O Brother, Where Art Thou?

[The Cinderella Man]

((Closed to Empyrean.))

When it rains, it pours...

Regardless of how fond Victor was of rainy days, Radasanth wasn’t an attractive sight on a random autumn day. Sure, it was nice to watch the rain pelting down and knocking on the windowsill when you were nice and cozy, and the fireplace crackled in that specific soothing manner that made you want to doze off. However, when the room was drafty and unheated, and the roof leaked on three separate places, you weren’t exactly in the mood to smile at the gloomy skies that decided to drown the world. And that went double when the only sight the windows offered was one of a sodden back alley that was turned into a foul river by the incessant precipitation, carrying half-rotten litter that folk usually just threw out back. But the room had a roof and despite being perforated, it was more then Victor had in a while.

However, that luxury was bound to become more then he would be able to afford very soon. For months now he worked for the Sooty Horse Publishing, an underground newspapers organization that printed pamphlets and bi-weekly revolutionary paper called The Republic Sun. It was mostly garbage, overblown rumors and radical ideas, and the Corone Government recognized it as such, not paying attention to the constant propaganda that the SHP used to sell more copies. Some of ideas actually made sense even to Victor who wasn’t too much into politicking. Like women’s right to vote, for example, or stricter enforcement of the anti-slave laws, but for every good idea there was at least five that were mostly just sugarcoated exclamations to fight the power for no other reason then for fight’s sake.

But it wasn’t Victor’s job to debate on the articles and their meaning. They didn’t pay him nearly enough to have an opinion on why the Corone Government is forcing a gold trade with Raiaera when they could get it cheaper from Alerar. No, that Victor did was pretty much what he always did best and that was grunt work. While the officials held no grudge against The Republic Sun – some even finding it comical – there were patriots that found it as treachery and an insult to everything that Corone was. And since such folk had a nasty tendency towards violence and even arson, Victor was hired as a guard on the SHP premises. It was tedious work most of the time, patrolling the hallways – all three of them – and then proceeding to do the same around the building that was nestled in a rather crummy block of Bazaar district, between a whorehouse and a dwarven weapon shop. And during the five months he worked for the SHP, only four times he had to deal with some nitwits that didn’t like what the newspapers said about what seemed like their favorite issue in the whole world. Victor mostly told them not to read the papers if they didn’t like the contents, and if they were stubborn, he flashed a gun at them. That got them running every time.

It was probably because there wasn’t that much work that they were letting him go. Then again, there was a rumor that the anonymous contributors that funded the papers were slowly losing interest in a profitless endeavor so Alain Veridian – the boss, the main editor and a lot of other titles – had to tighten his belt. That meant taking the risk of running the papers without protection, which in turn meant that Victor was once again jobless and unable to afford that perforated roof above his head.

Today, on what seemed the rainiest day of the year, was the day the prizefighter was to collect his last pay and be back on the market. He left his gloomy room, locked the door behind himself, pulled up his collar and stepped into the river that flowed behind the inn he was staying in. The rain fell on his head like a curtain, with fat drops assaulting him relentlessly and the mild northern breeze turning them into a chilly nuisance. Needless to say, he scurried down the stretch of the street and made his way through the desolate Radasanth streets with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his leather coat.

Luckily, the SHP headquarters weren’t too far and after a short while he passed the Aramil’s Anvil shop and approached the brick building that seemed condemned. The actual offices were in the basement, partially to underline the whole underground aura around the whole idea, but mostly because the rent was significantly cheaper. Victor made his way down the short flight of uneven stairs and past the door with a crummy “Sooty Horse Publishing – We know the truth and we’re not afraid to say it!” sign.

In the room beyond there was a laden receptionist desk with stacks and stacks of differently colored paper, a petroleum lamp set on a low flame and a bookworm middle-aged woman with large glasses and graying hair tied in a tight braided coiffure. The typewriter in front of her tap-tap-tapped incessantly.

“Hey, Anna. Is Alain in?” Victor asked the second he entered, running his hand through his hair in order to get at least some of humidity out of it. The woman kept typing until the machine made a low ding! and then replied without looking up.

“Yes, but he has visitors. They should be done soon. Have a seat.” she replied, professional as always, so much so that the prizefighter thought that the woman didn’t have any other part of her idiosyncrasy other then the business one. The boxer proceeded to one of the three chairs that stood in front of the door with semi-transparent glass that made the figures inside murky and blurry. Opposite to it there was a corridor that led to three other offices where other writers did their daily jobs. Victor didn’t know most of them too well since they were mostly the silent types, and since he was a silent type as well, their conversations never seemed to last past the usual pleasantries and weather arguments.

[Empyrean]

“Shame y’ave to see Radasanth on a day like this…” The man behind the counter wasn’t even looking at her, but the sympathy in his voice was more than evident.

“I don’t mind it,” answered the young woman huddled against the side of the little building. Sanoë had taken refuge from the torrent of rain underneath a small stand on the side of a crowded Radasanth street, and even underneath the voluminous green awning of the stand, she was getting wet. She drew her long coat close and buttoned it all the way down. “I like it, actually.”

The man looked up from his paper, his green eyes skeptical, but he merely chuckled and continued to read, shuffling towards the back of the information stand for a moment.

Sanoë shook her head, crossing her arms as she looked outside. Well, it’s true… Weather was the last thing on her mind. After the past few weeks - her first time in Althanas, no less – she’d been in more trouble than she cared to remember, and had spent almost every waking minute traveling somewhere she didn’t really want to be. Though every bit of trouble she’d gotten into was somehow her own fault, she preferred to believe that it all came back down to the same source; her brother, Eliot. He was barely twenty years old, and he’d already decided that his lot in life was to run off and try to change the world, no matter what the consequences were. Sanoë knew instinctively that he would get himself killed somewhere along the way if she weren’t there.

She’d already been through hell thus far. She’d gotten involved in dangerous schemes, either for payment or by mistake, and had spent most of her money and time looking for Eliot. She could handle a little rain. And she did like it - a rainy day in the middle-class district reminded her of home. Of course, the circumstances were very different. She was alone here, and she could get lost in a city like Radasanth. The impressive skyline alone was enough to offer fantasies about what the city held in store - Sanoë had never seen such magnificent architecture before. Even in the side street where she now stood, she could see that every building had been carefully planned to fascinate foreigners like herself.

She didn’t mind taking a moment to admire architecture while the rain lulled her nearly to sleep. “I’m going to be here for a while,” she called through the window, hoping the man would hear her. “Got anything to read?” She could tell by the small river running down the middle of the street that the downpour was not likely to cease. Everyone else in the streets had already dashed home to avoid getting drenched.

“Yeah, here,” scoffed the shopkeeper, tossing his paper onto the counter and pulling on a jacket to fight the chill seeping into his little shop. “We carry these kinds of papers all the time, but that’s just a load of bull, that one. I was going to wrap my sandwich in it if you hadn’t asked.”

“Thanks…” mumbled Sanoë, resting her elbows on the wooden counter of the shop to read the paper. It was more of a pamphlet, folded into three sides and featuring several articles and notices printed with rather cheap-looking ink. She skimmed through the article that took up the most space, trying to stifle a laugh at some of its contents. The writing was good – the message was crap. The jeweler looked down at the bottom of the page, next to the logo of the publisher, Sooty House Publishing….

“Didn’t I tell ya?” said the shopkeeper, laughing. “Bullshit.”

Sanoë wasn’t paying attention. She was staring at the name of the article’s author.


….Eliot O’Mead is a part-time writer for The Republic Sun, a bi-weekly publication of Sooty Horse Publishing.

“Holy shit…” breathed the jeweler, standing up straight as she read through the article again. It was her brother’s writing, alright, written in his zealous, persuasive hand. She even recognized the last name he’d used in place of Teriades. O’Mead. I can’t believe it. He actually used that stupid name, thought Sanoë with a laugh. Eliot, in one of his drunken stupors, had once declared himself to be “Eliot O’Mead, purveyor of fine wines, cheap alcohols, and man’s greatest invention: mead!”

Her brother was in Radasanth, and once she found him, she could be on her way home tonight. Stuffing the pamphlet into her left pocket, Sanoë flattened her palms against the wooden counter of the shop and looked up at the man before her. “Where’s Sooty Horse Publishing?”

He looked a little taken aback at her enthusiasm, but pointed down the left side of the street. “Uh, down to the end and to your left. Next to a whorehouse, it’s a dumpy little place…don’t tell me you’re going out in this rain?”

But Sanoë was already walking away, drawing her collar close to her neck and shouting a “Thank you!” that was lost in the howl of the wind and rain.

-----------------------

The publishing house wasn’t hard to find; it was easily the most decrepit-looking house on the block, juxtaposed between a weapons shop and a garish whorehouse. What is it with these people and prostitutes? thought the jeweler with dislike, averting her eyes to the ground the keep the rain away. She pushed in a hurry through the publishing house doorway, ignoring the slightly musty smell and dim lighting because it was, mercifully, dry. As she descended the stairs, grinning in amusement at the caption beneath Sooty Horse Publishing, she began to wring her hair out, hoping in vain to dry it a little.

Sanoë opened the door quickly and stood inside awkwardly. It was a bit too quiet even for her taste, small and compact inside the office. There were only two people, an older woman and a younger man who sat in silence. The jeweler’s attention was immediately drawn to the one who looked like she was in charge.

“Excuse me,” she began softly. The woman before her looked up at once, her fingers still poised for motion on her typewriter. “Is the editor here available? I’d like to ask about one of your writers. Eliot O’Mead,” she added, hoping for a sign of recognition. Sanoë glanced down the opposite hallway, wondering if she might see her half-brother sauntering down it at any second.

If the woman knew the name, she didn’t reveal it. Her face was blank, but Sanoë could sense a little irritation. “He’s busy at the moment, but he should be done soon. You’ll have to wait, I’m afraid,” she finished, nodding her head at the man who sat in one of the chairs.

Trying not to let her impatience show, Sanoë sat down in the closest chair. As soon as she settled in, the door to the office behind the woman opened, letting out three or four disgruntled-looking people who headed straight for the stairway outside.

Good luck with that, said Sanoë wryly to herself.

[The Cinderella Man]

Though utterly bored by the wait and the incessant tapping of the typewriter, Victor wasn’t in any real hurry to get anywhere. The only place that waited for him was the room in the fleabag inn and even when he would eventually get there, there was a big question waiting for him to mull over it and it was what to do next. The cash was bound to last a week tops and then it was either back to vagabonding or trying to find some sod who fought poorer then him in the boxing ring. Since neither seemed too prospective, the prizefighter wasn’t eager to get to them any time soon, so he didn’t mind the wait too much. He took one of the old issues of The Republic Sun that sat on top of the stack beside the chair, flipped it open and started reading about the “...secret organization that is eating through the very foundation of our society...”. A big bold title, very eye catching.

He was somewhere around the second conspiracy theory – that spoke of how the current Steward was actually the brain behind the whole operation – when the exterior door swung inwards. The woman that entered was looking genuinely miserable, her dark hair clinging to her head save for a handful of braids that dangled rather lifelessly. Her face was intriguing though, in a semi-bitchy, almost royal kind of way despite the general dampness. At first he suspected that the soaked dame wasn’t from around here, and when she spoke, her eloquent idiom made it quite certain that his gut feeling hit the nail on the head. She mentioned a name that he recognized though, that of Eliot O’Mead, a part-time writer and a full-time jester that used to work for SHP. Victor mostly remembered him because the young author was one of the few that didn’t walk around as if he was just diagnosed with a terminal illness.

When the woman sat in the chair next to him, the boxer folded the yellowish paper in his lap and reckoned he might as well offer her some information, maybe start a conversation to kill the time. “You looking for Eliot, miss? A scrawny looking lad, quite a joker, likes to run his mouth a whole lot?” he asked with a mild grin. “I don’t think he works here anymore. Last I saw him was last week and he and Alain didn’t seem to be parting on good terms.”

Victor was about to introduce himself, maybe even offer an amicable handshake to the gal, but the office door burst open in order to let through a handful of people that obviously weren’t too satisfied with whatever deal was or was not arranged. Given their rather pompous gait and their tilted chins, they looked like those anonymous endorsers that weren’t terribly satisfied with the way Sooty Horse Publishing was ran. They marched out the door, letting in a draft that disrupted Anna’s organized paper towers and eliciting a grunt from the woman who bent to pick them up.

“Damned stuck-up bastards. Anna!!” a well-rounded, gray-haired man shouted as he leant through the open door. The smoldering cigar that hung from his mouth was a little more then a butt, hanging by a thread as he looked outside his office. “We need to get in touch with those Alerar merchants. These local pennywise pricks grew a brain and decided they were too good for us.”

Anna scribbled something down indifferently, nodding shortly before proceeding with her work. The chief editor then turned to the two that were waiting for admittance, sticking the thumb of his right hand into his belt. “Oh Vic, it’s you? Came to collect your last paycheck? Great, more money going out...” he shook his head distantly, the cigar never leaving the corner of his mouth as he spoke. “Who’s the broad?”

“I don’t know. She needs to talk to you...” the boxer said, turning towards the drenched stern-faced woman. “You can go in first, miss. I’m not in any hurry and I’m pretty damn sure Alain here isn’t in any hurry to spread the wealth.”

“Ha! If I had a wealth to spread, I wouldn’t be in this shithole, lad.” Alain said, finally taking out the cigar with his left and pointing his index finger towards Victor. “And don’t you dare call me stingy now.”

“Come on in, little miss. I have to warn you though, if you’re here to ask for some money, you’re shit out of luck.” the man spoke, chuckling a little bit as he held the door open and waited for her to enter. Victor sat back, picked up another issue of The Republic Sun and started reading on the inevitable conquest of the goblins from the north.

[Empyrean]

From the moment the man next to her had said Eliot had probably left Sooty Horse Publishing, Sanoë’s fervent hopes began to drift right out into the pouring rain along with those ‘damned stuck-up bastards.’ This man had the description accurate – a scrawny, talkative joker was Eliot to a tee – and if he was right, Eliot was, once again, gone. Immediately, her thoughts began to disintegrate into disappointment; on how it seemed that every time she got closer to finding Eliot, the farther away he seemed to be, and how it figured that she’d gotten to the right place, but at the wrong time….

She wanted very much to prod the man for more answers, mostly to prove to herself that she was right, but she had a feeling she wasn’t going to get it. Besides, she was too cold to muster up the strength to form a coherent sentence. To distract herself from her growing restlessness, Sanoë looked over the man who’d managed to make her worry that her search was about to amount to something fruitless. His athletic torso and dark leather coat would have made him an altogether intimidating sort of person, but he was friendly and passive enough to convince the jeweler otherwise.

The fairly irate appearance of a man who was apparently the head honcho in the office startled Sanoë. It didn’t take much more than his general behavior to convince Sanoë that she wasn’t going to like the guy. The “broad” comment didn’t help. Maybe Eliot had a good reason for parting on bad terms with him, thought Sanoë disdainfully.

“Thank you,” she said to ‘Vic,’ trying very much to sound genuinely grateful. There weren’t a whole lot of people in the world with his manners anymore.

“I’m sure I’m shit out of luck anyway, but no, it’s not about money,” replied Sanoë as she entered Alain’s office. It was a little roomier than the makeshift lobby just outside, but the sizeable desk and the girth of the man who sat down behind it seemed to inadvertently shrink the space. A long, thin window was just above Alain’s head, letting in a glimpse of the rain spattering against the glass. The muted sound of it gave Sanoë a little more comfort as she sat awkwardly into one of the sturdy, cushioned chairs inside the room. She didn’t like the foggy glass wall that separated the rooms or the slight lack of privacy it produced. She always preferred discretion over style.

“That’s good news to me,” said Alain, removing a stack of forms from the middle of his spacious but cluttered desk. “I’m the editor here. Just call me Alain, everyone else does,” he added sourly as he pointed to the coppery-looking nameplate sitting crookedly at the front of his desk. “What can I do for you, Miss…?”

“Sanoë Teriades,” she answered curtly, eager to cut down on any small talk. “I read an article from one of your pamphlets, the one by Eliot O’Mead. I was wondering if he’s still here….”

“Well, you were right, you are shit out of luck,” answered Alain, folding his arms over his hefty middle. His eyebrows were raised over inquisitive brown eyes. “He quit last week.”

The jeweler couldn’t conceal a curse under her breath as she leaned forward. “Alright, then….is there any way you could give me his address? Is he in the city?”

“I doubt it, but to tell you the truth, I don’t give a damn. Kid was a good writer, but he kept giving me shit about this and that and us sitting on our asses and complaining, while the world goes by and what not…” The editor scoffed loudly and dug through a small box underneath his lamp, pulling out another cigar. “He was in a hurry, anyway,” he added casually, his voice muffled as he lit the cigar in his mouth. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he skipped town.”

Sanoë rolled her eyes, sighing heavily. That would be just like Eliot. “Godamnit…”

A thick cloud rose above Alain’s head, courtesy of that nasty thing in his mouth. Sanoë had to lean back into her chair, away from the terrible stench. “Why are you so interested in Eliot, anyhow?” asked Alain, taking the cigar out of his mouth and tapping the end of it into an ashtray. “The girls around here loved ‘im, but I didn’t think they’d be coming back for him.”

“He’s my brother,” said the jeweler stiffly.

Alain held his cigar over the tray for a moment, his eyes a little more alert as he stared at Sanoë. “Really,” he said, sounding more interested as he stuck the foul cigar back into the corner of his mouth. “He never mentioned siblings! Well, you do look like him. Much easier on the eyes, though,” the editor laughed, little puffs of smoke escaping his mouth. “Well, if you’re on his trail, good luck. When he wasn’t writing for me, he had his nose in a book. Researched god knows what, he went to the library a lot.” Alain Veridian wasn’t a likable man, but as he inhaled deeply on the cigar, Sanoë couldn’t miss the agitated look on his face. “That’s one more smartass I lose to the ‘bigger and better’ things in the world,” he said.

-----------------

“Where’s the closest library?” Sanoë asked the woman named Anna once she’d thanked Alain for his time and left his door open. She heard the creak of his chair as he stood up and made his way around that overly large desk to talk to the man who still sat waiting.

She knew Anna was already irritated from collecting her papers from the floor, but if she had one last source of hope to cling to, she was going to keep holding to it. Eliot might not be gone yet – he wasn’t that fast.

[The Cinderella Man]

Eavesdropping wasn’t something that Victor practiced often, but with the clicking of the typewriter being the only sound in the vicinity, it was almost impossible not to hear the exchange of the outlandish woman and the fat newspapers editor. The outdated issues of The Republic Sun didn’t help too much given the fact that the articles were mostly bogus pile of dung that, unsurprisingly, never occurred in the real world. Here and there, there was actually a theory that had some tangible foundation in the actual events, but it generally had nothing to do with good journalism. Even a blind hen sometimes found a corn seed, the boxer always liked to say. Still, the wooden door was thick enough to filter out most of the words spoken, turning them into incomprehensible mumbles with several exclamations and clearer words jutting out. One of them was the woman’s name – Sanoë Teriades. Definitely not local. The rest was mostly Alain blabbing something about how she was shit out of luck and how he didn’t give a damn. Typically Alain.

Before long, the soaked woman exited the office, clearly not satisfied with the results of her prospecting for Eliot. However, Alain seemed to give her a clue as to where Eliot spent his free time, since Sanoë asked direction to the local library. Anna, vexed by the irritating daily work and pushed beyond the limits of her patience by the rude visitors that let in a wind gust, didn’t seem like she would be handing out any useful guidelines. Before the middle-aged woman even started to give Sanoë directions that were bound not to lead her to the Radasanth public library, Victor interjected.

“It’s on the other side of the city, miss. You’re bound to get lost if you don’t know where you’re going.” the boxer spoke, setting aside the issue he was skimming through and looking up towards the dark-haired woman. Even though usually deaf and insipid towards the tribulations of random people he met, Victor occasionally had his deviations from the usual. Sometimes it procured good results. Mostly it needlessly led him into more trouble. Especially if there were women involved. And yet, he couldn’t help himself when the remnants of his benevolent nature came knocking.

“I’m going that way once I’m done with Alain here. I can show you the way.” Victor said, getting up to his feet once Alain approached the door with a canvas sack in his meaty hand. The cig shifted from one corner of his mouth to the other before an exhale that filled the room with the repulsive reek of singed tobacco.

“Here, you’re done.” the editor spoke, tossing the money pouch to the prizefighter with a not-so-amicable look on his rounded face. There was no hostility on Alain’s face though, but rather just plain irritation by the pickle he suddenly found himself in, and in such situations, a writer that quitted and a fired guard weren’t something he would lose sleep over. He had to add one last hit below the belt though.

“Don’t let him charge you for the escort, lass. It’ll cost you an arm and a leg.”

“I don’t charge pretty damsels in distress, Alain.” Victor responded with a smarmy smirk, pocketing the gold and buttoning up his leather coat that wasn’t nearly as dry as the boxer wanted it to be. “Pleasure doing business with you though.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just get out of here. Some of us have an actual job to do.” Alain mumbled, chewing on the smoldering thing in his mouth before slamming the door. The prizefighter shrugged his shoulders before proceeding towards the door that led to the unwelcome rainy exterior. It seemed that people always had a bug up their ass when they had to pay for what they bought.

“Some job.” Victor muttered before opening the door and looking towards Sanoë again, hoping she didn’t think that there was some sort of personal agenda in his proposition. Outside the shower waned into an autumn mizzle, slowly drooling down from the sky in tiny droplets carried by the chilly breeze. “Well, I’m heading out, miss. The weather won’t get better then this for a nice stroll.”

[Empyrean]

“I don’t mind the rain,” Sanoë said again, this time with a bit of sharp note at the end. Being disappointed in her search for Eliot for what seemed like an endless number of times was bad enough; having to wheedle information out of an obese editor-in-chief as though she were pulling teeth was worse. It was times like this that Sanoë was actually quite happy to be in the business she was in. As an assistant jeweler she might be small fry in the economic world, but neither did she have to deal with someone who imagined himself to be the big kahuna around these parts. Alain Veridian had a minute bit of power, but he was a big fish in a small pond.

Thinking so little of the newspaper’s head honcho gave the jeweler a respite from her irritation at missing Eliot. She couldn’t resist a small grin – to herself, of course – as she gave the weakly-lit office and its rotund owner one more glance. Maybe Eliot, in his own way, had been smart about this one thing – this place was no more than a workshop for him. It was too damn tiny, physically and metaphorically.

The jeweler followed the other man outside, and though she really didn’t mind the rain, she was pleased to see that it had slowed down considerably. Her boots tapped with a metallic sound on the smooth, slippery cobblestones. The street was dark from its unexpected shower, and the wind bit at her face with tiny drops of rain, but the air was wonderfully brisk and clear. No more of that goddamned cigar smoke. Horrible habit, thought Sanoë scornfully.

Sanoë turned her attention, then, to the newspaper’s one redeeming quality. Victor – she assumed ‘Vic’ was no more than a nickname – was a man who had some manners and quite a bit of bulk to go along with anyone who misjudged his courtesy for cowardliness. She admired his sincerity, but beyond that she wasn’t sure what to make of him. In truth, he was just a little unsettling to her. Most men she knew with that kind of build – and she didn’t know many – had a disposition to match. They were usually mean old brutes upon first impression, or at least frosty. This one, however, was probably the most polite person she’d met in the entire weird country.

It unsettled her, and especially because he was a man, and one who was offering to walk her straight across town. And because she was a woman, because she was annoyed at the moment, and chiefly because she was Sanoë, she was more than a little suspicious of his motive. I don’t charge pretty damsels in distress, he says, was the unkind, satirical thought that ran involuntarily through her head. Sanoë knew that she wasn’t a drop-dead gorgeous woman, but she had curves and breasts and either one of those was usually enough to get a man thinking. Or, rather, just the opposite.

And considering the shit she’d had to go through lately, she wasn’t entirely keen on trusting men.

“If you’re really willing to spend the time getting me to the library, I appreciate it,” she began carefully. “But you should know that there’s nothing I can give you in return,” she decided on saying, wondering if the man would catch her implication. Her eyes were icy enough to get the point across.

But she’d also been referring to money, and she really didn’t have a lot to spend on charity just then. If Eliot wasn’t in this city, she would need to conserve her resources for as long as possible. Of course, if Eliot wasn’t here, Sanoë was certain that she would be pissed off enough to kill her younger half-brother as soon as she did find him, thus taking care of the problem.

She softened a little bit then. This Victor character, whatever his intentions, didn’t deserve the brunt of her anger because of Eliot’s stupidity. “And I’m sure,” she added quickly, “that you don’t want to have to go back to that asshole.” She jerked her sharp chin back in the direction of Sooty Horse Publishing. “I certainly don’t.”

[The Cinderella Man]

Though generally rather phlegmatic when it came to interaction with other people, Victor had to admit that the curt, cold manner in which Sanoë responded almost made him reconsider his offer. It was the kind of a tone that people used when they saw (or thought they saw) a scheme, the kind that made you feel embarrassed for ever going out on a limb. People these days... They never ceased to find ways to surprise the boxer, and usually not in a good way. Was he the only one that still shot straight these days? The woman at his side looked at him as if he was a petty thief that measured the curvature of both her money pouch and the figure she hid beneath the raincoat.

She tried to somewhat remedy this initial frigidity, but it was a rather feeble attempt and ultimately redundant. If there was one useful perk that Victor possessed, it was the ability to brush these things aside and walk over them. They would collect in his head, fester and stew, but generally they were just words of a stranger with an episodic appearance in his life. Ultimately, he decided to turn the whole issue into a joke. Jokes were a good defense mechanism, making people feel like there was nothing wrong.

“Well, shucks. I guess I won’t be earning my pension on you then, miss.” the prizefighter said with a mild smile, pulling up the eaves of his collar and bringing them up to protect his neck. “The truth is, the inn that I’m staying is in the same neighborhood, so I reckoned you’d be better of with a guide then a set of instructions that would lead you in some blind alley in the Bazaar district.”

It wasn’t completely true though. The shabby Treehouse Inn was roughly in the same direction as the Library, but it was situated on the edge of the Bazaar District, some good two miles away from the library that was further west in the Government District. But quite frankly, Victor was bored out of his mind and the stuffy silence of his room was a company that got deadening even to a loner such as him. True, socializing wasn’t really his game to begin with, but he still liked to play it from time to time. Just to remember that he could still converse with human beings.

“I’m Victor, by the way. Victor Callahan.” he finally did the official introduction, not offering the woman a handshake that most people found obligatory. Partially, it was because his mother once told him that it’s rude to offer a handshake to a lady before she offered it first. Mostly, it was because it was cold and the hands he stuffed into his pockets were pulling his coat closer to his body.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re not from around here, right?” Victor continued. He usually wasn’t nearly this chatty, but the full money pouch and the waning rain put him into somewhat of a good mood. “Not to scare you or anything, but Radasanth can be dangerous when there’s an overcast, especially if it’s snowing. The law enforcers all flee back to their barracks like mice searching a dry spot on a sinking ship. Apparently, they don’t pay them enough to catch both the bad guys and a cold. Sadly, the bad guys know that too, so you’re more likely to get mugged during the rainy days, as strange as it seems.”

He wasn’t certain why he offered that bit of information, but it seemed like something useful at the time, especially if her search for Eliot wasn’t very fruitful and she kept inspecting the rest of the city in search for his whereabouts. Radasanth seemed like a fine and dandy place when you stood on the main street and ogled the majestic architecture, but when you took a step away from the glamour, there was a plethora of nasty things lurking in the shadows. Getting mugged was the least that could happen to you if you were in the wrong place at a wrong time. Worst case scenario, a person could wind up either in slaver shackles or in a rather shallow grave out in the outskirts of the Slums. And regardless of how cold and defensive she was, Sanoë didn’t deserve that fate.

“So, why are you looking for Eliot anyways?”

[Empyrean]

Jora was right. Her adoptive mother had always said Sanoë was bound and determined to spoil a good thing when it came her way. She said the jeweler was so skeptical, she couldn’t help but see the flaws and negative what-if’s of every encounter. Was Sanoë really such a pessimist that she had to automatically switch to distrust and suspicion every time a stroke of good luck made its infrequent appearance in her life?

Was she simply afraid of disappointment?

That was an option that was just as likely as the first. Sanoë liked to think herself an orderly person. She kept a guarded outlook on life and a firm grip on the events of her life so that it was nearly impossible for the sting of disappointment, excluding minor ones, to catch her by surprise. And in this unpredictable setting, this whirlwind world of Althanas, anything was possible, and disappointment was not far around the corner when it came to Sanoë. Disappointment, and failure. She couldn’t tolerate failure in anyone, least of all herself. So, as Jora had so aptly noted, Sanoë dismissed anything “good” or “lucky” that might have led her down different paths.

Victor Callahan didn’t deserve to be turned away like that.

As much as she hated to admit it, even just to herself, Sanoë had been wrong about his intentions. It was easy enough to hear in his words, and to see in his face, and he hadn’t even spurned her there and then. He was the bigger person, and it made Sanoë feel like a schoolgirl who’d wrongly accused someone of pairing her name up with some promiscuous fellow at school.

Yeah, well. Shouldn’t have tried to flatter yourself, should you? she said to herself, her cynicism as brutal against herself as it was to other people. She would never learn, would she.

Of course, she wasn’t about to make her error more obvious.

“Sanoë Teriades,” she said somewhat awkwardly, extending her hand to him. Slowly, so as not to jump straight from frostiness to overdone fervor. He didn’t seem to be all that affected by her social blunder, so when he asked her the next couple of questions, it was easy to answer. She could still salvage what might be a good ally, and she’d recited her little woeful tale more than enough times to know it by heart. Although this time, her audience actually knew Eliot, so there was bound to be some astonishment.

“I know, it’s a little obvious I’m not native to the area,” she began a little dryly. “I’ve actually gotten that more than once. I’m from a city, Arsal, not too far from Corone, though I had to come here by ship, but it still feels as though it’s a million miles away. This part of Radasanth reminds me of it,” she added wistfully. Homesickness still poked through her mind every now and then, even more so in big, elaborate, rich Radasanth. So much like home.

“As for Eliot…” She felt unusually talkative, and her expression sobered at simultaneous thoughts of her standoffish demeanor and of her brother. “I’ve been looking for him for a few months now. His name isn’t Eliot O’Mead, that’s just a stupid nickname he gave himself when he was drunk. His real name is Eliot Teriades.”

It felt oddly invigorating to be releasing her tension about her missing brother, and Sanoë shook her hair to get rid of the tangles and extra dampness. The jeweler glanced at Victor, wondering what he would make of the news, and finished with her main reason. “He’s my little brother and he’s a goddamned idiot, and I know he’s going to get himself in trouble.”

She wondered if the worry in her voice was just as obvious as her usual frigidity.

[The Cinderella Man]

Victor was never good at breaking the ice. It was partially due to his rather lack of deftness in socializing, but mostly because he was rather fond of ice. Ice kept the heads cool, kept the appropriate, platonic distance constant and ultimately prevented people from getting too close. And apparently he wasn’t the only one who felt that way. His initial disappointment was rather instinctive, a reaction of a bitter man that pushed people away for years, but even as he listened to Sanoë speak, the boxer realized that if the roles were reversed, he too would have approached the benevolence of a stranger with a hefty dose of mistrust. Hell, he was in Corone long enough to call it his second home and he still acted the same way Sanoë did. So in all truth, it was unfair to jump the gun and assume her to be just an acrimonious bitch.

So he cut her some slack on his end, she cut some herself on hers with her gradually softening disposition, and by the time the gray mush above stopped drooling raindrops on top of their heads, the conversation that both started with their guards up seemed to drift towards casualness. He accepted her handshake with a short but firm squeeze, noticing the same resolution in her own. You could always tell the true nature of the people from the way they shook your hand and Sanoë’s only confirmed her determination and authority. She certainly wasn’t a regular mile run woman, not the damsel in distress that there was a plethora of, and it was a detail that intrigued Victor enough to keep the ball of palaver rolling.

“A younger sibling who’s a bad hat, huh?” he said, this time his smirk a genuine one as his hand passed through his short hair, shaking off the accumulated precipitation. “I have one just like that back in Scara Brae, only it’s a she. Surprisingly, she still hadn’t run away from home, but she’s causing plenty of mischief where she is. A long tongue and a pretentious demeanor aren’t the best combination.”

Yavannha really was a yapping wench sometimes, making her opinion heard even to those who didn’t want to her it – or rather, especially to those kinds of people. No surprise given the fact that she studied psychology and read more books in a single year then Victor did in his entire lifetime. Granted, she was a rather bitter bitch whereas Eliot seemed more of a people’s person, but the troublemaking amounted up to the same.

“For what’s it worth, Eliot didn’t seem in trouble the last time I saw him.” Victor continued. Radasanth passed by them slowly, the streets doleful and gray under the sunless sky, emitting a rather distinctive – not too unpleasant, but not a real aroma either – damp scent. The window shutters were slowly opening, presenting squinted faces that looked up at the sky with an inquisitive looks, hoping to find an answer in the clouds above. “A bit vexed maybe, but not the I-want-to-get-the-hell-out-of-here-at-any-cost type of vexed if you know what I mean. He gave Alain a large piece of his mind – and that was an interesting exchange if I ever heard one – and just called it quits. I can’t really blame him. The Republic Sun is barely worth the paper its printed on.”

The prizefighter wasn’t certain how much of an ease would those words bring to Sanoë’s mind which was clearly worried about Eliot, but he reckoned a relatively good news was better then no news at all. The woman seemed genuinely concerned about the wellbeing of her brother and resolved to find him and knock some sense into him. Though, from the impression that Victor got from Eliot, the man was as stubborn as a mule given the right circumstances, so the knocking some sense part might prove to be a rather frustrating process. And from the look on Sanoë’s face, the woman knew that all too well.

Soon, the environment around them changed, the rustic, untidy cobbles of the Bazaar District gave way to the more maintained section of the city. The simple, one-storey houses gave way to the mansions that grew in both height and girth the further they ventured into the Government district. Victor personally disliked this part of the town, not because of its frigid cleanliness, but because of the prissy clotheshorses that pranced around their large estates, thinking they were immensely better then the rest. Luckily, Radasanth Public Library wasn’t too deep within what he liked to call the Prick Territory and before long they stood in front of what seemed like the longest stretch of wide stairs that led towards the entrance of the majestic edifice. A multitude of windows stretched to the both ends of the front part of the building, cascading on several levels, their frames ornate and detailed. The granite from which the Library was made seemed light gray, but when the sun finally overcame the gloom of the clouds, the whiteness of the stone became almost pearly. It was a glorious sight, especially to Victor who once upon a time studied architecture on the Scara Brae university.

“Well, here we are. There’s a reception desk where you can ask for information. Perhaps they can give you any clue as to where Eliot went.” the boxer spoke, pointing to the massive lacquered doors. “I guess this is where our paths part, Sanoë Teriades.”

[Empyrean]

Sanoë could practically feel the change when she and Victor found themselves in a rather different part of town. She could always tell. It was the same back home, when her errands would take her out of the middle-class business quarter and into the aristocratic neighborhoods and shops. There was a palpable shift in the air when stepping onto “higher ground,” as Jora used to call it, and an even more obvious change in the ground itself. Uneven stone smoothed itself out, peeling paint changed to marble, and pleasant stranger became pompous ass. Sanoë had always felt uncomfortable in the presence of the rich; it was fairly evident that she was not on their level, economically and perhaps in terms of sophistication, and if she were conspicuous enough that day, she’d get a stare or two, or a condescending giggle from an airhead debutante and her consort. The jeweler tried her best to avoid such people, though it wasn’t easy with the work she had to do. Every day she spent within fifty feet of aristocrats was a torment. Sanoë always found herself wanting to throttle the necks of every snooty bitch that snubbed her, or wishing that she were as financially well-off as they were. And as urbane.

It wasn’t all that different in Radasanth, but because of the morning drizzle, there was still a noticeable lack of people on the streets. Here and there was a drifter or businessman, all with their collars still pulled up to shield their necks from the icy sting of light rain, even though it was finally clearing up. Without the dull gray cast to the sky, Radasanth became more than just a fancier rendition of Arsal. It was a monument to classiness, as well as to valor and luxuriance. It was as though every out-of-place detail, every scrap of trash and grime, had been swept away along with the rain to leave a gleaming undertone. Looking up, Sanoë could see the skyline of the city growing even larger as her eyes passed over the multitude of buildings.

It was an impressive place, Radasanth, and without Victor’s help, Sanoë surely would have lost herself in it, though she couldn’t imagine a more intriguing place to be lost.

She was just about to ask Victor more about his sister, honestly curious about someone with as much of a penchant for trouble as Eliot, when he made it clear that he was going to depart. The jeweler was all set to put on her ‘gracious but platonic’ face and thank him for his trouble, but her mouth decided to get ahead of her brain. That seemed to be happening a lot these days.

“Well, don’t feel like you have to clear the road,” she said with a hint of a smirk – she didn’t feel quite upbeat enough for a smile yet. “I apologize for putting you off like that. I’m grateful for your help, it’s rare these days. And unless I’m keeping you from a prior appointment, I’d appreciate some more help inside. You’d know more about what Eliot was up to than I, and you can dry off a bit. If you’d like,” she added hesitantly, hoping he wouldn’t take her for someone too helpless to talk to a receptionist alone. Was it because of her astonishing bad luck that she was going out on a limb she seldom ventured to – asking for help?

Well, yes, she decided. That, and the fact that Victor was – and probably would be – the only agreeable person she met in Althanas. He was a good thing that she’d almost turned away, and she wouldn’t mess up this time – she would set aside her suspicions (for the most part) and try to keep this one stroke of good luck around a little longer. And as much as she hated to admit it, she really did need the help, and who better to assist her than someone like Victor? Even in her constantly platonic way, she could learn more about him, and why in the world he seemed to be the only “nice guy” she’d met in a long time.

“It’s up to you. I’ll be inside if you decide to come,” Sanoë said, going ahead of him and walking up the vast white steps of the Radasanth Public Library, marveling at the sheer size of the place. She couldn’t help but listen closely for the tap-tap-tap of feet ascending the stairs behind her, but she cast aside her keenness and pulled on the handle of the first set of double doors that led to the library. The handle was silver and fashioned in the shape of a small book, a novelty that made Sanoë smile.

Once inside, the jeweler once again had to adjust herself in her surroundings. Even though she herself was fond of isolation and silence, she’d never liked how it felt in libraries. The air was always stale and stuffy, and it seemed that the quietness of them enveloped her in a shroud and rang in her ears. It was always too quiet.

This library, however, made up for its unpleasant silence and scent with its looks. The carpet was a beautiful embroidery of reds and golds, catching the light from the many windows. The shelves of books themselves reached nearly to the ceiling, stretching for what looked like several rooms beyond. Upon observing the ceiling, Sanoë was amazed at the sculptures that hovered above her in the corners of the room, angels and gargoyles and scholars from years past. There was a massive painted depiction of a temple full of saintly-looking academics covering a majority of the ceiling, but rather than look like an idiot and crane her neck for too long, Sanoë approached the oaken desk that sat by the middle of the opposite wall.

Lamps lit each corner of the desk, which was piled with several books and scrolls and what looked like a long list of due books. The woman who sat in a cushioned red chair behind the desk was tracing the line of names on the paper with a rather sharp pen. She wasn’t all that much older than Sanoë, but her sober round face and drab attire reminded the jeweler too much of the middle-aged Anna back at Sooty Horse Publishing.

“Excuse me,” began Sanoë as she removed her still-damp coat and folded it over her arms. Just as she’d thought it would, her voice broke the silence like a vase shattering on a stone floor. “Um, has there been a man coming in here a lot the past few weeks or days? He’s twenty years old, dark hair, loud and obnoxious…?”

The woman’s head didn’t move, but the jeweler was suddenly seized by harsh green eyes beneath dirty blonde hair. “Excuse me?” she said in a rather snide voice.

Sanoë sighed. It was definitely going to end up being one of those days. “A young man. Coming in here. Reading stuff.”

“We get a lot of that type in here, ma’am,” replied the woman, making every syllable into an appraisal of Eliot and Sanoë’s ‘type.’ She was obviously upper class.

We? Oh, so there’s an entire coalition of people with sticks up their asses running this place, thought Sanoë spitefully.

[The Cinderella Man]

“Ah, so there is an actual woman below that thick shell...”

Given her reserved disposition and the rather provisionary defrosting, Victor was taken aback by Sanoë’s subtle suggestion. Footsure women – and the jeweler sure enough gave out such impression – frequently had to bite and chew on their pride in order to even accept a helping hand, let alone actually ask for one. However, while Sanoë maybe gave out an air of frigid confidence, she wasn’t a bitch. She even managed to utter a genuine-sounding apology for her initial reaction and that was basically where he won Victor’s attention back.

Victor was easy when it came to women. Not in a strictly sexual way – in fact, it was one aspect of communication with the opposite gender that he didn’t take lightly. But when it came to facilitating in certain endeavors or even risking his own wellbeing for another, he could generally be bought for a glance, a smile or a kind word or two. It had nothing to do with his gentlemanlike upbringing for he practically had none. It had nothing to do with taking advantage and investing in a possibility of a future romance for he profoundly despised shallow, two-week, one-night, wham-bam-thank-you-wench relationships that weren’t worth the stained sheets on which they begun and ended. His benevolence was instinctive, inadvertent even, like an involuntary notion inside his gut that decided against looking the other way.

“No apology is necessary, really.” he finally replied, a courteous, defensive smile on his face. “After all, it’s better to be suspicious and safe then wide-eyed and sorry. But I’m not certain how much of a help I would be in there. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a library.”

The truth was, Victor wasn’t a half-with as most people perceived him. While his line of work certainly didn’t demand intelligence as prerequisite, once upon a time Victor Callahan was a rather prospective student or, how his teachers liked to say, a great potential. Unfortunately, being a potential came with a price tag and after his father died, the shinnes were a scarce occurrence in the Callahan family. So instead of pursuing science and giggling female students, Victor started to pursue wooden crates on the docks in search for some petty cash. That ultimately led to boxing, a relatively easy to get money for being a living punching bag. Needless to say, throughout the whole ordeal, brain wasn’t the most flexed muscle in Victor’s body, so there was a good possibility that he’d embarrass himself in front of Sanoë. However, the good guy etiquette that seemed to follow him like both a boon and a bane forbade it from walking away from a person in need. Especially since she was a woman.

Several moments after the indurate jeweler stepped inside of the library, Victor made his way up the marble stairs and through the impressive front door. He witnessed the splendor of the ornate interior of the marvelous edifice several times before and always the same sensation swept over him once he entered the library. It was the chill, hollow and soundless, that made him feel that regardless of the amount of knowledge that was accumulated within these majestic walls, this place made the common visitor unwelcome. He felt like an infiltrator that wasn’t worthy of the presence of so many dead folk and their recorded words that plagued the shelves. And without desiring it, he caught himself measuring his footsteps in order to make them less intrusive, less obstructive to the stale silence. Sanoë and the librarian – a genuinely uncordial blonde that Victor could give the bitch title without reconsidering the thought – made his “stealth” approach easier with their conversation that seemed to be getting nowhere.

“Maybe you could...” the prizefighter tried to interject, but the emerald eyes lashed at him as if he was a bum that stepped on her shoe.

“I implore the sir to wait his turn!” she said, the frown making her sickly pale face ugly somehow.

“We’re here together, ma’am. We search for the same man, Eliot Teriades. Supposedly he spent a lot of time in your fine establishment, so we thought that maybe you could offer us some information on him or his whereabouts.” Victor said, doing his best to pull out his best propriety together with his most courteous face. Neither seemed to impress the prudish woman.

“Radasanth Public Library keeps the information on its clientele strictly confidential. I am not at liberty to disclose any information unless you are a law enforcer and/or have a warrant from the local law enforcement.” she dictated as if she was reading the words out of an instruction manual. And while her eyes were locked on Victor, he was pretty sure that she did in fact just recite them, word for word, the contents of the orders she received upon starting her work in the halls of knowledge.

“Aaa-lright. How about telling us what kind of books he read?” the boxer tried again. The librarian sighed in an irritated manner, rolling her eyes before speaking in the same, callous tone.

“I am not at liberty...”

“Alright, alright, we get it.” Victor said. It was like trying to negotiate a peace treaty with an ogre. He needed tact here, a plan that would allow him to sneak around the bends and jump through the loophole.

“How about this?” he finally spoke, leaning onto the table with his elbows. “Let us consider a hypothetical situation. Let us say that there are two people that are rather impressed with the work of a certain journalist... Let’s call him Eliot Teriades just for kicks. Let us say that these two people admire this man’s writing so much that they want to learn more about him through studying whatever he was studying in his free time. Would you have some information for these two knowledge seekers then?”

He concluded with an unctuous smile, seriously satisfied with the fact that he managed to pull off that piece of crap speech. The blonde in front of him once again failed to find any amusement in her visitors. She spoke in the same monotonous tone that started to irk the pugilist, not even looking at him this time as she flipped the pages of a tome that sat in front of her. “I would tell these hypothetical visitors that I am not at liberty to disclose any information.” but then, just after she said those words, her stone face cracked into a tiniest of smirks. “But I would recommend the following titles for them to study: History of Corone: Volume V – VII, The Republic Journal: On Public Enemies, The Clandestine Study by Arante Worth, Unofficial Underground Almanac and Atlas of Known Realms.”

“Would you be so kind to deliver these books to a pair of less hypothetical visitors? We’ll be in the reading section.” Victor asked.

“I’ll get a clerk to deliver them to you.” the woman said, shaking her head and scribbling something on the parchment in front of her in a beautiful cursive.

Victor turned towards Sanoë and exchanged his victorious smile for a more serious face. “I reckoned we might find a clue as to what his itinerary is from some of these books.”. He then gestured towards the spacious part of the library with what seemed like endless lines of tables bathed in sunlight that blasted its way through the tall windows with pointed arches. “After you.”

[Empyrean]

Sanoë was putting up a rather admirable fight against the urge to laugh, a fight she hadn’t had with herself for quite a while. Even as often as she’d had to deal with people like the Blonde Bitch of Radasanth, she’d never had the patience to use Victor’s way of dealing with it. Her mentor Jora had always said something about that way of facing down someone of a disagreeable nature – what was it? Kill ‘em with kindness, thought the jeweler, remembering Jora’s favorite of clichés. For some reason, several of Jora’s admonishments and bits of advice were coming back to prick at Sanoë’s conscience today. Of course, the ‘kindness’ in this instance was more smarmy than genuine, but it was still more than the jeweler could achieve. The receptionist deserved to be put in her place. Watching the woman’s face grimace at Victor’s words was more than enough to make Sanoë want to laugh.

The jeweler managed to hold it in when she followed Victor’s direction and approached the long oaken tables that sat between the tall shelves, biting her lip, and sat down. She draped her coat over the side of her chair, glad that she’d chosen a spot that the shafts of light hit – the sunlight warmed her chilled skin, and perhaps a little more of the arctic veil over her eyes, as well.

“That was….interesting,” she began in a hushed but admiring voice when Victor had joined her. “I’ve never seen anyone handle bitchiness quite like that before.” She chuckled a bit then, feeling a little like a delinquent child giggling over a prank on a teacher. She wasn’t usually so susceptible to such immature behavior and the amusement that came with it, and she felt a little uncomfortable with the change. Maybe that was the effect of a good person like Victor – tempting the more amiable side of a persona to emerge with an astonishing lack of effort. She hadn’t met very many decent people in her life, least of all in the last couple of months.

She schooled her expression into one of a more demure nature. She didn’t quite like the idea of a departure from her sanity. “Thank you again, for helping me, Victor. This is the farthest I’ve gotten to finding Eliot, and I’ve only been in Althanas for a few weeks.” She crossed her legs and leaned back so that she stared right up at the ceiling, letting her neck bathe in the shaft of sunlight as she tried to pick out every detail in the gorgeous – and rather exaggerated – pastiche etched on the ceiling.

It depicted several scholars of varying age, all swathed in brilliantly hued robes that seemed far too bright and lurid for people of a strictly intellectual persuasion. They dangled ink pens on their long, elegant fingers and penned down their thoughts on long, old-fashioned scrolls below a white temple ceiling. It was a beautiful work of art, obviously the product of several years’ labor, but being Sanoë, she couldn’t help but nitpick at what she viewed as its many flaws. All of them, even the ones approaching old age, were painted to look rather handsome, or at least divine, and all of them were male. It never fails, muttered Sanoë, and after that realization she could show nothing but contempt for the scene of exquisite writers and philosophers that graced the main room of the library. The feminist in her constantly jumped at the chance to grumble and nag at the all-encompassing world of men.

“Even if he was low-key while he was working for that publishing place, quitting it just like that can’t mean anything good,” said the jeweler after a lengthy silence. “It means he’s not satisfied, and when Eliot isn’t satisfied, he’ll do whatever it takes to accomplish what he wants to accomplish.” Sanoë closed her eyes and smirked. “He’s the same way in every aspect of his life, even drinking. Especially drinking, I should say,” she amended.

When she opened her eyes again, she looked back over at Victor with a vaguely curious expression. “I bet your sister isn’t as bad a drinker as my brother. It’s sad, but some of his best stuff was written when he was a minute or two away from passing out. He’s insane.” Her eyes softened a bit. “But he’s a good kid. Well, a good man…I suppose,” she rambled on.

Fortunately, she was interrupted before her mouth could lead the subject matter somewhere it didn’t need to go. A young man approached their table, startling Sanoë a bit because of his light stride. He’d obviously been working at the library for quite a while, for he’d mastered the art of an almost soundless gait when crossing the floor, so as not to disturb the solitary mood. He wore the same subtle color tones as the woman at the front desk, an anonymous white shirt and gray pants set that clothed a spindly frame and bony face that most would automatically label “bookworm.”

“History of Corone: Volumes V – VII, The Clandestine Study by Arante Worth, and the Unofficial Underground Almanac….” He rattled off the titles with a lack of enthusiasm, stopping the little cart full of books right in front of Victor and Sanoë’s table and piling them on the table.

“Thank you,” said Sanoë, reaching for one of the last books, a thick volume with a velvety green cover, but before her fingers could touch the cover, the man swept it up and slapped it onto the table with a shuffle.

“Those the right ones? Erica said you were looking for books some journalist liked…” he asked edgily, eyebrows raised at the two unlikely visitors.

Fed up with the condescending attitudes in this part of town, Sanoë stared at the man, her blue eyes hard with haughtiness. “I am not at liberty to disclose any contents of what we’re researching. But yes, thank you for the books, that’ll be all,” drawled the jeweler in a mockingly unpleasant tone similar to that of the rude receptionist. The young man seemed to twitch with irritation, and then grumbled his consent as he meandered off by the shelves behind them.

Smirking to herself and wondering if Victor would scold her for the imitation, Sanoë dragged the first of the History of Corone volumes off the top of the pile and opened the cover. She caught a strong scent of aging, of mustiness, and admired the fine, fragile pages that had a gold cast to their thin edges. It was a comforting scent, actually.

“Alright. I think just scanning these will do, because trying to actually read them could take a great deal of time. And I know I’m probably just as disinclined as you to spend any more time here,” she said.

[The Cinderella Man]

It was a refreshment to see her smile and hear her titter, more so because it was something he did that made her diverge from the ironclad emotional equilibrium. Given the rather standoffish initiation of their companionship and traces of obstinacy in Sanoë’s disposition, it and the recent apology were the first traces of the tensions dropping down a notch. It also made it clear to Victor that the jeweler wasn’t a ball-breaking wench out to defy every man in the world, but rather just a slow starter when it came to socializing. And the boxer could most definitely recognize that trait; it took one rather inimical individual to know another. It just took a little bit of effort to get through, a little bit perseverance and a skin at least an inch thicker then regular in order to walk over the suspicious glances and insinuations.

“Well, I wasn’t always a mere guard.” he said with a satisfied smile of his own as he took of his leather coat and positioned it on the chair backrest. “Not so long ago I was a prizefighter on his way to the top. And once you get more then two or three victories in a row, you’re miraculously transformed into a higher caste of people. Balls, parties, celebrities, the works. And when you find yourself amidst those sharks, you grow some teeth fast, if you know what I mean.”

She thanked him again once she managed to get her temporary joviality back in check, and Victor felt inclined to reiterate that there was no need for gratitude. However, even if he wanted to speak, once she leant backwards on her chair and her body was stricken by the sharp beam of sunlight that perforated the monotonous library interior, the thought was postponed. After all, a male brain was seldom able to do two things at the same time, and right now Victor’s brain was catching the glimpses of the beauty that the heavy overcoat and the stormy weather managed to conceal while they walked through Radasanth. But now, when Sanoë was a little less tense, a little more cordial and basking in the warmth of the sun, the boxer had to admit that there was definitely more then met the eye. He studied her facial features, her damp, braided hair, her luscious neck – which just happened to be Victor’s favorite detail on a woman’s body – and suddenly he felt like he should be thanking her.

Luckily, there was still enough tact and reason in him to divert his eyes once she finished her inspection of the fresco above and started speaking again. He listened as intently as he could given the fact that the image of Sanoë reveling the warmth of the sun got etched into his brain as one of those images that never left him. It was that how he would always remember the jeweler, with her visage glowing and her hair glittering and her skin almost begging to be touched. But Victor had no romantic delusions. He was a bum, she was a refined woman on a run, searching for her brother. To him she seemed like a piece of a jigsaw to which he didn’t belong. He gathered his bearings with enough subtlety not to elicit any suspicion from the woman.

“Well, Yavannha – my sister – is a good girl as well... I suppose. And she’s a good drinker as well. Maybe not as good as Eliot, but she’s still young.” he said with a wink and a self-explanatory grin. “God save us if Eliot decided to make his way to Scara Brae. But if what you say is true, I doubt he’ll be going in that direction. Scara Brae is a rather unimpressive island, not an environment for somebody with great ambitions. That leaves us with just the rest of Althanas.”

A youthful penpusher cut into their conversation, pussyfooting to their table with the stealth of an assassin and delivering the books the uppish bibliothec recommended. His persnickety demeanor however found a rather brusque opposition in Sanoë who seemed to do her utmost to copy Erica’s voice and posture. It was Victor’s turn to chuckle now. He didn’t know what struck him as more comical; the way the jeweler spoke and scolded the clerk or the clerk’s reaction to her falsely stuck-up demeanor. For somebody who claimed that she wouldn’t be able to do what Victor did with Erica, she sure as hell had garlic and acrimony when somebody got her to a boiling point. His laughter was a bit less stifled then hers, earning him a handful of patronizing looks from most eyes in the library. He ended with a fake cough, acknowledging Sanoë’s suggestion and pulling out The Clandestine Study from the stack. It was too thick for his tastes, but it seemed like a better option then the tedious history volumes.

“Yeah, I agree. Knowledge and hospitality don’t exactly go hand in hand here.” the boxer spoke, flipping the cover and dropping his eyes on the content on the yellowish pages. The Clandestine Study seemed a bit overblown from what Victor could gather from skimming through the pages. Whoever this Arante Worth was, he seemed to have a rather wide vocabulary and an imagination that coincided a little bit with those of the journalists of The Republic Sun. His theories of the involvement of various secret organizations – some even funded by the foreign governments – in the Corone history seemed more believable only because the man had a knack for sugarcoating stuff and linking it to the events that already transpired. In a way, Arante seemed like a guy who connected all the dots, but connected them in a wrong way so he got an image that he wanted.

“Well, this one is mostly about secret societies and their influence on the course of Corone history.” Victor whispered, trying not to get any more reprimanding glances as he turned the pages cautiously so as not to damage the book that looked fragile despite its girth. “I never heard for most of these organizations. But then again, they are supposed to be secret. However, this is what The Sun writes about all the time, so I think this was mere professional research for...”

His leafing continued and on the next page there was a scrap of white paper jutting out of the ancient look of the weathered pages and cutting his speech short. The writing on the torn parchment read:

The Coalition
- Check Almanac entry
- Possible locations?
- Ask Ganymede in the “Creaking Board”

Victor thought that it was a long shot, but he asked Sanoë anyways: “Hey, could this be Eliot’s handwriting?” He handed over the note for her inspection before he continued, his voice a bit too loud for a soundless library environment. “If it is, it could lead us somewhere. I don’t know about this Coalition or Ganymede, but I know where the Creaking Board tavern is.”

[Empyrean]

She took the note from him gingerly, as though she were afraid that too much pressure on the little piece of paper might crumble it into pieces. After all, her expectations had disintegrated into tiny shreds of hope when she’d gotten this close to finding Eliot and going home, only to be disappointed in full once again. But even her cynical mind refused to discharge today’s events as entirely worthless. For one thing, she’d found out scraps of what her brother was up to, and though the prospect was a bit upsetting – because she knew instinctively that it could only lead to trouble on his part – it was still something.

It was more than she’d troubled herself with finding out in the four years she’d known him. She knew he was ambitious, that he had strength in the art of writing, but she’d never picked him out for being anything along the lines of an anarchist. Oh, yes, she liked to tease him for his lack of wits when it came to the practical notions of life that Sanoë held so near and dear to her heart, but Eliot wasn’t stupid. He was street-smart and he knew people, and he’d finally figured out that he could reach them in a way that appealed to everyone, from the working class to aristocracy: the written word. People were finally paying some attention to him, and some of it was bound to be negative. If history had taught anything to mankind, it was that rebellion, no matter how seemingly insignificant, was not met without hostility.

But Sanoë knew this about him now, and that was enough. She was closer and closer to understanding what it was that made her brother tick, and this information was vital to keeping him near. She’d had enough setbacks already. Now, for every step backward, she could take two forward.

Her heart bounded with anticipation when she recognized the rapid scrawl of her brother’s handwriting. The overly large capitals, the messy vowels, the long fading line at the end….it was Eliot, alright. His hand was as impetuous as his demeanor.

“That’s him,” Sanoë exclaimed, her tone unexpectedly pleased. “He used to leave me little lists like this all the time. Great job, Victor,” she spoke with her thin lips upturned in a rare smile. No, certainly, today hadn’t been worthless. Despite her mental denial of it, there were things to be grateful for today. One of them, perhaps the most prominent, was Victor.

He’d unnerved her at first with his courtesy, the benevolent manner starkly different from men Sanoë had met so far in her life. And he’d constantly been catching her off guard – and not only with the facets of his personality that seemed to contradict everything she’d assumed about men. He was catching her off guard with parts of her own character, parts that must have lain dormant for years. For instance, she couldn’t remember smiling so much in such a short period of time. It was alarming, to say the least, but there was a part of her that didn’t entirely mind it. She was still curious about this cordial man who was slowly but surely locating the loophole around Sanoë’s emotional barricade.

What bits and pieces Victor offered about himself were interesting, indeed. Prizefighters, from what Sanoë knew, were usually brutish types without much on the mind except the destructive nature implied by their profession. Victor was, needless to say, a departure from that stereotype. She scanned him for traces of roughness left over from his boxer days. Muscle corded his arms beneath the heavy shirt, and while the contours of his face weren’t what she’d label “pretty boy,” they were pleasing in a coarse, distinctive way. The jeweler could appreciate that – she wasn’t a portrait of classic beauty, and she’d always found physical perfection to be trite.

She realized she was staring, as well as thinking some things she ought not to be thinking during her task, and busied herself with closing her History of Corone book and setting it aside, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “You found this note in that book, then?” she asked Victor as quietly as possible, reaching over and flipping the cover of his book. “If he was reading The Clandestine Study, maybe he read this too…”

She trailed off as she dug through the stack of books. Still somewhat flustered, she accidentally slid the Unofficial Underground Almanac onto the bright wooden tabletop with a loud thump that resounded through the main room of the library. Several chastising whispers of “Shhh!” found their way to her ears from other readers a few tables over. Now Sanoë could feel the heat radiating from her face as she tried to recover her dignity, flipping through the index pages of the Almanac.

“Maybe there’s something on the Coalition in here,” she added in a whisper, her forefinger tracing the column of contents. There was an explanation on the contents, followed by the names of several exaggerated-sounding names of underground groups. None of them looked even remotely related to the Coalition. The jeweler groaned under her breath. The Almanac was a huge book covering a vast range of groups, and Sanoë didn’t have the patience to even scan through every single one, looking for the Coalition. Eliot was the one with that talent – it was how he’d located Sanoë four years ago.

Once again frustrated, she slumped down in her chair with the book in her lap, rereading Eliot’s note. Idly, she flipped it over to the other side, where in the corner, a few words were scribbled in much smaller, finer writing. In bold was the first word:


HERE!

And beneath it was an underscored name Sanoë didn’t recognize.


Underwood

Sitting up straight again, the jeweler passed the note back to Victor. “What is that? Do you know that name?”

[The Cinderella Man]

When it came to reading between the lines of human reactions, Victor had to admit that he was quite illiterate, and that went double if the human in question was a female. That’s why he generally disliked people. There was always something beyond the obvious, some miniscule detail that a skillful eye could catch, decipher and assign to a certain train of thought that went inside someone’s head, and he was unable to grasp it. Today it was Sanoë’s prolonged gaze that left him pondering on the real meaning behind it. Her azure eyes were fixed on his own, her lips curved in a refined smile and the silence suddenly felt a thick as molasses. All of it made Victor feel a bit dumb for his inability to decode and respond to it in a proper manner and that consequently made him feel the way he regularly felt around women; ill at ease and wanting to both be in the crosshairs of that gaze and away from it.

Luckily, he wasn’t a schoolboy anymore and his weathered exterior succeeded in preserving his cool, so the only response elicited by her cryptic stare was an affable smirk and a nod. The jeweler, however, seemed genuinely excited by the result of their prospecting, proceeding to inspect the book mentioned in the note and almost fumbling the damn thing. The loud thud of the thick volume made her the target of several shushing noises which in turn filled her face up with an excessive amount of blood. Victor’s smile stayed on, albeit a more subtle one. The semi-embarrassed, not-so-restrained expression made her look less like a queen on her throne of ice and more like an actual woman. Suffice to say, it was an eye-catching deviation.

The book offered no insight on this Coalition which made Victor think that Eliot might’ve been lured into a hoax which successively meant that Sanoë might be right and he was in trouble. It was either that or this underground organization went so much underground that nobody heard about it nowadays. If there was bet going on though, Vic’s money would’ve been on the first option. Either way, it didn’t matter in the end. They weren’t after the Coalition, but after Eliot and he was following the vague trail that, according to the note on the flip side of the paper that the boxer failed to notice, led to Underwood. Victor looked at the underlined name for several seconds, recollecting his several visits in what he liked to call Lumberjack City and finding none of them too pleasurable.

“Yeah.” he finally said, again his voice not restrained enough for the delicate ears of the several readers that started to scuttle away from the noisy pair. He paid little heed to their stuck-up faces and self-righteous looks as he picked up the Atlas of Known Realms, flipping the pages until he found the first chart of Corone. He turned the book and pushed it over the desk towards Sanoë, tapping his finger to the bunch of huddled out-of-scale houses in the middle of the green sea. “Underwood is second largest city in Corone, smack-dab in the middle of the Concordia Forest. The South Road leads right towards it, past the Comb Mountains and through the forest. I fought there a couple of times. Those lumberjacks pack a mean punch.”

While his female companion studied the delicately drawn map, Victor turned the paper back to the side with the small list and reread the information. Underwood was a good, solid clue it seemed, but it was also a haystack and if they made a journey to it, they would wind up with the search for the needle.

“Wait, wait, hold your horses, Padre.” a voice in his head – that always referred to the prizefighter as if he was another entity – jawed. “We?! You plan to escort her all the way to Underwood? Who said she would even let you do that?”

As much as he hated that voice that always berated him, it was right. He was getting ahead of himself, caught in a fairytale where he was a hero and Sanoë was a damsel in distress, which had a touchy-feely ending where he got the girl after he helped her avenge the likely death of her brother. Or some other nonsense that bad writers of romantic novels wrote. The real life was significantly different and the best was Victor knew how to deal with it was one step at a time. And the next step should lead them to the Creaking Board tavern.

“I think we should check this Ganymede person first though. Underwood isn’t Radasanth, but it’s still pretty damn big and the more insight you get, the less time you’ll spend tapping in the dark.” the boxer said, getting up and putting on the coat that didn’t seem satisfactorily dry yet. “The Creaking Board is a shady dump in the Slums, den of thieves and lowlifes from what I heard.”

Somebody who didn’t have the guts to make eye contact with Victor made another effort to quieten the clamant prizefighter. “Yeah, alright already. We’re leaving.” Victor harangued, his voice now strong enough to stir up most in the proximity, including the blonde librarian that whipped them with her eyes, refusing to hide her disdain behind her usual frigid mask. He led the way down the soft carpet that made even his heavy footsteps silent and paused only to bow his head to Erica who shot fire from her eyes. “Thank you for your hospitality, miss.”

“Leaving us already?” the woman inquired, her face obviously unbeknownst to any other expression save a stuck-up one. Victor looked back at the reading area where the remaining visitors still escorted them out with righteous, satisfied eyes, most of them prissy royalty that came here to break away from the daily bustle.

“We didn’t want to overstay the welcome. Good day.”

[Empyrean]

The Slums. The two words triggered yet another homesick reaction in the jeweler. She could plunge into a whole new tirade that listed the disadvantages of her hometown one by one. She could rattle on and on about every little thing about her own pitiable section of Arsal that made her want to drive a blunt knife into her eye socket. She could go on about the noise that punctured even the deepest sleep in ungodly hours of the morning, sidewalks littered with garbage so old it had been stamped like a new coin into the concrete, bearing the imprint of boots, sharp heels, and even bare feet. The stink of the sewers. Muddied brick wall, a common canvas for graffiti that, more often than not, declared wild rebellion and racial slurs, amongst other distasteful, ugly things.

It wasn’t just the shock and horror induced by Althanas that made Sanoë long for the almost wretched life in Arsal.
There was a morbidity in that longing, a slightly warped image of ‘home’ that came to mind. Sanoë and Jora hadn’t lived smack dab in the middle of Arsal’s slums, but they were pretty damn close. They didn’t dabble in the taboo arts and clandestine workings in alleyways and basements, nor did they gamble away their earnings. But living right on the verge of the center of society’s ills left them with a wariness and knowledge that Sanoë was sure Victor himself was plenty familiar with, based on what little detail he’d revealed about his past. If this Creaking Board tavern was indeed as disreputable a place as Victor said it was, the jeweler had no problem with mutely agreeing to his accompanying her. It was almost as though he’d picked up on the curiosity stewing in her brain for the past hour; curiosity about Radasanth, which was so like home, and curiosity about the prizefighter himself.

Sanoë stood up as soon as Victor did. She too had felt the snide feeling of being unwanted, being an unwelcome presence in what was apparently a ‘hallowed hall’ in the rich part of Radasanth. ‘Hallowed hell’ would have been more appropriate. The not-so-subtle clearing of throats didn’t help much, either. She slipped her arms through the sleeves of her jacket, shuddering at the unpleasant chill its dampness sent pricking along her back, and began to follow Victor out.

As expected, Ill-Mannered Erica just couldn’t resist one more smarmy encouragement. The priggish blonde had an expression on her round face that did more than just indicate her silent glee at the two intruders leaving. Her face screamed satisfaction. Victor handled it precisely as Sanoë thought he would, with a hint or two of sarcasm and irony masked by his usual indifferent civility. Sanoë, however, was like Erica in one way and one way only; she just couldn’t resist one last crack.

Perhaps hoping for one last shot at a rather immature mockery, the jeweler waited until Victor had finished speaking, and then stuck her tongue out at the librarian.

The look, a mixture of bafflement and prudish disgust, on Erica’s face was well worth that moment of juvenile behavior. With a smirk on her face, Sanoë caught up with Victor to leave the library. How infantile, and yet how fulfilling that was! Sometimes she could hardly believe she was twenty-four years old.

---------------------------------------

It was both good and bad to be back out in the fresh air, she decided. After stepping back into the sunlight and thus back into the wide open space of high-brow Radasanth, she felt the familiar bristle of uneasiness washing over her. The good part was that outside, with the increasing number of passersby in the afternoon, Sanoë no longer felt stifled by the stuffy air in the library. The unnatural quiet and sanctity of the place was bothersome enough to make her nervous. That, and it also smelled vaguely like a closet infested with old mothballs.

It seemed that no matter where she went, Sanoë was destined to end up a nervous wreck.

As they descended the white marble steps, Sanoë spotted out of the corner of her eyes a small group huddled just across the square, three men. Two of them appeared to be in deep discussion, which ceased almost immediately, as Sanoë and Victor reached the bottom of the long set of steps in front of the library. At once, Sanoë slipped effortlessly into her usual, apprehensive self, picturing all sorts of scenarios in which the three men were the sort of crooked characters she’d first imagined Victor to be.

As if on cue, the trio straightened up and began to approach the pair. Two of the men fell back in a synchronized, military stride behind the first.

Oh, goody. The jeweler gave up on trying to look inconspicuous – when had that ever been an easy task? – and stopped on the spot, giving a conspiratorial glance to Victor. This won’t be fun, whatever the hell it is.

The man in front of the little group was dressed in a way that fit right into their rich surroundings, but a touch more on the moderate side. He seemed to favor darker shades, dressed in a long gray overcoat layered lavishly with decoration, though not so lavish as to appear gaudy. With close-cut blonde hair and an aging face, he gave off the impression of being just as uniform as the two men behind him, who were indeed soldiers. They bore a symbol on their uniforms that Sanoë recognized as a crest of the Corone Armed Forces.

“Your name is Sanoë Teriades, isn’t it?” the first man asked, his voice a polite baritone.

Her heart skittered for a moment. There were quite a few ways she could see this conversation going now, and none of them were enjoyable in the least. “Yes, it is. What do you want?” she asked curtly. When in doubt, be blunt.

“Nothing more than to give you some well-placed advice, ma’am,” the man answered without missing a beat. He kept his arms folded behind his back. “I believe you have a sibling you’re searching for, a half-brother named Eliot, correct?”

“Does this have a point or are you just really good at guessing games?”

The cut-to-the-chase inquisitor hardly seemed phased by the jeweler’s cutting tone. “The former. My advice is for you and your companion not to go researching Mr. Teriades’ whereabouts in this manner anymore.” He nodded sharply at the library looming behind them.

Sanoë, taken aback at the unexpected request, couldn’t stop herself from scoffing loudly. “Tch. And why should we take your advice?” she said. He’s my brother.

The man’s eyes, a darker blue than Sanoë’s, narrowed to the point of looking rather like chips of ice. “It would be wise for you to do so. And for your well-being,” he added with a decidedly obvious tilt of his head toward Victor.

The two men behind him moved apart to let the man through, but before he turned to leave, he gave the jeweler a meaningful look. “Nosing around will get you into more trouble than it’s worth.”

[The Cinderella Man]

Since the time he left his not-so-idyllic home in Scara Brae, Victor Callahan got into a fair share of troubles, but never with the law. Lawmen and their stoical postures always struck an eerily sort of respect in the prizefighter, the kind that a person had for a grumpy uncle that only visited during major holidays. Combined with his tendency to stay away from the shady deals with shady people, it enabled him to keep his dossier relatively clean. Several public disturbances and vagabonding accusations not included, of course. But as it seemed now, even though he evaded encounters with the law, the law tracked him down and wasn’t too pleased. Well, tracked down his companion actually, but it failed to deny the fact that he was once again in a pickle, and once again because of a girl.

The debonair man did his best to achieve an air of friendliness and sincerity, but it was rather clear even to a brute such as the Victor that the concern in the words spoken is as genuine as a coin with two heads. He was no soldier, this man, and what he masked as a warning was nothing but a subtle threat, a smooth way to say that something bad would happen should Sanoë choose to follow the trail. The law didn’t use such tactics. The law was in many ways like the boxer, uncouth, brutish, especially the CAF part of the law in the Republic. They either threw you into the brick or let you go. They didn’t approach, undercover, to inform you that you’re asking too many questions.

“Well, that was certainly... weird,” Victor said once the trio departed out of hearing range and he was certain only the jeweler could hear him. The prizefighter expected for Sanoë to fill in the blanks that were left after the conversation, but there was nothing on her face that would reveal some deeper knowledge of what was spoken. The foreign woman seemed just as surprised with the encounter, her cool, brusk demeanor returning with a vengeance. And though Victor knew the peculiar woman for only several hours, he could already say that he liked the smiling, relaxed Sanoë more then this frowning one caught in some distant introspection. Either way, there seemed to be no answer coming from his companion, so the boxer – despite being a rather reticent fellow – had to restart the conversation once again.

“I’d suggest following him, since he obviously knows something about Eliot, but I think he got those two so people wouldn’t get such smart ideas. Maybe we should check out the Creaking Board instead.” Victor didn’t expect Sanoë opposing this proposition and he was right to do so. The woman maybe didn’t look feisty at first glance, but there was steel in her, running through her backbone instead of the marrow and keeping her resolved. A slap on the wrist wouldn’t dissuade her from following the path she plotted.

“Those two grunts were definitely CAF, in case you’re wondering, but the talker seemed a bit too slick for the Armed Forces,” the prizefighter said, leading the way down the doused cobbles and doing his best to evade the miniature lakes the rain left in its wake. “Smarts and looks aren’t exactly a prerequisite for a soldier, a small wonder given the job description. But then again, you could say the same for boxing.”

***

The Creaking Board tavern was a crummy joint in an equally crummy part of town, an inglorious house made up from wood and bricks and blocks of stone, with a roof that looked like a patched up shirt, where the wooden tiles were the shirt and the tin plates were the patches. And even in such degenerative state, it was still the safest looking place in the close proximity. Most of the adjacent houses were either all boarded up and barely holding on or nothing but heaps of decaying wood and debris. The street was made out of dirt here, or rather it was dirt until the rain came down and turned it into miry, ankle-deep mud. This was the flip side of the coin, the ugly face of Radasanth that most closed their eyes to, where the less fortunate struggled to make a living.

Victor never ventured inside the Creaking Board, but now that he did, it was rather clear that he wasn’t missing much. Smoke as dense as swamp fog hovered above the heads of the patrons, each and every one of them looking like they befitted the scenery perfectly with their dark attires, darker outlooks and greedy eyes. They were the bottom of the pile, bums and rouges and felons, with nothing to lose and little to gain. Maneuvering through their hunched forms that sat at the tables was like walking through a trapped maze, where each trap had a pair of eyes, but the boxer and his female companion managed to reach the bar without any incidents. Behind it, a lean balding man with bushy sideburns and bushier salt-and-pepper beard sat on a stool, using a kriss dagger to clean the black beneath the nails of one of the three remaining fingers on his left hand.

“I’ve got ale, hard stuff and trouble. I recommend the first or the second,” he said before Victor even reached the bar, not taking his eyes off the precise manual labor. It ran smooth off his tongue, as if it was something he said hundred of times a day, a peculiar greeting that became mandatory.

“Uhm... Right,” the prizefighter was slightly taken aback, his question stuck somewhere in his throat. Perhaps that was for the best, Victor thought. If he asked for information straight of the bat, he would probably end up purchasing the third. “Ale. Two of them,” he said, sitting on one of the wobbly stools and talking out a pair of coins. By the time he placed them on the wooden surface, smooth from decades of usage, a pair of repugnant murky drinks were served. Despite his dislike towards most types of booze, the boxer took a sip of the bitter liquid.

“Say, you didn’t happen to notice a fellow...” He was unable to finish, the ale exploding at the bottom of his throat, sending a shockwave of bitterness, eliciting uncontrolled coughs from Victor. The bartender grinned.

“A bit strong?”

“Just a touch,” the bulky pugilist managed to squeeze through his irritated windpipe. “Now about that fellow...”

“I notice a lot of fellows,” an uninterested answer. Victor pulled out a fistful of gold pieces and placed one on the counter.

“Well, this one was asking about something called the Coalition.” The mention of the mysterious organization finally snapped the man from cleaning his nails, making him shoot an inspective glance at Victor, at Sanoë and then back at the prizefighter.

“The Coalition? Never heard of it.”

Victor put two more coins on the counter, eliciting additional words.

“A lot of people come through here...”

Another three.

“...asking a lot of questions...”

Five more. The man kept talking as Victor kept adding more money.

“But there could’ve been this foreigner. A week ago, maybe more. Asking more questions then he had money to pay for. I told him what I tell you: I don’t know anything about any coalitions. Then he asked me for a cheap place to stay. I sent him over to the old Moyes at the Hollow Ground. Never seen him since.”

The tally wound up a little over forty gold pieces, but it seemed to be money well spent, buying them another clue to Eliot’s whereabouts. If they’re lucky, he would still be there, and if they’re not – a more then likely option – then at least they connected another dot on their way to the full picture.

[Empyrean]

(Bunny approved.)

She knew it wouldn’t add much to her cache of social skills – or lack thereof – to keep silent and think on what had just happened, but Sanoë couldn’t stop herself from being carried away by her train of thoughts. Image after image, scenario after startling scenario flashed through her mind like some brutal slideshow – Eliot’s fruitless campaigns landing him in jail, Eliot’s body mangled by beatings from some nameless political foe, Eliot’s vicious demise. Worst of all, now those endless possibilities weren’t entirely impossible. What in the world had Eliot gotten himself into? The jeweler couldn’t decide which would be worse – not knowing what had befallen Eliot or knowing exactly what had come to pass. She could feel Victor’s inquisitive eyes on her, waiting for answers, but he certainly wouldn’t be getting them any time soon. Much of their awkward encounter with Corone law had gone over her head, too. She knew she should be even more worried about her brother than usual, but she didn’t precisely know why. The jeweler heard bits and pieces of Victor’s comments and suggestions but offered him nothing more than a terse nod of the head in acknowledgement, still lost in her thoughts.

Only twice did she want to cut in with an objection, though she didn’t. The jeweler didn’t agree with Victor’s theory about soldiers’ stupidity and unsightliness. Sanoë knew a thing or two about soldiers, having grown up in a military city. She was also fairly sure that both her parents had been in some sort of military position. And while she wasn’t about to laud her biological mother for anything – she’d been abandoned by the woman, for goodness’ sakes - she could argue that she remembered her mother, a soldier (or something like it), being a moderately attractive woman. She wasn’t so sure about the smarts.

Neither did she agree with his theory on boxers. True, Victor was not the smartest, most handsome man in existence, but he certainly wasn’t stupid, or bad-looking. She would vouch for that right off the bat, although she was almost vehement in her belief that looks were hardly an important accessory. But if there was one thing she’d noticed about Victor, it was that he apparently was not all too confident in himself in any area. Sanoë wondered vaguely if that had to do with his departure from boxing, but it didn’t take long for her thoughts to meander back to Eliot’s hypothetical, yet violent death.

-------------------------

Sanoë cradled her glass with quiet timidity. After seeing Victor nearly choke upon the stuff, she was more than reluctant to try whatever muddy concoction had been poured into the glass, but she was bound to stand out if she didn’t. So she stayed silent for the most part, taking much smaller sips than her companion and sputtering a little at the potency of the drink. No wonder Eliot turned into such a loon after a good long round of drinking – a glass or more of ale would irritate anyone to the point of lunacy.

Watching mildly and saying nothing as Victor haggled with the bartender, Sanoë examined her surroundings out of the corner of her eye. She sort of liked the mood of this bar. She settled right into the white noise of laughter and staccato chatter and the clinking sounds of glasses, molding into the dimly-lit, packed room much like a puzzle piece into its corner. She was comfortable in the familiarity of the place, even with its dodgy, rough-around-the-edges feel, its decaying structure and lack of class.

She drew her straying mind back to her body as the glint of gold on the polished counter caught her eye.

“But there could’ve been this foreigner. A week ago, maybe more…” The man behind the counter, still absentmindedly turning over the knife in his hands, made the process of obtaining information into an ordeal rather like pulling teeth. Sanoë irritably pressed her lips together so much that they nearly disappeared. What greed, to hold out on precious morsels of knowledge until there was literally a big enough compensation on the table, and then give out nothing than a scrap of information.

Stupid bastard….

“Never seen him since,” concluded the balding man decisively, his dark eyes flicking keenly over the pile of coins on his counter. Sanoë, too, glanced uneasily at the gold pieces, making a mental calculation and feeling rather sheepish at the result. Forty-some coins straight from Victor’s pocket, without even a blink from the former boxer.

Feeling displeased at their loss of money, Sanoë rose quickly from her seat and pushed the glass of ale back to the edge of the counter. “That’ll be all, then. We’ll just be on our way,” she said hastily. The bartender wouldn’t be getting a thank you from her, not after being thanked in full with gold he hardly deserved.

“After you, Victor,” she said, inviting her companion to go first. “You’ll probably know the way better…”

------------------------

And, of course, he did. Victor was indeed an efficient tour guide in addition to other things. Sanoë might have let him lead the way to this Hollow Ground place without saying a word, having so much to think about, but the rising prick of guilt pinching at her gut prompted her to be the conversation-starter for once. She caught up to him as they crossed a side street, feeling the stab of uneasiness in the darkening streets of Radasanth’s slums. The jeweler dug into a bag on her belt before speaking, and, handing Victor a small money pouch heavily weighted down with gold pieces.

“There.” She locked her fingers together as they walked, trying to keep the early evening chill from settling on her hands. “That’s the same amount you gave to him. Well, a little more than that, in return for all your help.” She paused for a moment before adding, with a touch of impatience, “And I don’t want you playing the gentleman and refusing to take it, because paying that much for a lousy tip or two is more than unfair.”

The cobblestone street on which they walked, as abundant with potholes as the moon with its craters, stood adjacent to a long line of inns and lodges, each one just as seedy as The Creaking Board. And each one looked increasingly treacherous in the slanted shadows of the setting sun just above the impressive Radasanth skyline. It wouldn’t be long before the more squalid characters that Sanoë was so paranoid of started showing up in the very alleys and roads the jeweler and her companion were now traveling.

“That one’s it, isn’t it…” murmured Sanoë, pointing to the lodge on the far right. ‘Hollow Ground’ was emblazoned just above the swinging set of double wooden doors, which sat, intrusively, in a sea of unplastered brick wall. From the outside it looked peculiarly like a warehouse, which made it all the more curious to the jeweler. She could see Eliot being just as intrigued by the look of the place, probably imagining it as a good setting for writing. What a lark, she thought.

Once inside, Sanoë could tell that the appeal apparently rested with quite a few others, too. The entrance led immediately to a common room full of people – mostly young men Eliot’s age, and a few older patrons. The rooms off to the side sunk in the middle of the floor like natural cavities, like the potholes outside. The Radasanth slums couldn’t escape a sinking quality, thought the jeweler a little meanly, but in affection as well.

After approaching the innkeeper and arguing quietly about guests’ privacy and that annoying compensation again, Sanoë, her money bag even lighter now, led Victor up the set of stairs to where Eliot had taken up residence. The steps creaked a warning to heavy feet, and the jeweler made sure to take a lighter stride as they reached the landing. “I can see why Eliot might have stayed here a long while, it’s obviously more in his price range,” she remarked to Victor as she fished the key from the innkeeper out of her pocket. She ducked under the arched doorway, half expecting her brother to be standing right on the other side of the door.

He wasn’t there at all. It wasn’t a very big room, but it seemed to offer a lot of space because of the high, sloping ceiling that reached a point in the middle. The sun had almost set, allowing only a few rays of light to stray in from the rafter through a cloudy skylight. There was a bed, a sunken couch, a few mismatched chairs….Sanoë peeked into a tiny room off to the right, where there was a sink and a toilet, both of a grubby, molding appearance. There were a few scattered articles of clothing and crumbled papers on the floor.

Sanoë walked over to the bed, shaking her head at the unfolded sheets. “Eliot was definitely…” she began, and then noticed a poorly hidden pair of women’s underwear half sticking out at the bottom of the bed. One of Eliot’s many sexual escapades, no doubt. She sighed heavily, rolling her eyes. “…definitely here,” she finished blandly, kicking the underwear under the bed in disgust.

[The Cinderella Man]

Prizefighting business certainly wasn’t flourishing for Victor as of late, but even though his coffers were seldom filled with more gold pieces then it took to cover the bottom, the boxer had to admit that Sanoë’s little money-returning gesture didn’t sit well with him. Especially since the taciturn jeweler decided to reimburse him for both the money he spent on the information and the aid he offered her so far. Perhaps that was a habitual practice, to measure everything in numbers of round pieces of gold, but Victor didn’t operate in sync with the customs. It had nothing to with being couth or gentlemanly though; tax collectors and aristocrats had those same attributes and they were still just well-behaving mongrels. It was simply the way he was raised, the way that wrought him into the man he was today. When somebody is hungry, feed him. When somebody is thirsty, give him water. When somebody is in trouble, do your utmost to help him, or her in this particular instance. Not because of the money (even though, given her attire and vocation, she probably had an abundance), not because he wanted to get into her pants (which, in truth, he wouldn’t mind; he was, after all, just a man), not because it was the right thing to do. But because it felt right.

Mulling on this and sifting through the fistful of ducats that rested in the deep pocket of his overcoat was what kept Victor both busy and silent as they traversed the quaggy distance between the two establishments in the Radasanth Slums. The atmosphere of freshness that was so prominent when they exited the library was lost in this part of the metropolis, bogged down in the unglamorous muck. Slums weren’t all bad though. There were still decent people living there, families who made the best of what they could acquire with their measly wages, establishments with fair owners and honest employees. And on top of that, there was a sense of togetherness here that seemed to have been evicted from the other districts. Elsewhere, the majority of townsfolk walled themselves in worlds of their own, following the well-known route of their everyday life. Here, all were stuck in the same mud, shedding the same blood. Oftentimes it made people worse. Sometimes it made them better.

Moyes, the old geezer who owned the Hollow Ground, was one of those who definitely wasn’t changed for the better due to this bondage. Akin to the three-fingered tavern owner, his information and admittance had their worth in gold. This time Sanoë did the negotiating, but her innate curtness bore a result similar to his everyman indifference. Only after the resolved woman deposited another decent sum of shiny pieces they were allowed to make their way to what was supposed to be Eliot’s room. Victor, still wrestling the coinage exchange issue in his head, let her handle it and followed her up the ghastly stairs. The designated room was on the third floor, though the entire storey looked more like a fairly large attic with plywood bulkheads that served as walls. It smelled like an attic too, moldy and dusty, with boards creaking beneath their feet with every step they made.

The room itself failed to diverge from the general outlook of the place. Beige walls that had as much plaster on as they had places where it went missing, furniture that looked at least half a century old, with wormwoods starting to work their way into some of the cupboards, tousled bed sheets that made the bed look worse then the three-legged sofa, and a privy unworthy of mentioning. Eliot either fell on some really low branches or he had a few screws loose that made him like this bohemian style of life. According to the general impression that Victor got from Sanoë’s words, the latter seemed like a more probable option.

“Seems like he left in a hurry,” the prizefighter mused, approaching the only window and making an attempt to open it. The room smelled worse then his gymbag, desperate for some freshness, but getting the window open proved to be everything but easy. The grimy thing refused to slide upwards, regardless of Victor’s physical strength, and the only thing that he managed to do is to tear off one of the handles. “Can’t say I blame him. This place isn’t exactly the Radasanth Oasis.”

The name of the majestic inn probably meant nothing to Sanoë, but it was one of the few standard bearers up in the Government District. Victor never ventured in the lofty establishment himself, but he heard enough stories to make him think that people that could afford staying there shat gold pieces instead of dung. Compared to the Oasis, this little business that Moyes was running wasn’t worthy to serve as a cellar. Maybe as stables, but it was a big maybe.

“We should look around. Maybe we didn’t spend all our luck back in the library,” he said. The wardrobe opened with an irritating creak, but in the waning light that crept timidly through the window, he could barely decipher what was inside. Luckily, there was an oil lamp nearby and it seemed to have enough oil to uphold a tiny, wavy flame. Unfortunately, it revealed nothing of use; a pair of worn boots, several semi-clean pieces of clothing on the hangers, and a denim mini-skirt discarded at the bottom.

“Quite a ladies, man, huh?” the boxer thought, ransacking the closet despite the fact that it smelled like the rest of the room. Once he found no notes in the pockets and no discarded pieces of paper, he moved on to the cupboards. The square containers hanged from the wall almost hazardously, an accident waiting to happen, but Victor opened them anyways. There were some dishes in the first one, haphazard, mismatched and relatively clean. In the second was quite a formidable assortment of alcoholic beverages. Elven wine, Lavinian Ale, whiskey, bourbon, Eliot seemed to have it all. No appropriate glasses for it though. “Quite a collection,” the bulky man murmured more to himself before he moved on. The ground cupboards (that doubled as something akin to kitchen surface) might’ve held some food once, but the only thing that inhabited them nowadays was a rather sizeable rat that snuck through the hole in the back the second Victor took a peek.

Finding nothing of interest – and getting fed up with the silence and the sound of a couple having really loud sex two rooms from Eliot’s – Victor spoke of the very thing that the fingers of his left hand still played with. “So listen, about the money...” he begun reluctantly, and then continued before the jeweler could stop him. “I understand that this is your search. But I’m not helping you because of money. If I wanted to help people for money, I would’ve been a mercenary. So here...” He took out the money she gave him, counted the excess and pocketed the forty-three gold pieces. The rest he set on the wobbly table. “You can take it back or you can leave it here.”

“Speaking of leaving,” he continued, hanging the lamp on one of the low beams. “It’s getting rather late. I’d suggest we go find a decent inn, but with what that old bastard charged you, we might as well use this room.” And then, when he realized that his proposition might provoke certain insinuations in Sanoë, he added with abruptness that revealed a portion of his chagrin. “I’ll take the couch.”

[Empyrean]

Sanoë said nothing at first, then allowed only a reluctant mumble of consent. What else could she say? She couldn’t very well tell the truth outright – that she was uncomfortable with the whole situation thus far, and sharing a room with a man she hardly knew would do nothing to benefit it. The jeweler grimaced, having been appropriately chastised for, once again, measuring assistance by the weight of a purse. The pile of gold pieces sat on the rickety little table between them like an uninvited guest; an obstacle that blocked the opposing person from view until it was acknowledged. That was the way an issue of money had always seemed to stand. To keep her reserve from slipping as it had too many times that day, she clenched her teeth together and busied herself with further inspecting the space beneath the bed.

Logically, there was nothing the matter with Victor’s proposal. So far he’d proven himself to be a trustworthy man, and certainly more of a gentleman than most she’d encountered. They’d already paid for the room anyway, destitute as it was. And if their information on Eliot’s comings and goings was accurate enough (and seeing as how pursuing anything further apparently put them both in danger), this was probably the safest space to inhabit for the time being. It was a cramped, sullied space to be sure, apparently just casually arranged for living, but it was anonymous and secure when it came down to it.
It was the more insignificant, self-concerning details that bothered, even alarmed Sanoë. She was accustomed to solitude, both in the daylight hours and particularly at night. Evening was her downtime, her personal interlude, her chance to eschew her many financial and occupational responsibilities for a few hours. Not even Jora would disrupt the welcome seclusion awarded to her after a long day’s work (though the most Sanoë accomplished at night was tinkering with new jewel sets and clasps, or taking down copious notes on which detestable customers to avoid that week).

Except for Eliot, who sometimes intruded on her privacy to carry on about political campaigns, Sanoë spent her nights alone. Physically and otherwise. Inwardly she could be as prurient as the next creature, but most of the time she clung to almost lofty moral standards, even with matters as trivial as sleeping arrangements.

Tonight she had a roommate, which meant none of her usual tossing and turning to find a comfortable groove in what was bound to be a lumpy mattress. No lounging around in undergarments to keep cool, even though the air in this room was considerably thick with a stifling humidity. Add to that the fact that the loud couple a few rooms away gave away no signs of relenting, and that Eliot’s frequent dalliances probably meant stained sheets – he’d never been very adept at cleaning. Sanoë reckoned she was in for a restless night.

Feeling irritable now, Sanoë jerked the sheets off the bed, steadfastly keeping them out of sight. The women’s underwear and the miniskirt were embarrassment enough; letting Victor see the undeniably dirtied sheets would be unbearably awkward. The man was clearly getting the better side of the deal this time around, thought the couch could easily be just as questionable.

“Bastard keeps me cleaning up after him even when he’s not around,” she groused, stuffing the sheets underneath the bed with the underwear and clumps of dust. A spare blanket had been left, crumpled, at the foot of the bed. Sanoë gathered it up, folding it over her arms and turning around to face Victor, hoping the blood would stop filling her face. “You can have this, if you want,” she said, draping the blanket over the couch. “I won’t be needing it. It’s hot as hell in here.”

A warm flush from the humidity crept up her neck as she spoke. Sanoë approached the stubborn window and picked up the broken handle, examining it with a smirk. “You sure did a number on this thing. You must’ve been a good boxer,” she said in an offhand sort of way, making small talk as she stuck the handle between the window and its ledge. She tried using it as leverage to pry open the window, and had minute success as the window cracked open a little less than an inch.

“Well…” began the jeweler, cocking her head in disappointment. “Better than nothing, I guess.”

Before silence could take hold again and leave the air feeling stale, Sanoë perused her brother’s notable collection of ales and wines. Selecting a small, half-full bottle of a simple wine, the jeweler settled herself on the bed, eyeing the contents of the bottle with a probing gaze, as though pondering its possibilities.

“He was always trying to get me to try this or that new drink,” she remarked conversationally, shaking the bottle a bit to stir up the wine. “If I can’t find him right off the bat, I might as well honor his wishes.” She took a small sip, her lips puckering a little at the odd taste as she set the wine down on the table next to the gold coins. Two of Eliot's favorite vices. “You’re welcome to it as well, he’s not coming back for it.”

[The Cinderella Man]

Even though Sanoë's remark regarding his boxing prowess was rather extemporary, it still succeeded in taking Victor on a short drive down memory lane. His brain rewound the track of his life so fast that the images appeared only as flashes, but most of them were clear enough to make him remember the way he was in his primes, on the top of his game; young and dumb. Yes, he was a good boxer, and yes, the key word nowadays was ‘was’. Compared to those days of glory, he wasn’t even a shadow of his former self. He was simply a completely different person; new but most definitely not improved. Arslan, his aged trainer, said that he looked like somebody let the air out of him, like somebody reached down his gullet and ripped his heart right out. The old coot wasn’t that far from the truth.

“Yeah, I could fire a jab or two back in the day,” Victor contemplated, unsure whether or not should he elaborate on that part of his life. Sanoë was still a complete stranger - the only thing he knew about her was that she was from some island city whose name slipped out of his mind as soon as she spoke it and that she sought a sibling that had a knack of falling into all kinds of trouble. And that she was probably a part of some upper crust family, judging by her attire and the occasional attacks of uppish arrogance. Other then that, though, she could’ve been anything from a princess to a mass murderer for all Victor knew. The former sooner then the latter, Vic’s gut – that always served as a good judge of people – testified. On the other hand, despite the fact that he was rather inept when it came to socializing, the prizefighter knew that if he wanted to find out more about her – and he most certainly did – he would have to offer something in return. Why not make it the memory of the time he wasn’t a bum?

“Would it surprise you that I was a contender for the title of the Champion of Scara Brae once upon a time?” he asked, walking up to the table solemnly and picking up the offered bottle. He examined the fancy label, but the letters were curvy and foreign and revealed no more clues of the origin of the wine then the sweet-and-sour taste did after a sip of the rosy nectar went past his lips and down his throat. He set the bottle down after another two sips; he was never much of a wine drinker. Not much of an alcohol drinker for that fact, despite the rough patches in his life that seemed depressive enough for getting grandly hammered.

“It probably would. Hell, it sure surprised me,” Victor added, hoping that the wine and his smirk would put a lighter note on the whole conversation. He pulled out a risky-looking wooden chair and tested its sturdiness before he sat, finding the couch too far and the bedside too bold. “I was twelve-and-O, one bout away from the title. They used to call me the ‘Architect of Destruction’, but it was too long for chanting, so they just called me ‘Padre’, because my father was a priest.” His tone, usually passive and indifferent, was touched with a dose enthusiasm as he spoke, but sobriety soon started to gnaw at it.

“But then one day I realized that I’m fighting for the wrong thing, you know? I found out that all the glory and prestige that I obtained, they are like a gold coin made of tin. It sparkles and it shines and it looks real enough, but eventually you realize you can’t buy anything with it. A bum dressed as royalty is still a bum.” He said more then he initially intended, he realized then, even though he hadn’t spoken all that much. Even though Sanoë looked at him with attentive, even haunting eyes, it was probably just courteous interest, the kind that people used when they had no choice but to listen to someone. That was why Victor decided to end his monologue as soon as possible. “After that wake-up call, it all went downhill. Nothing is worse then a fighter without the will to fight.”

Feeling a bit cornered by her blue eyes that seemed to cut right through his skull, the prizefighter turned his focus on the bottle once again. He took another sip, then another, and then realized that he didn’t want to come off as a pitiful wino, so he put the wine down. The silence was creeping around them once again, bound to make them queasy and disquieted, so Victor decided to intercept it with a query.

“So, what’s your story? I hope it’s not too bold of me to ask, but what does Sanoë Teriades do when she isn’t running after her troublemaking siblings?” he asked, his fingers restless as they always were when he felt a tad anxious, playing with the cork of the bottle. Even though their relationship so far was strictly platonic and short-lived, this little overnight stay was the closest he got to a woman in a long while. And those were the waters in which Victor always had trouble swimming in.

[Empyrean]

Sanoë had to permit a smile, though it was a feeble one at that. ‘A bum dressed as royalty is still a bum.’ Oh, how well she knew. How many days had she looked in the mirror and begun her daily routine of driving such proverbs into her brain, to be as blunt against her own arrogance as a hammer to its nail? Too many days for her liking. It took willpower to keep herself from blurting out something that might be risky for business. Not an hour passed when she didn’t feel like expressing her true opinion of her snobbish, wealthy customers. It took willpower for anyone in any sort of servile position, be it of high or low consequence, to keep that position and not jeopardize it. No matter how they really felt about the people they served.

Victor, she reasoned, probably meant something different than what Sanoë had perceived, but underneath, his words had the same acidic ring: you are what you are, and nothing can be done to change that. No amount of luxury, or conceit, or fame could totally smother one’s self. It was something the jeweler had learned to live with early on, something that first-class citizens seemed to be able to sniff out and distinguish at first sight. Sanoë could decorate her clothes with jewels, accentuate her speech to match that of the debutantes and politicians, and strive for respect as much as she wanted. When she was judged by class, she didn’t pass muster. She was an unpolished boot next to the studded heels of society.

No use trying to piss and moan about it, the jeweler sighed inwardly. Still, she couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy for the man sitting across from her. He knew what it was like to be rejected as a poor, plain, working class citizen. And yet, she noticed with a spot of envy, he didn’t even try to match himself up to a wealthy snob. He didn’t seem like a very confident man, but he wasn’t trying to disguise anything about himself either.

She wanted to ask him more about this second Victor, the Victor who was a fierce combatant, who sounded more than worthy of the title ‘Architect of Destruction,’ but the opportunity had suddenly passed. It was as though some inner tap had been turned on, and prattle – so uncharacteristic of the boxer – just poured out of him, in a torrent of hints, scraps about his life. And then, when it reached a sensitive, almost taboo point, the tap was switched off again.

Sanoë was obviously not the only one with an unsatisfactory life history. She had a sense, a rather humorous one, that she was sitting across from what was essentially the male version of herself.

Victor’s change of subject, however, was something Sanoë could elaborate on, within reason. Reclaiming the bottle of wine, she took a sip to fortify herself and chuckled. “Well, when Sanoë Teriades isn’t running after her stupid brother, she’s mostly working her ass off.” Straightening out her blue, gem-studded robe, she gave Victor a conspiratorial grimace. “I work as a jeweler back home. I thought you might have guessed already…“

She tugged on a corner of her robe to emphasize her point. “…but I suppose it’s different here. In Arsal, anyone who works in small business without much help will make something with their own materials and show it off to mark their trade. Helps advertise to what few customers haven’t already been claimed by the big industries.” She paused for a moment, forgetting that Jora, and not Victor, was usually the one willing to hear her out when it came to financial lectures. “So….I made this. I guess I just assumed everyone would know.”

Her face was filling up with blood for what must have been the umpteenth time that day, but Sanoë felt the need to explain further. “As for my work….I’m still fine-tuning my technique, but I’ll make some of the cheaper bits of jewelry, and the rest of the day is paperwork, dealing with customers and errands. Arsal is an island city, so everything is imported, and since we’re small business, they make us double check to make sure nothing’s smuggled. Pleasant job, that,” she added irritably, careful not to take another swig of wine. She had a feeling the stuff was loosening her resolve a bit more than was required.

“From then on, it’s just cleaning up after Elliot, when he’s around, and helping my – my boss clean up.” The last thing Sanoë wished to get into was the rather touchy subject of her parentage. Letting slip that her boss was also her adoptive mother usually incited a series of overly personal questions.

So she plunged ahead, trying to get through whatever banter she’d gotten herself into so she could shut herself up. “Living just above the store helps with expenses, but I’m cutting it close now, being away this long. My boss is good at it, but she can’t last too long without my help. The job keeps bread on the table, but you have to keep it up or there won’t be bread or a table.”

She laughed a little inanely, and then shut her trap, hopefully for good. She hadn’t had much wine, though it was difficult to recall how many times the bottle made it to her lips when she almost ran out of things to say. Most likely out of suggestion and paranoia, she felt the effects of it ebbing away at her usually iron will to keep herself from looking like a fool. Wine was an incense, sucking the fresh air and common sense out of the room like a vacuum and leaving a perfume of absurdity and stupidity.

So she set the drink down and pushed it away.

[The Cinderella Man]

“Well, I guess that shows how wrong the first impressions can be,” Victor said once his jeweler companion was done with her personal exposition. Anxiety was still present in his system, manifesting itself as restlessness that made his fingers torment the wine bottle in an attempt to peel off the paper label, but it was loosening its grasp gradually. Wine probably had a lot to do with it; alcohol had a habit of untangling tongues and easing the tension amongst other things. It seemed to do exactly that for the both of them. Neither of them were the talkative type, and here they were, sitting in a room in some rundown tavern in the Slums, trading stories and passing the bottle. “Here I thought you were just another foreign noble with a thing for sparkly stuff.”

It wasn’t exactly the truth. There was something royal in the woman - a stringent kind of arrogance that seemed interweaved with her every word, every glance - but there was more to it. Victor knew royalty. Perhaps he was never a part of it, but he mingled with their pompous kind enough to recognize the genuine, stick-up-the-ass, nobly clotheshorses that paraded through every party on a horse of vanity. There was nothing below the surface of such people; snobbery was all that they were. Sanoë was different. Her mannerism proved it, a bit too rough-cut to fit the profile, and her story supported it, a story of a working woman making her way in the world. She wasn’t royalty; she simply had to deal with their kind on daily basis. And the result merely confirmed the phrase he said to her in the library: when you’re swimming with the sharks, you grow some teeth.

“Seems like a nice enough job. Delicate, precise,” he said, observing the ornate robe her body held on display. It was perhaps a bit too garish for his taste, but then again, she was a jeweler and he was a fistfighter. Their worlds and opinions seldom went hand in hand. He took his eyes off of her once his mind reminded him that his observation was under a threat to turn into ogling. Returning his eyes on hers, he added with a sarcastic smirk that eventually broke into a chuckle: “Beats the hell out of getting hit in the head for money.”

“Well, if we are to get you back on that job, we better start early tomorrow. Underwood is due south. Way due south,” Victor added after a short period of silence and cryptic eye contact. He got up unceremoniously, leaving both the bottle and the blanket to Sanoë and approaching his bedroll. The couch looked neither sturdy nor clean, but being a wanderer – which was really a puffed up term form a homeless person – he slept on worse places. After aligning the cushions a little bit and getting rid of some old newspaper, it actually looked quite decent, though it still smelled a little bit like stale vomit and cheap detergent. Taking off his leather coat, Victor used it as a blanket once he lowered himself on the couch.

“You better keep that blanket close. It may be warm now, but it can get pretty chilly during the night, especially if it rains again,” the prizefighter advised her, fidgeting a little in an attempt to find a position in which his body didn’t lay on every possible bump of the couch. He wouldn’t get much sleep, he knew. There were too many factors that disturbed his sleep that was usually as thin as a sheet of paper. Aside from the uncomfortable couch, there was another person in the room, and regardless of how little noise she made, it was a distraction. Though, compared to the restless pair three doors down that were going at it like rabbits in heat, Sanoë was a minor one. Regardless of the fact that it probably wouldn’t be, Victor spoke the conventional two words.

“Good night.”

***

It really wasn’t. And it wasn’t chilly either. At some point during his slumber that seemed the drift between an irritating snooze and actual deep sleep, Victor felt that his coat was unnecessary and that even his linen shirt was too insulating. On top of that, the vague, sweet-and-acidic stench of the couch seemed to change as well into something bitter that scraped against his throat like sandpaper. And then there was commotion, voices coming from the outside, creeping through the window and further scrambling his reprieve. All of this combined agitated the prizefighter just enough to break him away from his sleep. Once he opened his eyes, he couldn’t thank these disturbances enough.

The smoke wasn’t thick in the room, but there was enough of it to sting his freshly opened eyes. The vague, distorted sounds that he heard through the filter of dreams crystallized now, amplified the way all sounds usually were early in the morning. And amidst them somebody was shouting something that was already clear to Victor by now. Fire!. He could see its tongues creeping below the door, feel its dry heat as it crackled somewhere beneath the floorboards. And when he jumped to his feet – donning his coat hastily despite the heat; it was too good of a coat to leave behind – and went for the doorknob, he could feel its heat singing the flesh of his palm.

“Sanoë! Sanoë, wake up! We have to go!!” he shouted, shaking the heat off his hand as he approached her bedroll and gave her leg a forceful, almost panicky shake. He didn’t spend too much time at her side, though. Instead, the boxer was already next to the window that, despite the fiery demise that knocked on the front door, still stubbornly refused to slide upwards. Luckily, the glass was much less resilient once Victor pulled out his revolver and used its barrel to create an escape route. There was a two-storey drop to the awning of the front porch that didn’t look too sturdy. However, when compared to the fire that just broke through the door and started to chew on the far wall, it looked a lot more inviting. They could only hope that it would endure them both.

“Quick, out the window!”

[Empyrean]

Sanoë did not sleep well.

It was no surprise, really, considering the substantial amount of stress weighing down her mind in the past few weeks. The added strain of Eliot's incomprehensible predicament did nothing to soothe her nerves. All of this, and her unconscious impulse to remain as still as possible being that there was someone else in the room with her, made for a very uncomfortable night.

It took long enough to fall asleep, and once she did, no dreams came for the obligatory comfort. Her mind continually reviewed information she would rather forget, and portions of conversations she'd had with Eliot, and Victor, and Jora and the military-looking man they'd met outside the library, all of them making a choppy, makeshift album in her brain. At one point Sanoë's eyes flicked open, irritated by the scratchy threads of the blanket she'd thrown over the pillow, and she sat up groggily. That stubborn window was emitting more moonlight than she would have expected; the shine of a partial moon fell heavily on part of the bed. She felt staggeringly hot.

Aside from the muffled sound of residents coming and going at odd hours (some jumping loudly down the rickety stairs in anticipation of a night of debauchery), it was surprisingly quiet in the tiny suite. The energetic couple three doors down had finally elected to afford everyone a few silent hours of sleep. Her stiff shoulder twinging from a recent gunshot wound - healed but still likely to throb every now and then - she turned to glance at her companion. Victor had subconsciously jammed his coat between the awkward crook of the armrest and cushions. He had a comical look to him just then, body arranged delicately to suit the abounding curves (and consequential bumps) of the couch. His face - or what she could see of it in the dark, anyhow - was even screwed up in the faintest form of a grimace.

She would've laughed aloud but for several reasons. She didn't want to disrupt the pleasant stillness that had momentarily enveloped the night, and, well, she was just too damn tired. Just summoning the energy to incline her head seemed to dry up her last reserves of strength. And...as decent as Victor seemed to be, there was still a part of her - albeit a miniscule part - that trained her ears on every sound, that kept her eyes half-open. Because, by all accounts, she still didn't know him. Yet here they were, sleeping in the same room. Life had a peculiar way of flinging Sanoë's own lectures and words to the wise right back in her teeth.

Instead of enforcing the diligence she so often depended on, Sanoë allowed the fatigue of her body to overwhelm her mind, and, moving almost mechanically, she slid backwards on the bed to crouch in the shadows. After a moment of rest, all the while thinking only of the thin softness of her pillow, she pulled off her jeweler's robe and balled it up, leaving it crumpled on the floor. In her undershirt and slacks she was only marginally less humid, but it was an improvement over waking up with sweat stains.

Her weighty belt was still looped around her waist when she finally fell back asleep. It provided a comfortable groove for her body so that the bedsprings didn't jab at her ribs. God knows I need the rest, she thought faintly before letting sleep overtake her.

------------------

Her eyes couldn't have been closed for more than thirty seconds, or so it felt, when her nose began to sting, her senses slow on the uptake until they recognized an acute, pungent smell. Trying to convince herself that it was allergies, or that somewhat reeking, lingering scent so typical of Eliot, Sanoë grumbled her usual morning complaints and rolled over.

There, it was much stronger.

"Sanoë, wake up!" Someone - Victor, she finally realized - was at the foot of her bed, tugging on her leg. "We have to go!!" By the time Sanoë sat up completely, swinging her head this way and that to appraise the situation, Victor was already in motion, taking charge with the sort of animation that Sanoë wouldn't have immediately pegged him for. Glass shattered, letting in the sound of panic-stricken screams, both inside and out. It was then that she saw it, the orange glow emanating from just below the door. The sound of it was baneful; in the midst of her rising panic, the jeweler likened it to the raucous hissing of a cat, steadily increasing in volume and dissipating into the crackling, jarring roar of a lion. The fire began to curl underneath the door, slipping in like the agile body of such a cat.

With just enough presence of mind to stick her bare feet into her boots, Sanoë pulled them on without doing up the laces, coughed from the astringent smell, and stumbled over to the window with Victor.

"Quick, out the window!" he said, the fear in his voice almost completely disguised by its forcefulness.

Sanoë stuck her head out to gauge exactly what distance the boxer intended them to travel. She looked down, down....and swiveled her head back around to stare at the man, her mouth open for a temporary loss of words.

"I-I can't....Victor, it's..." But at the look on his face, she started again. This was clearly no time for unhitherto expected hysterics. She swallowed hard against the dry lump in her throat. Feeling hotter than ever from the flames licking the doorway (and now catching onto a stray nightshirt) Sanoë grabbed hold of the window frame, heaving herself upward.

"Crazy....this is fucking crazy...." she muttered to herself as she rested for a split second, halfway between the dry heat in the room and the cool, early morning air. The hell do I look like, an athlete?! At that point she was sitting awkwardly on the window ledge, bits of glass cutting into her hands, and she thought, in the far reaches of her mind not imbued by terror, how embarrassing it would look if she were to get stuck halfway.

There was a long pipeline less than a foot above the window. Grabbing hold of it with one hand, Sanoë released the breath she'd been holding, and scooted herself out of the window.

The pipeline gave a horrible, metallic creak, and for a moment, the jeweler dangled two stories high. Her stomach twisted queasily. Before she could lose her hold on the pipe, Sanoë swung herself forward, angling towards the awning beneath her, and then let go. She fell with impossible speed, her body losing control of its stiffness, and then, finally, there was contact. For a moment, the awning bounced her back up an inch or two, then split. Sanoë hit the watery cement side-first.

Shit, shit, shit, oh....... The wind had been knocked out of her. She drew in a rattling breath, and when her lungs were able to function again, a piercing pain in her side killed her hope of escaping unscathed.

She was alive. She was alive, amazingly, wonderfully alive, but damnit, it hurt.

"Fucking concrete..." she said aloud, bracing herself up by her elbows and wincing. It was only after she was able to sit up on her own and put enormous pressure on the painful stitch in her side, that she remembered Victor.

"Victor!!" she called out, her side and shoulder protesting the overuse of her lungs. "Victor, come on! Shit...."

[The Cinderella Man]

Telling Sanoë to jump through the window was easy, instinctive, the way most things were when somebody uttered them without considering the ramifications. Following her, example, however, wasn’t easy at all. The jeweler scuttled out the window and made her leap of faith, hitting the awning dead-on and tearing through it almost immediately afterwards. For a moment Victor feared that she broke her back or her neck, but the textile of the canopy broke enough of her fall to keep her alive. All doubts in this little fact were cast away when she spat a curse like a sailor who just witnessed a sail tear. It would’ve made Victor smile, if not for the beast made of flames that was threatening to chew his ass off.

Casting one last look at the room behind him – a part of him hoping against hope that some other exit would miraculously appear – the prizefighter was about to follow his companion when a peculiar detail caught his eye. The fire engulfed half of the room by now, its flames marching forwards like obedient soldiers, eating through the couch on one side of the room and the kitchen cabinets on the other. But that wasn’t peculiar. What was became visible when one of the cabinets tore off the wall and came tumbling down into the flames. Behind it, nailed to the wall, was... something wrapped in tawny leather. It looked like one of rations that some Bazaar merchants packed for adventurers, square parcels perfect for storing in packs and carts. Victor doubted this particular bundle was edible. For one, it looked too thin to contain more then just a couple of pieces of toast, and for another, he doubted that there were people who kept eatable things behind a cabinet instead of inside one.

From the outside, Sanoë was crying out his name amidst the murmurs of other voices. Before him, the inferno was about to reach the leathery parcel. Neither option seemed too inviting to Victor Callahan. And yet, perhaps because he got hit in the head once too many, he decided to go through both of them. Scurrying around the bed, he made a run for the kitchen, vaulting over the table and burying his feet just as the fire started to make his bare skin feel as if he was getting roasted. “Goddamn, you dumb bastard,” he chastised himself, pulling his right hand into the leather sleeve of his coat to shield it from the flames. “You’re going to burn alive.”

He didn’t, though. His partially protected limb outstretched through the flames, snatching the bundle that was nailed against the wall. It smoldered in his hand, spreading the smell of burnt leather as he stuffed it into the pocket of his coat before he made a run for the window. Only when he pushed his head through the window again did he notice how sweaty he was, how relieving the outside air was on his face. The freefall was still as uninviting as ever, the height looking even greater now somehow. It was fear that clutched him, Victor knew. If a fear-stricken man counted his enemy twice and gravity was the enemy, them the boxer felt as if he was about to leap from the top floor of the Radasanth Palace. The crackle and the heat behind his back reminded him that, despite the possibility of breaking something, the jump was still lesser of the two evils.

He motioned his bulky body through the broken glass, legs first. A shard tore his pants at the back of his knee, another refused to let go of his coat, but soon enough Victor was standing on the ledge, searching for the optimal trajectory for his body. Half of the awning was gone after Sanoë made her fall which probably meant that the other half would tear with even more ease. Considering his size and weight, that wasn’t a promising observation. Still, it was the only thing to aim for save about a dozen of gathered people that screamed at him to jump. So he jumped, screaming something undecipherable.

Physics and estimating things were never Victor’s strong points. In this instance, both played their part. He was aiming for the other half of the sunblind, but his jump was too weak and the pull of gravity too strong. Instead of landing on the coarse material of the canopy, his back crashed against a supporting plywood beam. It dampened his fall, albeit in a rather crude manner, making him collide with the concrete hard before the entire construction of the awning followed his example. The voices fell silent, the people gathered observing the heap of wooden debris and torn canvas, half-expecting that nothing would stir beneath it.

“Damn, that hurts,” a voice dissuaded them, announcing a hand that pushed the remnants of the shabby porch. Beneath it, Victor and his painful grimace greeted the rest. Amidst the hands and faces that rushed towards him to help him up, the battered man accepted that of Sanoë. The woman wasn’t her usual dignified self, but after a thirty-foot drop from a fiery building, chances are that even Letho Ravenheart would’ve been somewhat shaken.

“Well, that was fun, in very life-threatening, not-at-all-fun kind of way,” he said to the jeweler, holding to his back like an old man with a bad case or ischia. Even at times like these, Victor couldn’t help jesting. Turning everything into a joke was his way of fending the serious stuff, making it more bearable. “Bet let us not try doing that again any time soon.”

It took the crash-landed prizefighter a couple of moments to get his bearings completely and estimate that nothing was broken and dislocated. But when he tried to examine Sanoë in the same way, he found himself studying her in a slightly different manner. Without her fancy robes encompassing her physique, the jeweler woman looked considerably more a woman then usual. Her singlet didn’t conceal nearly as much as her usual attire, making her look more like some maiden that just peeked outside her bedroom window after awakening. It lasted for several seconds this ogling of his, and it was probably rather blatant as well because soon Sanoë frowned and folded her arms before her chest, taking an almost defensive stance. It snapped Victor right out of any fervor that might’ve overtaken him.

“You alright?” he asked, diverting his eyes and combing some splinters out of his hair. Seeing that she probably felt rather uncomfortable in her sleeveless undershirt, he took off his coat and draped it around her shoulders. “There. I’m afraid your pretty robes are lost to the flames and it’s bound to be a rather crisp morning.”

Victor didn’t mind the view of Sanoë without her robes, but he reckoned that if he let his eyes wander again – which they probably would – he’d probably earn himself a slap.

[Empyrean]

Sanoë had almost let herself laugh, despite the circumstances. She'd found that in moments of panic and wariness and even in their aftermath, the most she could do to alleviate some of the day's burdens was to laugh them off. But laughing in the midst of a group of people just as alarmed and rumpled as though they had just been sprinting through a savage forest fire might not be the wisest thing to do. They might assume the jeweler to be amused at the sight of their temporary lodgings aflame, and then assume her to be the perpetrator. And Sanoë usually preferred to be blameless. Instead of allowing herself the jittery laugh that would have routinely followed the last few minutes of terror, an uneasy smile worked itself up from the depths of her shaken body.

As befit someone who'd just taken a thirty-foot plunge, she still felt startled and nearly stricken mute after her unexpected flight downward onto the dingy cement, but the emergence of Victor seemed to remedy most of her anxiety. His reappearance after landing on a wooden beam and having the whole damn thing topple and collapse on him was nothing short of astonishing. Relief swarmed her and replaced a great deal of the distress, and though it hurt her aching ribs to do so, she helped him to his feet and laughed weakly at his feeble joke.

"Well, jumping out the window was your idea, Victor..." said the jeweler, her eyes gleaming with a merriment that, despite her sudden geniality, she still had to muster up. "Maybe I just shouldn't listen to you anymore."

Even her own offhand remark seemed terribly funny. Perhaps her hysteria hadn't quite evaporated yet, but Sanoë had the oddest feeling that things would turn out alright. They'd survived a terrible accident and even managed to keep themselves intact for the most part. It was exceedingly strange for her to be so positive in light of a near-disaster. In her short time on Althanas, she'd had quite a few chance encounters with death, each time closely skirting the edge between living and dying and each time getting lucky. Each time, Death had brushed past her like a stranger following a familiar face in a heavy crowd. If she'd had a weaker constitution, she might have packed up the first time and set her sights on the most available route home. Yet here she was, alive and kicking and still following her brother's footprints without too many frequent thoughts of turning back.

To distract herself from her unexpected optimism, Sanoë promptly appraised the damage on Victor. His clothing was badly torn in a few spots, but from what she could see there was no broken skin, and though he had to crane over like some old fossil to make whatever pain his back had given him more endurable, he seemed to be recovering fairly quickly. In fact, he'd already gotten over the worst of it and was now similarly checking Sanoë for physical trauma. It took the jeweler an unusually long time to realize that his own obligatory examination of her did not have as much to do with her minor injury as it did with just looking at her. As his eyes continued to linger on her figure, Sanoë felt a compromising heat creeping up her neck into her face, and she instantly drew herself up to her full height. Admittedly, it didn't amount to much, being that Victor was taller by half a foot, but the almost severe look as her face tightened made her all the more formidable. The jeweler crossed her arms hastily.

"We need....we need to find out what happened," she said rather stupidly, tripping over some of her words. There was no mistaking her obvious discomposure; even after losing some of it to shards of glass, she still had enough blood left to fill up her face. The humiliation of it had rendered her defiant body language rather ineffective.

Victor never missed a beat. He jumped right back into that nonchalance with the punctual ease that the jeweler so envied, and covered her shoulders with his long leather coat. Sanoë felt a tingle skitter across the back of her neck that had very little to do with the morning's chill. Amidst the cloudy, dismal notion that she'd lost her precious, self-made jeweler's dress, she tried to array the thoughts smothering the part of her mind that usually dealt with rationality. Had Victor looked at her the way she suspected? She couldn't know for sure. Attraction, even the fleeting sort, was something that happened to other people. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride, as Jora used to say. Although the terms were highly off in this case.

This is not the time, idiot. Her rationality came back full-force, as always. This is hardly the time or place.

"Oh horseshit," she grunted, fuming at herself as the realization of her lost robe finally hit her. She colored a little at the accidental use of a swear word she'd picked up in Willowtown, and, refusing to look Victor in the face, slipped her arms through the sleeves of his coat. It was overly large on her, and warm with sweat from the rousing thirty-foot jump, and Victor's muscular arms....

"Let's go," she said shortly, striding forward in hopes that the cold air would fend off the excessive blood once again rushing to her cheeks.

It was, as the former prizefighter had predicted, a cold dawn that greeted the survivors of the fiery inn. The night's feebly glimmering stars had already half vanished in the sky, which was lit up as though it had recently been sieged by fireworks. The fire was escaping to the stars, slinking over walls and slipping through cracked doors that led to the roof. The greatest damage had been done to the floor in which Sanoë and Victor had resided, but instead of crumbling into ash, it only stood charred black and smelling even worse than before as several people climbed the stairs and flung buckets of water every which way. The air was thick with the scent of scorched wood.

As smoke rose and unfurled and swelled in the red-gold sky, the former inhabitants of the Hollow Ground Inn stood in disbelief and indignation. If it hadn' been for the cloaking smell of fear ripe on the wind, it would have been mightily funny to see all these people wandering about the cobblestones in their bedclothes. They were all muttering to each other in quiet tones, but still the noise was astonishingly loud.

Sanoë, assuming Victor had followed her, moved through the crowd of disgruntled, perplexed residents toward the innkeeper, Moyes. Before she could reach him, he was nearly accosted by quite a few people who looked like they had a bone or two to pick with him.

"The hell's going on, old man?" barked one of them, a fairly large man with graying hair who seemed to have lost his shirt in the mayhem. "I thought you got those goddamned kids off your property! Didn't you guarantee that there'd be no bonfires this time?"

"That was no bonfire, you imbecile," growled Moyes with a surprising amount of vigor for someone with so much less muscle than his interrogator. "It was inside the building."

"Alright then, you know so much, how'd the damn thing start up?"

Moyes was wringing his hands together in frustration. "How should I know?? I'm not the one who started it, so don't ask me. I don't have the slightest..."

"Will we get our money back?" asked a younger man whose arm was wrapped around the waist of a flustered young woman. The pair of them looked heavily tousled, and when the woman began to whine, Sanoë recognized their voices as belonging to the energetic couple from a few doors down. Spiteful as it was, the jeweler had to smirk at their comeuppance for 'disturbing the peace.'

"I'm not going home until someone recovers my silk robe!" shrilled the woman. "It cost too much to lose in some trashy hotel, if someone would just dash in there, I'm sure it landed somewhere by the closet earlier--"

Moderately certain that she didn't want to hear anymore, the jeweler turned to face Victor once more. "Great. So we get a crappy night's sleep, I lose my robe and my coat and take a lovely two-story fall, and we still don't even know what--"

"'Scuse me?"

Sanoë whirled around, half expecting another military inquisitor to be standing behind her, but instead there was a boy about half her height. His fair hair was just visible beneath a heavy cap that nearly sank over the child's eyes, but somehow he managed to see through the veil of blonde hair and dark cloth. He held out a small, crumpled slip of paper with strong, grubby hands.

"Yer Miss Sanoë, right?"

Apprehension clenched her stomach, though she wasn't sure why. "Yeah....yeah, that's me."

"They asked me to give ya this," he said, thrusting the note into her hand and wiping his nose on his cuff. His feet rocked back and forth as though he were itchy to be out of sight of the bewildered bunch outside Hollow Ground. "Gave me a fair bit of gold for it, too."

"That's....nice," replied Sanoë tersely. She'd never been very apt at dealing with children, finding them noisy and difficult. "Er....thank you." Well done, Sanoë. As always you are a moron of epic proportions.

The boy was off and running before Sanoë could even unfold the paper, sure enough to spend his new allowance. The jeweler looked in puzzlement at her companion, then smoothed out the many creases of the small paper.



You have been warned.

Coldness surged through her. She reread the note several times to try and reappraise its meaning as something that wasn't dire, but every word brought a new tidal wave of dread that washed away all her trivial concerns from just moments ago. When Victor tried to read over her shoulder, she wheeled around on the spot and read it aloud. "'You have been warned.'" Her voice was flat, but still she dropped the note into Victor's hands and moved quickly past him, down the more empty side of the street so he couldn't see her hands shaking.

It was that man. The man from Corone Law, his profile cut sharp like a diamond, his face now plastered to the forefront of her mind, along with Eliot's. How could she not have seen it before?? The one night that Moyes' establishment ends up in flames was the same day that Sanoë's search for her brother became common knowledge. The lurking form of Death, whom she'd just passed by, unnoticed, crept up behind her and let its fingers dance along the nape of her neck. Terror and anger coursed through her veins, and when she heard Victor's footsteps just behind her, she realized that she could not keep it all in this time. As she flexed her slender fingers, trying to work out the anxious knots that had formed, a dam in Sanoë loosened up, freeing the pent-up emotion.

"That is it!" she spat. "Goddamn it, Eliot, this is the last straw!"

She flung her arms into the air as though inviting the rest of her troubles to come back and plague her as well. "That's all he's good for! He gets himself into trouble and then drags me into it! He's done it since the day I met him, I knew this would happen, I fucking knew it, I had him pinned from day one."

She was aware that Victor was probably just as bewildered as those guests by now, but once she started venting it was hard for her to stop. Her voice threatened to break. "I can't - I can't do this anymore! I can't keep trying to babysit him and save his goddamned life when all he cares about is his little personal rebellion. Just because we share a last name doesn't mean I have to be his bloody savior."

Her voice had drawn itself into more of a sigh. She threw her hands out again, but feebly, and trudged over to a bench just outside a tiny shop, sinking down onto it. After a few moments of fiddling with her hands, Sanoë glanced up at the ex-boxer, her eyes red from fatigue and unshed tears. She looked tired.

"I'm sorry, Victor....I'm sorry, I'm sure my ranting and raving is the last thing you want to hear right now. I'm sorry you were pulled into this." She inhaled deeply to control her wavering voice and smiled grimly."I should've known bad luck was going miss my company sooner or later. Look, please, I'm sure you have better things to do than get stuck with someone who gets you into all sorts of danger. We could have died just now and according to this note, we could end up dead soon....like Eliot might be...." She swallowed hard. "I don't want....I don't want you to get hurt because of all my stupid troubles."

She meant to wrap her arms around herself, but something jabbed her sharply in the chest. The jeweler reached into the deep pocket of Victor's long coat, and pulled out a thin package. She examined it without much enthusiasm and handed it over to her companion.

"Here, that must be yours."

[The Cinderella Man]

Exhaling a lackluster sigh that seemed more fit for some graybeard, Victor took a seat on the bench next to the apparently vexed jeweler to whom the threatening note was the drop that spilled spilt the proverbial cup. In one quick rant, Sanoë expelled her emotions almost in a barrage, conveying them to the boxer unabridged, the way thoughts stormed through her head. It was sheer irritation at first, anger at her brother that was good for stirring the pot and little else. But once she was done with that, the more docile part of her came to surface, the part every woman had regardless of how hard she tried to hide it behind the mask of confidence and autonomy. Tears welled up her azure eyes and with it the concern for his wellbeing. It made Victor smile meekly; it had been a while since somebody gave a damn for him.

Reading the once sentence that somehow seemed more ominous in its brevity then any malevolent claptrap ever could, the prizefighter balled the paper up and flicked it away with a snap of his fingers. “Don’t worry about it,” he dismissed her worries offhandedly, with an unconcerned smile, as if she just accidentally stepped on his foot or sat on his glasses. “I’m a big boy, big enough not to get pulled into things I don’t want to be pulled in.”

The prizefighter nudged Sanoë gently with his shoulder, an almost playful gesture that clarified that there was no harm and no foul done. Other then the harm from their jump through the window of a burning building, of course. The thought of the plunge reminded his back that they were supposed to hurt again, so Victor leant against the backrest of the bench before he continued. “And the truth is I’m somewhat of a vagrant. I don’t exactly have somebody at home waiting for me. Or a home waiting for me. So if there’s a chance to do something good during my vagrancy, help somebody get out of some stupid trouble... Well, let’s just say I’m not the kind of a person that would walk out on that. Besides, chances are I’d get more hurt in the boxing ring then while helping you.”

He kept talking as the jeweler offered him the parcel he snatched from the jaws of the fire, his hands working on unpacking the damn thing. “I understand your frustration, though. My little sister maybe never got into the trouble of Eliot’s caliber, but she had her moments. And they always happened because she stubbornly tries to do things her way.” The burnt leather that protected the contents of the parcel slowly gave way to what looked like a tome with its front hardcover torn off. “But regardless of what she did, I could never just turn my back on her. Blood is not water, not for me it isn’t. And given the fact that you went so far on a limb that you followed your brother to a foreign land, I reckon you feel the same.”

The little, sedate speech held more sincerity then Victor uttered in a long while. The boxer was never a man of many words, but not because he was unable to form three consecutive sentences, but rather because words were a waste with majority of people. Most folk expected you to listen litanies of their plight, but when you tried to move the topic away from them, there was suddenly a vacant space between their ears, allowing the words to pass from one ear to the other unobstructed. But Sanoë definitely didn’t seem like one of those. She was much more like Victor himself, voicing her thoughts when she absolutely couldn’t hold them back anymore or when there was necessity for them. And while she probably didn’t need a shoulder to cry on right now, the jeweler needed something reassuring, a hopeful foothold in the world that was slowly crumbling around her.

As it turned out, the package that the prizefighter procured, was turning out to be just that. Though the flames were slowly dying down and the sun was just about to pop above the horizon, Victor was able to discern some of the words written in the tome. He wasn’t quite certain that the book was Eliot’s doing, but according to the format that contained dates and thick-paragraphed entries, it seemed like a journal of sorts. And the word that came poking at his straining eyes was the one they read back in the library.

Coalition.

“Here, this might cheer you up a bit,” he said, handing the tattered tome to Sanoë. “I found it back in Eliot’s room, wrapped in leather and hidden behind a kitchen cabinet. Nearly got my arm charcoaled while I tried to get it. But it might contain some clues to his whereabouts. I mean, he probably wouldn’t go to the trouble of hiding the thing behind a cabinet if there wasn’t something worth hiding.”

Casting the leather envelope aside, Victor got up to his feet with another one of those tired groans. He tried to stretch a little bit, but the motion nearly made his eyeballs pop out as his back insisted on hurting like a bitch, so he didn’t persist in taunting the bruise. “We should probably get going. I’m getting tired of breathing all this smoke,” he said to the jeweler, determined not to leave her in this pickle all by her lonesome. “I think there are some bakeries open by now, up in the Bazaar. We can get some breakfast, see if there’s something useful in that book and where do we go from there.”

This time he offered her a helping hand, making it clear that the warning in both the note and her words failed to waver his resolve.

[Empyrean]

Blood, huh.

There were many things more important than the topic of the thickness of family blood that had yet to take root in Sanoë's ever-apprehensive subconscious, but oddly enough, it chose to settle just on that dicey subject.

Sanoë was not a person who had the utmost faith in the durability of family ties.

She was born into family dysfunction. It was difficult, in fact, to say that she had even been born into a family at all, for what little 'family' she did have was brittle at best. The most she remembered of her biological mother were as brief as flashes of lightning, snapshots in a hastily-arranged psychological slideshow. Her mother taking her gently by the hand, the woman's grip tightening on young Sanoë's stout fingers as she toddled down the marble hallway on eager, two-year-old legs. Admiring those tall, imposing copper statues of soldiers and staring at the passing uniformed men and women who stared coldly back. Her mother, brushing back luxuriant hair the color of burnished copper wire with an old comb as Sanoë watched, fixated on the slow, rhythmic strokes, swinging her small, calloused feet back and forth over the rim of the toilet seat in the decrepit apartment. Her mother rigging up a little shelter for them under the picnic table in the park, stars blinking overhead, trying to explain to her young daughter why they had to camp out instead of sleeping in beds.

Her mother, bathed in white, incandescent light that came through the open door, who made for a gorgeous silhouette walking away, as three-year-old Sanoë scratched Jora's aging arms in a failed attempt to run after her. It was that last image she recalled most vividly, in a more artistic rendering, painting her mother in a better, more beautiful light than she usually did. Ileana never did come back. Sanoë figured eventually that it was for the same reasons she'd never met her father, either. Pretty soon she'd stopped asking.

Even Eliot, whom she'd always thought of as an impressively passionate person, was, she felt, deserving of a little criticism. He'd spent two long, tedious years looking for any possibility of a sibling, going as far as sneaking into military records to find birth certificates. For a man with as much devotion as a puppy blindsided by a treat, he certainly had been quick to up and leave his only sister once he'd latched onto a worthy cause.

Clearly, her family's blood was as diluted as the water running through the sewer system yards beneath her feet.

On the other hand, Eliot was the only family - blood-related, anyway - she had. If he lost anything of importance, be it life or limb, she'd never forgive herself for turning into her mother and abandoning him. She'd come to this point so far and managed to keep herself alive and her head still somewhat hinged on her shoulders. It was an effort worth preserving.

Besides, she missed the stupid boy.

She'd caught only the tail end of Victor's words, and gave him a wan, guilty smile as she accepted the singed volume and Victor's extended palm, both with still-jittery hands. "You need to stop sticking your neck out for me so much," she said, half-serious and half-joking as she gripped the book tightly enough to steady her fingers. In the early morning Sanoë's shaking hands looked frail, as though the skin were going to begin coming off in flakes. The things she got in her head.

"I'm not used t--I've sort of been on my own for..." She'd been on the way to 'I can take care of myself,' but having already been silently reproached for said attitude, she decided to keep it to herself. Victor didn't need to be inadvertently - or directly - told off for being a nice guy.

"I just want you to know that, if for any reason, this--" - she twisted her hand in vague motions through the air as she walked, the sleeves of Victor's spacious coat flopping around - "gets to be too much for you....please don't feel obligated to stick around. I know you can take care of yourself - I'm the same way - but, either way, you've got your own life and I don't want to know it's been largely interrupted by some girl who asked you into a library."

She'd meant it to sound more humorous, but as she sat in her current stew of anxiety and fear, she felt stiff and unfunny. Her side still pained her from the fall if she moved the wrong way, so the lack of laughter was more or less a good thing.

As she spoke, she thumbed idly through the leather-bound notebook, if only to distract herself from her growing concern for Victor's wellbeing in her company, Eliot's predicament, and her own safety. Sanoë caught glimpses of her brother's writing as she flipped the pages. Big-lettered, spontaneous notes with elaborate lines, written in haste. A shortcut through writing eloquently to get to the meat of the matter in short bursts of the written word. Of course it was Eliot.

She started walking faster in anticipation, unconsciously so, when she saw the entry a few pages from the middle of the tome, where the empty, unused pages began. It was a word at the end of the short entry that had caught her eye, but still she read through the entire two paragraphs, which were dated from the middle of the week before:



I found it. Took a fuckin' long time to find any info, but doesn't everything for me nowadays? Made a stop by the library, fortunately - good thing I keep at it! Would've been a faster trip if it weren't for that bitch at the desk. Everyone's a snob in this town. Bet she was related to Alain. Blonde, though. Always liked blondes. Wasn't the best-lookin', but you know what a good rack does for an ugly face.
It's in Concordia. Makes sense. Coalition would want to keep their HQ isolated and thought obsolete. On my way out today. Gave Alain my notice earlier, got bitched out as usual. Not my problem he'd rather keep pandering to these bureaucrats. That bastard deserves to get lung cancer. If you wanna help people, a little getting off your fat ass is required. If they don't do it, I will.

If he were around, Sanoë knew instinctively that he would be ducking from blows dealt by his half-sister after reading his comment regarding women's looks. Trying to smother a laugh she felt she shouldn't be exhibiting, Sanoë read eagerly over what had captured her attention.



Note to self:

Send Snowy a letter upon arrival in Concordia so she won't piss her pants worrying. Also might want to buy a helmet. May get smacked upon return home.


She stopped walking immediately and slapped a hand over her mouth, stifling the chuckle that threatened to come out. A twinge of reminiscence made her smile, however, when she dropped her hand and turned to Victor. "He's already there, in Concordia," she said almost breathlessly. "This is his journal, it's all his, he even mentioned me, just there--"

In a rare fit of excitement, she pointed unnecessarily to the name 'Snowy' in the note as they walked away from Moyes' inn on the cobblestones. "He, uh, whenever he gets drunk and stumbles around the apartment, he slurs everything and somehow ends up calling me 'Snowy,' even when he's sober, the idiot," she chattered, smiling almost giddily, as though the appearance of Eliot's words somehow resurrected him from wherever he was and planted him on the street in front of them. "Maybe this means he's safe, maybe he knows what he's doing--"

In her elation, Sanoë was overwhelmingly grateful to Victor. Settling a hand firmly on his shoulder, she went on, "Thanks for sticking your arm behind the cabinet, Victor, really. I mean, this is, this is just--"

Well, Overly-Cheerful Sanoë never did stick around for more than the allotted time, and once the jeweler came to her senses, she plucked her hand away from the man's shoulder and went back to clutching the book, still saving that particular page. She'd gone far over her quota of excessive friendliness recently, especially with Victor.

"Here, you can--you can look at that if you'd like. Hopefully it doesn't hold any other reminders involving me." She stared straight ahead to keep from seeing Victor's face after her spontaneous bout of giddiness. "Breakfast sounds fantastic right now."

She wasn't entirely sure she wanted to go into any public domain looking singed and scratched, with her hair an unholy mess and her body clothed in a practical stranger's coat, but, as usual, she didn't have much of a say in the matter.

[The Cinderella Man]

Unfortunately for Victor’s curiosity – awoken by the endearing little snippet at the bottom of the page – the journal offered no further mention of either Sanoë or Snowy or any other potentially embarrassing nickname. This Eliot fellow, though quite humorous at times, was far too self-centered, it seemed, yammering on about how he had done this, planned to do that, how he wooed some strumpet or blarneyed a hawker into lowering the price of some item or other. It was a collection of his personal conquest and failures, but that wasn’t surprising given the nature of the tome. Journals were written snapshots of one’s life, capturing something important, something that seems deadly crucial at that point. To Eliot that something was Eliot.

“Hmm, no mention of the exact location,” Victor wound up muttering to himself once his fingers flipped the next page and his eyes found it blank. They had been ambling through the streets of Radasanth long enough for the sun to come up and change the color of the world, painting the sky into a healthy shade of blue and the alleys to a lighter, less ominous shade of gray. The resurrected daily illumination allowed for a closer inspection of the journal. For all the entries about the Coalition – and there were quite a few – none pinpointed the coveted organization. Whether this was because Eliot was smart enough not to disclose such a thing in a journal or because he seemed to have the attention span of a fish in a bowl that always followed your finger that tapped on the glass, the prizefighter couldn’t tell. What he could, however, was that without something more concrete, they were looking for a needle in a forest of needles. And Concordia was one hell of a forest.

“It doesn’t say where exactly he’s heading,” Victor repeated with more clarity once he lifted his eyes from the book and noticed an inquiring look on Sanoë’s face. He closed the book, made a move to stuff it into the deep pocket of his coat and wound up looking silly when he realized he didn’t wear the damn thing at the time.

“Concordia is a very broad term, and by that I mean it’s a pretty damn big woodland,” he continued with a bit of haste, hoping dialogue would detract from his embarrassing reflex. A part of him didn’t want to give voice to these thoughts. The possibility that the information from the journal offered put a light on Sanoë’s face, the soft kind of warmth that contrasted the usual, frigid expression. Shooting down that hope she put up was dirty work, but he felt inclined to do it. Better to be miserable then deluded. He secured Eliot’s diary in the back pocket of his pants and went on. “I used to work in one of the places down there. Darth’s Ditch I believe it was called. Not a bad little place for a one horse town filled with woodcutters and... Well, mostly woodcutters. Anyways, I remember going for a stroll once. It wound being a three day wandering until some Rangers found me.”

He sniggered at the recollection distantly. It was a funny story now, an interesting little anecdote that could break ice and elicit some smiles, but back then, when he was tired and hungry and scared to his boots by every shadow the moonlight and the wind played with, there was nothing comical about it. It was blind luck that he hadn’t wound up as some beast’s midnight snack. The Rangers said it was one in a million shot that they stumbled upon him. Victor just thanked the gods that for once it wasn’t the bad kind of luck that was upon him.

By the time they reached the Bazaar, Sanoë didn’t seem all that giddy and high-spirited anymore, the conversation came to a chilly halt and they wound up staring at the cobbles a whole lot, each wrapped in the shawl of their own thoughts. But at least food was within sight. The Bazaar district was by far the first one to awaken from the nightly slumber, with the merchants and their servants preparing the stands and the shops for another day of merciless shopping. A far number of them scuttled this way and that, unloading the carts and wheelbarrows, setting up the awnings, sweeping the litter away from their stands, pulling back the shades from the windows, chalking down the daily specials and the three-for-one deals. The smells invaded, mixed and intertwined to the point where you couldn’t tell whether it was an orange you’re smelling or a batch of silks from Raiaera. And the best thing about it was that it was all still fresh, unpolluted by the countless sweating bodies and the rot brought by the heat of the midday sun. If he weren’t religiously grumpy in the morning and there wasn’t this cloud of hopelessness looming above them, Victor would’ve actually enjoyed the visit.

The bakery awaited them with open doors, together with a short queue of early risers that got in line for the cheaper types of bread that got sold in a hurry. They were mostly older, decrepit people, to whom every copper piece mattered, and they sort of murdered the fresh scent of the morning, but Victor and Sanoë got in line all the same. It took them some five minutes to reach the fat baker in a flour-covered apron – flour -overed pretty much everything – and his young female assistant that struggled to serve the customers as fast as possible. Victor picked up a bagel with some minced meat in it, a good hard breakfast for the beginning of a hard day. Once Sanoë got what she wished for and he paid for the pastry goods, they stepped outside and took a seat on the steps that led to the shop next door, which still remained dormant.

The bagel was still steaming hot in his hands, but Victor was reluctant to eat. Compared to a woman eating, a man looked like a barbarian with a lamb loin in his hands regardless of how much he tried. Sure, there were always those delicate fairies that knew the purpose of each and every one of those twelve forks and spoons, those sissies that sipped some pansy liquor from tiny glasses with two fingers and an outstretched pinky, but most normal males lacked the subtlety. So for the time being, Victor decided to let the pastry cool down a bit and instead give some food for both their thoughts.

“Maybe we could hire a tracker,” he finally said, breaking the silence and the monotony of the steadily rising hubbub of the Bazaar. He looked at his bagel instead of Sanoë, trying to decide from which side to attack it. “Well, maybe not the usual kind. I mean, a ranger would be useless. Eliot’s trail would be impossible to find now. But I heard there are some folk that track people by magic. You know, they do some voodoo or somesuch, speak some gibberish and show some razzle-dazzle. Frankly, I think it’s all a big sham, but we can give it a go if you want to.”

Frankly, Victor thought those people were more full of shit then the public latrines in the Slums, but it was still a better option that combing Concordia with a two-tooth comb.