The Good Samaritan

[Faure]

(Solo. Takes place two months after the conclusion of Salvar's Civil War. This is being used as primary source material. However, this isn't meant to create canon, but rather to play upon events that were never looked at during the FQ. Thanks.)

The marketplace was busy as trade reached the chaos of midday. Merchants bellowed from their makeshift stands that crowded the narrow streets, brandishing all manner of wares at unsuspecting patrons while telling incredible lies about their properties in an attempt to entice them to buy. The cacophony of traders attempting to be heard over one another was drowned out by the sheer number of people that walked about the market, the dirt roads paved with footprints and refuse. It was hard to imagine seeing that many people all in one place at once without causing some sort of panic from the culture shock. But it was real, vibrant and smelled awful. Men, women, children and everything in-between pushed at one another to keep the human traffic going, people moving in all manner of directions all at once that it was mind-boggling to try and find your way around any part of the Assan marketplace and not be whisked away to another part of it. It was common in fact to lay eyes upon a person for a second, to take in their features, and for them to vanish into the crowd the very next second, never to be seen or heard from again. The havoc the people were causing upon the market was truly awful for anyone really looking to conduct business, but the chaos of Assan was a haven for thieves, cutpurses and murderers alike. One would never miss their coin in a place like this, and there were stories about this place that kept the rich wary from traveling to these parts of the city for it was far more likely that that unlucky fellow would be struck and bled out while his assailants were busy sorting out his valuables in a nearby alley then he was ever to strike a deal here.

Still, the marketplace had its purpose and it served it well. As a commonwealth on the southern shores of Fallien, Assan served as the beating heart of commerce in a country that was reputed for being both exotic and desolate.

Gerard had his fill of cultural propriety about five minutes after entering the market and had been trying to find his way out for the last two hours only to be shoved, pulled and pushed around the streets against his will. Even a benevolent fellow like himself, the good doctor had gone from annoyed, to frustrated to even angry as he shoved people aside in an attempt to escape the current of the streets. He had lost his guide, Lami, to the tides around the time he entered the market and while he had been trying to find him, somehow Gerard knew that the Fallinari had betrayed him. Obviously four pieces of silver is not enough to buy loyalty, he deduced, but that line of thought quickly vanished when an old woman balancing a pot of water upon her head shoved him violently into a nearby stand. The merchant there had been selling rich, luxurious carpets of all manner of colours and fabrics, but at that moment all Faure could see was red. Using the momentary reprieve from the torment of the market, the doctor stood by the stand and placed his medical bag in front of him, never taking his eyes off of it.

"Why am I here again?" Gerard asked himself as he put his hand in his pocket to retrieve the note he had, but found himself fingering the bottom of his trousers where a jagged hole had been slashed by a cutpurse. "Damn it!" He snarled as he fumbled for his wallet in his breast pocket and found that to be absconded with as well.

The merchant who had been peddling his carpets at to the streets took notice to him and began to yell at him in thick Falliari, asking him if he wished to buy this carpet in a deal of a lifetime. "I hate this place!" Faure replied to him coolly in common and when the merchant smiled and made it known he didn't understand him, Gerard reached into his pocket and stuck his finger through the hole to display he had been robbed, cursing in the merchant's native tongue. The carpet merchant bellowed with laughter and regarded him another moment before turning back to the streets to peddle his wares.

He doesn't care, nobody does, the doctor realized. Looking from the stand and above the heads of the crowd, Faure saw a nearby alley that was wide enough for him to fit through, but he would have never make it through the streets to the other side without being whisked off to another part of the market. Gerard knew that much. Putting his hand upon his medical bag, he took out a blue spotted kerchief from his jacket and wiped the sweat from his brow. It was hot, he was angry and he couldn't hear himself think in this abominable place. He took a few precious seconds to collect himself and focus on to why he was here, even risking to close his eyes to try and pull a phrase from that note he had been given that had drawn him to this infernal market in the first place. It had been written brusquely in the common tongue, was plaintive and very much cut to the point;

Man dying. In need of your assistance. Will meet you in Assan's market at noon tomorrow. Come alone. Will pay three hundred crowns for your time.

"Crowns in Fallien," Gerard snorted. The entire note had made him suspicious, and the ones who had been behind it were definitely up to no good, but he came anyway if only out of some air of civic responsibility. And at that moment it was that motivation that brought him here that he was in dire short supply of. "Forget it." The doctor said finally, "I tried to be the Samaritan today and I've lost a good deal more than three hundred crowns. Far more."

Instead, Gerard opened his eyes and began to look for the nearest exit, when he finally found a path of purchase that would get him out of this horrible place, he moved away from the stand pulling a heavy bag off the counter when he fell sideways at the risk of being trampled upon at the very same moment he realized he wasn't holding a bag, but a very large rock wrapped in cloth instead.

"No!" Gerard roared as something in him finally snapped. He had wanted those in the crowd to notice his anger, but only the few nearest him paid him queer looks as he fumed at the loss of his most precious item. As fickle luck schemed to rob him of his medical bag, it must have been fate that caused him to look upon the crowd and watch his bag hover over the crowd, in the hands of two young boys that ran with the current of the crowd and were making for a bend in the road. And then they and his bag vanished.

Gerard didn't think and events ran together very quickly as he rushed into the street and brutally kicked the man nearest him in his arse to clear the way. Once lost in the crowd again, the doctor rushed forward knocking anyone and everyone aside to retrieve his stolen valuables.