Vhadya & Velocity (Closed)

[Mordelain]

The two opponents sat opposite one another, backs straight, eyes ablaze, hearts pounding. With Suresh’s nod of approval the games began. With a quick flick of his wrist the old man secreted away the shells into the safety of his robes. It was traditional at the start of a coup for the participants to try and gull their opponent into anger, an early mistake. A well-aimed and quick sucker punch of history and rivalry often ended a coup just as quickly as it had begun.

Seeing that his gull was having no effect on the girl, Mariachi went straight and headfirst into the opening move.

“My first question, as it is customary to allow the challenged to begin is this.” He produced the shells again and held them out in the skeletal palm of his right hand. “Which of these shells is closer to the north?” He tossed them a few feet from the table. They landed on the flattened sand with a hollow thud.

Mordelain followed them through their trajectory and stared at them for a few anguished moments, deep in thought. Her instinct was to ask for further clarification about what the old man meant. Did he mean north as in elevation? Did he mean the compass north, or north as in distance, proximity to the northern seas and the start of the Attireyi River? It would forfeit the coup if she asked. She had to answer the question but her first answer would be her only attempt.

She slouched, let the weight fall from her shoulders and the tension tumble away from her spine. A tingling sensation raised up her back as she welcome the warmth of the enchantment on the belt about her waist. When she had completed her first assignment and collected her first tokens from the Freerunner desk, they had also given her a gift. The belt had two purposes; the first was to insert tokens into the steel rings to keep them safe. The second was to always give a sense of direction, so that an il’Jhain was always with a guide through the shifting sands of Fallien.

It always told a runner which was north.

“That one,” she pointed at the leftmost shell, which had upturned after bouncing. The little circles of its ricochet were like tiny craters in the landscape.

Mariachi smiled weakly.

“Correct, though I guess I should not have tried to trick someone who my son holds in such high esteem.” He shuffled on the spot, tucking his hands back into his robes as if he were ashamed of his vestige.

Mordelain had guessed that Mariachi would try and cheat. If she had been as wet behind the ears and naïve as most Fallien il’Jhain considered the Freerunners, she would not yet have earned the belt, and would never have guessed which of the shells was most northerly of the two. She would have lost there and then, and come undone at the first hurdle.

She ran her right finger along the ridge of her pointed ears, and smiled with her Tama charm. She felt empowered, for once, realising that she was feared and underestimated simply for being light skinned and different. Difference, if viewed correctly, could be a powerful ally.

“Then I guess it is now my turn to ask a question.”

The rules of the counting coup meant that the riddles asked during a more academic encounter had to be based around the Abdhos’s rules, and the history of Fallien as recorded in the Brief Guide to Fallien. It was ironically written by an Outsider, but all the same, the weighty and in-depth tome was given freely to newcomers, nay, forced heavily upon them the moment they set foot on the docks of Irrakam.

Mordelain’s copy was by now well read, dog eared and proudly missing several pages through severe over referencing and study. From its pages, she drew on the information depicting the history of the glass spinners, and the deadly glass planes called the Nirakkal. The colours of her fruit bowl jumped into her memory, it’s gold, crimson and orange splendour ironically purposeful and useful all of a sudden. Suresh would be proud of her, even if he refused to see the use in decorate home ware.

“Yesterday I brought a fruit bowl, a mosaic piece made of golden, red and orange glass. It was brittle, but milky in form. We purchased it in the Numara Bazaar, from an old woman named Giselle. Tell me, Mariachi, defender of purity, which of the Nirakkal tribes did the glass come from?” The annunciation of the word purity was as close as Mordelain would ever come to spitting in her opponent’s face.