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peopleofthedas2011-04-10 04:05 pm
what_ithacas_mean) wrote in peopleofthedas2011-04-10 04:05 pm
Entry tags:
Fic Prompt: "The Affair of the Stolen Dagger, Part 2"
title: "The Affair of the Stolen Dagger, Part 2."
characters: Soris, f!Tabris
rating/warnings: murder, off-screen torture (which actually happens in this installment)
words: ~2,000
summary: One summer night in Denerim, sixteen-year-old Soris finds out what his cousin does for a living. For prompt "Stolen."
2.
The thief had rooms in a lodging-house off Copperman's Circle, a stone's throw from the river. Soris would've gone to the door, but Kallian's tug on his elbow stopped him. "What?" he asked.
She led him around to a side alley and gestured at a shuttered second-storey window. "That's her room," she said, a breath of air beside his ear. "Give me a boost up, and I'll get us in."
He braced his back against the brick wall and made a stirrup of his hands. Her bare foot pressed cold against his palm. He grunted - she was heavy - and heaved her up.
She balanced in the window embrasure for a heart-stoppingly long moment. When the shutter latch popped, she disappeared inside in a lithe slither, reappearing after a second with a length of rope secured for him to climb.
"Stay quiet," she said, soft, when his feet touched the boards beside her. "We can risk a lamp, I think, but if we wake the landlady she'll come looking. And I'd rather not have to kill her."
Her tone told him she was serious. "Have I mentioned that you're bloody terrifying?" Soris said, under his breath.
There was the click of a striker. Light flared from a lamp beside the heavy wooden bedstead, revealing a narrow cluttered room and Kallian's feral grin. "Not lately."
Maker's breath, she's enjoying this.
"What -" He coughed, lowered his voice to a whisper. "What are we looking for?"
"A dagger. Gold-chased hilt with blue inlay, Tevinter runes on the blade." Her tone was absent, distracted. She pinched the bridge of her nose, surveying the room with an intent expression, then shook her head impatiently. "Check the clotheschest and the mattress. I'm going to see if I can find a hideyhole in the floorboards or the walls."
The chest, a chunky iron-bound thing squatted beside the bed, wasn't latched. The lid lifted easily, revealing that Faith-the-thief hadn't been particularly fastidious about her laundy. Soris wrinkled his nose. You asked for it, Sor, he reminded himself, and started rumaging through sweaty shirts and smalls. Behind him, Kallian commenced a delicate tapping.
The chest held a wealth of fabric. It was a shame to see good wool and linen treated so poorly. Particularly - Soris tucked his tongue between his teeth, grimacing - particularly if, like him, you had all of three shirts to your name. One to wash, one to wear, one for feast days and pretty girls, as his years-dead granther used to say. He frowned. Maybe he could take one when they left. The dead woman - his hands stilled, remembering - the dead woman would hardly be needing them again. Forgive me, holy Andraste, but I could really use another shirt without holes -
From downstairs, the sound of an abruptly-silenced scream cut off his guilty prayer.
"Soris." Kallian, at his shoulder faster than he could turn his head. The knife in her white-knuckled grip as much as the hard urgency in her voice sent ice churning in his gut. "Hide. Now."
"But -" What about you?
Brutally, she shoved him, the light in her eyes fierce and afraid. "No time to run. Get under the bed and whatever happens stay quiet."
Sick and scared, he obeyed, rolling under the heavy bedstead - its counterpane trailed the floor - into a small mountain of accumulated dust. Kallian's feet settled on the scarred wooden boards, shoulder-spaced, weight balanced and light. He stared at her grimed ankles, the ragged ends of her trousers, and tried to calm the heartbeat thundering in his ears.
The door slammed open. Kallian twitched - and gasped.
Only one set of footsteps. The wooden boards creaked. Soris breathed shallowly and tried not to sneeze. Tried not to think about sneezing.
Andraste, preserve me. Please.
In a strained voice, hitched with pain, his cousin said, "I'm guessing you're a mage."
"Good guess," said a strange woman's voice. She sounded amused. "Don't bother trying to move, by the way. That spell isn't called a glyph of paralysis for nothing."
"Tevinter?"
The woman chuckled. The sound reminded Soris of a snake, hissing. "Pure homegrown apostate, sweetheart. But I work for the highest bidder, and right now the highest bidder wants to know what happened to a certain dagger and the thief who was supposed to deliver it."
"I don't know what you're talking about," his cousin said, steadily.
"Sweetheart." Snake-woman gave an exaggerated sigh. Her boots, tasselled calfskin, came into Soris's narrow range of vision in the gap between the counterpane and the floor. "I don't have time to play games. You're not Faith the Cope, so you're here working for someone else. Just tell me what happened to the Cope and the dagger, and - as a courtesy between professionals - I'll even let you go, afterwards."
Something was sticking into Soris's hip, an edge of wood. He shifted. It clicked. He froze.
The click had been lost in Kallian's reply. "I still don't know what you're talking about. Unless you have silver. Silver always helps me think more clearly."
The woman snorted. "Oh, you're a brazen one. But like I said, I don't have time for games. Nothing personal, sweetheart, but if you don't tell me, I'm going to have to hurt you."
"Nothing personal," Kallian said, somewhere between mocking and resigned. "But go fuck a donkey."
Soris slid his hand down to his hip. A section of floorboard moved aside under his questing fingers. Emptiness. A cloth-wrapped hardness.
"Don't say I didn't warn you," the woman said mildly. Purple light flashed.
His cousin grunted, drew a ragged breath. "I don't sell out... for free," she said. But there was a shaky edge in her voice.
Soris unwrapped the cloth bundle carefully, inch by inch. Maker, please - The air crackled. Kallian screamed. "Sweetheart," snake-woman said, almost gently, "this is only the start of what I can do to you. Think about it."
Soris found hard, sharp metal under his fingers. The dagger. He gripped the hilt. He'd only have one chance. Maker, what am I thinking? But he had to. He had to wait until the woman came close enough to the bed that he could cripple her with one blow. The back of the knees would do, or the inner thigh where the big vein pressed against the skin. Take her down, grab Kal, and run -
He squeezed his eyes shut. I'm not a killer. Maker, please -
Not that the Maker ever listened.
He waited for his opportunity. Kallian's screams turned his ears raw. After an eternity - it felt like an eternity, but it couldn't have been more than an hour - Soris saw his chance.
Kallian's screams had changed to small pained noises deep in her throat. The woman stepped closer to his cousin - her heels within inches of the bed - voice a comforting croon. "Ssh, sweetheart. Tell me and I'll stop. Don't be so stubborn, hmm? Just tell me."
Soris struck.
The dagger slid into the back of the woman's knee like a hot wire through butter. Silver light flared from the blade. She yowled like a trodden cat and in panic he stabbed again, throwing himself out from under the bed's claustrophobic confines. He rolled into her ankles, and she collapsed on top of him, a tangle of limbs that drove the breath from his chest. Before he could think about what he was doing - Andraste - he lashed out with the dagger again.
Steel ground on bone. Hot wetness drenched his hands. Wild and terrified, he scrambled out from underneath her, expecting the red bloom of magic fire to eat the flesh from his bones at any instant -
She didn't move. She lay there, sprawled limbs in gaudy wool, and it wasn't until he saw the spreading pool of blood underneath her ribs that he realised she was dead.
She's dead. And I killed her.
"Well done," his cousin said, in a voice like death. Grey-faced, her shirt damp with sweat, she braced herself on the foot of the bed as though it took all her strength just to stand. And looked at him with a calmness that astonished him. "You all right?"
Am I all right? he thought, half sick, half furious. His vision blurred. Maker's breath, was he crying?
"Hey." A rustle, and Kallian's arms enfolded him. "You did what you had to do, Soris," she said, quietly. "She was going to kill me."
"Andraste's frilly underwear, why didn't you just tell her what she wanted to hear?" Soris pulled back and glared at her through his shakes. "Do you owe the bloody shem that much?"
Her shrug turned into a wince. "If she got what she wanted from me, she'd've only killed me that much quicker. For what it's worth..." A sigh. "For what it's worth, Sor, I'm sorry it came down to you."
"You're sorry? I -" He exhaled and met her waiting glance. "I'm glad you're not dead, Cousin."
She seemed to take this as a signal to change the subject - which was good, because he really didn't want to think about the dead woman on the floor or the pained tightness at the corner of his cousin's eyes - and nodded to the dagger. "You find that under the bed?"
"Under the floorboards. But -" He looked down at it, bloody in his grip. So much for not thinking about it.
"Good. Give it here." He surrendered it, and she eyed it briefly, sucking on her split bottom lip, before tucking it into her belt. "No wonder the templars want it back. It's enchanted against mages." She gave the corpse a disgusted look. "She must have done something to keep the neighbours from hearing, but we've got what we came for. No point hanging around."
"What about -?" He jerked his chin at the body, and swallowed.
Kallian regarded him with a certain weary compassion. "You saved my life. It gets easier. Just... try not to think about it too much."
He snorted. "Yeah. Right."
Noise from the street drove the crooked half-smile from her lips. Booted feet tromping in step and the rattle of armour. "Shit." She gestured him to the window, doused the lamp. "Jump, damn it."
Soris landed awkwardly on the packed earth, Kallian hard on his heels. She recovered fast, peered around the corner into the street, and darted back to his side to yank him deeper into the alleyway. "Templars," she murmured, a breath of sound in his ear. "Thank the Maker they don't know the meaning of subtle." And when he pulled up short: "Keep moving, blight you, unless you want to get caught."
He kept moving. "How - how did they know?"
"Good question." Grim. "I'd say the Cope got careless, except for the fact that Herrian said the templars shouldn't officially miss our pretty dagger till morning. Could be that bloody mage got careless, but if she was careless she'd never have lasted very long as an apostate-for-hire - and I've seen her face before."
"Where?"
Silence. Then, in a reluctant hiss: "Rikor."
You know the way I said this would conclude in Part 2? Yeah, sorry about that. It's kind of got away from me. But! I am sure - well, very nearly sure - it will conclude in Part 3!
characters: Soris, f!Tabris
rating/warnings: murder, off-screen torture (which actually happens in this installment)
words: ~2,000
summary: One summer night in Denerim, sixteen-year-old Soris finds out what his cousin does for a living. For prompt "Stolen."
2.
The thief had rooms in a lodging-house off Copperman's Circle, a stone's throw from the river. Soris would've gone to the door, but Kallian's tug on his elbow stopped him. "What?" he asked.
She led him around to a side alley and gestured at a shuttered second-storey window. "That's her room," she said, a breath of air beside his ear. "Give me a boost up, and I'll get us in."
He braced his back against the brick wall and made a stirrup of his hands. Her bare foot pressed cold against his palm. He grunted - she was heavy - and heaved her up.
She balanced in the window embrasure for a heart-stoppingly long moment. When the shutter latch popped, she disappeared inside in a lithe slither, reappearing after a second with a length of rope secured for him to climb.
"Stay quiet," she said, soft, when his feet touched the boards beside her. "We can risk a lamp, I think, but if we wake the landlady she'll come looking. And I'd rather not have to kill her."
Her tone told him she was serious. "Have I mentioned that you're bloody terrifying?" Soris said, under his breath.
There was the click of a striker. Light flared from a lamp beside the heavy wooden bedstead, revealing a narrow cluttered room and Kallian's feral grin. "Not lately."
Maker's breath, she's enjoying this.
"What -" He coughed, lowered his voice to a whisper. "What are we looking for?"
"A dagger. Gold-chased hilt with blue inlay, Tevinter runes on the blade." Her tone was absent, distracted. She pinched the bridge of her nose, surveying the room with an intent expression, then shook her head impatiently. "Check the clotheschest and the mattress. I'm going to see if I can find a hideyhole in the floorboards or the walls."
The chest, a chunky iron-bound thing squatted beside the bed, wasn't latched. The lid lifted easily, revealing that Faith-the-thief hadn't been particularly fastidious about her laundy. Soris wrinkled his nose. You asked for it, Sor, he reminded himself, and started rumaging through sweaty shirts and smalls. Behind him, Kallian commenced a delicate tapping.
The chest held a wealth of fabric. It was a shame to see good wool and linen treated so poorly. Particularly - Soris tucked his tongue between his teeth, grimacing - particularly if, like him, you had all of three shirts to your name. One to wash, one to wear, one for feast days and pretty girls, as his years-dead granther used to say. He frowned. Maybe he could take one when they left. The dead woman - his hands stilled, remembering - the dead woman would hardly be needing them again. Forgive me, holy Andraste, but I could really use another shirt without holes -
From downstairs, the sound of an abruptly-silenced scream cut off his guilty prayer.
"Soris." Kallian, at his shoulder faster than he could turn his head. The knife in her white-knuckled grip as much as the hard urgency in her voice sent ice churning in his gut. "Hide. Now."
"But -" What about you?
Brutally, she shoved him, the light in her eyes fierce and afraid. "No time to run. Get under the bed and whatever happens stay quiet."
Sick and scared, he obeyed, rolling under the heavy bedstead - its counterpane trailed the floor - into a small mountain of accumulated dust. Kallian's feet settled on the scarred wooden boards, shoulder-spaced, weight balanced and light. He stared at her grimed ankles, the ragged ends of her trousers, and tried to calm the heartbeat thundering in his ears.
The door slammed open. Kallian twitched - and gasped.
Only one set of footsteps. The wooden boards creaked. Soris breathed shallowly and tried not to sneeze. Tried not to think about sneezing.
Andraste, preserve me. Please.
In a strained voice, hitched with pain, his cousin said, "I'm guessing you're a mage."
"Good guess," said a strange woman's voice. She sounded amused. "Don't bother trying to move, by the way. That spell isn't called a glyph of paralysis for nothing."
"Tevinter?"
The woman chuckled. The sound reminded Soris of a snake, hissing. "Pure homegrown apostate, sweetheart. But I work for the highest bidder, and right now the highest bidder wants to know what happened to a certain dagger and the thief who was supposed to deliver it."
"I don't know what you're talking about," his cousin said, steadily.
"Sweetheart." Snake-woman gave an exaggerated sigh. Her boots, tasselled calfskin, came into Soris's narrow range of vision in the gap between the counterpane and the floor. "I don't have time to play games. You're not Faith the Cope, so you're here working for someone else. Just tell me what happened to the Cope and the dagger, and - as a courtesy between professionals - I'll even let you go, afterwards."
Something was sticking into Soris's hip, an edge of wood. He shifted. It clicked. He froze.
The click had been lost in Kallian's reply. "I still don't know what you're talking about. Unless you have silver. Silver always helps me think more clearly."
The woman snorted. "Oh, you're a brazen one. But like I said, I don't have time for games. Nothing personal, sweetheart, but if you don't tell me, I'm going to have to hurt you."
"Nothing personal," Kallian said, somewhere between mocking and resigned. "But go fuck a donkey."
Soris slid his hand down to his hip. A section of floorboard moved aside under his questing fingers. Emptiness. A cloth-wrapped hardness.
"Don't say I didn't warn you," the woman said mildly. Purple light flashed.
His cousin grunted, drew a ragged breath. "I don't sell out... for free," she said. But there was a shaky edge in her voice.
Soris unwrapped the cloth bundle carefully, inch by inch. Maker, please - The air crackled. Kallian screamed. "Sweetheart," snake-woman said, almost gently, "this is only the start of what I can do to you. Think about it."
Soris found hard, sharp metal under his fingers. The dagger. He gripped the hilt. He'd only have one chance. Maker, what am I thinking? But he had to. He had to wait until the woman came close enough to the bed that he could cripple her with one blow. The back of the knees would do, or the inner thigh where the big vein pressed against the skin. Take her down, grab Kal, and run -
He squeezed his eyes shut. I'm not a killer. Maker, please -
Not that the Maker ever listened.
He waited for his opportunity. Kallian's screams turned his ears raw. After an eternity - it felt like an eternity, but it couldn't have been more than an hour - Soris saw his chance.
Kallian's screams had changed to small pained noises deep in her throat. The woman stepped closer to his cousin - her heels within inches of the bed - voice a comforting croon. "Ssh, sweetheart. Tell me and I'll stop. Don't be so stubborn, hmm? Just tell me."
Soris struck.
The dagger slid into the back of the woman's knee like a hot wire through butter. Silver light flared from the blade. She yowled like a trodden cat and in panic he stabbed again, throwing himself out from under the bed's claustrophobic confines. He rolled into her ankles, and she collapsed on top of him, a tangle of limbs that drove the breath from his chest. Before he could think about what he was doing - Andraste - he lashed out with the dagger again.
Steel ground on bone. Hot wetness drenched his hands. Wild and terrified, he scrambled out from underneath her, expecting the red bloom of magic fire to eat the flesh from his bones at any instant -
She didn't move. She lay there, sprawled limbs in gaudy wool, and it wasn't until he saw the spreading pool of blood underneath her ribs that he realised she was dead.
She's dead. And I killed her.
"Well done," his cousin said, in a voice like death. Grey-faced, her shirt damp with sweat, she braced herself on the foot of the bed as though it took all her strength just to stand. And looked at him with a calmness that astonished him. "You all right?"
Am I all right? he thought, half sick, half furious. His vision blurred. Maker's breath, was he crying?
"Hey." A rustle, and Kallian's arms enfolded him. "You did what you had to do, Soris," she said, quietly. "She was going to kill me."
"Andraste's frilly underwear, why didn't you just tell her what she wanted to hear?" Soris pulled back and glared at her through his shakes. "Do you owe the bloody shem that much?"
Her shrug turned into a wince. "If she got what she wanted from me, she'd've only killed me that much quicker. For what it's worth..." A sigh. "For what it's worth, Sor, I'm sorry it came down to you."
"You're sorry? I -" He exhaled and met her waiting glance. "I'm glad you're not dead, Cousin."
She seemed to take this as a signal to change the subject - which was good, because he really didn't want to think about the dead woman on the floor or the pained tightness at the corner of his cousin's eyes - and nodded to the dagger. "You find that under the bed?"
"Under the floorboards. But -" He looked down at it, bloody in his grip. So much for not thinking about it.
"Good. Give it here." He surrendered it, and she eyed it briefly, sucking on her split bottom lip, before tucking it into her belt. "No wonder the templars want it back. It's enchanted against mages." She gave the corpse a disgusted look. "She must have done something to keep the neighbours from hearing, but we've got what we came for. No point hanging around."
"What about -?" He jerked his chin at the body, and swallowed.
Kallian regarded him with a certain weary compassion. "You saved my life. It gets easier. Just... try not to think about it too much."
He snorted. "Yeah. Right."
Noise from the street drove the crooked half-smile from her lips. Booted feet tromping in step and the rattle of armour. "Shit." She gestured him to the window, doused the lamp. "Jump, damn it."
Soris landed awkwardly on the packed earth, Kallian hard on his heels. She recovered fast, peered around the corner into the street, and darted back to his side to yank him deeper into the alleyway. "Templars," she murmured, a breath of sound in his ear. "Thank the Maker they don't know the meaning of subtle." And when he pulled up short: "Keep moving, blight you, unless you want to get caught."
He kept moving. "How - how did they know?"
"Good question." Grim. "I'd say the Cope got careless, except for the fact that Herrian said the templars shouldn't officially miss our pretty dagger till morning. Could be that bloody mage got careless, but if she was careless she'd never have lasted very long as an apostate-for-hire - and I've seen her face before."
"Where?"
Silence. Then, in a reluctant hiss: "Rikor."
You know the way I said this would conclude in Part 2? Yeah, sorry about that. It's kind of got away from me. But! I am sure - well, very nearly sure - it will conclude in Part 3!