. People who'd aided him, people who knew why he was in Foster's Landing two seasons ago. Only two stuck in his mind: the bargeman and the innkeeper. Neither knew the why. Cheval's name was a mystery to them. But was it worth the risk? If pressed, if questioned... the list shrunk to one man.

Because Ol' Slattery had been grilled and questioned and raked over hot coals by the Black Guard back home; hard men and enforcers of law who were as rough as half the gangers they went after. Twenty years he'd been smuggling and plying his trade, and his reputation for keeping his fucking mouth shut was as much a boon to him as his vessel. So, he could be relied upon. But that last one, with his wet eyes and nervous manner...

"... I will."

And like that, the decision was made.

"Well, now you've been reassured, Madam, we can move onto-"

Kasoria spoke without breaking eye contact with Zipper. Like Ilos was not even there.

"Give us a moment, Ilos."

Even the seagull thought that was a little much, and Kasoria thought he could go fuck himself, too. So much had been exchanged in the last bit that he found his reserve of self-control starting to fray. Staring into Zipper's eyes, battling with her foul mood and merciless nature, he'd been ground away bit by bit until his awful, honest self was there. He could close his eyes and see many long bits of her chewing Ilos into paste and spitting him back out to mumble and stutter flattery, with little of any substance being accomplished.

He knew he was there was a silent vouchsafe for the man; that Vorund had sent him to show that he could be trusted, but now the negotiation had begun, he could see that would take far too long. Ilos spoke with the word and will of Bangun Vorund, and in Etzos, he might be enough. Hells, in Foster's Landing it was enough. but not with someone like Zipper. Someone whose mind was naught but steel and gears and icy intellect.

Kasoria was getting old, or at least older. His patience was in short supply and being even near this girl again was making him remember it. Just like how she had gone from a bludgeoned, stilted fighter, bloodied at his feet, to an implacable, tactical brawler a mere seven trials later. He'd been her teacher, after all. A favor for his master, though these days he wondered if Vorund hadn't got something more than just the gratitude of the intelligence officer out of it. Kasoria knew how she fought, now. He'd trained her. Taught her the tricks and amoral savagery that the Black Guard shied away from in the training program.

Seven trials, and a half-dozen more incidents dotted across the years. Like candles in the darkness. Watching her grow up and advance and harden and ossify. Feeling a pang for her whenever he did and that, there, that feeling, that illegal and foolish connection, was what prompted him - him - to issue such an order to Ilos.

Who stood there, trembling with rage, not about to fucking take it.

Up to you now, young one. My words are not enough.

"Who... Kasoria, who in the world-"

"Listen to the man and fuck off for a moment, sonny. We need to catch up."

Now the seagull sounded like it was choking to death. Then there was a mass of furious flapping and the sound remained... which was when Kasoria realized that it was coming from Ilos. Who was very close to choking on his own rage and exploding with indignity all over the wet wood. For long trills he stood there, impotent and red-faced, but Kasoria had to hand it to him... he knew when a position was untenable. He breathed deep and exhaled. He let his shoulders slump... and finally bowed curtly to the lady from the Black Guard.

"As you wish... madam."

Yeah, had to get one last dig in, didn't you?

Kasoria watched him go, until he was a vague, grey blur halfway down the pier, before turning back to Zipper. His face seemed to morph as he looked at her. Lips curling into the kind of disapproving grimace that a parent might give a child. Not one soaked with the potential for violent punishment, but one that spoke of vague disappointment that the beholder could have acted better, but did not. Yet even in that disappointment was a strange, conditional fondness.

"I don't have time for you to play with your food," he said, keeping his voice low even though they were alone, moving forward so they were side by side, staring out at the same stretch of saltwater. "We'd be here all night if you kept toying with him."

He would not allow her to spar with him. He only enjoyed that when it was in some pokey basement under the Citadel, hard to find and well-padded against noise. She did much the same there: utilized that formidable mind of hers to set her enemies to confusion and doubt. Snapped of barbs and observations like he would punches and kicks. Kasoria sighed and into it crept just a hint, a dram of the father not even a handful of folk knew he was.

She was still young, after all. They both forgot that, and sometimes it mattered.

"Not that I've heard. Wouldn't much matter if he was. He does his job, and he's loyal."

He knew the role that he had to play, and what was expected. This was hardly first parlay, after all. But that same restlessness was still kneading at his tight shoulders; scratching behind his tired eyes. He'd had his fill of secrets and subtleties and shadow politics. Twenty arcs of it, immersed in an underworld where today's paymaster was tomorrow's target, and your fellows one night could be facing you across the cobbles before the hangover had worn off. Kasoria didn't know how Vorund could stand it, lasting decades in a world where everything, every companion and associate, every gesture and deal, could be playing you false and mortally so.

"Mister Vorund wants to know if you'll back him, should him and the Al'Angyryl come to blows."

There it was. No pretense or prevarications; no codes or hints or fishing for much the same. Too honest a man: that's what Vorund had said about him, more than once. In the earlier days, maybe, when he was younger and he still had some sort of rigid code holding him back. Nowadays it was an impatience, an irritability, that seemed to curse all men approaching his age. Kasoria's lips curled in one corner as he remembered tell his master that he had to have a mind like a corkscrew, to survive for arcs in the business he was in.

"Aye, maybe," the old gang chief said, smirking over the top of his mug. "But y'know what's more of a thing? Survivin' as long as you have, when y'don't have one."

He blinked and her reply was fresh in his ears. Still with a playful-if-bladed bounce to it, but he did not presume to catch Zipper in an off mood. She was a woman with interests all over Etzos, and he'd guess she was used to such meetings. The stakes and the circumstances... they might alter, but most of her parlays were underlined in blood, he'd wager.

"Define 'back him'. I'm not in the war business."

The assassin licked his lips and leaned on the guard-rail. It was only after it groaned under him that he wondered if that was a smart idea. But he wanted to give his body some modicum of relaxation as his mind raced. Trying to think like... no... no, that was useless. Thinking like Vorund, or even fucking Ilos...he wouldn't know where to begin. So he stepped back from it all, from the city and the seasons, tried to look at it all like some great gaming boards. Millions of pieces, always shuffling around the tiles, moving as certainly and as obliviously as carved pawns.

"Whatever you think of my master, you know he's a businessman. You can work with that... concept. They want a quiet world and steady profits. Can you tell me that's what the Al want? Do you even KNOW what they want?"

He was on safe enough ground, there. He'd buried more loud, pugnacious, tattoo-and-piercings-covered "renegades" across the arcs to know the difference between them, and a man who was in it for the long haul. He knew that the Black Guard were corrupt, and probably always would be, but the men that led them... they understood that the graft and vice their underlings fell prey to was but a microsm of the city as a whole.

There would always be crime, and criminals. Always illicit services and goods for sale, and organized bands that sprang up to peddle them. Better to have that cacophony of shadowy economics in the hands of a man who you could deal with, as a ruler. Someone who was a mirror to your own interests: he wanted peace, and quiet, with minimal, messy, wasteful bloodshed, and maximum return on his investments.

That was Bangun Vorund. That was how he'd lasted so long. Because he was the safe option. But these others...

"The way I hear of them talked of, it's like a... cult. Like the old days, before we kicked the Immortal bastards out the city."

There was a flicker of movement, but Kasoria didn't see her odd, frowning expression taking him in. She'd heard the tone of his voice, the layers to it, like paint splashed and smeared onto a surface usually cold and stolid as rock. But he was still looking out into the darkness. A tightness, a hardness, something old and bitter and terrible... it stretched the skin under his mounds of hair. From the side, he looked like a wolf that had been raised and clothed and talked to walk upright, but it had never really taken. That animal heat had never left, just been smothered.

Zipper felt the hatred in the word he called the closest thing Idalos had to gods, and was so certain he was not capable of such emotion. She'd seen him kill, butcher, maim, cripple, and most of the time there had been a perverse serenity to him. Somewhere between a dance and a duty, enjoyed for its form and challenge, but never indulged as many of his peers seemed to. But even talking about them, that drew-

Memories, she reminded herself. She'd read his file. Not the one that had gone around the Black Guard personnel offices a dozen or so times, frustratingly free of convictions and absolutely choked with rumors and hearsay. From the file that had been locked. Presumably destroyed. But in Etzos... information isn't a thing so quickly obliterated.

She knew that more than most men she'd met in her life, Kasoria had more reason to hate the Immortals. For what they'd failed to do, and what they'd allowed to happen.

"Ideology's a moot point if you can't win. That's your war chief?"

Kasoria snorted at her words, casting a look over his shoulder at Ilos. Flagrantly trying to eavesdrop and failing miserably. Shuffling around in his fine boots, hiking up his cape a little so the edges wouldn't drag along the muck-smeared wood. The killer closed his eyes for a moment, sighing silently. The fucker grew up a five minute walk from where he had, for fuck's sake. What had gotten lost in the interim years?! Who had so grievously failed to raise the bastard properly?

"You know I've been busy. Me and the others working for him."

Now his eyes slid to her, look in them flinty and hard but winking in that way moonlight did off a blade. Oh, he knew she'd heard the reports. Those five likely lads, chopped up into offal late one night at the Market. Handsome Dom and his cronies, dispatched like cattle. The Charon and all that word entailed for them both. Messages sent, word spread, intimidation and fear propagated across the shadows and the underworld like a virus, but also like a cure.

"It's the dregs, or the ones who'd turn their coats anyway. The South Side is his, and if loyalty doesn't keep them united under Mister Vorund, you know that fear will."

For the Al'Angyryl were waging a war already: seeking to make alliances and instill terror, before they finally marched their way south. Kasoria and his ilk had been busy bastards the last two season. Spreading the Gospel of Bangun Vorund: I'm old, but I'm not dead, and I'm here, you cretinous little fuckers, and the very trill you show yourself knaves or traitors, they'll find your guts hanging from butchers' hooks.

"And as fer that one back there," Kasoria said with a shrug that spoke more of regret than of worry; like one would a cousin that you had to let sleep in your barn, because blood was blood, even if it would b easier to toss the wanker out on his ear. "He's an accountant and a useful proxy. Mister Vorund doesn't need a war chief. Wherever the war is, he'll be leading from the front."

Anyone else, and his pitch might have worked. He was hardly a negotiator, but Kasoria had force, for a man so small. A man that had stared so many doomed men in the eyes and never blinked... he carried some weight in his words. Like armor that couldn't quite be seen, it made him larger, more serious, especially when he spoke about the subject he was second most knowledgeable of.

No, not home-cooked meals on an Outer Perimeter budget. His master, the great, the wise, the cunning, and the terrible, Bangun Fucking Vor-

"All due respect, but Mister Vorund is an old man with one foot out of the game. His successor... No, success isn't a word I would ever place in a sentence with him. You've killed for him, sure, but will you be swept away with an ailing regime?"

Clearly, Zipper did not share his appraisal. He shifted his body to face hers, and she couldn't help but tense her own... and parts of her not so physically-bound. Fifteen feet, and she'd been worried. This close... she gave herself an even chance to cripple the little monster before he could do much the same to her. And she didn't know if it would be enough to actually stop him, before he settled his master's honor and-

"HA!"

The seagull and Ilos both seemed startled; the former almost smacked the latter with a surprised wing and the litany of curses that followed was both creative and humorous. Kasoria blocked it out, focusing instead on Zipper. Even the sight of Ilos vainly trying to shoo off the clueless creature wasn't as fun as what he was looking at. Another nameless emotion passed across his eyes; like a leviathan under the surface of brackish waters, hinting at form and shape, but never breaking the surface.

"Never afraid to speak the truth as you see it, were you?"

It was almost a compliment. Then his eyes shied away from hers and back across the water. Seeing waves and muddled lights and memories of his wrinkled master in the distance.

"Getting to be an old man in his world should tell you how easy it is to kill him. Plenty have tried. Forty arcs, give or take, and he's still in business."

She didn't answer, and didn't need to, and he knew that she knew that he... oh, fuck it, that's what he hated so much about all this. It wasn't so fun and witty, like it was in the novels he devoured in his free time. When all these machinations and endless verbal duels were crowding his own life. Vorund was a tough old cunt, no-one was denying that... but was was old, and getting older. Sixty-five arcs walking the world this year, and there weren't many older in their world that Kasoria knew of. If any, in point of fact.

His money and his wits kept him alive that long, he reminded himself, seeing his master with the same cold, logical, unbiased pragmatism that Zipper did. But he is old. He has no son to be his heir. Only Ilos, who will not command the respect and fear he does. So what happens next?

What if Al'Angyryl just waits for the king to die, and takes his kingdom while the dukes fight among themselves?

He knew the answer to that. It lay nowhere in Etzos, or Foster's Landing. It came with no gangland upheavals or clawing, savage conflict for the dark throne left vacant. Kasoria closed his eyes for a moment. It was all he needed. Just that fraction of time, the merest, briefest indulgence in a memory. Of a brown, chubby face, that could be serious and silly in the same breath. Of him telling his... his mother's friend, about all the monsters he'd seen, honest, swear, while out in the woods.

"We're not talking about me. We're talking about Mister Vorund, and you, and the deal you've had in place for arcs. The deal that's paid off for you both, time and time again."

Kasoria couldn't meet her gaze when he spoke, and knew that could prove... fatal. She may hear a lie in his words. May sense evasion or ulterior meaning. Was even Doubtless Kasoria unsure about his master? Would he turn traitor, as many dead men had already done? But the truth could not come to her. The old man seemed much that way, before he spoke one last time. Holding onto the guard rail and looking out into the water, like he wished they could swallow him and spit him out on a far and green hill, where a young boy was waiting.

I wish I could trust you, he whispered in his mind. And it was truly a whisper, for who knew how keen the senses of Zipper could be? I wish I could tell you, that the moment he's dead, no-one in Etzos will ever see me again. But I can't. And that's just how it is.

"I can look after myself."

That, at least, was the truth.

Two trials later, and Ilos still didn't bloody like it.

Didn't like being excluded. Didn't like that witch that spoke and dressed like a man just vanishing without a word. Didn't like how Kasoria had collected him like some child he was minding, hustling them to their tavern without a word. Didn't like the blunt, hopeless way he relayed the woman's final words to him-

"We're on our own. She won't help us."

At least it was short enough for the idiot to get it right.

The suns rose and set twice after that meeting, and they spent that time floating upriver like clothed driftwood. They'd said maybe three dozen words to each other in that time. Ilos didn't much mind that. What would he talk about with Kasoria, anyway? The man was so dull he might as well be a fucking civilian. No voices, no ribald stories, no sense of fun or camaraderie at all. He went about his bloody work with calm detachment, then fucked off until Vorund whistled him up again. He'd slept on the floor in their room, head propped up against his boots, and slept so lightly a muffled fart had his eyes snapping open.

Then he slept again. A loyal bodyguard, a gifted killer... but Ilos still didn't bloody like him. Because he didn't know his place, and he didn't show him the proper fucking respect.

Twenty arcs and more you've been at this, the gangster thought with mild disgust as the two of them watched Etzos loom closer in the horizon, a grand atrocity of civilization carved into dirt and grass and trees and water. And what do you have? Nothing. A shit heap lodgings in a shit heap part of town, no status, no business of your own, no respect, no... power. Vorund's dog, that's all. No-one even knows you're the Raggedy Man.

And you don't give a shit, do you?

"Comin' inta' dock, chaps," Slattery crowed from the helm, rousing the other passengers to activity. "Grab yer things and get ready to feet land under 'em again."

Ilos silently thanked the Fates for that simple pleasure alone, but it was nothing compared to being back in The Big Rock. Foster's was a fucking oke compared to it. Dirt streets, wooden buildings, shit running down them to the docks, and everywhere the stink of dead fish and saltwater. It was a bloody mockery of the city that had truly birthed it, for without the mother settlement squatting on her bounty of jewels and minerals, all the hardscrabble homesteads around her died.

This is where the money is, and the power, Ilos thought to himself as he jumped lightly onto the dock. Having those two things is the hope, but having them here? That's the dream.

He looked up and up and up and he damn well had to, because the walls rose just that high. Enough that his neck cracked and he completely missed Kasoria sidling up next to him. Little runt had made him carry his own bag, too. Something about leaving his hands free if he needed to protect him, or some such shit. Ilos accepted the necessity, but he chafed, oh, how he chafed.

Another jibe. Another example of how you don't bloody know what's good for you. I'm the one that'll succeed the old man. You want to keep your job? Your head? Best cosy up to me, you hairy little shit.

"I'm getting back on the barge. Headed down to Foster's. Tell Mister Vorund I'm handling that loose end."

Ilos was dumbstuck for a second, and only found his voice when the little man had turned away from him. Not even waiting for a damn dismissal, either! His hand shot out and gripped the man's arm. Words were starting to spew from his mouth and then he felt... muscle, under his hand. He gripped a little tighter and Kasoria turned to look at him with those lidded black eyes of his. It was like holding onto a wooden beam. No give, no... squish, just constant, weathered, callused power.

"You... You can't just go! Your job is to protect me, so who-"

"They will."

Ilos followed the assassin's jutting chin and found a pair of rolling stones (boulders, more like) parting the crowd. Terry and Shine, good lads, and Shine seemed to have some sense about him. The shoal of travelers gave the broad, beefy buggers a wide berth and their eyes were already fixed on the pair of them. Clearly Vorund had sent some additional protection, but... he couldn't have known about Kasoria's decision.

No... No, surely not.

"Slattery and Roy." Kasoria spoke again, low and close enough that the words were for Ilos alone. "Slattery's solid. He knows his business'd be dead if word got out he talked, and he'd be the same not long after. But Roy? He'll talk. Once they get round to him, and they just might, they'll beat or threaten or bribe or whatever and that'll be that. So I'm tying it off. Tell Mister Vorund."

"What about the meeting?"

"You're still holding my arm."

It definitely, most assuredly, most certainly was not a threat. The tone was wrong for it, even in the myriad of ways Ilos had heard them delivered over the years. The little man was just stating a fact of the present that he did not like, and would rather not be so. Moreover, his twin protectors had arrived, eclipsing the suns like celestial bodies themselves, dragged to earth and put to work breaking legs. Kasoria wouldn't dare assault him with the two of them so close... would he?

"You..."

Kasoria had to clench his jaw not to wrinkle his nose in disgust. Still the petulant boy. Still obsessed with his respect, what he'd earned, the endless trivia of rank that were as pointless as ribbons on a sword. You swung it. You didn't decorate it. You let Kasoria handle his business, you didn't demand he genuflect like some fucking Rharne nob at court.

He looked down at his arm... and he flexed the muscle Ilos was holding. Taut, well-kept flesh tightened and popped at his command, and the man's grip faded just a little. He looked back up, steady gaze seeming to burn hotter behind the curtain of his hair. Ilos was still finding his words, still engaging in this pointless pissing contest-

"A'right, people! One bell and then we're off again! Get some food, booze, and cunt if you can manage it, then get back here!"

Slattery broke the deadlock for them. Ilos let go, snapping his hand away as if Kasoria was somehow diseased. The little man just blinked back at him.

"I'll tell him you're doing your job. Like a good boy."

Kasoria shrugged, knowing it would annoy Ilos far more than any retort.

"As you wish."

He turned and walked back onto the barge, needing neither food nor booze nor pleasurable company. He didn't see Ilos stare at his back, nor wonder if he'd made an enemy after this trip, that meeting, how he and Zipper had frozen him out of it all. He'd much to learn and a summit with a Black Guard connection was not the place to indulge in idle education... but mayhap Kasoria would have thought it worth worrying about. But he didn't. Because he remembered Zipper's sad face and her cold eyes, the latter telling him the former was as much a mask as the beggar guise he so often wore. She would not help. Not him, not Vorund.

He likely would not see her again, and that drew his mind to memories he knew would not be repeated.

So he did not think on Ilos. Did not see the roiling anger seething across the man's thin, fine features. He couldn't see the decision made there, locked away in a special place within Ilos' mind, where dark and secret ambitions were kept. When he next saw Vorund's underboss, he was marching imperiously away, flanked by his two vast bodyguards.

"Comin' back down?"

"Aye," Kasoria said to Slattery, without looking up. "Business."

The bargeman grumbled something about Vorund "double-dipping" on him or some other such rot. Kasoria ignored him and found a quiet spot, leaned up against a barrel. He tipped his hat over his face and closed his eyes. A bell until cast off, and three days afloat ahead of him.