Little Lies
11-29-06, 12:04 AM
{open}
A small house stood on the corner of Hill Street and Soothsayer's Way in the Outlander's Quarters. The beige brick walls that clothed the two story box were dirtier than the streets that flanked it and just outside one black-painted door a rotting redwood sign hung from rusted chains. It rocked in the wind, shrieking with every movement, until finally one of the chains broke and it fell, spinning and swinging on the one line. Heavy lace curtains obscured the view into the windows, but the glow of fire danced behind them, casting shadows onto the sidewalk that run before the house. Every few moments, a blurry darkness would interrupt the orange glow to pass by the window, until finally the lights were extinguished. The door opened with a sickening creak, a few flakes of paint falling from the frame as a figure emerged. It stopped for a moment and pulled the decimated sign completely from the eaves where it hung and flung it off the side of the steps. A second followed a moment later, locking the door behind it and joined their companion under the streetlamp’s flickering light.
The first figure, a tall woman with pale hair and an even more ghostly complexion, walked quickly, forcing the shorter of the two to walk with a faster gait. The wind of the evening tugged at her clothing, causing it to tighten against her back to reveal the outline of her ribcage. In the dim light of the lamps, she seemed even thinner, a wraith that stalked the streets of the Quarters. The other, a man who came only to her shoulder, was seemingly the opposite, his extended belly shaking with the efforts his body was making to keep up to the woman. He was as filthy as his home had been, smudges of coal across his olive skin. He was wearing a cloak in the warm evening, tattered as it was, and as they passed by a constable’s station he pulled it even closer to him. The dozing officer shifted as they passed and the two ducked into an alleyway just beside the station. In silence, they crossed to the end, avoiding piles of garbage that lined the sides of the narrow walkway until they emerged out the end. Several buildings here were in ruins, hulls of homes with caverns of blackened brick stood as monuments to the recent attacks against the island. Above the skyline, the Jya’s Keep could be seen in the haze of the hearth fires of those that refused to leave the city when the siege began.
They paused for a moment as the wind seemed to change, and both turned up their eyes to scan the skies. After a moment, they set off again, the woman now walking so quickly that the man had to jog to stay just behind her. They came at last to a building that seemed to have no door nor windows. It was nestled so snugly between the houses beside it that even the skeletal frame of the woman could not have squeezed down the side. The woman stopped by the nearest lamp and lifted the glass casing, letting the wind extinguish the light as the man leaned against the front wall of the building. His hand groped along the wall and finally stopped upon a brick. Leaning on his hand, the brick pushed easily inwards until stopping with a mechanical click. Several other bricks along the wall began to pull in, the bricks just under them sliding outwards until there was a ladder up the side of the building. The man moved aside so that the woman could scale up it. With the skill gained from habit rather than fitness, she made her way quickly. Towards the top, her sandals slid on a slick piece, but she caught herself and hoisted up the rest of the way. When she was settled on the roof, the man began to climb as she did, though he was having far more difficulty with the demanding task.
“Take off your cursed cloak!” she whispered violently, looking up and down the street as she did so. The man, however, set his face into a determined scowl and shook his head, sweat shining on the top of his balding head between patches of black hair. His progress never picked up, but soon he was near the top. The girl began to wring her hands together, anxiously looking up the street where a threatening glow was beginning to grow ever brighter in the alleyway between two buildings. “Hurry up!” she whispered again, putting out her hand for him to take hold of. “Copper’s coming!”
He, however, didn’t seem to hear her. He stared strangely at his hand, placed on the brick that she’d slipped on before and then looked up at her again. “Blood…” he said, and then as he seemed to realize what exactly was going on, he looked up again and screamed “BLOOD!” The light was now bobbing closer, the sound of footsteps accompanying, slamming down on the pavement. The girl’s hand shot down, grabbed the man by the cloak and pulled, throwing her body back to give herself extra leverage. Heavy as he was, he seemed to fly upwards, landing heavily on the roof beside her. Still holding onto his cloak, she pulled them to the other side of the front dormer of the building, her fist slamming into a lone protruding brick. It was shoved in, and with the same sound of mechanics, the ladder on the front of the wall righted itself to a sheer surface once again. The girl leaned back against the side of the dormer and held her breath as she heard the footsteps move in front of the building and stop, a searchlight sliding across the roof to jump onto the fringe of the building beside them. The man began to move towards the back of the building, his steps dislodging one of the shingles of the roof. Madly, the woman reached for it, but it slid out of her grasp and clattered to the ground. The searchlight dropped, and the officer took a step towards the building until pausing. As the two stay shoved against the wall of the windowless dormer, they held their breathes, listening carefully as the officer took one more step towards the building, paused again and then turned and walked away.
When silence once again reigned in the night, the two moved to the end of the building together, not bothering with a second shingle that fell, until they reached the end of the roof. A terrace extended out from the back side of the building, and they dropped onto it together. Turning, they now faced the only entrance into the building; a steel door that didn’t seem to have any hinges. The man knocked, and a paper thin space opened up on the surface of the door.
“Pass code,” a gruff voice demanded with the air that the offer to enter would not be extended again.
“Shades the Daisy.” the man said, and the space closed firmly. After a moment, the door slid sideways, revealing a long, empty hallway. As they stepped inside, the door slid back, but the guard was nowhere to be seen. Not bothered by this, the two continued down the hallway and stopped before a door painted with the same black peeling paint that the man’s own door had been. A sigil had been carved into it, revealing an archaic symbol in the golden color that the door had originally been. The man again knocked, and waited until the door was opened by a thin man with skin as black as the night outside. His iris’ were crystal blue, the surrounding eyeball a swirl of pinks and reds from where blood vessels had burst. He moved aside so that the two could enter the room and moved to a small sofa where a woman now reclined.
Her skin was the same shade as her companion’s, and her eyes the same crystal, but devoid of the red that his held. Where he kept his head shaved, she had long, luxurious crimson locks that spilled down the side of the sofa and wound across the ground like threads of red silk. She lifted her legs so that he could sit down and then laid them on his lap, intent on not getting up as the two newcomers entered the room. Another sofa sat across a small table from where the two sat. The tall woman was the first to sit down, leaning back and crossing her brown denim-clad legs. The man sat beside her, his beloved cloak falling open to reveal a pair of leather pants and a vest of chain mail that seemed to shimmer. The tall woman stared at it for a moment before she realized that while they'd moved through the streets and up the wall, she'd never heard the clink of metal under his cloak.
“Did you bring the papers?” the black-skinned man asked. His voice was rich, with an Alerian lilt to it, and it pulled the woman out of her reverie.
“We do not need to discuss the papers right now,” the short man said, waving his hand. “We need to discuss payment.” This brought a scowl from the other man, and even the woman with him seemed to lose some of her relaxed poise.
“Herald, we will not pay until we see papers. That was the agreement we made with your contact!” His fist curled up and he hit the top of the table for emphasis as his voice rose. The man he’d called Herald didn’t seem to be disturbed by it, but he did reach into his cloak and produced two of the coveted passes that would allow the other two to freely wander about Fallien.
“I have the papers here, but they don’t have your names on them, or the proper seals. They won’t until you pay us.”
The man seemed about to begin yelling again, but the woman leaned forward, placing her hand on his shoulder. He stopped, staring into her eyes. Something unspoken passed between them and finally he nodded. He turned back to Herald and the woman, his hands out, pleading.
“I am very sick, and the authorities here do not want us leaving the quarantine of the Quarters. We must get to the Spicelands to find a cure for this. I will pay anything you wish.” At this plea, a gleeful grin spread across Herald’s face, and he began rubbing his hands together.
“These things aren’t easy to forge, and getting the sigil is even more difficult. It was a very expensive favor you asked me for.”
“Three thousand.” the blonde woman who’d been silent until now spoke up. Herald looked at her, a scowl across his face, and as he began to stammer an argument, she silenced him with a single glare. Turning back to the couple she spoke again. “Three thousand, but it must be paid in cash and it must be paid now. War has come to this place, and while you wander further into the desert, we will need to purchase passage out of here.”
The money passed quickly between the two men, the papers taken care of, and as the couple left the room, the woman paused at the door, looking over her shoulder through a cascade of cherry at the blonde, who had once again leaned back in her place. For a moment, she seemed about to say something, but thought better of it and left. Alone, Herald turned on the woman, his anger evident in his face.
“What a sob story! We could have fleeced them for all they had!” The woman waved his tirade off, putting her feet up on the small table.
“Three is more than enough to get us out of this hell hole tonight and still have enough left over to set up shop in Corone. Besides, I don’t want a curse on my soul. You know as well as I do that they won’t last a week out here. If they’re going to die, they’re going to either be harpy meat or join the ranks of the Arta. I won’t have them have starved to death because we took all their money.”
“I don’t see how you get through life being that superstitious. There are things far more real out there than old stories, Paz.”
“Like the old stories on your palm, Hero? Or my shoe, for that matter?” she asked with a grin, holding up a sandaled foot so that he could see the red stain smeared across the bottom of it.
“You don’t know that they did that.” he said seriously, staring at his hand again. Paz shrugged, running a bony hand through her thick flaxen mane.
“No, I don’t, but it doesn’t matter. They’ll smell the blood. The house is marked, whether they did it or not. They’ll come before the night is over. I’m surprised, actually. Usually they’re tossing firebombs by now.”
“They probably had to stop to take a piss,” he quipped, before wrapping his cloak around him to disguise the armor underneath and moved to the door. “Shevek’s selling the tickets to us, so let’s get across the hall and get them before it’s too late for us to get out of here.”
Paz stood, stretching and had walked halfway to the door when the building began to shake. As she dropped to the ground, she called out to Herald, who was moving closer to the door. His hand hovered over the door handle as he stared down at it. The knob glowed red for just one moment and he had the good sense to throw himself to the ground as the next rumble came, blowing the door open and a ball of fire exploded into the room. The shaking of the building seemed to rise to it’s peak, and for a moment Paz felt her friend’s hand on her shoulder before the entire floor collapsed under them, sending them falling, screaming, into the blackness of the first floor.
A small house stood on the corner of Hill Street and Soothsayer's Way in the Outlander's Quarters. The beige brick walls that clothed the two story box were dirtier than the streets that flanked it and just outside one black-painted door a rotting redwood sign hung from rusted chains. It rocked in the wind, shrieking with every movement, until finally one of the chains broke and it fell, spinning and swinging on the one line. Heavy lace curtains obscured the view into the windows, but the glow of fire danced behind them, casting shadows onto the sidewalk that run before the house. Every few moments, a blurry darkness would interrupt the orange glow to pass by the window, until finally the lights were extinguished. The door opened with a sickening creak, a few flakes of paint falling from the frame as a figure emerged. It stopped for a moment and pulled the decimated sign completely from the eaves where it hung and flung it off the side of the steps. A second followed a moment later, locking the door behind it and joined their companion under the streetlamp’s flickering light.
The first figure, a tall woman with pale hair and an even more ghostly complexion, walked quickly, forcing the shorter of the two to walk with a faster gait. The wind of the evening tugged at her clothing, causing it to tighten against her back to reveal the outline of her ribcage. In the dim light of the lamps, she seemed even thinner, a wraith that stalked the streets of the Quarters. The other, a man who came only to her shoulder, was seemingly the opposite, his extended belly shaking with the efforts his body was making to keep up to the woman. He was as filthy as his home had been, smudges of coal across his olive skin. He was wearing a cloak in the warm evening, tattered as it was, and as they passed by a constable’s station he pulled it even closer to him. The dozing officer shifted as they passed and the two ducked into an alleyway just beside the station. In silence, they crossed to the end, avoiding piles of garbage that lined the sides of the narrow walkway until they emerged out the end. Several buildings here were in ruins, hulls of homes with caverns of blackened brick stood as monuments to the recent attacks against the island. Above the skyline, the Jya’s Keep could be seen in the haze of the hearth fires of those that refused to leave the city when the siege began.
They paused for a moment as the wind seemed to change, and both turned up their eyes to scan the skies. After a moment, they set off again, the woman now walking so quickly that the man had to jog to stay just behind her. They came at last to a building that seemed to have no door nor windows. It was nestled so snugly between the houses beside it that even the skeletal frame of the woman could not have squeezed down the side. The woman stopped by the nearest lamp and lifted the glass casing, letting the wind extinguish the light as the man leaned against the front wall of the building. His hand groped along the wall and finally stopped upon a brick. Leaning on his hand, the brick pushed easily inwards until stopping with a mechanical click. Several other bricks along the wall began to pull in, the bricks just under them sliding outwards until there was a ladder up the side of the building. The man moved aside so that the woman could scale up it. With the skill gained from habit rather than fitness, she made her way quickly. Towards the top, her sandals slid on a slick piece, but she caught herself and hoisted up the rest of the way. When she was settled on the roof, the man began to climb as she did, though he was having far more difficulty with the demanding task.
“Take off your cursed cloak!” she whispered violently, looking up and down the street as she did so. The man, however, set his face into a determined scowl and shook his head, sweat shining on the top of his balding head between patches of black hair. His progress never picked up, but soon he was near the top. The girl began to wring her hands together, anxiously looking up the street where a threatening glow was beginning to grow ever brighter in the alleyway between two buildings. “Hurry up!” she whispered again, putting out her hand for him to take hold of. “Copper’s coming!”
He, however, didn’t seem to hear her. He stared strangely at his hand, placed on the brick that she’d slipped on before and then looked up at her again. “Blood…” he said, and then as he seemed to realize what exactly was going on, he looked up again and screamed “BLOOD!” The light was now bobbing closer, the sound of footsteps accompanying, slamming down on the pavement. The girl’s hand shot down, grabbed the man by the cloak and pulled, throwing her body back to give herself extra leverage. Heavy as he was, he seemed to fly upwards, landing heavily on the roof beside her. Still holding onto his cloak, she pulled them to the other side of the front dormer of the building, her fist slamming into a lone protruding brick. It was shoved in, and with the same sound of mechanics, the ladder on the front of the wall righted itself to a sheer surface once again. The girl leaned back against the side of the dormer and held her breath as she heard the footsteps move in front of the building and stop, a searchlight sliding across the roof to jump onto the fringe of the building beside them. The man began to move towards the back of the building, his steps dislodging one of the shingles of the roof. Madly, the woman reached for it, but it slid out of her grasp and clattered to the ground. The searchlight dropped, and the officer took a step towards the building until pausing. As the two stay shoved against the wall of the windowless dormer, they held their breathes, listening carefully as the officer took one more step towards the building, paused again and then turned and walked away.
When silence once again reigned in the night, the two moved to the end of the building together, not bothering with a second shingle that fell, until they reached the end of the roof. A terrace extended out from the back side of the building, and they dropped onto it together. Turning, they now faced the only entrance into the building; a steel door that didn’t seem to have any hinges. The man knocked, and a paper thin space opened up on the surface of the door.
“Pass code,” a gruff voice demanded with the air that the offer to enter would not be extended again.
“Shades the Daisy.” the man said, and the space closed firmly. After a moment, the door slid sideways, revealing a long, empty hallway. As they stepped inside, the door slid back, but the guard was nowhere to be seen. Not bothered by this, the two continued down the hallway and stopped before a door painted with the same black peeling paint that the man’s own door had been. A sigil had been carved into it, revealing an archaic symbol in the golden color that the door had originally been. The man again knocked, and waited until the door was opened by a thin man with skin as black as the night outside. His iris’ were crystal blue, the surrounding eyeball a swirl of pinks and reds from where blood vessels had burst. He moved aside so that the two could enter the room and moved to a small sofa where a woman now reclined.
Her skin was the same shade as her companion’s, and her eyes the same crystal, but devoid of the red that his held. Where he kept his head shaved, she had long, luxurious crimson locks that spilled down the side of the sofa and wound across the ground like threads of red silk. She lifted her legs so that he could sit down and then laid them on his lap, intent on not getting up as the two newcomers entered the room. Another sofa sat across a small table from where the two sat. The tall woman was the first to sit down, leaning back and crossing her brown denim-clad legs. The man sat beside her, his beloved cloak falling open to reveal a pair of leather pants and a vest of chain mail that seemed to shimmer. The tall woman stared at it for a moment before she realized that while they'd moved through the streets and up the wall, she'd never heard the clink of metal under his cloak.
“Did you bring the papers?” the black-skinned man asked. His voice was rich, with an Alerian lilt to it, and it pulled the woman out of her reverie.
“We do not need to discuss the papers right now,” the short man said, waving his hand. “We need to discuss payment.” This brought a scowl from the other man, and even the woman with him seemed to lose some of her relaxed poise.
“Herald, we will not pay until we see papers. That was the agreement we made with your contact!” His fist curled up and he hit the top of the table for emphasis as his voice rose. The man he’d called Herald didn’t seem to be disturbed by it, but he did reach into his cloak and produced two of the coveted passes that would allow the other two to freely wander about Fallien.
“I have the papers here, but they don’t have your names on them, or the proper seals. They won’t until you pay us.”
The man seemed about to begin yelling again, but the woman leaned forward, placing her hand on his shoulder. He stopped, staring into her eyes. Something unspoken passed between them and finally he nodded. He turned back to Herald and the woman, his hands out, pleading.
“I am very sick, and the authorities here do not want us leaving the quarantine of the Quarters. We must get to the Spicelands to find a cure for this. I will pay anything you wish.” At this plea, a gleeful grin spread across Herald’s face, and he began rubbing his hands together.
“These things aren’t easy to forge, and getting the sigil is even more difficult. It was a very expensive favor you asked me for.”
“Three thousand.” the blonde woman who’d been silent until now spoke up. Herald looked at her, a scowl across his face, and as he began to stammer an argument, she silenced him with a single glare. Turning back to the couple she spoke again. “Three thousand, but it must be paid in cash and it must be paid now. War has come to this place, and while you wander further into the desert, we will need to purchase passage out of here.”
The money passed quickly between the two men, the papers taken care of, and as the couple left the room, the woman paused at the door, looking over her shoulder through a cascade of cherry at the blonde, who had once again leaned back in her place. For a moment, she seemed about to say something, but thought better of it and left. Alone, Herald turned on the woman, his anger evident in his face.
“What a sob story! We could have fleeced them for all they had!” The woman waved his tirade off, putting her feet up on the small table.
“Three is more than enough to get us out of this hell hole tonight and still have enough left over to set up shop in Corone. Besides, I don’t want a curse on my soul. You know as well as I do that they won’t last a week out here. If they’re going to die, they’re going to either be harpy meat or join the ranks of the Arta. I won’t have them have starved to death because we took all their money.”
“I don’t see how you get through life being that superstitious. There are things far more real out there than old stories, Paz.”
“Like the old stories on your palm, Hero? Or my shoe, for that matter?” she asked with a grin, holding up a sandaled foot so that he could see the red stain smeared across the bottom of it.
“You don’t know that they did that.” he said seriously, staring at his hand again. Paz shrugged, running a bony hand through her thick flaxen mane.
“No, I don’t, but it doesn’t matter. They’ll smell the blood. The house is marked, whether they did it or not. They’ll come before the night is over. I’m surprised, actually. Usually they’re tossing firebombs by now.”
“They probably had to stop to take a piss,” he quipped, before wrapping his cloak around him to disguise the armor underneath and moved to the door. “Shevek’s selling the tickets to us, so let’s get across the hall and get them before it’s too late for us to get out of here.”
Paz stood, stretching and had walked halfway to the door when the building began to shake. As she dropped to the ground, she called out to Herald, who was moving closer to the door. His hand hovered over the door handle as he stared down at it. The knob glowed red for just one moment and he had the good sense to throw himself to the ground as the next rumble came, blowing the door open and a ball of fire exploded into the room. The shaking of the building seemed to rise to it’s peak, and for a moment Paz felt her friend’s hand on her shoulder before the entire floor collapsed under them, sending them falling, screaming, into the blackness of the first floor.