"D'you think they'll be okay together?" Marcus looked anxiously over Blaine's shoulder at the two girls playing beneath the trees. "Amata hasn't exactly had what you might call a...normal upbringing."
Blaine slumped down on the bench and covered his face with his hand. "Well, I don't know, Marcus. Birdie plays with knives and dreams of growing up to be a mass murderer some day."
"I think 'Mata is the reincarnated soul of my brother," Marcus said somberly, eyes wide. "Also, she can set things on fire with her mind."
"I think they'll get along just fine." Blaine gestured to the chessboard between them without removing his hand from his face. "It's your move, Your Grace."
"We never really used titles like that," Marcus muttered. He peered at the chessboard, eyebrows swooping together. The tiny bells hanging from his eyebrow rings jingled. "I was always just 'High Priest,' generally...sometimes 'Lord of the Seventh Hour,' if people were being really formal. You know, I think you're going to win this one." He moved a bishop, and raised an eyebrow with a faint chime.
Blaine looked down at the board, then at Marcus, then back down at the board. "I think you might be right." His mouth quirked to the side, an almost smile. "I thought you were some sort of warlord? Master tactician and strategist, that sort of thing?" He was getting that uncomfortable, itchy sensation in the back of his head that meant he was probably being flirted with. He hated that feeling.
"I...I was, once. I think." His eyes went slightly out of focus. "You start to...lose track of the details, after the first dozen lifetimes or so."
"Hm. I wouldn't know." He moved one of his knights, capturing a rook and cutting off Marcus's bishop. Marcus's well meaning glances were making him twitch; he took out his wallet and started rolling a cigarette.
Marcus stared at the board, frowning again. "I'm usually better at this, really." He glanced up as Blaine began rummaging through his pockets for a match or a lighter. "Here, let me." He held out his hand, offering a flame on the tip of his finger.
Blaine froze, staring at Marcus's hand. This was really not his area of expertise. Images of Greymalkin flashed through his head. "I-"
Behind him, a tree exploded. He dropped his unlit cigarette and vaulted over the back of the bench, heading towards the sound of hysterical giggling at the center of the smoke. Marcus was right behind him.
He was never more thankful for Foxbird's ability to get into trouble.
-----
Ahahaha, I just remembered Marcus was full of ridiculous body mods as well. WHAT, ME, PREDICTABLE? NEVER. He's only got a bunch of ear and eyebrow piercings, though.
It's just- they're both single fathers, their kids are redheaded prodigies, and they're high priests of corrupt religious orders.
Blaine gets so uncomfortable when people act like they're attracted to him, it's hilarious. The more hilarious part is that Blaine really isn't Marcus's type- but Marcus gets attached to anybody who seems to have thier shit together.
Heh. Stay tuned for CTSNB part 2- Boffo vs Toggle: When Stupid Acronyms Attack!
Showing posts with label toggle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label toggle. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Nothing is real 'til it's gone
Well, this ended up being about six times longer than it needed to be. >_< AS USUAL, AUGH. I need to start seriously doing 50sentences prompts, because my inability to say things succinctly is getting irritating. And shit, but I do suck at endings something awful.
Orrin is a spaz, but he also tends to be very logical and methodical in his thought processes, if not in his actions. (He lacks organizational skills something fierce.) And he suffers from the affliction of incurable curiosity, which will undoubtedly get him into terrible trouble at some point in the future.
He knows Silverlock as Rien, and has a hard time thinking of him by any other name.
--------------------------------------------
"What are you doing?" Orrin squinted blearily at Rien, and tried to figure out where the clock had landed the night before.
"Nothing, go back to sleep." The other man sat beside the bed with a cup of coffee balanced on one knee and a sketchpad on the other.
"That doesn't look like nothing." He rubbed his eyes until his vision cleared and leaned over the edge of the bed to get a better look at the sketchpad. "What're you drawing?"
Rien looked vaguely embarrassed, and tilted the sketchpad out of Orrin's view. "It's just a sketch," he said, taking a sip of his coffee. "I picked up the habit a few centuries ago, but art has never been my strong suit."
"Come on, let me see." Orrin put on his best pleading expression; the only person he'd met who was consistently immune to it was Eleth, but Eleth didn't count as a whole person, anyway.
Rien thwacked him upside the head with the sketchpad and tossed it on the bed. "Fine, brat. But I'm no artist, so don't complain if you look like a cow. I'm making more coffee."
"Bitch," Orrin said affectionately. He picked up the sketchpad and began flipping through it. "Put the kettle on for tea? And make some pancakes?"
"Does this look like a bed and breakfast to you? Make your own godsdamned pancakes," Rien shouted from the kitchen.
Orrin snorted. Rien was an excellent artist- not professional quality, perhaps, but Orrin recognized his own face easily among the dozens of sketches in the book. There were several other pictures of him, in various states of unconsciousness, including one of him asleep in the lab, drooling on his notes. "Charming," he muttered. There were sketches of other people, most of whom he didn't recognize.
Rien sauntered back into the bedroom with his coffee in one hand and Orrin's tea in the other. Orrin took the tea with a grateful smile.
"These are all pretty good, you know. Maybe you should try drawing people who are awake to appreciate it."
"People's faces are more honest in sleep." Rien settled back into his chair and propped his feet on the bed. "And the majority of the people I draw wouldn't appreciate it."
"Huh. Really?"
"Security risk. And some of my older sketches are of people who were very self conscious."
"Mm. So, who's this?" She was young- younger than him, definitely- but her face was twisted in weariness.
"Anna DeLavrey."
"You had sex with Anna DeLavrey?" He couldn't decide if he was surprised or horrified.
"No. I spent several years as her body guard, however." Rien looked thoughtful. "That was done the night her mother died."
"Oh." He looked at the picture again. Anna DeLavrey was responsible for his soul, in a way, and though she'd been dead for years, he still felt grateful to her. "And this?"
"Zizi Menelek. He's an old friend, and the artist who did the linework on my face."
"You sleep with him?"
"On occasion." Rien shrugged. "I don't keep a log of my bedroom conquests in my sketchbooks, Orrin. It's more a record of the people I care about than anything else."
"Isn't that dangerous?"
"When they're not in my hands, they're in a locked box in my workroom."
Orrin still had yet to see the inside of Rien's workroom; there were enough magical wards on the door to give him a headache if he thought about it for too long. "Fair enough." He tilted his head to the side. "You have other pictures, then?"
Rien smiled mysteriously. "You're going to be late for class, you know."
"What?" He caught sight of the clock, lying on its side by one of the windows. "Fuck! Why didn't you warn me?" He scrambled out of bed, gulping the rest of his tea in the process and only spilling some of it on his chest. "This is the third time this month- my students are going to riot. Crap, crap, crap- where are my pants?"
"Your clothes are in the bathroom, on the counter, as usual." Rien leaned back in his chair, a serene expression on his face. "There's toast on the kitchen table, and your briefcase is by the door."
Orrin hurried to get dressed, any further thoughts of sketchbooks banished from his mind.
---
A week later; he'd managed to be late to class only one day, which was possibly a new record. His students had taken to showing up even later than he did, and as a result, the entire class was about a chapter behind schedule. If they all failed the final, he would probably have a lynch mob on his hands, and his department might take away his fellowship grant.
Well, that was fairly unlikely. But if he pissed off his advisors too much, they might downgrade his housing options. And he liked his apartment, for all that he didn't see the inside of it very often these days. It was optimally located for him to steal food out of Faraz's fridge.
Of course, Rien had plenty of space if it came to that, but Orrin wasn't sure he wanted to move in with the other man. It would mean putting a formal name to their arrangement, and he wasn't quite willing to do that yet. (He could hear Jay in the back of his head, using his most condescending therapist voice. "How does it really make you feel, Orrin?")
He kicked open the door to Rien's apartment, feeling slightly irritable, and ignored the sound of Jay's voice in the back of his head.
"Bad day?"
"Not really. Class is behind, as usual; they all blame me and not their own unwillingness to read the fucking textbook, as usual. What the hells are you doing?" He dropped his briefcase by the door, kicked off his shoes, and stepped across the mess Rien had made across the carpet, heading towards the kitchen.
"Indulging in nostalgia. I hadn't realized I'd collected so many sketchbooks over the years."
"Seriously?" Orrin found some cheese in the fridge and wandered back into the living room, gnawing absently. "I thought a filing cabinet attacked you or something."
Rien was leaning against the couch, surrounded by notebooks and photo albums and hundreds of sheets of heavy drawing paper, napkins, bits of newsprint, parchment, and what might have been vellum. Each page glittered with aether: preservation and protection castings.
"I thought you might like to see some of them." Rien's smile was distant. "Since you were so fascinated last week."
"Sure." Orrin sat on the edge of the couch and picked up a piece of parchment. "How much energy does it take to maintain these castings?" He turned it over and rubbed at it with a greasy finger; the spell shimmered, and the stain crumbled away.
Rien snorted. "Engineer."
Orrin blinked owlishly. "What? Some of these are hundreds of years old, right? And they're all in really good condition, and I bet you could set them on fire and they wouldn't even get singed. And there's a lot of paper here- the energy expenditure has to be enormous. They don't use spells this thorough in the library except in the classified archives." He pulled out his glasses. "You must have some sort of aether-dampening field working, too, because there's no way a spell this powerful would be so quiet."
A crumpled up ball of paper hit him on the nose. "I'm almost tempted to make you figure it out for yourself, but you'd probably try to deconstruct it, and that wouldn't be healthy for you or my sketches." Rien pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed heavily. "Do you want me to spoil it for you?"
"No! That takes all of the fun out of it." Orrin lit the tip of his finger on fire and held the paper over the flame. The casting shimmered, and the flame went out. "That's so cool."
"I'm glad you're amused." Rien began sorting through the papers, arranging them in neat stacks. "The casting uses some magicrafting techniques. I'll introduce you to Bellicose and Prufrock at some point, and they can explain the basics of crafting to you. Who knows, you might even have some talent for it."
"That would be awesome." Curiosity temporarily sated, Orrin turned the sketch over and adjusted his glasses. "So, who is this?" The sketch was old, if the date in the corner was to be believed. It was done with an amateur's hand, but lovingly- the young woman slept with a smile on her face.
"Sarila An'astri. My sister." Rien was looking out the window, away from Orrin.
Orrin's eyes widened. The date in the corner wasn't lying, then- and the woman was young, which meant Rien had been young as well. "How old were you?"
"Twenty three. I gave that to her when it was finished; it was found among her possessions after her death. Her husband's children were kind enough to let me keep it."
"She's hot." Orrin grinned.
"The most beautiful woman in the world," Rien agreed, grinning back. "She was the only sister from my age group to survive her indenture. The others killed themselves when they left the House, along with two of my brothers."
He set the sketch down, carefully. "That's...kind of terrible."
"Emotional enslavement usually is."
Orrin had nothing to say to that; slavery had been abolished for centuries, and the dwindling half elf population no longer bothered with the old traditions. Their god was dead, swallowed by the tower, and none of the Kin alive now remembered what it meant to wear a collar- none of them, except Rien.
He picked up another sketch; it was easy to forget, sometimes, exactly how old Rien was. "Who's this?" It was another very old sketch, though not quite as old as the first. A scar cut across the woman's right eye, and she slept with tension carving lines into her forehead.
"Ayanna DeLavrey. She put an end to the Fourth Era Riftwar by killing her brother and the Guildmaster of the Assassins' Guild."
"I've read about her- Eleth has some sort of weird historical crush on her."
Rien laughed. "Eleth has too much free time, but he certainly does have good taste. She was an amazing woman, and I loved her dearly- more than I should have, really, but she was...kind enough to not hold that against me. It's because of her that I've kept so close to the DeLavreys over the years."
Her features were strong, and she was older, probably in her fifties, but she'd clearly been quite beautiful once. "She reminds me of someone." He couldn't quite say why- there was nothing about her face that was familiar, but she reminded him of someone nonetheless.
Rien laughed again, but without humor. "Does she, now?" Mocking, slightly bitter.
"Ass," Orrin muttered. He hated when Rien did that- that irritating, I-know-something-you-don't-know tone of voice and smile. He set the sketch of the Lady DeLavrey aside and picked up another. It was from around the same time as the other two, of a man with scars across his mouth and nose. Orrin stared at the picture. This was familiar, too, and he had no idea why.
"He never knew I drew him." Rien nudged a stack of sketches towards Orrin, all of the same man. He was older in many of them, though curiously lacking the scars in some. "Towards the end, I filled an entire book with him, and I never told him, never showed him any of them."
Orrin looked through the stack of pages- there were hundreds of drawings, and couldn't shake the feeling he knew this face. "Who was he?"
"Someone else I loved more than I should have. It's something of a recurring theme in my life." Rueful, then sly. "He reminds you of someone, too, doesn't he?"
"Yeah." Orrin set the sketches aside and looked at Rien searchingly. "You're never going to tell me, are you?"
He shook his head. "You don't need to know."
"That isn't your choice to make." It angered him. It fucking pissed him off, actually, because he hated it when people knew things he didn't know, hated when information was witheld.
"It is, actually- possession is nine tenths of ownership, and that applies to information as well as anything else. If I told you who you were, you would live every moment of your life wondering if your thoughts or actions were your own, or those of someone who died well before you were born." He reached up and pulled Orrin's glasses from his face. "You are yourself, Orrin. Not any of them." He gestured to the stacks of paper. "And you might be able to believe that now, if you let yourself. If I tell you which of these faces might have been yours once, you never will."
"That isn't fair- I have the right to know." It wasn't just morbid curiosity, and it wasn't just because of Rien- even though he knew- knew, no matter what Rien said- that if it weren't for his soul, he wouldn't be in this- relationship, or whatever it was. He needed to know, because he could remember the Time Before, and he still woke up at night gasping, afraid that it was gone, that the bleakness would return.
He owed someone's memory a debt that he might never be able to repay. And if he had learned one thing in his life, it was to pay his debts.
Rien shook his head. "Jaden agrees with me on this- knowing would do you more harm than good." He took Orrin's chin and pulled him down so their faces were close. "And I am being selfish, Orrin. If I tell you where your soul came from, you would leave. I'm rather fond of you, for any number of completely unrelated reasons."
The kiss was less of an attempt to manipulate him than he expected.
"Please, just trust me- and if not me, trust Jaden."
"If I promised to stay, and if I told you I would leave if you didn't tell me-"
"It wouldn't change anything," Rien said gravely. "I'm selfish, but I'm not that selfish. Knowing would do you more harm than good."
Orrin leaned closer, so their foreheads touched. He liked his life. He liked his job, he liked his friends- he even liked his therapist. And he liked this- arrangement. Relationship. Whatever it was. He liked raiding Rien's kitchen and he liked the fantastic sex and he liked pancakes at three in the morning and waking up next to someone who remembered where he'd put his things the night before.
He still wanted to know the truth about his soul. But he wasn't a fool. "I trust you."
"Thank you." Rien sounded relieved- and Orrin wondered if he could push hard enough, if the other man would cave eventually. It was something to think about.
He sat back on the couch and picked up another sketch, this one of a woman with scaly shadows on her face and some sort of headdress or jewelry with a large cabochon stone centered on her forehead. It was dated about a hundred years after the others. "Who's this?"
Rien crossed his arms over Orrin's knees and leaned to get a better look. "Ah, that lovely lady is Her Holiness Manikarnika, Avatar of Venani. Brilliant woman, one of the most well read scholars of her time. Also one of the most amazingly flexible people I've ever met, though I do attribute that to her being half snake."
"Ugh. Snake? Seriously?" Orrin shuddered. "Scales and slithering- that's disgusting. Seriously disgusting."
Rien stared at him for a moment, then burst into laughter.
"Oh, screw you." The next sketch was of two people, an almost completely nondescript man and a fae-looking woman. "Who are they?"
"That's Lady Foxbird Torkehaav, City Walker and Guildmaster of the Assassins' Guild, with a lieutenant of the City Watch. I never could remember his name- I don't think she could, half the time, either." He picked up another stack of papers. "I did draw her awake several times, at her insistance. She was always particularly skilled at getting what she wanted."
Orrin knew he was slow sometimes, but he usually figured things out eventually. The fact that Lady Torkehaav's face was familiar to him was irrelevant. "Tell me more about her?" He held out the sketch.
Rien smiled all the time; he said it was a good way to put people off guard and that he was, by nature, a cheerful person. Orrin thought this was bullshit, generally. He'd gotten to know Rien well enough to tell when his smiles were hollow and when they were true, or rather, not quite as empty. The hollow, untrustworthy sort far, far out numbered the others.
He was smiling at Orrin now- a smile that barely reached his mouth, but one that lingered in the corners of his eyes. It was, Orrin realized, probably the first truly honest expression he'd ever seen on the other man's face.
Orrin is a spaz, but he also tends to be very logical and methodical in his thought processes, if not in his actions. (He lacks organizational skills something fierce.) And he suffers from the affliction of incurable curiosity, which will undoubtedly get him into terrible trouble at some point in the future.
He knows Silverlock as Rien, and has a hard time thinking of him by any other name.
--------------------------------------------
"What are you doing?" Orrin squinted blearily at Rien, and tried to figure out where the clock had landed the night before.
"Nothing, go back to sleep." The other man sat beside the bed with a cup of coffee balanced on one knee and a sketchpad on the other.
"That doesn't look like nothing." He rubbed his eyes until his vision cleared and leaned over the edge of the bed to get a better look at the sketchpad. "What're you drawing?"
Rien looked vaguely embarrassed, and tilted the sketchpad out of Orrin's view. "It's just a sketch," he said, taking a sip of his coffee. "I picked up the habit a few centuries ago, but art has never been my strong suit."
"Come on, let me see." Orrin put on his best pleading expression; the only person he'd met who was consistently immune to it was Eleth, but Eleth didn't count as a whole person, anyway.
Rien thwacked him upside the head with the sketchpad and tossed it on the bed. "Fine, brat. But I'm no artist, so don't complain if you look like a cow. I'm making more coffee."
"Bitch," Orrin said affectionately. He picked up the sketchpad and began flipping through it. "Put the kettle on for tea? And make some pancakes?"
"Does this look like a bed and breakfast to you? Make your own godsdamned pancakes," Rien shouted from the kitchen.
Orrin snorted. Rien was an excellent artist- not professional quality, perhaps, but Orrin recognized his own face easily among the dozens of sketches in the book. There were several other pictures of him, in various states of unconsciousness, including one of him asleep in the lab, drooling on his notes. "Charming," he muttered. There were sketches of other people, most of whom he didn't recognize.
Rien sauntered back into the bedroom with his coffee in one hand and Orrin's tea in the other. Orrin took the tea with a grateful smile.
"These are all pretty good, you know. Maybe you should try drawing people who are awake to appreciate it."
"People's faces are more honest in sleep." Rien settled back into his chair and propped his feet on the bed. "And the majority of the people I draw wouldn't appreciate it."
"Huh. Really?"
"Security risk. And some of my older sketches are of people who were very self conscious."
"Mm. So, who's this?" She was young- younger than him, definitely- but her face was twisted in weariness.
"Anna DeLavrey."
"You had sex with Anna DeLavrey?" He couldn't decide if he was surprised or horrified.
"No. I spent several years as her body guard, however." Rien looked thoughtful. "That was done the night her mother died."
"Oh." He looked at the picture again. Anna DeLavrey was responsible for his soul, in a way, and though she'd been dead for years, he still felt grateful to her. "And this?"
"Zizi Menelek. He's an old friend, and the artist who did the linework on my face."
"You sleep with him?"
"On occasion." Rien shrugged. "I don't keep a log of my bedroom conquests in my sketchbooks, Orrin. It's more a record of the people I care about than anything else."
"Isn't that dangerous?"
"When they're not in my hands, they're in a locked box in my workroom."
Orrin still had yet to see the inside of Rien's workroom; there were enough magical wards on the door to give him a headache if he thought about it for too long. "Fair enough." He tilted his head to the side. "You have other pictures, then?"
Rien smiled mysteriously. "You're going to be late for class, you know."
"What?" He caught sight of the clock, lying on its side by one of the windows. "Fuck! Why didn't you warn me?" He scrambled out of bed, gulping the rest of his tea in the process and only spilling some of it on his chest. "This is the third time this month- my students are going to riot. Crap, crap, crap- where are my pants?"
"Your clothes are in the bathroom, on the counter, as usual." Rien leaned back in his chair, a serene expression on his face. "There's toast on the kitchen table, and your briefcase is by the door."
Orrin hurried to get dressed, any further thoughts of sketchbooks banished from his mind.
---
A week later; he'd managed to be late to class only one day, which was possibly a new record. His students had taken to showing up even later than he did, and as a result, the entire class was about a chapter behind schedule. If they all failed the final, he would probably have a lynch mob on his hands, and his department might take away his fellowship grant.
Well, that was fairly unlikely. But if he pissed off his advisors too much, they might downgrade his housing options. And he liked his apartment, for all that he didn't see the inside of it very often these days. It was optimally located for him to steal food out of Faraz's fridge.
Of course, Rien had plenty of space if it came to that, but Orrin wasn't sure he wanted to move in with the other man. It would mean putting a formal name to their arrangement, and he wasn't quite willing to do that yet. (He could hear Jay in the back of his head, using his most condescending therapist voice. "How does it really make you feel, Orrin?")
He kicked open the door to Rien's apartment, feeling slightly irritable, and ignored the sound of Jay's voice in the back of his head.
"Bad day?"
"Not really. Class is behind, as usual; they all blame me and not their own unwillingness to read the fucking textbook, as usual. What the hells are you doing?" He dropped his briefcase by the door, kicked off his shoes, and stepped across the mess Rien had made across the carpet, heading towards the kitchen.
"Indulging in nostalgia. I hadn't realized I'd collected so many sketchbooks over the years."
"Seriously?" Orrin found some cheese in the fridge and wandered back into the living room, gnawing absently. "I thought a filing cabinet attacked you or something."
Rien was leaning against the couch, surrounded by notebooks and photo albums and hundreds of sheets of heavy drawing paper, napkins, bits of newsprint, parchment, and what might have been vellum. Each page glittered with aether: preservation and protection castings.
"I thought you might like to see some of them." Rien's smile was distant. "Since you were so fascinated last week."
"Sure." Orrin sat on the edge of the couch and picked up a piece of parchment. "How much energy does it take to maintain these castings?" He turned it over and rubbed at it with a greasy finger; the spell shimmered, and the stain crumbled away.
Rien snorted. "Engineer."
Orrin blinked owlishly. "What? Some of these are hundreds of years old, right? And they're all in really good condition, and I bet you could set them on fire and they wouldn't even get singed. And there's a lot of paper here- the energy expenditure has to be enormous. They don't use spells this thorough in the library except in the classified archives." He pulled out his glasses. "You must have some sort of aether-dampening field working, too, because there's no way a spell this powerful would be so quiet."
A crumpled up ball of paper hit him on the nose. "I'm almost tempted to make you figure it out for yourself, but you'd probably try to deconstruct it, and that wouldn't be healthy for you or my sketches." Rien pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed heavily. "Do you want me to spoil it for you?"
"No! That takes all of the fun out of it." Orrin lit the tip of his finger on fire and held the paper over the flame. The casting shimmered, and the flame went out. "That's so cool."
"I'm glad you're amused." Rien began sorting through the papers, arranging them in neat stacks. "The casting uses some magicrafting techniques. I'll introduce you to Bellicose and Prufrock at some point, and they can explain the basics of crafting to you. Who knows, you might even have some talent for it."
"That would be awesome." Curiosity temporarily sated, Orrin turned the sketch over and adjusted his glasses. "So, who is this?" The sketch was old, if the date in the corner was to be believed. It was done with an amateur's hand, but lovingly- the young woman slept with a smile on her face.
"Sarila An'astri. My sister." Rien was looking out the window, away from Orrin.
Orrin's eyes widened. The date in the corner wasn't lying, then- and the woman was young, which meant Rien had been young as well. "How old were you?"
"Twenty three. I gave that to her when it was finished; it was found among her possessions after her death. Her husband's children were kind enough to let me keep it."
"She's hot." Orrin grinned.
"The most beautiful woman in the world," Rien agreed, grinning back. "She was the only sister from my age group to survive her indenture. The others killed themselves when they left the House, along with two of my brothers."
He set the sketch down, carefully. "That's...kind of terrible."
"Emotional enslavement usually is."
Orrin had nothing to say to that; slavery had been abolished for centuries, and the dwindling half elf population no longer bothered with the old traditions. Their god was dead, swallowed by the tower, and none of the Kin alive now remembered what it meant to wear a collar- none of them, except Rien.
He picked up another sketch; it was easy to forget, sometimes, exactly how old Rien was. "Who's this?" It was another very old sketch, though not quite as old as the first. A scar cut across the woman's right eye, and she slept with tension carving lines into her forehead.
"Ayanna DeLavrey. She put an end to the Fourth Era Riftwar by killing her brother and the Guildmaster of the Assassins' Guild."
"I've read about her- Eleth has some sort of weird historical crush on her."
Rien laughed. "Eleth has too much free time, but he certainly does have good taste. She was an amazing woman, and I loved her dearly- more than I should have, really, but she was...kind enough to not hold that against me. It's because of her that I've kept so close to the DeLavreys over the years."
Her features were strong, and she was older, probably in her fifties, but she'd clearly been quite beautiful once. "She reminds me of someone." He couldn't quite say why- there was nothing about her face that was familiar, but she reminded him of someone nonetheless.
Rien laughed again, but without humor. "Does she, now?" Mocking, slightly bitter.
"Ass," Orrin muttered. He hated when Rien did that- that irritating, I-know-something-you-don't-know tone of voice and smile. He set the sketch of the Lady DeLavrey aside and picked up another. It was from around the same time as the other two, of a man with scars across his mouth and nose. Orrin stared at the picture. This was familiar, too, and he had no idea why.
"He never knew I drew him." Rien nudged a stack of sketches towards Orrin, all of the same man. He was older in many of them, though curiously lacking the scars in some. "Towards the end, I filled an entire book with him, and I never told him, never showed him any of them."
Orrin looked through the stack of pages- there were hundreds of drawings, and couldn't shake the feeling he knew this face. "Who was he?"
"Someone else I loved more than I should have. It's something of a recurring theme in my life." Rueful, then sly. "He reminds you of someone, too, doesn't he?"
"Yeah." Orrin set the sketches aside and looked at Rien searchingly. "You're never going to tell me, are you?"
He shook his head. "You don't need to know."
"That isn't your choice to make." It angered him. It fucking pissed him off, actually, because he hated it when people knew things he didn't know, hated when information was witheld.
"It is, actually- possession is nine tenths of ownership, and that applies to information as well as anything else. If I told you who you were, you would live every moment of your life wondering if your thoughts or actions were your own, or those of someone who died well before you were born." He reached up and pulled Orrin's glasses from his face. "You are yourself, Orrin. Not any of them." He gestured to the stacks of paper. "And you might be able to believe that now, if you let yourself. If I tell you which of these faces might have been yours once, you never will."
"That isn't fair- I have the right to know." It wasn't just morbid curiosity, and it wasn't just because of Rien- even though he knew- knew, no matter what Rien said- that if it weren't for his soul, he wouldn't be in this- relationship, or whatever it was. He needed to know, because he could remember the Time Before, and he still woke up at night gasping, afraid that it was gone, that the bleakness would return.
He owed someone's memory a debt that he might never be able to repay. And if he had learned one thing in his life, it was to pay his debts.
Rien shook his head. "Jaden agrees with me on this- knowing would do you more harm than good." He took Orrin's chin and pulled him down so their faces were close. "And I am being selfish, Orrin. If I tell you where your soul came from, you would leave. I'm rather fond of you, for any number of completely unrelated reasons."
The kiss was less of an attempt to manipulate him than he expected.
"Please, just trust me- and if not me, trust Jaden."
"If I promised to stay, and if I told you I would leave if you didn't tell me-"
"It wouldn't change anything," Rien said gravely. "I'm selfish, but I'm not that selfish. Knowing would do you more harm than good."
Orrin leaned closer, so their foreheads touched. He liked his life. He liked his job, he liked his friends- he even liked his therapist. And he liked this- arrangement. Relationship. Whatever it was. He liked raiding Rien's kitchen and he liked the fantastic sex and he liked pancakes at three in the morning and waking up next to someone who remembered where he'd put his things the night before.
He still wanted to know the truth about his soul. But he wasn't a fool. "I trust you."
"Thank you." Rien sounded relieved- and Orrin wondered if he could push hard enough, if the other man would cave eventually. It was something to think about.
He sat back on the couch and picked up another sketch, this one of a woman with scaly shadows on her face and some sort of headdress or jewelry with a large cabochon stone centered on her forehead. It was dated about a hundred years after the others. "Who's this?"
Rien crossed his arms over Orrin's knees and leaned to get a better look. "Ah, that lovely lady is Her Holiness Manikarnika, Avatar of Venani. Brilliant woman, one of the most well read scholars of her time. Also one of the most amazingly flexible people I've ever met, though I do attribute that to her being half snake."
"Ugh. Snake? Seriously?" Orrin shuddered. "Scales and slithering- that's disgusting. Seriously disgusting."
Rien stared at him for a moment, then burst into laughter.
"Oh, screw you." The next sketch was of two people, an almost completely nondescript man and a fae-looking woman. "Who are they?"
"That's Lady Foxbird Torkehaav, City Walker and Guildmaster of the Assassins' Guild, with a lieutenant of the City Watch. I never could remember his name- I don't think she could, half the time, either." He picked up another stack of papers. "I did draw her awake several times, at her insistance. She was always particularly skilled at getting what she wanted."
Orrin knew he was slow sometimes, but he usually figured things out eventually. The fact that Lady Torkehaav's face was familiar to him was irrelevant. "Tell me more about her?" He held out the sketch.
Rien smiled all the time; he said it was a good way to put people off guard and that he was, by nature, a cheerful person. Orrin thought this was bullshit, generally. He'd gotten to know Rien well enough to tell when his smiles were hollow and when they were true, or rather, not quite as empty. The hollow, untrustworthy sort far, far out numbered the others.
He was smiling at Orrin now- a smile that barely reached his mouth, but one that lingered in the corners of his eyes. It was, Orrin realized, probably the first truly honest expression he'd ever seen on the other man's face.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
You will be the father of something terrible
Perhaps he should have been intimidated by the wolf, but Blaine was a son of the city, and the feeling that nondomesticated animals were a myth had been bred into him.
The wolf shook itself, and shifted. Harbard as a man probably should have been just as intimidating as Harbard-the-wolf- he was a hulking, scarred, beast of a man, covered in a thatch of hair nearly as thick as his wolf pelt. But Blaine could no longer be bothered with fearing anything on this plane, or any other, for that matter. There was too much of the serpent left in him for that.
"Huh." Harbard stayed in a low crouch, and scratched behind his ears. "You still smell like a thief."
"Really?" That made Blaine smile, inexplicably. He supposed it was good, that Tyrin wasn't completely dead. "I haven't been one of those in years. Decades, really."
Harbard made a noise halfway between a snort and a growl. "Like a criminal, then. What do you want?" He surged to his feet, and stalked across the room to a cupboard against the far wall. He took out a set of clothes and began dressing. "I was sleeping."
Blaine leaned against the desk, and thought that, as far as these things went, Harbard wasn't bad looking. Older, yes, but not so many years older than Blaine himself, and nowhere near as old as Silverlock. He was, by all reports, a good man. Fair with his men. Loose enough with his morality to, if not condone, perhaps at least to understand what it meant to be an assassin. And he was a Malestri, which meant more than the rest combined in the end.
But Blaine wasn't the one in danger of marrying the man, so he supposed it didn't really matter.
"I want you to stay away from my daughter."
Harbard finished pulling his tunic over his head, and laughed. Clothed, he looked less like some sort of creature born out of snow and jagged rock, but there was still something feral in his laughter, something a little too like the sound of howling on a moonless night.
Blaine crossed his arms, fully well aware of how thin he was now, and how Harbard could, theoretically, snap him in half one-handed. Theoretically. The other man would have to catch him first. "It wasn't my intention to be entertaining."
"I'm sure it wasn't, little man. I'm sure it wasn't." Harbard's eyes in human form were meant to be blue, but right now they were golden, and a little too round. Wolf eyes. "But you're no more her father than I am, and have even less right to be saying such things to me." There was a snarl in his voice.
"What I am to her exactly is of little relevance, I think." Blaine could hear the edges of the serpent curling his tongue. He hadn't intended to get into a pissing contest with a captain of the Watch, but he'd never been overly fond of bullies. "The fact remains that she is my family, and your attentions are unwanted. So: stay away from her."
"Or what, little criminal? I could have you jailed for threatening me. I could have you jailed as an accessory to murder a thousand times over, too." Harbard stepped closer, his height and bulk overshadowing Blaine. The growl in his voice became more pronounced. "Or I could see how you fare against the wolf. She's not your responsibility, human. She's Malestri."
He smirked, and forced the serpent back- he had no need for it here, now. "She's an assassin, Captain Halverness. First, last, and above all else. I'm not threatening you- I'm warning you. After all, if you don't leave her be, there's nothing I can do, save put you back together, perhaps- but she's more than capable of taking care of herself."
Harbard actually looked startled, and seemed to shrink slightly in his surprise. Blaine's smirk deepened. Bullies. He pushed past Harbard, toward the door. "Have a nice day, Captain Halverness."
Outside Harbard's office, the Liutenant managed to look completely casual, as though he hadn't just had his ear pressed to the door, listening. Tim was not quite so suave, and nearly caught the door with his face when it opened.
Blaine rolled his eyes. Kids. "Good evening, Lieutenant, Tim."
"Evening, Your Holiness!" Tim scrambled back to his desk, blushing fiercely.
The Lieutenant nodded, still pretending to be engrossed in paperwork. "Bright welcome to you, Mister Torkehaav." He looked up, and tapped his pen against the desk thoughtfully. "If you see Miss Foxbird-"
"I'll tell her you said hello."
The Lieutenant nodded, and turned back to his work.
Blaine shook his head as he left the Watchquarters; kids, indeed. He was getting old.
The wolf shook itself, and shifted. Harbard as a man probably should have been just as intimidating as Harbard-the-wolf- he was a hulking, scarred, beast of a man, covered in a thatch of hair nearly as thick as his wolf pelt. But Blaine could no longer be bothered with fearing anything on this plane, or any other, for that matter. There was too much of the serpent left in him for that.
"Huh." Harbard stayed in a low crouch, and scratched behind his ears. "You still smell like a thief."
"Really?" That made Blaine smile, inexplicably. He supposed it was good, that Tyrin wasn't completely dead. "I haven't been one of those in years. Decades, really."
Harbard made a noise halfway between a snort and a growl. "Like a criminal, then. What do you want?" He surged to his feet, and stalked across the room to a cupboard against the far wall. He took out a set of clothes and began dressing. "I was sleeping."
Blaine leaned against the desk, and thought that, as far as these things went, Harbard wasn't bad looking. Older, yes, but not so many years older than Blaine himself, and nowhere near as old as Silverlock. He was, by all reports, a good man. Fair with his men. Loose enough with his morality to, if not condone, perhaps at least to understand what it meant to be an assassin. And he was a Malestri, which meant more than the rest combined in the end.
But Blaine wasn't the one in danger of marrying the man, so he supposed it didn't really matter.
"I want you to stay away from my daughter."
Harbard finished pulling his tunic over his head, and laughed. Clothed, he looked less like some sort of creature born out of snow and jagged rock, but there was still something feral in his laughter, something a little too like the sound of howling on a moonless night.
Blaine crossed his arms, fully well aware of how thin he was now, and how Harbard could, theoretically, snap him in half one-handed. Theoretically. The other man would have to catch him first. "It wasn't my intention to be entertaining."
"I'm sure it wasn't, little man. I'm sure it wasn't." Harbard's eyes in human form were meant to be blue, but right now they were golden, and a little too round. Wolf eyes. "But you're no more her father than I am, and have even less right to be saying such things to me." There was a snarl in his voice.
"What I am to her exactly is of little relevance, I think." Blaine could hear the edges of the serpent curling his tongue. He hadn't intended to get into a pissing contest with a captain of the Watch, but he'd never been overly fond of bullies. "The fact remains that she is my family, and your attentions are unwanted. So: stay away from her."
"Or what, little criminal? I could have you jailed for threatening me. I could have you jailed as an accessory to murder a thousand times over, too." Harbard stepped closer, his height and bulk overshadowing Blaine. The growl in his voice became more pronounced. "Or I could see how you fare against the wolf. She's not your responsibility, human. She's Malestri."
He smirked, and forced the serpent back- he had no need for it here, now. "She's an assassin, Captain Halverness. First, last, and above all else. I'm not threatening you- I'm warning you. After all, if you don't leave her be, there's nothing I can do, save put you back together, perhaps- but she's more than capable of taking care of herself."
Harbard actually looked startled, and seemed to shrink slightly in his surprise. Blaine's smirk deepened. Bullies. He pushed past Harbard, toward the door. "Have a nice day, Captain Halverness."
Outside Harbard's office, the Liutenant managed to look completely casual, as though he hadn't just had his ear pressed to the door, listening. Tim was not quite so suave, and nearly caught the door with his face when it opened.
Blaine rolled his eyes. Kids. "Good evening, Lieutenant, Tim."
"Evening, Your Holiness!" Tim scrambled back to his desk, blushing fiercely.
The Lieutenant nodded, still pretending to be engrossed in paperwork. "Bright welcome to you, Mister Torkehaav." He looked up, and tapped his pen against the desk thoughtfully. "If you see Miss Foxbird-"
"I'll tell her you said hello."
The Lieutenant nodded, and turned back to his work.
Blaine shook his head as he left the Watchquarters; kids, indeed. He was getting old.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
I could be your father, I could be your brother, I could be a flower, rise up in the dirt
Blaine's parents are awesome, but his dad is such. a. dork.
(As always, three times longer than it needs to be! *chews off fingers*)
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It had been, to put it mildly, a long week. He'd spent the last five days in a summoning circle, and had been running on adrenaline and raw aether for three of them. It had been worth it, certainly- he now held the true name of one of the Greater Shrive, but at the moment, all he really wanted to do was sleep for a week or three.
Living on the edge of Candlemark only meant he slept with one eye open, even when half dead from exhaustion. The sound of the window opening jolted him awake for half a moment- just long enough to throw a paralysis cantrip in the general direction of the window. He vaguely heard a thump and a clatter before turning over and falling back asleep.
He woke again a few hours later, to the sound of Master Sorlin moving about the kitchen. The smell of the weak green tea Master Sorlin drank was almost enough to rouse him from where he'd collapsed on the couch, but it would take far more caffeine than was contained in a watery cup of tea to entice him to move.
He was just about to drift back to sleep again when Master Sorlin slammed the teakettle down on the stove with a crash. "I know you're awake, Estri. I don't keep you around to be lazy- I'll be at the university all day, but I expect the workroom and the kitchen to be spotless by the time I return."
He muttered something halfway between "Yes, sir," and "Fuck you" in reply. His head hurt, and he wanted to go back to sleep.
Sorlin barked a short, derisive laugh. "I'll be back late, so there's no need to wait up for me- but I mean it about the kitchen." A moment later, he was gone.
Estri stretched, and luxuriated in the feel of the blessedly empty apartment.
His eyes snapped open. "Oh, hells."
There was a dagger driven into the kitchen table, its blade gleaming with something slick and purple. The owner of the dagger, dressed in black from head to toe, was sprawled beneath the window, caught in the same position he'd fallen in. Master Sorlin had pulled his hood back and he looked up at Estri from underneath his elbow; his neck had to be cramping terribly by now.
"Sweet Natasha, I am not awake enough for this." He rubbed his eyes wearily. A migraine began to throb behind his left eyebrow, the sort of pain that lodged deep in the bone, all the way down to his soul. "I'm making coffee. Would you like some?"
"Er. I'd have a rather hard time drinking it from here, wouldn't I?" The assassin grinned a little lopsidedly. He had incredibly bright blue eyes.
"I'll give you a straw. Or. Whatever. I'll think of something when I'm awake." He rummaged through the cubpoards, assembling the pieces of the coffee press. "I hope you don't mind if it tastes like magic."
"Can't say I've ever tried any before."
"Vaguely lemony. You get used to it after a while, but it's still...ngh." Estri left the water to heat on the stove and pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, willing the pain to go away. Exhaustion and aether drain, and the assassin on his kitchen floor was keeping himself too calm for Estri to leech anything from him. His magical senses were worn raw, nearly to the point of bleeding.
The pain receded slowly. "It's still an acquired taste for most people."
"I'm sure I'll manage. And. Um. I do hate to be a bother- and, I mean, it looks like your day hasn't been much better than mine so far- but this is a remarkably uncomfortable position to be lying in."
Estri raised an incrdulous eyebrow at the man, and turned back to the stove without answering.
The coffee was dark and syrupy; he drank the first cup straight, and had to cling to the counter with white knuckled hands for a minute afterwards, trembling with the urge to retch.
The assassin let out a low whistle from the floor. "Brave man! I've seen coffee like that kill a man at thirty paces!"
Estri smiled weakly as the caffeine hit his system like a hammer and killed off the last vestiges of his headache. "It's remarkably useful in necromancy rituals, actually." He poured two more cups, dosed them both liberally with sugar and cardamom, and set them on the table. He sat down, and stared at the assassin. "So."
The man's grin faded slightly. "So?"
Estri sipped his coffee, feeling slightly less like death warmed over. There were few things that cured the ache of aetherial exhaustion as effectively as coffee. "I assume, from your garb and the knife ruining my table, that you came here to kill Master Sorlin."
"Well. Yes?" He looked a little sheepish. "Sorry. I suppose you're going to call the Watch, now."
"Mm...no. I've been ordered on pain of death to never let the Watch set foot in this house. And I am, above all else, obedient." He placed his palms together and bowed slightly, mocking. "I just need your assurance that you won't try anything stupid, if I release you from that cantrip."
"You have it. Sorlin made it clear before he left that it would be in my best interests to abandon this job. Killing you would have been sloppy before- now, it would be downright unprofessional."
He broke the cantrip with a gesture, and felt the release of it like something snapping quietly inside his skull, easing pressure he hadn't even noticed. The assassin uncoiled himself and stretched the kinks out of his neck and back with a hideous series of cracks from every vertebrae.
There was something in the way the man moved that reminded him of his brothers and sisters; he hadn't thought of them in years, but the sudden memory of them hurt less than he'd expected. "Come, sit. You owe me at least a little conversation for all the trouble you've caused me."
"Trouble I've caused you?" He sat, and cradled his cup of coffee in his long-fingered hands. Musician's hands, or a strangler's. "I'm the one out a job, you know. A screw up like this will be hell on my reputation." He was still smiling, if a little ruefully.
"Should've thought of that before you went breaking into a mage's home." Rummaging in the cupboard produced a loaf of bread, a piece of cheese, and a few apples. He set them on the table and the assassin obligingly produced a knife from his person and began slicing.
"Rather, I should just accept that I'm shit at solo missions. Planning isn't my strong suit, I'm afraid." He dipped a corner of the bread in his coffee.
"Then why not find yourself a partner?"
"I've got one- but she's on probation. Healer's orders, you see- broken ribs, punctured lung. She'll be fine, now that the healer's tied her to the bed and taken her off the mission roster." He shook his head. "She'll be up in another day, though. Not too fond of being tied down."
Estri chewed on a piece of apple and smiled slyly. The man was completely transparent, even if Estri was too burnt out to use his empathy. It was...cute. "To beds, or in general?"
The assassin flushed, and dropped his bread in his coffee. "Well- I-" He avoided the question by gulping his coffee. He flinched; the coffee had still been hot enough to scald. "I wouldn't really know."
Estri didn't laugh, though he dearly wanted to. "Perhaps you should ask her? I imagine it's not so much that she objects to the tying as to the person who is- or isn't- binding her."
Even his ears turned red. Charming. He took pity on the poor man. "It's something to think about, at any rate. Have you a name?"
"Hawk. Hawk Samarkand. And yourself?" He leapt on the chance to change the subject, but then his eyes widened, and he was flustered again. "That is- I mean- I don't have many dealings with slaves and if you don't-"
"My given name, for the time being, is Estri. But most of the neighbors have taken to calling me Silverlock," he said, touching the streak in his woefully shortened hair. "And I find that suits me better, these days." He stood, and cleared away the cups.
Hawk stood as well, smiling but still flushed. "Well met, Silverlock." He held out his hand; his grip on Estri's wrist was almost a threat; it was a completely unconscious gesture on Hawk's part. "Should you ever find yourself wandering the halls of the Guild, look me up. I owe you a cup of coffee."
His clumsy charisma was endearing, to say the least. "I'll hold you to that, Hawk." He still had a few years left to his indenture, but afterwards- why not? "Take the door out- the wards on the windows can be twitchy."
The assassin left, and Estri cleared away the rest of the food. He briefly contemplated cleaning out the workroom, but was asleep on his cot before the thought could fully formulate itself in his mind.
His dreams were prophetic, but he would not remember any of them upon waking.
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Silverlock had been keeping track of the assassin's aura for the last ten minutes as he wandered the catacombs. Even so, the woman's knife knicked the side of his neck when she finally attacked; he just barely had time to put up a barrier between them before she attacked again.
"Ch'. Mages." Her knife disappeared and she crossed her arms impatiently. "If it is the necromancer covens you seek, you'll have to look elsewhere. This is assassin territory." She spoke with a faint Dzyrachan accent, all lilting vowels and softened gutterals.
"I'm not looking for any trouble, milady." He spread his hands, and did his best to project harmless innocence. "I'm looking for a man- about so tall, blue eyes, goes by the name of Hawk."
She snorted. "Then you are looking for trouble, for that man attracts it like little else. I hope you're not looking to hire him."
For some reason, Silverlock was not surprised in the slightest. "Nothing of the sort. He owes me a cup of coffee."
"Fair enough." A faint tremor shook the air- some sort of set spell. "Hawk will vouch for you if you speak truly- and if he does not, I'll try out each my knives on your pretty barier until we find something that cuts you." She leaned against the wall, the very picture of casual threat.
"You'll forgive me if I stop your heart the moment you try? I'm not so keen on having my throat slit." He projected an air of indifference in response to her spoken and unspoken threats; in an unfair fight, he was fairly certain he would win.
"You're welcome to make the attempt, mage. But better than you have tried and failed."
He sensed the other presence in the tunnel before a man stepped out of the shadows, but he wouldn't have felt it if he hadn't been looking for it. It seemed that Hawk had gained a few skills in the years since their first meeting.
His smile was still disarmingly open. "Silverlock!" He stopped, and looked nervous. "That is- if that's still the name you go by, I'm not-"
The woman elbowed him sharply, cutting off the stream of babble before it could start. Hawk rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed. "Civ, do you remember, a few years ago, when I completely botched the mage job in Eastmark?"
She rolled her eyes and relaxed minutely. "How could I forget? You, then, are the one who didn't turn this poor fool over to the Watch?"
"That would be me, milady." He gave her a proper bow, with an exaggerated flourish. "Silverlock D'Alestri, at your service."
"A pleasure, I'm sure." She touched her forehead in a particularly Dzyrachan gesture of respect. "Civet Samarkand. And I suppose, if he's promised you coffee, I'll be the one making it." She gave Hawk a fondly exhasperated look.
"The pleasure is all mine, Lady Samarkand." He glanced at Hawk; the man's ears still turned red when he blushed. "I wouldn't want to trouble you-"
"What trouble? My husband has brought me far more troubling things than the chance to drink with an ally, and possibly a friend." She had a beautiful, deadly smile. "Come. I will show you proper hospitality, something of which these city-bred northern barbarians know little, indeed."
She gestured to the darkness of the tunnel, and Silverlock followed. Hawk fell into step beside him, and he glanced upwards at the other man, then forwards to the swaying cadence of Civet's hips as she strode silently ahead of them. "You, my friend," he murmured, "are the luckiest man in the world."
"I know." Hawk's grin was just as charming as he remembered.
It was good, he decided. Upon descending the steps of Master Sorlin's home for the last time, he had sworn that his life would always be interesting, if nothing else.
His gaze drifted back to Civet, and he permitted himself a small smile. Being free of his indenture was already less boring than he'd dreaded.
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He stared at the ibrik in Blaine's cupboard; it was the sort of look he usually gave to uncooperative Shrivebeasts and other recalcitrant demons. "Huh." It was a lovely antique, its tall copper sides etched in swirling geometric patterns. The lip was dented, though, and the handle had a deep scratch in it.
"What? Is my coffee pot possessed now? Knew I shouldn't have taken it from that shifty eyed man at the bazaar, but he was giving it away for free." Blaine leaned down and rested his chin on Silverlock's shoulder. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Not a ghost. Just a memory that I'd not visited in quite some time." He closed the cupboard and turned around, looping his arms around Blaine's waist. "It's a very familiar coffee pot, that's all." He remembered the dent, and how much Civet had yelled when Hawk dropped it.
"Hm. I'll make you coffee some time- proper, Dzyrachan coffee." He smiled into Silverlock's hair. "Black as sin, strong as death, sweet as love."
"Careful now, someone might accuse you of being a romantic." He pulled Blaine a little closer, and raised an eyebrow suggestively.
"We can't have that. My reputation would be ruined."
"Don't worry." He leaned forward to steal a kiss, and did not say that Blaine had his mother's eyes, but his father's smile. "I can keep a secret."
_______________________ __________________________ ________________________
Hawk? Is the biggest dork to ever dork his way through assassin training in his own dorky, dorky idiom. I kind of adore him, in all his henpecked glory. (He looks rather like Daniel Craig, actually. Same eyes, same doofy grin, just make him about fifteen years younger for this particular fragment.) He and Civet are really amazingly cute together, but he's utterly useless without her, even if he does grow much less incompetent with age. After she dies, he...fades, a little. Leaves the Guild, becomes a regular at Templar's Rest, since that's where old characters go if they don't die in a horribly tragic manner.
Blaine tracks him down at some point, when he's much older, and they have an incredibly awkward and sad conversation, and then never see each other again. (Silverlock doesn't see Hawk again after Hawk leaves until after Blaine dies, and when he does finally go, he drags Foxbird with him for moral support.)
And yeah. Silverlock was kind of in love with Blaine's parents. Hawk and Civet sponsor him as an apprentice in the Guild, but once he earns his tags and particularly once Tyrin is born, they drift apart. He might have seen Tyrin once or twice, but they were never actually introduced.
Dzyrach is kind of Rothcar's equivalent of the Middle East; an ibrik is the sort of pot used to make Turkish coffee. Civet is actually a lesser princess of some sort in Dzyrach; eleventh daughter of a fifth wife, that sort of thing. She underwent her assassin apprenticeship there, under her family's spymaster, and transferred to the Rothcaran Guild to earn her tags.
Blaine grew up speaking Rothish and Dzyrachan; Civet made sure that, in the unlikely event that he did meet any members of his extended family, he wouldn't be a complete embarrassment to her. As an adult, he still speaks Dzyrachan, though he's only barely literate in it.
(As always, three times longer than it needs to be! *chews off fingers*)
---------------------------
It had been, to put it mildly, a long week. He'd spent the last five days in a summoning circle, and had been running on adrenaline and raw aether for three of them. It had been worth it, certainly- he now held the true name of one of the Greater Shrive, but at the moment, all he really wanted to do was sleep for a week or three.
Living on the edge of Candlemark only meant he slept with one eye open, even when half dead from exhaustion. The sound of the window opening jolted him awake for half a moment- just long enough to throw a paralysis cantrip in the general direction of the window. He vaguely heard a thump and a clatter before turning over and falling back asleep.
He woke again a few hours later, to the sound of Master Sorlin moving about the kitchen. The smell of the weak green tea Master Sorlin drank was almost enough to rouse him from where he'd collapsed on the couch, but it would take far more caffeine than was contained in a watery cup of tea to entice him to move.
He was just about to drift back to sleep again when Master Sorlin slammed the teakettle down on the stove with a crash. "I know you're awake, Estri. I don't keep you around to be lazy- I'll be at the university all day, but I expect the workroom and the kitchen to be spotless by the time I return."
He muttered something halfway between "Yes, sir," and "Fuck you" in reply. His head hurt, and he wanted to go back to sleep.
Sorlin barked a short, derisive laugh. "I'll be back late, so there's no need to wait up for me- but I mean it about the kitchen." A moment later, he was gone.
Estri stretched, and luxuriated in the feel of the blessedly empty apartment.
His eyes snapped open. "Oh, hells."
There was a dagger driven into the kitchen table, its blade gleaming with something slick and purple. The owner of the dagger, dressed in black from head to toe, was sprawled beneath the window, caught in the same position he'd fallen in. Master Sorlin had pulled his hood back and he looked up at Estri from underneath his elbow; his neck had to be cramping terribly by now.
"Sweet Natasha, I am not awake enough for this." He rubbed his eyes wearily. A migraine began to throb behind his left eyebrow, the sort of pain that lodged deep in the bone, all the way down to his soul. "I'm making coffee. Would you like some?"
"Er. I'd have a rather hard time drinking it from here, wouldn't I?" The assassin grinned a little lopsidedly. He had incredibly bright blue eyes.
"I'll give you a straw. Or. Whatever. I'll think of something when I'm awake." He rummaged through the cubpoards, assembling the pieces of the coffee press. "I hope you don't mind if it tastes like magic."
"Can't say I've ever tried any before."
"Vaguely lemony. You get used to it after a while, but it's still...ngh." Estri left the water to heat on the stove and pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, willing the pain to go away. Exhaustion and aether drain, and the assassin on his kitchen floor was keeping himself too calm for Estri to leech anything from him. His magical senses were worn raw, nearly to the point of bleeding.
The pain receded slowly. "It's still an acquired taste for most people."
"I'm sure I'll manage. And. Um. I do hate to be a bother- and, I mean, it looks like your day hasn't been much better than mine so far- but this is a remarkably uncomfortable position to be lying in."
Estri raised an incrdulous eyebrow at the man, and turned back to the stove without answering.
The coffee was dark and syrupy; he drank the first cup straight, and had to cling to the counter with white knuckled hands for a minute afterwards, trembling with the urge to retch.
The assassin let out a low whistle from the floor. "Brave man! I've seen coffee like that kill a man at thirty paces!"
Estri smiled weakly as the caffeine hit his system like a hammer and killed off the last vestiges of his headache. "It's remarkably useful in necromancy rituals, actually." He poured two more cups, dosed them both liberally with sugar and cardamom, and set them on the table. He sat down, and stared at the assassin. "So."
The man's grin faded slightly. "So?"
Estri sipped his coffee, feeling slightly less like death warmed over. There were few things that cured the ache of aetherial exhaustion as effectively as coffee. "I assume, from your garb and the knife ruining my table, that you came here to kill Master Sorlin."
"Well. Yes?" He looked a little sheepish. "Sorry. I suppose you're going to call the Watch, now."
"Mm...no. I've been ordered on pain of death to never let the Watch set foot in this house. And I am, above all else, obedient." He placed his palms together and bowed slightly, mocking. "I just need your assurance that you won't try anything stupid, if I release you from that cantrip."
"You have it. Sorlin made it clear before he left that it would be in my best interests to abandon this job. Killing you would have been sloppy before- now, it would be downright unprofessional."
He broke the cantrip with a gesture, and felt the release of it like something snapping quietly inside his skull, easing pressure he hadn't even noticed. The assassin uncoiled himself and stretched the kinks out of his neck and back with a hideous series of cracks from every vertebrae.
There was something in the way the man moved that reminded him of his brothers and sisters; he hadn't thought of them in years, but the sudden memory of them hurt less than he'd expected. "Come, sit. You owe me at least a little conversation for all the trouble you've caused me."
"Trouble I've caused you?" He sat, and cradled his cup of coffee in his long-fingered hands. Musician's hands, or a strangler's. "I'm the one out a job, you know. A screw up like this will be hell on my reputation." He was still smiling, if a little ruefully.
"Should've thought of that before you went breaking into a mage's home." Rummaging in the cupboard produced a loaf of bread, a piece of cheese, and a few apples. He set them on the table and the assassin obligingly produced a knife from his person and began slicing.
"Rather, I should just accept that I'm shit at solo missions. Planning isn't my strong suit, I'm afraid." He dipped a corner of the bread in his coffee.
"Then why not find yourself a partner?"
"I've got one- but she's on probation. Healer's orders, you see- broken ribs, punctured lung. She'll be fine, now that the healer's tied her to the bed and taken her off the mission roster." He shook his head. "She'll be up in another day, though. Not too fond of being tied down."
Estri chewed on a piece of apple and smiled slyly. The man was completely transparent, even if Estri was too burnt out to use his empathy. It was...cute. "To beds, or in general?"
The assassin flushed, and dropped his bread in his coffee. "Well- I-" He avoided the question by gulping his coffee. He flinched; the coffee had still been hot enough to scald. "I wouldn't really know."
Estri didn't laugh, though he dearly wanted to. "Perhaps you should ask her? I imagine it's not so much that she objects to the tying as to the person who is- or isn't- binding her."
Even his ears turned red. Charming. He took pity on the poor man. "It's something to think about, at any rate. Have you a name?"
"Hawk. Hawk Samarkand. And yourself?" He leapt on the chance to change the subject, but then his eyes widened, and he was flustered again. "That is- I mean- I don't have many dealings with slaves and if you don't-"
"My given name, for the time being, is Estri. But most of the neighbors have taken to calling me Silverlock," he said, touching the streak in his woefully shortened hair. "And I find that suits me better, these days." He stood, and cleared away the cups.
Hawk stood as well, smiling but still flushed. "Well met, Silverlock." He held out his hand; his grip on Estri's wrist was almost a threat; it was a completely unconscious gesture on Hawk's part. "Should you ever find yourself wandering the halls of the Guild, look me up. I owe you a cup of coffee."
His clumsy charisma was endearing, to say the least. "I'll hold you to that, Hawk." He still had a few years left to his indenture, but afterwards- why not? "Take the door out- the wards on the windows can be twitchy."
The assassin left, and Estri cleared away the rest of the food. He briefly contemplated cleaning out the workroom, but was asleep on his cot before the thought could fully formulate itself in his mind.
His dreams were prophetic, but he would not remember any of them upon waking.
----------------
----------------
Silverlock had been keeping track of the assassin's aura for the last ten minutes as he wandered the catacombs. Even so, the woman's knife knicked the side of his neck when she finally attacked; he just barely had time to put up a barrier between them before she attacked again.
"Ch'. Mages." Her knife disappeared and she crossed her arms impatiently. "If it is the necromancer covens you seek, you'll have to look elsewhere. This is assassin territory." She spoke with a faint Dzyrachan accent, all lilting vowels and softened gutterals.
"I'm not looking for any trouble, milady." He spread his hands, and did his best to project harmless innocence. "I'm looking for a man- about so tall, blue eyes, goes by the name of Hawk."
She snorted. "Then you are looking for trouble, for that man attracts it like little else. I hope you're not looking to hire him."
For some reason, Silverlock was not surprised in the slightest. "Nothing of the sort. He owes me a cup of coffee."
"Fair enough." A faint tremor shook the air- some sort of set spell. "Hawk will vouch for you if you speak truly- and if he does not, I'll try out each my knives on your pretty barier until we find something that cuts you." She leaned against the wall, the very picture of casual threat.
"You'll forgive me if I stop your heart the moment you try? I'm not so keen on having my throat slit." He projected an air of indifference in response to her spoken and unspoken threats; in an unfair fight, he was fairly certain he would win.
"You're welcome to make the attempt, mage. But better than you have tried and failed."
He sensed the other presence in the tunnel before a man stepped out of the shadows, but he wouldn't have felt it if he hadn't been looking for it. It seemed that Hawk had gained a few skills in the years since their first meeting.
His smile was still disarmingly open. "Silverlock!" He stopped, and looked nervous. "That is- if that's still the name you go by, I'm not-"
The woman elbowed him sharply, cutting off the stream of babble before it could start. Hawk rubbed the back of his neck, embarrassed. "Civ, do you remember, a few years ago, when I completely botched the mage job in Eastmark?"
She rolled her eyes and relaxed minutely. "How could I forget? You, then, are the one who didn't turn this poor fool over to the Watch?"
"That would be me, milady." He gave her a proper bow, with an exaggerated flourish. "Silverlock D'Alestri, at your service."
"A pleasure, I'm sure." She touched her forehead in a particularly Dzyrachan gesture of respect. "Civet Samarkand. And I suppose, if he's promised you coffee, I'll be the one making it." She gave Hawk a fondly exhasperated look.
"The pleasure is all mine, Lady Samarkand." He glanced at Hawk; the man's ears still turned red when he blushed. "I wouldn't want to trouble you-"
"What trouble? My husband has brought me far more troubling things than the chance to drink with an ally, and possibly a friend." She had a beautiful, deadly smile. "Come. I will show you proper hospitality, something of which these city-bred northern barbarians know little, indeed."
She gestured to the darkness of the tunnel, and Silverlock followed. Hawk fell into step beside him, and he glanced upwards at the other man, then forwards to the swaying cadence of Civet's hips as she strode silently ahead of them. "You, my friend," he murmured, "are the luckiest man in the world."
"I know." Hawk's grin was just as charming as he remembered.
It was good, he decided. Upon descending the steps of Master Sorlin's home for the last time, he had sworn that his life would always be interesting, if nothing else.
His gaze drifted back to Civet, and he permitted himself a small smile. Being free of his indenture was already less boring than he'd dreaded.
----------------
----------------
He stared at the ibrik in Blaine's cupboard; it was the sort of look he usually gave to uncooperative Shrivebeasts and other recalcitrant demons. "Huh." It was a lovely antique, its tall copper sides etched in swirling geometric patterns. The lip was dented, though, and the handle had a deep scratch in it.
"What? Is my coffee pot possessed now? Knew I shouldn't have taken it from that shifty eyed man at the bazaar, but he was giving it away for free." Blaine leaned down and rested his chin on Silverlock's shoulder. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
"Not a ghost. Just a memory that I'd not visited in quite some time." He closed the cupboard and turned around, looping his arms around Blaine's waist. "It's a very familiar coffee pot, that's all." He remembered the dent, and how much Civet had yelled when Hawk dropped it.
"Hm. I'll make you coffee some time- proper, Dzyrachan coffee." He smiled into Silverlock's hair. "Black as sin, strong as death, sweet as love."
"Careful now, someone might accuse you of being a romantic." He pulled Blaine a little closer, and raised an eyebrow suggestively.
"We can't have that. My reputation would be ruined."
"Don't worry." He leaned forward to steal a kiss, and did not say that Blaine had his mother's eyes, but his father's smile. "I can keep a secret."
_______________________ __________________________ ________________________
Hawk? Is the biggest dork to ever dork his way through assassin training in his own dorky, dorky idiom. I kind of adore him, in all his henpecked glory. (He looks rather like Daniel Craig, actually. Same eyes, same doofy grin, just make him about fifteen years younger for this particular fragment.) He and Civet are really amazingly cute together, but he's utterly useless without her, even if he does grow much less incompetent with age. After she dies, he...fades, a little. Leaves the Guild, becomes a regular at Templar's Rest, since that's where old characters go if they don't die in a horribly tragic manner.
Blaine tracks him down at some point, when he's much older, and they have an incredibly awkward and sad conversation, and then never see each other again. (Silverlock doesn't see Hawk again after Hawk leaves until after Blaine dies, and when he does finally go, he drags Foxbird with him for moral support.)
And yeah. Silverlock was kind of in love with Blaine's parents. Hawk and Civet sponsor him as an apprentice in the Guild, but once he earns his tags and particularly once Tyrin is born, they drift apart. He might have seen Tyrin once or twice, but they were never actually introduced.
Dzyrach is kind of Rothcar's equivalent of the Middle East; an ibrik is the sort of pot used to make Turkish coffee. Civet is actually a lesser princess of some sort in Dzyrach; eleventh daughter of a fifth wife, that sort of thing. She underwent her assassin apprenticeship there, under her family's spymaster, and transferred to the Rothcaran Guild to earn her tags.
Blaine grew up speaking Rothish and Dzyrachan; Civet made sure that, in the unlikely event that he did meet any members of his extended family, he wouldn't be a complete embarrassment to her. As an adult, he still speaks Dzyrachan, though he's only barely literate in it.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Song Call: Johnny Clegg, "Dela"
Last one of these for a while, I promise, but since I'm on a Blaine and Silverlock kick (as I have been for the past...well, a really long time, but whatever). This is them from Blaine's point of view, at the beginning. In this case, it's more the lyrics than anything else- in particular, the translation of the Zulu lyrics as "I am content," which is a particularly Blaine-like sentiment to express.
-----
One day I looked up and there you stood
Like a simple question looking for an answer
Now I am a whale listening to some inner call
Swimming blindly to throw myself upon your shores
But what if I don't find when I have landed?
Would you leave me here to die on your shores stranded?
I think I know why the dog howls at the moon.
I think I know why the dog howls at the moon.
I say:
"Dela! Dela! Ngiyadela!
(Content, content I am content)
When I am with you!
Dela! Sondela mama, sondela!
(Closer, closer, come closer mama)
I burn for you!
I've been waiting for you all my life -- hoping for a miracle
I've been waiting day and night -- day and night!
I've been waiting day and night -- waiting for redemption
I've been waiting day and night -- I burn for you
A blind bird sings inside the cage that is my heart
And the image of your face comes to me when I'm alone in the dark
If I could give a shape to this ache that I have for you
If I could find the voice that says the words that capture you
I think I know, I think I know
I think I know, I think I know
I think I know why the dog howls at the moon.
I think I know why the dog howls at the moon.
I say:
"Dela! Dela! Ngiyadela!
(Content, content I am content)
When I am with you!
Dela! Sondela mama, sondela!
(Closer, closer, come closer mama)
I burn for you!
I've been waiting for you all my life- hoping for a miracle
I've been waiting day and night- day and night!
I've been waiting day and night- waiting for redemption
I've been waiting day and night- I burn for you
Burn for you, I burn for you
-Johnny Clegg, "Dela"
-----
One day I looked up and there you stood
Like a simple question looking for an answer
Now I am a whale listening to some inner call
Swimming blindly to throw myself upon your shores
But what if I don't find when I have landed?
Would you leave me here to die on your shores stranded?
I think I know why the dog howls at the moon.
I think I know why the dog howls at the moon.
I say:
"Dela! Dela! Ngiyadela!
(Content, content I am content)
When I am with you!
Dela! Sondela mama, sondela!
(Closer, closer, come closer mama)
I burn for you!
I've been waiting for you all my life -- hoping for a miracle
I've been waiting day and night -- day and night!
I've been waiting day and night -- waiting for redemption
I've been waiting day and night -- I burn for you
A blind bird sings inside the cage that is my heart
And the image of your face comes to me when I'm alone in the dark
If I could give a shape to this ache that I have for you
If I could find the voice that says the words that capture you
I think I know, I think I know
I think I know, I think I know
I think I know why the dog howls at the moon.
I think I know why the dog howls at the moon.
I say:
"Dela! Dela! Ngiyadela!
(Content, content I am content)
When I am with you!
Dela! Sondela mama, sondela!
(Closer, closer, come closer mama)
I burn for you!
I've been waiting for you all my life- hoping for a miracle
I've been waiting day and night- day and night!
I've been waiting day and night- waiting for redemption
I've been waiting day and night- I burn for you
Burn for you, I burn for you
-Johnny Clegg, "Dela"
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Song call: Voxtrot, Rise Up In the Dirt
The first time I actually listened to the lyrics of this song, I nearly fell over; this is basically my Silverlock/Blaine "OMG we're retarded and in love" song. It's their quintessential relationship song. The whole thing is mostly Silverlock talking to Blaine, but a few lines fit both of them. The lyrics kill me with how hilariously appropriate they are; I've italicized the best ones, for my own entertainment.
-----
Too many times you're gonna go out river-walkin'
Too many times you come home late
Too many times you suck yourself out of the scene,
It makes you wanna go straight
It makes you wanna go straight
Too many times you trade the bottle for the body
One drop for breath and one for skin
You say nobody knows the truth about your body,
You look tired and thin.
Are you tired and thin?
But if I were a good man, would it really happen?
Would you walk me home then everyday from work?
But maybe I'm a good man, wouldn't let it happen
I believe in love, I'm married to my work
Cause I could be a father, I could be a brother,
I could be a flower, rise up in the dirt
We were born to live here, we were born to die here
And you know this when you work
Yeah, you watch me when you work
When you are free from the work of this house
Well, you know what to do with your hands
Yes I'm sure
You got a few ideas
And when you wake from the shell of this body
Oh will you sing your ghostly lament?
Oh yes I hope
You've got something better up your sleeve
Too many times you bleed your love dry for your family
And let it over in your sleep
You'll overtry some hold the burden like a man,
Something you can keep
Something you can keep
You smell the scent of something burning in the kitchen
He smells the future on the lawn
These are the things we've come to recognize as truth,
We cut the right into wrong
We cut the right into wrong
But if I were a good man, would it really happen?
Would you walk me home then everyday from work?
But maybe I'm a good man, wouldn't let it happen
I believe in love, I'm married to my work
Cause I could be a father, I could be a brother,
I could be a flower, rise up in the dirt
We were born to live here, we were born to die here
And you know this when you work
Yeah, you watch me when you work
It seems that we used to live like rebels
But now we get scared like our parents
I shudder and think
It's just a waste of money
And when you wake up tomorrow, my son
You will be the father of something terrible
It will it shine, throughout your life
It won't bury you, cause we know
Somewhere in the darkness, you will find love,
Baby you will find love
You will feel young again
And you will feel young
-Voxtrot, "Rise Up In the Dirt"
-----
Too many times you're gonna go out river-walkin'
Too many times you come home late
Too many times you suck yourself out of the scene,
It makes you wanna go straight
It makes you wanna go straight
Too many times you trade the bottle for the body
One drop for breath and one for skin
You say nobody knows the truth about your body,
You look tired and thin.
Are you tired and thin?
But if I were a good man, would it really happen?
Would you walk me home then everyday from work?
But maybe I'm a good man, wouldn't let it happen
I believe in love, I'm married to my work
Cause I could be a father, I could be a brother,
I could be a flower, rise up in the dirt
We were born to live here, we were born to die here
And you know this when you work
Yeah, you watch me when you work
When you are free from the work of this house
Well, you know what to do with your hands
Yes I'm sure
You got a few ideas
And when you wake from the shell of this body
Oh will you sing your ghostly lament?
Oh yes I hope
You've got something better up your sleeve
Too many times you bleed your love dry for your family
And let it over in your sleep
You'll overtry some hold the burden like a man,
Something you can keep
Something you can keep
You smell the scent of something burning in the kitchen
He smells the future on the lawn
These are the things we've come to recognize as truth,
We cut the right into wrong
We cut the right into wrong
But if I were a good man, would it really happen?
Would you walk me home then everyday from work?
But maybe I'm a good man, wouldn't let it happen
I believe in love, I'm married to my work
Cause I could be a father, I could be a brother,
I could be a flower, rise up in the dirt
We were born to live here, we were born to die here
And you know this when you work
Yeah, you watch me when you work
It seems that we used to live like rebels
But now we get scared like our parents
I shudder and think
It's just a waste of money
And when you wake up tomorrow, my son
You will be the father of something terrible
It will it shine, throughout your life
It won't bury you, cause we know
Somewhere in the darkness, you will find love,
Baby you will find love
You will feel young again
And you will feel young
-Voxtrot, "Rise Up In the Dirt"
Tuesday, August 07, 2007
only amounts to a couple of tears
Ugh. Writing anything lately is like pulling fucking teeth. (Case in point, I wrote that sentence hours ago and couldn't find it in myself to write anything further.)
Been having nightmares, which is always fun. I suppose there's something to be said for being predictable, but that doesn't mean I particularly enjoy it.
Build up to Blaine's death, because I can't, you know, write something upbeat for once. I blame it on listening to an excess of Duncan Sheik, and the heat. It's impossible to be upbeat in this weather.
-------------------
He knew most of the apprentices by name; all of them ended up in the infirmary at some point or other. Theirs wasn't a safe or easy profession, and training left scars.
"Thank you, Healer Torkehaav." The girl called herself Mist, though her mother had named her Cecily, and Blaine had been there to cut the cord when she was born. He wondered when he'd gotten so old, sometimes. She flexed her fingers carefully.
"My pleasure, Lady Mist. Your hand won't be back to full strength for another few weeks- don't strain it, or I'll put you on probation for stupidity."
"Aye, sir." She grinned. "As you say."
"Off with you- get out of my infirmary, I'm sick of seeing you here." He pushed her towards the door and she ran out without another word.
Blaine slumped against the examination table, head bowed. Mist's hand had been completely crushed- an accident with a locked vault, the sort of thing that happened more often to thieves than assassins. He stared at his own hands, which still surprised him with their lack of scars. His reflection in the mirror still startled him on occasion, though that was as much because he avoided mirrors out of habit as it was his appearance.
He clenched his right hand into a fist, and uncurled his fingers slowly, one by one. Then he clenched his left- but his fingers would only curl weakly towards his palm.
He touched the examination table, then tried to pick up a crucible- and he cursed when it slid through his fingers. He wasn't quick enough to catch it before it shattered on the floor.
Fighting down panic and despair, he took down a scalpel from the rack along the wall. He couldn't feel the edge of it along his palm, couldn't feel the tip of it pushing into his fingers. Just numbness, and the sight of blood pooling beneath his hand.
Maddel found him on the floor some time later; he'd sliced his hand to ribbons and hadn't bothered to stem the bleeding.
"What the fuck are you doing?" The elf knelt beside him and began binding the cuts with magic and bandages. "Idiot."
Blaine smiled weakly, and ran his good hand through his graying hair. "I think I'm dying," he said quietly. "What do you think?"
Maddel paused and stared him in the eye. Blaine could feel the soft brush of aether against his senses while the Masterhealer examined him.
"Well?" Blaine asked, after Maddel was silent for a little too long.
He looked away, frowning, and tied off the bandages around Blaine's hand. "I think you're right."
Blaine laughed humorlessly. "I hate it when that happens." He leaned his head back against the cabinets and stared at the ceiling.
Maddel sat back on his heels and lit a cigarette. "You only just noticed?"
"Aye."
"It's just the hand for now, but it'll spread- extremities first, then-"
"I'm aware of how it progresses, thank you, sir." Slow nerve death, his borrowed body grinding to a halt. He'd be bedridden within a matter of weeks, and then it would be a race to see whether his brain would die before his internal organs. Slow, messy, and inevitable.
"You'll have to tell your family."
His family. He almost laughed. "Not yet."
"Torkehaav." Maddel's voice was serious enough to pull Blaine's eyes away from the ceiling. "Don't be a fucking coward. You have to tell them."
"I'll tell them." He looked away. "But not yet." His good hand scrabbled for purchase against the counter, and he pulled himself to his feet. "I need a few days off, sir."
Maddel sighed, and rubbed his eyes. "Fine. You have three days, and if you try to disappear, I'll hunt you down and drag you back myself."
"Duly noted." He touched Maddel on the shoulder. "For what it's worth, old man, I'm sorry."
"Get out of here before I hurt you, Torkehaav. You know full well I'm not above hitting someone who can't hit back." Maddel's glare was fierce. "And don't you dare apologize to me again."
"Wouldn't dream of it, sir." He left Maddel staring at the shattered crucible on the floor, and pretended he didn't see or feel the hurt in the elf's stance.
Theoretically, he could live for months while his body broke down; the thought sickened and infuriated him. Some gods held suicide to be a sin, but his had never been one of them. It was time to pay the Avatar a visit.
Been having nightmares, which is always fun. I suppose there's something to be said for being predictable, but that doesn't mean I particularly enjoy it.
Build up to Blaine's death, because I can't, you know, write something upbeat for once. I blame it on listening to an excess of Duncan Sheik, and the heat. It's impossible to be upbeat in this weather.
-------------------
He knew most of the apprentices by name; all of them ended up in the infirmary at some point or other. Theirs wasn't a safe or easy profession, and training left scars.
"Thank you, Healer Torkehaav." The girl called herself Mist, though her mother had named her Cecily, and Blaine had been there to cut the cord when she was born. He wondered when he'd gotten so old, sometimes. She flexed her fingers carefully.
"My pleasure, Lady Mist. Your hand won't be back to full strength for another few weeks- don't strain it, or I'll put you on probation for stupidity."
"Aye, sir." She grinned. "As you say."
"Off with you- get out of my infirmary, I'm sick of seeing you here." He pushed her towards the door and she ran out without another word.
Blaine slumped against the examination table, head bowed. Mist's hand had been completely crushed- an accident with a locked vault, the sort of thing that happened more often to thieves than assassins. He stared at his own hands, which still surprised him with their lack of scars. His reflection in the mirror still startled him on occasion, though that was as much because he avoided mirrors out of habit as it was his appearance.
He clenched his right hand into a fist, and uncurled his fingers slowly, one by one. Then he clenched his left- but his fingers would only curl weakly towards his palm.
He touched the examination table, then tried to pick up a crucible- and he cursed when it slid through his fingers. He wasn't quick enough to catch it before it shattered on the floor.
Fighting down panic and despair, he took down a scalpel from the rack along the wall. He couldn't feel the edge of it along his palm, couldn't feel the tip of it pushing into his fingers. Just numbness, and the sight of blood pooling beneath his hand.
Maddel found him on the floor some time later; he'd sliced his hand to ribbons and hadn't bothered to stem the bleeding.
"What the fuck are you doing?" The elf knelt beside him and began binding the cuts with magic and bandages. "Idiot."
Blaine smiled weakly, and ran his good hand through his graying hair. "I think I'm dying," he said quietly. "What do you think?"
Maddel paused and stared him in the eye. Blaine could feel the soft brush of aether against his senses while the Masterhealer examined him.
"Well?" Blaine asked, after Maddel was silent for a little too long.
He looked away, frowning, and tied off the bandages around Blaine's hand. "I think you're right."
Blaine laughed humorlessly. "I hate it when that happens." He leaned his head back against the cabinets and stared at the ceiling.
Maddel sat back on his heels and lit a cigarette. "You only just noticed?"
"Aye."
"It's just the hand for now, but it'll spread- extremities first, then-"
"I'm aware of how it progresses, thank you, sir." Slow nerve death, his borrowed body grinding to a halt. He'd be bedridden within a matter of weeks, and then it would be a race to see whether his brain would die before his internal organs. Slow, messy, and inevitable.
"You'll have to tell your family."
His family. He almost laughed. "Not yet."
"Torkehaav." Maddel's voice was serious enough to pull Blaine's eyes away from the ceiling. "Don't be a fucking coward. You have to tell them."
"I'll tell them." He looked away. "But not yet." His good hand scrabbled for purchase against the counter, and he pulled himself to his feet. "I need a few days off, sir."
Maddel sighed, and rubbed his eyes. "Fine. You have three days, and if you try to disappear, I'll hunt you down and drag you back myself."
"Duly noted." He touched Maddel on the shoulder. "For what it's worth, old man, I'm sorry."
"Get out of here before I hurt you, Torkehaav. You know full well I'm not above hitting someone who can't hit back." Maddel's glare was fierce. "And don't you dare apologize to me again."
"Wouldn't dream of it, sir." He left Maddel staring at the shattered crucible on the floor, and pretended he didn't see or feel the hurt in the elf's stance.
Theoretically, he could live for months while his body broke down; the thought sickened and infuriated him. Some gods held suicide to be a sin, but his had never been one of them. It was time to pay the Avatar a visit.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
let the motherfucker burn (Orrin babble)
(I keep watching Nip/Tuck, waiting for Sean and Christian to kiss- and they never will, but that doesn't keep me from hoping.)
I think, possibly, the real reason I've let the Fifth Era run off with itself so much is because sometimes I really enjoy naming new characters. The core five plus one all have delightful names- Orrin Brannskada, Faraz Aghavni, Ravi Anrai, Lindra Barak-Anrai, Lorreth Hjordiss, Jaden Morehan. I don't know why Blaine insists on ridiculous and vaguely ironic Swedish names (Torkehaav was mispelled Swedish for "dry ocean" and Brannskada means "burn injury") but they seem to suit him well.
Orrin is actually very little like Blaine. He's quite a bit like the person Blaine could have been, had he stayed a thief, however. Very friendly, very high energy, somewhat ADHD, fidgets with his hands constantly. He's easily distracted when he's bored, but if he's interested in something, he'll tune out the rest of the world. He can be very intense when the mood takes him.
He's 5'8" and solidly built, with traditional redhead complexion and six billion freckles. He has hazel eyes, and has never quite managed to grow a beard; after a week or so of not shaving, he gets a little fuzzy around the edges, but that's about it. This is incredibly disappointing to him, because part of him always wanted to be a pirate, and he feels no pirate is complete without facial hair. He and Mordant shop at the same clothing stores- worn out jeans, steel-toed boots, button-down shirts. He wears arm guards; he has several different pairs for different occasions, but mostly he just wears plain leather ones. They keep him from chewing on his wrists (it was a bizarre nervous habit he picked up as a very, very small child) and they hide the scars from the times he bit down to the bone as a kid.
He smokes (Blaine did, too, but Blaine hand rolled his cigarettes after picking up the habit from Maddel- Orrin smokes cheap Dzyrachan imports), but not profusely: after sex, when bar crawling, and occasionally with his morning tea when he's been pulling all nighters during exams.
He's got the equivalent of a master's degree in arcanic engineering; his doctorate thesis is on energy conversion matrices. (What? What. What? I DON'T EVEN KNOW.) All of Orrin's academic advisors love him- he's a brilliant engineer, but he's kind of a spaz. His research fellowship has him TAing a few engineering classes and some arcane theory classes. His students like him as a person, but he's a pretty useless teacher. He's also perpetually late to all of his classes.
He rides a motorcycle that actually starts three times out of five- he keeps trying to take it apart and fix it, but it hates him quite violently, and he's only succeeded in making it worse. It's got a vintage arcanic engine that isn't really compatible with the Fifth Era, but Orrin refuses to upgrade it to something that, y'know, works.
He's got decent hand-to-hand combat skills, but he prefers hitting things with sticks (his prefered weapon is something like escrima sticks, but he's proficient with a quarterstaff and a three section staff as well). Orrin, unlike Blaine, has no problem punching people when he feels it necessary. In fact, he quite enjoys it. He and Faraz occasionally go out late at night on weekends and engage in acts of vigilante justice. (There's a reason people are terrified of Faraz. SHE WILL CRUSH YOUR SOUL BENEATH HER FOOT AND DEVOUR YOUR ENTRAILS.)
He lives in one of SCoAA's graduate housing apartments, down the hall from Faraz. They used to live together, until Faraz qualified for a place of her own and moved out. (She's got a degree in biology, and is getting her doctorate in arcane botany; she's essentially a druid. Talks to plants and everything. Her apartment looks a bit like a jungle.) They still practically live together; Orrin raids her fridge almost constantly, and Faraz usually shows up in his kitchen and makes him cook for her. They make a point to meet for lunch every day, unless they're both terminally busy. They're incredibly close- nothing happens to either of them that the other doesn't know about. (This means that Orrin gets all of the gory details when Faraz randomly hooks up with some guy she met in a bar for the fourth time that week- and that Faraz has a mental catalogue of all of Silverlock's tattoos.) (Also, Orrin is a thirteen year old girl. Dear god, he is such a thirteen year old girl. Or possibly he's just really, really gay; he can't quite decide.)
He and Silverlock are ecstatically happy together, even when Silverlock does kind of get him involved in a plot to overthrow the government. (I'm still not sure what's going on with that, but whatever.) They don't stay together, I don't think. I'm not sure why- I just can't see Orrin as growing old with someone. I can't really see him as growing old, period. And Silverlock, for all that he is perfectly capable of monogamy, doesn't entirely enjoy it. Dunno; if the timeline in my head ever does get to the point where they break up, it'll probably have something to do with Theron. (What? What. What? I STIL HAVE NO IDEA, but Silverlock and Theron aren't allowed to have sex ever again, I don't care what either of them have to say on the matter.)
I think, possibly, the real reason I've let the Fifth Era run off with itself so much is because sometimes I really enjoy naming new characters. The core five plus one all have delightful names- Orrin Brannskada, Faraz Aghavni, Ravi Anrai, Lindra Barak-Anrai, Lorreth Hjordiss, Jaden Morehan. I don't know why Blaine insists on ridiculous and vaguely ironic Swedish names (Torkehaav was mispelled Swedish for "dry ocean" and Brannskada means "burn injury") but they seem to suit him well.
Orrin is actually very little like Blaine. He's quite a bit like the person Blaine could have been, had he stayed a thief, however. Very friendly, very high energy, somewhat ADHD, fidgets with his hands constantly. He's easily distracted when he's bored, but if he's interested in something, he'll tune out the rest of the world. He can be very intense when the mood takes him.
He's 5'8" and solidly built, with traditional redhead complexion and six billion freckles. He has hazel eyes, and has never quite managed to grow a beard; after a week or so of not shaving, he gets a little fuzzy around the edges, but that's about it. This is incredibly disappointing to him, because part of him always wanted to be a pirate, and he feels no pirate is complete without facial hair. He and Mordant shop at the same clothing stores- worn out jeans, steel-toed boots, button-down shirts. He wears arm guards; he has several different pairs for different occasions, but mostly he just wears plain leather ones. They keep him from chewing on his wrists (it was a bizarre nervous habit he picked up as a very, very small child) and they hide the scars from the times he bit down to the bone as a kid.
He smokes (Blaine did, too, but Blaine hand rolled his cigarettes after picking up the habit from Maddel- Orrin smokes cheap Dzyrachan imports), but not profusely: after sex, when bar crawling, and occasionally with his morning tea when he's been pulling all nighters during exams.
He's got the equivalent of a master's degree in arcanic engineering; his doctorate thesis is on energy conversion matrices. (What? What. What? I DON'T EVEN KNOW.) All of Orrin's academic advisors love him- he's a brilliant engineer, but he's kind of a spaz. His research fellowship has him TAing a few engineering classes and some arcane theory classes. His students like him as a person, but he's a pretty useless teacher. He's also perpetually late to all of his classes.
He rides a motorcycle that actually starts three times out of five- he keeps trying to take it apart and fix it, but it hates him quite violently, and he's only succeeded in making it worse. It's got a vintage arcanic engine that isn't really compatible with the Fifth Era, but Orrin refuses to upgrade it to something that, y'know, works.
He's got decent hand-to-hand combat skills, but he prefers hitting things with sticks (his prefered weapon is something like escrima sticks, but he's proficient with a quarterstaff and a three section staff as well). Orrin, unlike Blaine, has no problem punching people when he feels it necessary. In fact, he quite enjoys it. He and Faraz occasionally go out late at night on weekends and engage in acts of vigilante justice. (There's a reason people are terrified of Faraz. SHE WILL CRUSH YOUR SOUL BENEATH HER FOOT AND DEVOUR YOUR ENTRAILS.)
He lives in one of SCoAA's graduate housing apartments, down the hall from Faraz. They used to live together, until Faraz qualified for a place of her own and moved out. (She's got a degree in biology, and is getting her doctorate in arcane botany; she's essentially a druid. Talks to plants and everything. Her apartment looks a bit like a jungle.) They still practically live together; Orrin raids her fridge almost constantly, and Faraz usually shows up in his kitchen and makes him cook for her. They make a point to meet for lunch every day, unless they're both terminally busy. They're incredibly close- nothing happens to either of them that the other doesn't know about. (This means that Orrin gets all of the gory details when Faraz randomly hooks up with some guy she met in a bar for the fourth time that week- and that Faraz has a mental catalogue of all of Silverlock's tattoos.) (Also, Orrin is a thirteen year old girl. Dear god, he is such a thirteen year old girl. Or possibly he's just really, really gay; he can't quite decide.)
He and Silverlock are ecstatically happy together, even when Silverlock does kind of get him involved in a plot to overthrow the government. (I'm still not sure what's going on with that, but whatever.) They don't stay together, I don't think. I'm not sure why- I just can't see Orrin as growing old with someone. I can't really see him as growing old, period. And Silverlock, for all that he is perfectly capable of monogamy, doesn't entirely enjoy it. Dunno; if the timeline in my head ever does get to the point where they break up, it'll probably have something to do with Theron. (What? What. What? I STIL HAVE NO IDEA, but Silverlock and Theron aren't allowed to have sex ever again, I don't care what either of them have to say on the matter.)
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
the naming of cats- i mean, characters
So, in my head, Nick isn't much on speaking terms with anyone after Blue Rose. He's still sulky, particularly since so many of the drabble prompts I'm procrastinating on are about him and Skoros. But I've figured out some of the details of his family/the Ishkhahareni/Akvaria.
Ishkhahar is one of the more popular fertility deities, though she's most popular along the coast and in Akvaria. She's got a decent Rothcaran following, but she is most closely associated with the Akvarian highlands. The Ishkhahareni are her most devoted followers- those who choose to be married in her name. Isshkhaharet Akvaria is a matriarchal, polygamous society that takes all of its traditions- especially the pre-fourth era ones- very seriously.
Marriage is a huge thing for Ishkhahar's followers, though it's taken to extremes in Akvaria. Rothcar and Ikatia are the only other provinces that really make allowances for extremist Ishkhahareni and other polygamous deities. The practice is largely frowned upon in Dzyrach and Tarmish. (Someday I'll draw a map.) Akvaria is loosely (very loosely) based off of a romanticized version of Muslim Spain (I'm not gonna lie, it's totally Rozarria). This means that the native language is a combination of Toggleverse-Spanish and Toggleverse-Arabic, and that all of the natives have incredibly ridiculous names.
It suits, though, because so many families are polygamous monstrosities, and the easiest way to make sure you're not marrying your sister is to check your last names. Nick's full name (since I now know that "Zanadreth" was just a place holder) is Vanick de Bayez Viudo y Zabalmedina Cruzado. And yes, that's largely just a combination of a bunch of Spanish words whose meanings I found to be hilarious and/or appropriate. And according to proper naming conventions, I'm misusing those conjunctions horribly, but they suit my purposes well enough.
I'll probably have to tweak the naming a bit more, since the Ishkhahareni are equal opportunity polygamists- Nick is the younger son of his father's second wife; his father is the first husband of their clan's matriarch, whose primary surname is Zabalmedina. Because he belongs to a clan- and clan isn't quite the right word for it, but the implications are mostly correct- he gets the "y stuff" tacked on to his name. He isn't one of the matriarch's children, so that denotes him as a secondary member of the family.
Mireia Zabalmedina Cruzado is the matriarch of the family; she inherited a great deal of land from her parent-clan, and she married Nick's father (Dario Viudo Anastasis) despite his unlucky surname, and has three children with him. Dario then married Nick's mother (Zahra Bayez Mendoza) and they have two kids- Nick, and his older brother. Mireia has two other husbands, and five other children (eight total). Dario has three wives, and a total of eight children; Mireia's second husband has a second wife (who happens to be Mireia's sister, actually) and a total of three children, and her third husband, who is something like fifteen years younger than her, is otherwise unmarried and has no children. There are rules as to how many spouses you can have depending on whether or not you're someone's primary and how many children there are and how much anyone stands to inherit.
Thus, the people Nick considers to be his parents are as follows:
Mireia (matriarch), Dario (father), Zahra (mother), Alara (father's second wife), Orsino (Mireia's second husband), Silvalia (Orsino's second wife (and also Mireia's sister, but that's irrelevant), and Stefan (Mireia's third husband). Though only Mireia, Dario, and Zahra are legally responsible for him, and in a less close-knit family, only Dario, Zahra, and Alara would be at all involved in raising him.
He has an older brother, six half-sisters, two matriarchal brothers, and one matriarchal sister. So, eleven children, broken up between seven parents. I'm still working out how the ages fall; some of the children are older than some of the lesser spouses.
Family systems of the size and scale of the Zabalmedina's are rare. Most people just have one spouse, because that's all they can afford. Mireia's mother only had one husband, but her husband had a second wife, and Mireia has several brothers and sisters.
Adultery is a capital crime, and will get you stoned quite thoroughly by anyone in the area. That said, it isn't adultery if your primary spouse has given you permission, or if you intend to marry. Marriage is not an easy way out of an adultery charge, however, since you still need the permission of your other spouses, and you get judged by the priests of Ishkhahar during the ceremony. There's magic involved, and if they decide the marriage isn't a "true" marriage, you get stoned anyway. (A "true" marriage is one in which the involved parties are getting married out of actual affection for one another, and not political or monetary reasons. The magic involved is simple tactile empathy on the part of the priest, who is usually a leechmage.)
Same sex marriages are out of the question in Akvaria, though they do happen occasionally among the Ishkhahareni of Rothcar and Murundcar. (Rothcar, in general, has a much more liberal attitude towards these things, given how many of their important historical figures have been flamingly gay. (Oh, Siegfried. *shakes head* I'M NEVER WRITING THE THIRD ERA.) Murundcar...that's a post all to itself, really. There are lots of elves in Murundcar. It's a weird place.) There's a willingness to look the other way in the case of same sex relationships between married people, particulary women, but among the unwed over the age of twenty, it's considered an ostracizeable offense. (So is divorce- if a couple simply grows apart, they remain married. But if a divorce is necessary, the case goes to an impartial committee to decide where the fault lies, and the person at fault is cast out of the family. It's a messy business, and not one that happens often.)
Nick is a happy hypocrite in that he'll cheerfully fantasize about Liall and Aya, but being within fifty feet of Silverlock makes him want to punch someone in the face. (In Silverlock's case its as much the fact that he was a prostitute for so much of his life as the gender of the people he sleeps with. Though, to be fair, he does sleep with more women, on average, than men.) He's not actually as straight as he'd like to pretend, but he is too closeted to even acknowledge that fact to himself. Liall only teases him in Blue Rose-verse; she's a bit more sensitive in her original incarnation, and he's a bit more inclined to be an asshole when he's provoked.
I've been working on family trees, which means coming up with names for all of the children and parents. Things tend to get a bit...hyphenated. XD
Nick's parents are pretty cool, though- as far as his immediate family members go, he's closest to his half sisters from his father's third wife, and one of his satellite fathers- Mireia's second husband is the one who taught him to ride.
I need to start making little posts again; these long, worldbuilding things are fun and interesting for me, but they take forever to finish, and I'm pretty sure no one else gives a damn.
Ah, well. I'm probably going to focus on Orrin for my next lengthy babble.
Ishkhahar is one of the more popular fertility deities, though she's most popular along the coast and in Akvaria. She's got a decent Rothcaran following, but she is most closely associated with the Akvarian highlands. The Ishkhahareni are her most devoted followers- those who choose to be married in her name. Isshkhaharet Akvaria is a matriarchal, polygamous society that takes all of its traditions- especially the pre-fourth era ones- very seriously.
Marriage is a huge thing for Ishkhahar's followers, though it's taken to extremes in Akvaria. Rothcar and Ikatia are the only other provinces that really make allowances for extremist Ishkhahareni and other polygamous deities. The practice is largely frowned upon in Dzyrach and Tarmish. (Someday I'll draw a map.) Akvaria is loosely (very loosely) based off of a romanticized version of Muslim Spain (I'm not gonna lie, it's totally Rozarria). This means that the native language is a combination of Toggleverse-Spanish and Toggleverse-Arabic, and that all of the natives have incredibly ridiculous names.
It suits, though, because so many families are polygamous monstrosities, and the easiest way to make sure you're not marrying your sister is to check your last names. Nick's full name (since I now know that "Zanadreth" was just a place holder) is Vanick de Bayez Viudo y Zabalmedina Cruzado. And yes, that's largely just a combination of a bunch of Spanish words whose meanings I found to be hilarious and/or appropriate. And according to proper naming conventions, I'm misusing those conjunctions horribly, but they suit my purposes well enough.
I'll probably have to tweak the naming a bit more, since the Ishkhahareni are equal opportunity polygamists- Nick is the younger son of his father's second wife; his father is the first husband of their clan's matriarch, whose primary surname is Zabalmedina. Because he belongs to a clan- and clan isn't quite the right word for it, but the implications are mostly correct- he gets the "y stuff" tacked on to his name. He isn't one of the matriarch's children, so that denotes him as a secondary member of the family.
Mireia Zabalmedina Cruzado is the matriarch of the family; she inherited a great deal of land from her parent-clan, and she married Nick's father (Dario Viudo Anastasis) despite his unlucky surname, and has three children with him. Dario then married Nick's mother (Zahra Bayez Mendoza) and they have two kids- Nick, and his older brother. Mireia has two other husbands, and five other children (eight total). Dario has three wives, and a total of eight children; Mireia's second husband has a second wife (who happens to be Mireia's sister, actually) and a total of three children, and her third husband, who is something like fifteen years younger than her, is otherwise unmarried and has no children. There are rules as to how many spouses you can have depending on whether or not you're someone's primary and how many children there are and how much anyone stands to inherit.
Thus, the people Nick considers to be his parents are as follows:
Mireia (matriarch), Dario (father), Zahra (mother), Alara (father's second wife), Orsino (Mireia's second husband), Silvalia (Orsino's second wife (and also Mireia's sister, but that's irrelevant), and Stefan (Mireia's third husband). Though only Mireia, Dario, and Zahra are legally responsible for him, and in a less close-knit family, only Dario, Zahra, and Alara would be at all involved in raising him.
He has an older brother, six half-sisters, two matriarchal brothers, and one matriarchal sister. So, eleven children, broken up between seven parents. I'm still working out how the ages fall; some of the children are older than some of the lesser spouses.
Family systems of the size and scale of the Zabalmedina's are rare. Most people just have one spouse, because that's all they can afford. Mireia's mother only had one husband, but her husband had a second wife, and Mireia has several brothers and sisters.
Adultery is a capital crime, and will get you stoned quite thoroughly by anyone in the area. That said, it isn't adultery if your primary spouse has given you permission, or if you intend to marry. Marriage is not an easy way out of an adultery charge, however, since you still need the permission of your other spouses, and you get judged by the priests of Ishkhahar during the ceremony. There's magic involved, and if they decide the marriage isn't a "true" marriage, you get stoned anyway. (A "true" marriage is one in which the involved parties are getting married out of actual affection for one another, and not political or monetary reasons. The magic involved is simple tactile empathy on the part of the priest, who is usually a leechmage.)
Same sex marriages are out of the question in Akvaria, though they do happen occasionally among the Ishkhahareni of Rothcar and Murundcar. (Rothcar, in general, has a much more liberal attitude towards these things, given how many of their important historical figures have been flamingly gay. (Oh, Siegfried. *shakes head* I'M NEVER WRITING THE THIRD ERA.) Murundcar...that's a post all to itself, really. There are lots of elves in Murundcar. It's a weird place.) There's a willingness to look the other way in the case of same sex relationships between married people, particulary women, but among the unwed over the age of twenty, it's considered an ostracizeable offense. (So is divorce- if a couple simply grows apart, they remain married. But if a divorce is necessary, the case goes to an impartial committee to decide where the fault lies, and the person at fault is cast out of the family. It's a messy business, and not one that happens often.)
Nick is a happy hypocrite in that he'll cheerfully fantasize about Liall and Aya, but being within fifty feet of Silverlock makes him want to punch someone in the face. (In Silverlock's case its as much the fact that he was a prostitute for so much of his life as the gender of the people he sleeps with. Though, to be fair, he does sleep with more women, on average, than men.) He's not actually as straight as he'd like to pretend, but he is too closeted to even acknowledge that fact to himself. Liall only teases him in Blue Rose-verse; she's a bit more sensitive in her original incarnation, and he's a bit more inclined to be an asshole when he's provoked.
I've been working on family trees, which means coming up with names for all of the children and parents. Things tend to get a bit...hyphenated. XD
Nick's parents are pretty cool, though- as far as his immediate family members go, he's closest to his half sisters from his father's third wife, and one of his satellite fathers- Mireia's second husband is the one who taught him to ride.
I need to start making little posts again; these long, worldbuilding things are fun and interesting for me, but they take forever to finish, and I'm pretty sure no one else gives a damn.
Ah, well. I'm probably going to focus on Orrin for my next lengthy babble.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
one more casualty
Bleh. My creative processes are dysfunctional at the moment. I have a bunch of writing prompts to finish, and they're going nowhere fast. (Three of them are about Nick, and I'm really not in the mood to write for him.)
Well, that's kind of a lie. It's just that most of the things I want to write for Nick involve Aya. And I do want to write their final battle, but that's amazingly, incredibly depressing and involves Liall getting raped, or at the very least severely assaulted, and the fallout from that nearly leads to their divorce. And then, you know, she and Nick die, and they don't even die together. Nick's horse also dies. Aya has her fourth and final miscarriage, and loses her eye. It's really depressing.
So instead I'll write bits of the actual story...like the part where Blaine dies! Because that's not depressing, either.
--
The rifthorror crawled closer.
The elves had fled, seeking higher ground. Their order was meant to fight, but nothing mortal could stand before this. It was a nothingness older than the universe, so old and empty it could not contain even a proper name.
Blaine could barely remember his own name- he was too human for this, too mortal- and so he'd become something else, not human nor god but something in between. His god was busy elsewhere, distracted by a war on the aetherial plane. The only one listening was Natasha, who could not touch him. "Who am I supposed to pray to if this doesn't work?"
She laughed, her voice faint over the sound of rushing water in his head. If this didn't work, there would be nothing left to pray to, except perhaps the undead gods of Radrezaria with their strange, opaque magicks.
Venani might be ignoring him, but the Avatar's death had opened a doorway in his soul, and he drank in aether with abandon. His skin grew scales, and his soul swelled, stretching to the bursting point, like a balloon overfilled. There was water everywhere, and it answered his call, rising up from the stones beneath his feet.
The rifthorror crawled closer.
The water rose higher.
It had swallowed pieces of the city, devouring the soul of the earth itself. It was no bigger than a man to the naked eye, but to those with aethersight, it expanded beyond the limits of what could be measured. And where it walked, life simply...ceased.
The water rose higher.
He began to choke. He could breathe water as easily as air, but it choked him now, filling his lungs. The horror was looking at him, and they were both drowning and it wasn't fair. The power he was using came from Venani, and Venani had marked him from the moment of his birth. Do no harm. Not even to this thing of nothingness and death that came to devour the world- and he could see it in perfect detail, and he knew exactly how to destroy it and he knew- knew- exactly what it would cost him.
There was no one to hear him scream but Natasha- and where she walked, so too did her brother.
The rifthorror stood before him, close enough to touch.
(you are so small, so young) it said. (and I am so old) (this world used to be mine) it said (it was mine)
He could see the outlines of the souls it had swallowed sparkling along the edges of his consciousness. He could see its eyes, like stars, and he could see its hunger. He could feel its sadness.
His hands- still rippling with scales- plunged into the center of it. He couldn't feel anything anymore. His world became the soft echo of its voice and the rush of water as the waves crashed over them both and he became, for a single moment, a perfect conduit of power.
The last thing he thought was that it was terribly ironic- and then the sound of Natasha's dice, her brother's footsteps and-
(you are so young)
-------------
Silverlock was running on adrenaline and aether- his senses were in overdrive, leading him to the tower. All around him, he could feel the tiny lives of the vermin in the catacombs, and those few larger creatures that hadn't fled. Above, he could feel the rifthorror like a pulsing wave of rot- and then it disappeared in a wave of pure, distilled aether.
His left arm burned with sudden, exquisite pain. He stopped short, clawing at the source of the pain, and then tearing at his skin with his knife when he realized the cause.
The talisman was a match for the one he'd kept in his right arm, woven with the same spells and protections, and keyed to Blaine the way its twin was keyed to Foxbird. Her talisman was now around his neck, still whole. If he needed to, he could use it to find her; if not, as long as it was whole, he knew she was alive, and well.
The small crystal disc burned white hot, cauterizing the wound even as he ripped it out of his arm, and it shattered when it hit the ground.
He stared at the broken talisman for a full minute, blood rushing in his ears, unable to feel anything but numb.
And then he could feel nothing but rage, and rage was good because rage was power- and may all the gods help anything that stood in his way.
---------------------------------------
The rifthorrors are made of anti-aether, for lack of a better word; they're the stuff that was left over at the creation of the universe, and they're keyed to certain elements the same way the aetherial plane deities are. The seven horrors weren't shattered in the sundering at the start of the Fourth Era; this one is one of the lesser six, the one representing Fire.
Basically, Blaine got lucky, otherwise he'd never have been able to touch the thing. If he'd been elementally aligned to anything but water (technically water, earth, and life are Venani's elements, but Blaine naturally takes to water far better than to the other elements), the thing would've eaten him.
Silverlock likes keeping tabs on the people he cares about; he made locator talismans for Foxbird and Blaine (he has them for a few other people as well), and kept them embedded in his arms. (Yeah, okay, it's a little gross, but it means that no one's going to find them unless they know where to look; talismans of that nature are dangerous in the wrong hands.) They explode when the person they're keyed to dies.
Blaine gets better, of course, much to Silverlock's vague consternation and relief. ("I'm, um, sorry. For, you know, dying..." "Don't worry, I intend to take full advantage of your guilt for the next, oh, ten years or so." "You could try to not look so gleeful when you say that.")
Well, that's kind of a lie. It's just that most of the things I want to write for Nick involve Aya. And I do want to write their final battle, but that's amazingly, incredibly depressing and involves Liall getting raped, or at the very least severely assaulted, and the fallout from that nearly leads to their divorce. And then, you know, she and Nick die, and they don't even die together. Nick's horse also dies. Aya has her fourth and final miscarriage, and loses her eye. It's really depressing.
So instead I'll write bits of the actual story...like the part where Blaine dies! Because that's not depressing, either.
--
The rifthorror crawled closer.
The elves had fled, seeking higher ground. Their order was meant to fight, but nothing mortal could stand before this. It was a nothingness older than the universe, so old and empty it could not contain even a proper name.
Blaine could barely remember his own name- he was too human for this, too mortal- and so he'd become something else, not human nor god but something in between. His god was busy elsewhere, distracted by a war on the aetherial plane. The only one listening was Natasha, who could not touch him. "Who am I supposed to pray to if this doesn't work?"
She laughed, her voice faint over the sound of rushing water in his head. If this didn't work, there would be nothing left to pray to, except perhaps the undead gods of Radrezaria with their strange, opaque magicks.
Venani might be ignoring him, but the Avatar's death had opened a doorway in his soul, and he drank in aether with abandon. His skin grew scales, and his soul swelled, stretching to the bursting point, like a balloon overfilled. There was water everywhere, and it answered his call, rising up from the stones beneath his feet.
The rifthorror crawled closer.
The water rose higher.
It had swallowed pieces of the city, devouring the soul of the earth itself. It was no bigger than a man to the naked eye, but to those with aethersight, it expanded beyond the limits of what could be measured. And where it walked, life simply...ceased.
The water rose higher.
He began to choke. He could breathe water as easily as air, but it choked him now, filling his lungs. The horror was looking at him, and they were both drowning and it wasn't fair. The power he was using came from Venani, and Venani had marked him from the moment of his birth. Do no harm. Not even to this thing of nothingness and death that came to devour the world- and he could see it in perfect detail, and he knew exactly how to destroy it and he knew- knew- exactly what it would cost him.
There was no one to hear him scream but Natasha- and where she walked, so too did her brother.
The rifthorror stood before him, close enough to touch.
(you are so small, so young) it said. (and I am so old) (this world used to be mine) it said (it was mine)
He could see the outlines of the souls it had swallowed sparkling along the edges of his consciousness. He could see its eyes, like stars, and he could see its hunger. He could feel its sadness.
His hands- still rippling with scales- plunged into the center of it. He couldn't feel anything anymore. His world became the soft echo of its voice and the rush of water as the waves crashed over them both and he became, for a single moment, a perfect conduit of power.
The last thing he thought was that it was terribly ironic- and then the sound of Natasha's dice, her brother's footsteps and-
(you are so young)
-------------
Silverlock was running on adrenaline and aether- his senses were in overdrive, leading him to the tower. All around him, he could feel the tiny lives of the vermin in the catacombs, and those few larger creatures that hadn't fled. Above, he could feel the rifthorror like a pulsing wave of rot- and then it disappeared in a wave of pure, distilled aether.
His left arm burned with sudden, exquisite pain. He stopped short, clawing at the source of the pain, and then tearing at his skin with his knife when he realized the cause.
The talisman was a match for the one he'd kept in his right arm, woven with the same spells and protections, and keyed to Blaine the way its twin was keyed to Foxbird. Her talisman was now around his neck, still whole. If he needed to, he could use it to find her; if not, as long as it was whole, he knew she was alive, and well.
The small crystal disc burned white hot, cauterizing the wound even as he ripped it out of his arm, and it shattered when it hit the ground.
He stared at the broken talisman for a full minute, blood rushing in his ears, unable to feel anything but numb.
And then he could feel nothing but rage, and rage was good because rage was power- and may all the gods help anything that stood in his way.
---------------------------------------
The rifthorrors are made of anti-aether, for lack of a better word; they're the stuff that was left over at the creation of the universe, and they're keyed to certain elements the same way the aetherial plane deities are. The seven horrors weren't shattered in the sundering at the start of the Fourth Era; this one is one of the lesser six, the one representing Fire.
Basically, Blaine got lucky, otherwise he'd never have been able to touch the thing. If he'd been elementally aligned to anything but water (technically water, earth, and life are Venani's elements, but Blaine naturally takes to water far better than to the other elements), the thing would've eaten him.
Silverlock likes keeping tabs on the people he cares about; he made locator talismans for Foxbird and Blaine (he has them for a few other people as well), and kept them embedded in his arms. (Yeah, okay, it's a little gross, but it means that no one's going to find them unless they know where to look; talismans of that nature are dangerous in the wrong hands.) They explode when the person they're keyed to dies.
Blaine gets better, of course, much to Silverlock's vague consternation and relief. ("I'm, um, sorry. For, you know, dying..." "Don't worry, I intend to take full advantage of your guilt for the next, oh, ten years or so." "You could try to not look so gleeful when you say that.")
not gonna be...
Continued from the previous post: the life and times of Silverlock D'Alestri, post-plot.
After about twenty years, Blaine dies and Silverlock gets a bit wangsty. He hangs around the Temple of Venani a lot, and becomes close friends with the new, non-crazy Avatar. This comes in handy when Theron discovers he's allergic to bees. (I'M A BAD PERSON.)
He spends some time working for the mob, and he goes back to prostituting himself for a bit (as a free person, he can get a guild license, which he does; he maintains his standing in the Guild of Prostitution for the rest of his life, just because it's a useful thing to have, particularly when he's feeling petty and vengeful, or when he wants to make some spare cash).
Two hundred years after Blaine dies, he sees Theron in the slave markets. The first thing he notices is that Theron looks like a pretty version of Blaine; the second thing he notices is that the kid is practically seething with untapped magickal potential.
He spends the next eight years making Theron's life miserable while giving him a thorough grounding in aetherial magick. Because Theron is actually an inhuman and unnatural magickal abomination, he's quite good at manipulating aether, and is a much better mage than Silverlock once he pulls his head out of his ass long enough to learn things. Of course, Theron is also thin, sickly, and apparently deathly allergic to bees, so as long as you punch him in the face before he starts spellcasting, you're golden. Or, you know, force feed him honey.
They have sex once, and Theron never forgives him for it. Even after Theron leaves and becomes the zombie overlord of Radrezaria, Silverlock never stops being in love with him, just a little. And Theron, emotionally stunted little idiot that he is, never quite realizes this.
He spends some time as an acolyte of Joshel, and later some time as an acolyte of Azan (more than any of the other deities, those two are his patrons- he's bound to Venani and Natasha because of Blaine, but neither of them expect much from him, though he does have a brief affair with Natasha- but most people do, at least once). Mostly he does freelance magework and hangs around with the DeLavrey family, becoming a retainer of sorts. The government gives him a job in the arcane researach division of the military towards the end of the Fourth Era (he remains an independent contractor, though, as he usually has several unrelated, private projects going on at the same time as his work for Parliament). When Radrezaria implodes, the Justiciar demands an explanation; Silverlock is one of the few people with any inkling of what might have happened, and that gets the Justiciar's attention.
He changes his name to Rien when the Voyancy is destroyed; those of his associates who survived assume he does it out of mourning and respect for the dead. He actually does it because he knows the Era is coming to a close- and because he thinks Theron is finally dead. (He does stupid things for the people he loves.)
In the Fifth Era, he's still doing freelance work as an independent contractor, but he's also the Justiciar's Shadow- which basically means he's back to being an assassin, but a government sanctioned one. Thankfully, the only members of the Assassins Guild who knew him as a Guildsman who are still alive are Maddel and the Librarian, and neither of them really care that he's broken Guild law. The Guild has a phenomenally high price on his head for being an unlicensed assassin.
The Guild is much smaller in the Fifth Era- free capitalism reigns, and all of the Guilds are shrunken in their powers (except the Guild of Prostitution, curiously enough; that one's stronger than ever). The DeLavrey family is headed by a teenaged boy, and Silverlock has very little to do with him, on the Justiciar's orders.
He meets Orrin when the Dean of one of the universities offers him a position as a teacher; most mages died at the end of the Fourth Era, and the new Era brought an influx of leechmages and magicrafters. They work in related departments, although Silverlock does less "work" and more "irritating the fuck out of his superiors" than anything else. No one at the university can touch him; he's one of the strongest mages left alive, and he finds this hilariously ironic. As far as magick goes, he's very well trained, but not actually all that powerful. Most of his spellcasting is very subtle, ritualistic stuff that kills people very quickly and effectively while giving him enough of a boost to escape. Unless he's got an outside power source nearby, he's actually very limited in the sorts of magick he can do.
Orrin is nothing at all like Blaine, but his soul is the same shape and operates on the same frequencies, and that's enough for Silverlock to get attached. It helps that Orrin is cute and surprisingly well adjusted despite having been born with no soul. Orrin, after growing up in a research laboratory with Faraz, Lorreth, Lindra, and Ravi as his closest friends, has different criteria for "weird" than the rest of society and thus fins Silverlock to be just, like, one of the coolest things ever.
(It also helps that Orrin really, enthusiastically enjoys sex once he gets the hang of it, and that growing up in a research lab means he'll try anything once...or twice, or, y'know, anything is pretty good once you get used to it...)
Silverlock doesn't know if he imagines the pieces of Blaine he occasionally sees in Orrin; he also doesn't know if he likes Orrin for Orrin, or if it's just a side effect of being drugged by his soul. This is, actually, something he loses sleep over; after Blaine's death in the Fourth Era, he became a much colder, much crueler person, but after the opening of the Tower and the start of the Fifth Era, he mellows out and rejoins the rest of humanity as an active participant. (Theron is indirectly responsible for this; his situation is one of the few things in his life that Silverlock feels guilt over.)
More plot happens, but that isn't quite worked out yet. I do know that Theron gets to take down about a hundred dragons by transmuting the air in their lungs into nitrous oxide ("Dragon physiology is curiously vulnerable to nitrous oxide, you know. It puts them down for days- most make a full recovery, but about ten percent of our subjects just...never woke up. A pity, really- we lost so many good specimens that way.") because I have to let Theron be badass on occasion. It's a tragic waste of his character if I don't.
(Interesting point of trivia! Whenever Theron and Silverlock get into arguments, Silverlock usually wins by threatening to sleep with Bren and/or Stella. This is way more effective than it should be.)
I'm not sure what happens after that; he really is determined to live forever, because the world really doesn't get boring. Possibly he'll travel- either planar travel, or I'll expand the Toggle world, since I know there are other continents. I just don't know who, or what is on them. I can see him enjoying the Boffo universe, though, or possibly Uva.
After about twenty years, Blaine dies and Silverlock gets a bit wangsty. He hangs around the Temple of Venani a lot, and becomes close friends with the new, non-crazy Avatar. This comes in handy when Theron discovers he's allergic to bees. (I'M A BAD PERSON.)
He spends some time working for the mob, and he goes back to prostituting himself for a bit (as a free person, he can get a guild license, which he does; he maintains his standing in the Guild of Prostitution for the rest of his life, just because it's a useful thing to have, particularly when he's feeling petty and vengeful, or when he wants to make some spare cash).
Two hundred years after Blaine dies, he sees Theron in the slave markets. The first thing he notices is that Theron looks like a pretty version of Blaine; the second thing he notices is that the kid is practically seething with untapped magickal potential.
He spends the next eight years making Theron's life miserable while giving him a thorough grounding in aetherial magick. Because Theron is actually an inhuman and unnatural magickal abomination, he's quite good at manipulating aether, and is a much better mage than Silverlock once he pulls his head out of his ass long enough to learn things. Of course, Theron is also thin, sickly, and apparently deathly allergic to bees, so as long as you punch him in the face before he starts spellcasting, you're golden. Or, you know, force feed him honey.
They have sex once, and Theron never forgives him for it. Even after Theron leaves and becomes the zombie overlord of Radrezaria, Silverlock never stops being in love with him, just a little. And Theron, emotionally stunted little idiot that he is, never quite realizes this.
He spends some time as an acolyte of Joshel, and later some time as an acolyte of Azan (more than any of the other deities, those two are his patrons- he's bound to Venani and Natasha because of Blaine, but neither of them expect much from him, though he does have a brief affair with Natasha- but most people do, at least once). Mostly he does freelance magework and hangs around with the DeLavrey family, becoming a retainer of sorts. The government gives him a job in the arcane researach division of the military towards the end of the Fourth Era (he remains an independent contractor, though, as he usually has several unrelated, private projects going on at the same time as his work for Parliament). When Radrezaria implodes, the Justiciar demands an explanation; Silverlock is one of the few people with any inkling of what might have happened, and that gets the Justiciar's attention.
He changes his name to Rien when the Voyancy is destroyed; those of his associates who survived assume he does it out of mourning and respect for the dead. He actually does it because he knows the Era is coming to a close- and because he thinks Theron is finally dead. (He does stupid things for the people he loves.)
In the Fifth Era, he's still doing freelance work as an independent contractor, but he's also the Justiciar's Shadow- which basically means he's back to being an assassin, but a government sanctioned one. Thankfully, the only members of the Assassins Guild who knew him as a Guildsman who are still alive are Maddel and the Librarian, and neither of them really care that he's broken Guild law. The Guild has a phenomenally high price on his head for being an unlicensed assassin.
The Guild is much smaller in the Fifth Era- free capitalism reigns, and all of the Guilds are shrunken in their powers (except the Guild of Prostitution, curiously enough; that one's stronger than ever). The DeLavrey family is headed by a teenaged boy, and Silverlock has very little to do with him, on the Justiciar's orders.
He meets Orrin when the Dean of one of the universities offers him a position as a teacher; most mages died at the end of the Fourth Era, and the new Era brought an influx of leechmages and magicrafters. They work in related departments, although Silverlock does less "work" and more "irritating the fuck out of his superiors" than anything else. No one at the university can touch him; he's one of the strongest mages left alive, and he finds this hilariously ironic. As far as magick goes, he's very well trained, but not actually all that powerful. Most of his spellcasting is very subtle, ritualistic stuff that kills people very quickly and effectively while giving him enough of a boost to escape. Unless he's got an outside power source nearby, he's actually very limited in the sorts of magick he can do.
Orrin is nothing at all like Blaine, but his soul is the same shape and operates on the same frequencies, and that's enough for Silverlock to get attached. It helps that Orrin is cute and surprisingly well adjusted despite having been born with no soul. Orrin, after growing up in a research laboratory with Faraz, Lorreth, Lindra, and Ravi as his closest friends, has different criteria for "weird" than the rest of society and thus fins Silverlock to be just, like, one of the coolest things ever.
(It also helps that Orrin really, enthusiastically enjoys sex once he gets the hang of it, and that growing up in a research lab means he'll try anything once...or twice, or, y'know, anything is pretty good once you get used to it...)
Silverlock doesn't know if he imagines the pieces of Blaine he occasionally sees in Orrin; he also doesn't know if he likes Orrin for Orrin, or if it's just a side effect of being drugged by his soul. This is, actually, something he loses sleep over; after Blaine's death in the Fourth Era, he became a much colder, much crueler person, but after the opening of the Tower and the start of the Fifth Era, he mellows out and rejoins the rest of humanity as an active participant. (Theron is indirectly responsible for this; his situation is one of the few things in his life that Silverlock feels guilt over.)
More plot happens, but that isn't quite worked out yet. I do know that Theron gets to take down about a hundred dragons by transmuting the air in their lungs into nitrous oxide ("Dragon physiology is curiously vulnerable to nitrous oxide, you know. It puts them down for days- most make a full recovery, but about ten percent of our subjects just...never woke up. A pity, really- we lost so many good specimens that way.") because I have to let Theron be badass on occasion. It's a tragic waste of his character if I don't.
(Interesting point of trivia! Whenever Theron and Silverlock get into arguments, Silverlock usually wins by threatening to sleep with Bren and/or Stella. This is way more effective than it should be.)
I'm not sure what happens after that; he really is determined to live forever, because the world really doesn't get boring. Possibly he'll travel- either planar travel, or I'll expand the Toggle world, since I know there are other continents. I just don't know who, or what is on them. I can see him enjoying the Boffo universe, though, or possibly Uva.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
za
Continued from the previous post: the life and times of Silverlock D'Alestri.
About a year before the end of his indenture, and after about a week of intensive summoning work, an assassin breaks into the house. Silverlock (who was asleep on the couch at the time) throws a paralysis cantrip at him and forgets about him until morning, when Gannet leaves for the university for the day.
The assassin is Hawk Samarkand, and by the time Silverlock wakes up enough to release him from the paralysis cantrip, he has one hell of a crick in his neck. Hawk isn't completely incompetent, but he's not used to doing solo missions, and his partner is out of commission with a set of broken ribs for a few weeks. (Maddel frequently gets pissed off at the various assassins who come through his infirmary, and will refuse to magickally heal them until he feels they've learned their lesson.) Once he promises to not assassinate anyone, Silverlock gives him a cup of coffee and they chat for a while. Hawk is worried that he won't be able to support himself and his partner on his own, and if he can't manage for a few weeks, how is he going to manage for a few months when he and his partner eventually decide to have kids? Silverlock, meanwhile, has no idea what he's going to do with himself once his indenture is up; he still has thousands of marks of debt to pay off because Gannet is an asshole who steals things (and people).
Hawk is a nice guy at heart- a truly good person, honestly, for all that he kills people for a living. ("It's a living, you know? Been the family business for generations, and it's not like I'm bad at it. Sure, I'm not as good at it as Civet, but most people aren't. And I just wouldn't be satisfied doing something like, I dunno, carpentry, or bartending. There's no thrill. And I meet interesting people this way, too.") He offers to sponsor Silverlock in the Guild, if he can't find any other, more suitable work once his indenture expires. Or, at the very least, he'll pay back the cup of excellent coffee Silverlock gave him.
(Silverlock falls a little bit in love with Hawk, too, but he does that a lot. It's one of the things Aya mocks him for most frequently- to which he usually responds with, "And I suppose you're so much happier, being the frigid bitch that you are.")
A year later, Gannet kicks him out, and he leaves with nothing but the clothes on his back and a plethora of interesting and potentially dangerous tattoos. He goes looking for the Assassins Guild, and finds it- ("If you're looking for the mage covens, you're in the wrong area." "I'm not looking for any trouble, milady. I'm looking for Hawk Samarkand." "Then you are looking for trouble, since it follows that man like stench on a bog corpse." "Be that as it may, he owes me a cup of coffee.") and gets sponsored as a provisional apprentice.
The only Assassin-Mage in the Guild takes him on. Banshee is a 4'9" black woman with vaguely sentient hair, and she kicks Silverlock's ass six ways to Sunday in the first half hour of their acquaintence. Then she teaches him everything she knows about destructive necromancy, which is considerable.
He keeps up his acquaintence with Hawk and Civet until Civet finally gets pregnant; they still remain friends, but by that point he's too busy with his apprenticeship and they're too busy with raising a kid and getting paid for them to see each other much. He does occasionally get to hear Hawk lamenting the kid's clumsiness, and he finds out in a peripheral sort of way that the kid got sent off to the Thieves' Guild and was doing well there. (This doesn't become important until a good twenty years later, when he meets Blaine. After a few years, some pieces click into place, and Silverlock spends a day alternating between beating his head against a wall in frustration and laughing hysterically.)
He spends somewhere between five and ten years as Banshee's apprentice- probably closer to five, since he already has a thorough background in magickal stuff, and is physically in better condition than most of his fellow Guildsmen. She teaches him some advanced weaponswork to supplement his streetfighting skills (and the stuff he learned from Aya, way back when), and she teaches him to integrate his magick with his fighting, and she spends two or three years attacking him without warning to build up his reflexes and his resistance to various poisons. (For years, that's his one failing as an assassin- he doesn't have the immunity gained by spending a lifetime absorbing small amounts of poison, and this leads to some humorous episodes in the infirmary when his career is just beginning. He figures out how to neutralize most poisons magickally, but that was a trial and error process that also frequently ended hilariously.)
Sometimes he runs into other mages, who twitch violently at the thought of his chosen profession. Most mages with strong empathy become healers or psychotherapists; very few of them become serial killers. ("I see it as the natural progression of things; the only rush greater than sex is death. And I can see by your horrified look that that isn't a satisfactory answer. Ah, well. Let's just say I'm a masochist and leave it at that, shall we?") Being part of the Guild means he has an enormous extended family- he has a society to belong to, and everyone who isn't part of that society is a nonentity until they prove themselves otherwise. Killing them is a bit like killing very large rats that twitch and squeak in entertaining ways when you poke them. He's a very well conditioned, functional sort of sociopath.
When he finally earns his tags (Guild-speak for graduating one's apprenticeship; proof of membership and identity are a set of dog tags, magickally imprinted by the Guildmaster himself), he and Banshee work as partners for a few years, until she retires. Then he's on his own; he uses the connections he has to the Candlemark gangs and the more eccentric parts of high society to good advantage, and he builds up an information network that is the envy of many in the Guild. Most of his close acquaintences from his youth are in positions of power once he becomes an assassin.
He has as many enemies in the Guild as he has allies; for the most part, he's seen as an eccentric, but he's respected for his skills. He's not the best at what he does, but he works hard to be damned good at it, and he doesn't get involved much in Guild politics.
He mourns Civet's transition to Guildmaster, and is one of the few people who says goodbye to Hawk when Hawk leaves the Guild. (Hawk becomes a bartender in Eastmark.)
He had an apprentice, who would've been another assassin-mage, but the kid died in a stupid accident. Silverlock doesn't talk about the incident ever, really. He doesn't blame himself, but he still sees it as a failure of sorts. He took Foxbird on her apprentice test, which is a bit different- he just oversaw her first assassination, and made sure nothing got too terribly fucked up. He wasn't her actual apprentice-master; most apprentices do not, in fact, get individual training of that sort. They tend to be communally trained by the older Guildsmen. Only those who require specialist training, like assassin-mages or poisonmakers, usually receive an apprentice-mster.
As an assassin-mage, and as a leechmage, he frequently gets called on to clean up other people's messes. He works a lot with the Guild mystics to track retrieve the tags of dead assassins, and he often gets called on to interrogate Guildsmen who've failed their missions. This is actually the case when he meets Blaine for the first time; an assassin came back to the Guild in shreds, after failing a time-sensitive assignment. He has to get all of the pertinent details out of the assassin in question before Maddel puts him under for intensive healing, so someone can go out and finish the job.
Blaine gets a nasty jolt from encountering Silverlock's leechmagick while in the middle of channeling his deity; Nagendra's curse kicks in, and his connection to his god shuts down, leaving him with a backlash migraine of epic proportions.
For a few moments, however, Silverlock was able to get a very good "look" at his soul, and what he saw was fascinating. (Deity-born mages like Blaine always parse a bit strangely to those with aetherial sight. To someone as sensitive as Silverlock, he's like an Escher done in irridescent colors.) Really, he was doomed before he and Blaine ever had their first civilized conversation; when he gets attached to people, he does so on an aetherial level. I wouldn't use any term as trite as "soulmates," since the feeling isn't at all reciprocal, and because on any given day, he's likely to run into five or six people whose souls operate on a similar wavelength. It just happens to be a wavelength that his soul finds irresistable.
(According to Silverlock, it's like cats with catnip, and he's very, very embarrassed to admit this.) It's because of the buzz he got off of thirty seconds in the presence of Blaine's soul that he decides to get to know him better. (Blaine figures this out after he dies, and spends a good deal of time wishing he had a corporeal form with which to kick Silverlock in the head.) The irony here is, of course, that to be within thirty feet of Blaine, Silverlock has to shut down his empathy, or Blaine loses contact with his deity. (This is really only potentially harmful when he's in the middle of spellcasting; the rest of the time he would just feel vaguely disoriented and slightly nauseous. As a priest, he has a direct connection to his god, all the time; he hears hissing in the back of his head, and the sound of water. When that connection shuts down, the lack manifests itself as something like an inner ear imbalance. They give each other migraines! ...no, I don't believe in writing functional relationships, why do you ask?)
It's fortunate for both of them that they actually like each other; Blaine is a lot like Hawk when he isn't wangsting, and Silverlock goes out of his way to be a likeable person when it suits him. They also bond over a shared affection for Foxbird and a shared distaste of Greymalkin. (I still need to write the scene where Blaine gives Greymalkin syphilis.)
Aya and Blaine don't get along very well; Silverlock thinks this is poetic justice, since he despised her boyfriend. Aya terrifies Blaine just a little bit, though by the time she's a general and head of the DeLavrey family, she terrifies most people just a little bit. It's the eyepatch- you still get the feeling her missing eye is staring at you, somewhere. (There are a great many people who think she actually had her eye magically preserved and uses it to spy on her enemies. This is blatantly untrue, but Aya does nothing to discourage this rumor.) Aya mostly just doesn't have time for Blaine's wangsty nonsense, and she thinks Silverlock could do much better for himself than some whiny, underfed religious fanatic. In this, and perhaps only this, she and Blaine are in agreement.
The actual story still needs a number of plot points worked out, but the biggest spoiler is that it was the Guildmaster the whole time. That's a subject for another post, I think- this one is mostly about Silverlock.
After the story, and after he gets his hands put back on properly (Blaine stuck them back on, but it was more of a quick fix than anything permanent), he keeps on assassining for a few more years- ten or twelve. As a reward for helping to save the world, Parliament agreed to waive his taxes for the rest of his life, so he finally pays off the last of his debts to the Guild and works when it pleases him to do so. (At the time, he wasn't planning to live forever, but the no taxes thing was definitely a marker in the "pro" column we he did make that decision.) When he gets tired of working, he starts teaching, though he refuses to teach any new assassin mages.
About a year before the end of his indenture, and after about a week of intensive summoning work, an assassin breaks into the house. Silverlock (who was asleep on the couch at the time) throws a paralysis cantrip at him and forgets about him until morning, when Gannet leaves for the university for the day.
The assassin is Hawk Samarkand, and by the time Silverlock wakes up enough to release him from the paralysis cantrip, he has one hell of a crick in his neck. Hawk isn't completely incompetent, but he's not used to doing solo missions, and his partner is out of commission with a set of broken ribs for a few weeks. (Maddel frequently gets pissed off at the various assassins who come through his infirmary, and will refuse to magickally heal them until he feels they've learned their lesson.) Once he promises to not assassinate anyone, Silverlock gives him a cup of coffee and they chat for a while. Hawk is worried that he won't be able to support himself and his partner on his own, and if he can't manage for a few weeks, how is he going to manage for a few months when he and his partner eventually decide to have kids? Silverlock, meanwhile, has no idea what he's going to do with himself once his indenture is up; he still has thousands of marks of debt to pay off because Gannet is an asshole who steals things (and people).
Hawk is a nice guy at heart- a truly good person, honestly, for all that he kills people for a living. ("It's a living, you know? Been the family business for generations, and it's not like I'm bad at it. Sure, I'm not as good at it as Civet, but most people aren't. And I just wouldn't be satisfied doing something like, I dunno, carpentry, or bartending. There's no thrill. And I meet interesting people this way, too.") He offers to sponsor Silverlock in the Guild, if he can't find any other, more suitable work once his indenture expires. Or, at the very least, he'll pay back the cup of excellent coffee Silverlock gave him.
(Silverlock falls a little bit in love with Hawk, too, but he does that a lot. It's one of the things Aya mocks him for most frequently- to which he usually responds with, "And I suppose you're so much happier, being the frigid bitch that you are.")
A year later, Gannet kicks him out, and he leaves with nothing but the clothes on his back and a plethora of interesting and potentially dangerous tattoos. He goes looking for the Assassins Guild, and finds it- ("If you're looking for the mage covens, you're in the wrong area." "I'm not looking for any trouble, milady. I'm looking for Hawk Samarkand." "Then you are looking for trouble, since it follows that man like stench on a bog corpse." "Be that as it may, he owes me a cup of coffee.") and gets sponsored as a provisional apprentice.
The only Assassin-Mage in the Guild takes him on. Banshee is a 4'9" black woman with vaguely sentient hair, and she kicks Silverlock's ass six ways to Sunday in the first half hour of their acquaintence. Then she teaches him everything she knows about destructive necromancy, which is considerable.
He keeps up his acquaintence with Hawk and Civet until Civet finally gets pregnant; they still remain friends, but by that point he's too busy with his apprenticeship and they're too busy with raising a kid and getting paid for them to see each other much. He does occasionally get to hear Hawk lamenting the kid's clumsiness, and he finds out in a peripheral sort of way that the kid got sent off to the Thieves' Guild and was doing well there. (This doesn't become important until a good twenty years later, when he meets Blaine. After a few years, some pieces click into place, and Silverlock spends a day alternating between beating his head against a wall in frustration and laughing hysterically.)
He spends somewhere between five and ten years as Banshee's apprentice- probably closer to five, since he already has a thorough background in magickal stuff, and is physically in better condition than most of his fellow Guildsmen. She teaches him some advanced weaponswork to supplement his streetfighting skills (and the stuff he learned from Aya, way back when), and she teaches him to integrate his magick with his fighting, and she spends two or three years attacking him without warning to build up his reflexes and his resistance to various poisons. (For years, that's his one failing as an assassin- he doesn't have the immunity gained by spending a lifetime absorbing small amounts of poison, and this leads to some humorous episodes in the infirmary when his career is just beginning. He figures out how to neutralize most poisons magickally, but that was a trial and error process that also frequently ended hilariously.)
Sometimes he runs into other mages, who twitch violently at the thought of his chosen profession. Most mages with strong empathy become healers or psychotherapists; very few of them become serial killers. ("I see it as the natural progression of things; the only rush greater than sex is death. And I can see by your horrified look that that isn't a satisfactory answer. Ah, well. Let's just say I'm a masochist and leave it at that, shall we?") Being part of the Guild means he has an enormous extended family- he has a society to belong to, and everyone who isn't part of that society is a nonentity until they prove themselves otherwise. Killing them is a bit like killing very large rats that twitch and squeak in entertaining ways when you poke them. He's a very well conditioned, functional sort of sociopath.
When he finally earns his tags (Guild-speak for graduating one's apprenticeship; proof of membership and identity are a set of dog tags, magickally imprinted by the Guildmaster himself), he and Banshee work as partners for a few years, until she retires. Then he's on his own; he uses the connections he has to the Candlemark gangs and the more eccentric parts of high society to good advantage, and he builds up an information network that is the envy of many in the Guild. Most of his close acquaintences from his youth are in positions of power once he becomes an assassin.
He has as many enemies in the Guild as he has allies; for the most part, he's seen as an eccentric, but he's respected for his skills. He's not the best at what he does, but he works hard to be damned good at it, and he doesn't get involved much in Guild politics.
He mourns Civet's transition to Guildmaster, and is one of the few people who says goodbye to Hawk when Hawk leaves the Guild. (Hawk becomes a bartender in Eastmark.)
He had an apprentice, who would've been another assassin-mage, but the kid died in a stupid accident. Silverlock doesn't talk about the incident ever, really. He doesn't blame himself, but he still sees it as a failure of sorts. He took Foxbird on her apprentice test, which is a bit different- he just oversaw her first assassination, and made sure nothing got too terribly fucked up. He wasn't her actual apprentice-master; most apprentices do not, in fact, get individual training of that sort. They tend to be communally trained by the older Guildsmen. Only those who require specialist training, like assassin-mages or poisonmakers, usually receive an apprentice-mster.
As an assassin-mage, and as a leechmage, he frequently gets called on to clean up other people's messes. He works a lot with the Guild mystics to track retrieve the tags of dead assassins, and he often gets called on to interrogate Guildsmen who've failed their missions. This is actually the case when he meets Blaine for the first time; an assassin came back to the Guild in shreds, after failing a time-sensitive assignment. He has to get all of the pertinent details out of the assassin in question before Maddel puts him under for intensive healing, so someone can go out and finish the job.
Blaine gets a nasty jolt from encountering Silverlock's leechmagick while in the middle of channeling his deity; Nagendra's curse kicks in, and his connection to his god shuts down, leaving him with a backlash migraine of epic proportions.
For a few moments, however, Silverlock was able to get a very good "look" at his soul, and what he saw was fascinating. (Deity-born mages like Blaine always parse a bit strangely to those with aetherial sight. To someone as sensitive as Silverlock, he's like an Escher done in irridescent colors.) Really, he was doomed before he and Blaine ever had their first civilized conversation; when he gets attached to people, he does so on an aetherial level. I wouldn't use any term as trite as "soulmates," since the feeling isn't at all reciprocal, and because on any given day, he's likely to run into five or six people whose souls operate on a similar wavelength. It just happens to be a wavelength that his soul finds irresistable.
(According to Silverlock, it's like cats with catnip, and he's very, very embarrassed to admit this.) It's because of the buzz he got off of thirty seconds in the presence of Blaine's soul that he decides to get to know him better. (Blaine figures this out after he dies, and spends a good deal of time wishing he had a corporeal form with which to kick Silverlock in the head.) The irony here is, of course, that to be within thirty feet of Blaine, Silverlock has to shut down his empathy, or Blaine loses contact with his deity. (This is really only potentially harmful when he's in the middle of spellcasting; the rest of the time he would just feel vaguely disoriented and slightly nauseous. As a priest, he has a direct connection to his god, all the time; he hears hissing in the back of his head, and the sound of water. When that connection shuts down, the lack manifests itself as something like an inner ear imbalance. They give each other migraines! ...no, I don't believe in writing functional relationships, why do you ask?)
It's fortunate for both of them that they actually like each other; Blaine is a lot like Hawk when he isn't wangsting, and Silverlock goes out of his way to be a likeable person when it suits him. They also bond over a shared affection for Foxbird and a shared distaste of Greymalkin. (I still need to write the scene where Blaine gives Greymalkin syphilis.)
Aya and Blaine don't get along very well; Silverlock thinks this is poetic justice, since he despised her boyfriend. Aya terrifies Blaine just a little bit, though by the time she's a general and head of the DeLavrey family, she terrifies most people just a little bit. It's the eyepatch- you still get the feeling her missing eye is staring at you, somewhere. (There are a great many people who think she actually had her eye magically preserved and uses it to spy on her enemies. This is blatantly untrue, but Aya does nothing to discourage this rumor.) Aya mostly just doesn't have time for Blaine's wangsty nonsense, and she thinks Silverlock could do much better for himself than some whiny, underfed religious fanatic. In this, and perhaps only this, she and Blaine are in agreement.
The actual story still needs a number of plot points worked out, but the biggest spoiler is that it was the Guildmaster the whole time. That's a subject for another post, I think- this one is mostly about Silverlock.
After the story, and after he gets his hands put back on properly (Blaine stuck them back on, but it was more of a quick fix than anything permanent), he keeps on assassining for a few more years- ten or twelve. As a reward for helping to save the world, Parliament agreed to waive his taxes for the rest of his life, so he finally pays off the last of his debts to the Guild and works when it pleases him to do so. (At the time, he wasn't planning to live forever, but the no taxes thing was definitely a marker in the "pro" column we he did make that decision.) When he gets tired of working, he starts teaching, though he refuses to teach any new assassin mages.
shtuff
Oh, man, Blogger has an autosave function now. My life is golden.
I need...to get off my ass and stop being emotionally/mentally paralyzed. I can't afford paralysis right now- I won't be able to afford it for the next few months, possibly years. I'm not sure how to deal with this.
Anyway, that's not why I'm posting. I'm posting because I've got crap in my head that needs excising, so here goes: early Fourth Era Silverlock, in a nutshell! Sort of.
Silverlock gets really attached to people he cares about. Part of this is just the way he was conditioned- the best way to keep slaves from rebelling was to make them part of the family, and he considered his fellows at the House his family. The House Mother and House Steward were his parents; the other slaves were his brothers and sisters. And he was happy growing up with them, and he loved them all dearly. (The rest of it is the way his magick works and the way his soul interacts with the world around him, but more on that later.)
Hundreds of years later, he wouldn't trade his magick for anything- but when Gannet Sorlin took him away from the House as his apprentice, Silverlock seriously considered suicide, rather than leave his family.
He was fairly miserable as Gannet's apprentice. They lived on the edges of Candlemark, where it borders Eastmark- it's not the nicest of neighborhoods, and at the time, he didn't really know anything about life outside of the upperclass. Sorlin, recognizing this, put severe restrictions on his movements, so as to prevent him from getting knifed in an alley.
The first castings he learned were defensive ones- he wasn't permitted to leave the house until he could construct a solid energy shield as a reflex. (Gannet was an asshole, but he wasn't stupid, and he wasn't about to waste a potential leechmage. Third class mages were incredibly rare, and having an apprentice was a mark of status among the leechmage community.) It took him the better part of a year to manage this, of course- and during that year, he wasn't permitted past the threshold of the front door.
Eventually, Gannet lets him wander about on his own, but for a while, he isn't allowed past the borders of the street they live on. (I have the name written down somewhere, but I can't recall it at the moment.) He spends a lot of time sitting on the front steps, writing letters to Aya. By this point, she hasn't spoken to him in years, and has more or less given up on him for dead. She hasn't met Nick and Liall yet, but she's joined the army and moved off of the DeLavrey estates.
(They meet when she's fifteen, and one of her mother's cast-offs hires Silverlock as an escort to one of Ninaya's parties. She's a rebellious teenager, he's representative of a million things her mother hates- and, to their respective surprises, they actually like each other. [The man who buys him for the evening is High Prince Ostrek Rehoren of Murundcar; Os is the reason Silverlock can curse fluently in High Murundic.])
They keep in contact through letters, since she can't get away from her duties with the army, and he's not allowed to wander on his own. (When he's a slave, Silverlock is incredibly obedient. Mouthy, yes, but obedient.) At some point, when he's sitting on the steps, writing a letter to her, one of the neighborhood kids wanders over and starts being annoying. Her name is Andra.
Gannet spends most of his time working at one of the universities, which means he's gone for most of the day. He'd give Silverlock some sort of task or assignment to complete, but otherwise, Silverlock would be left to his own devices, such as they were.
Andra is your standard six-year-old street urchin, but she doesn't throw rocks at him like several of the other street urchins do- she's just curious, because he sits on the steps every day, writing, and when the others do throw rocks, the rocks just bounce away.
He teaches her to read; she's a sweet kid, and bright for her age, and her mother works all day, so she's lonely. He can kind of relate. This is when he starts using the name "Silverlock," rather than his House name. (It was "Estri," which is Shrivish for "prince." Aya still occasionally calls him that, when she's feeling sentimental.) He'll say he chose that name because it was indicative of the person he'd become as a mage (the streak in his hair manifested when Gannet broke his magick), but it's actually just a nickname the kids on his street gave him. It's also the name Andra's mother uses for him, and he was a bit in love with her for quite a while.
Once Gannet is assured that he can take care of himself, he starts wandering the streets at night. He gets into a decent number of fights, but manages to stay alive. People learn to respect him after a while. He runs into a street-dance fight and convinces a few gang members to teach him the basics of street fighting and street dancing. Magick is all well and good, but one of the first things he learned at the House was to be comfortable with his body, and to use it to the full limits of its capabilities.
He takes to street dancing like a fish to water, and having an outlet for his physical energy (besides, y'know, having sex with Andra's mother [who totally has a name, I swear]) actually helps him concentrate better in his mage studies. He's a very physical person, even without his magick; he tends to touch people when talking to them, and he's very physically affectionate with people he considers friends. Sleeping around is an extension of this; sex is just another gesture of respect or regard, but not a particularly valuable one. It doesn't mean anything more than a friendly handshake, and it takes him a very long time before he finally understands that most people don't- or can't- feel the same way.
He's a remarkably sensitive empath, and he's had very thorough psychological training, but he's still occasionally clueless when it comes to dealing with people. (He figures things out for the most part by the time he joins the Guild, but he still has a number of gaps in his concept of "normal" human interaction.)
He becomes an active member of his neighborhood, and even though the local gangs don't completely accept him as one of their own, he still gets his own place in their hierarchy. He stops being miserable once he's got a group to belong to; the one thing discovering his empathy truly underscores is his need for people. It's as much an energy thing as it is an emotional thing; his own personal aether reserves are quite small, and if he isn't leeching energy from other people, he gets exhausted fairly easily.
He meets Vanick and Liall a few months before they die; he and Nick hate each other on sight because Nick has some very old fashioned notions of propriety, and Silverlock has dealth with traditionalist Akvarians in the past. He and Liall get along just fine, though, and they both half-jokingly lament the fact that Aya is terminally monogamous. (I've had Nick trying to explain Akvarian views on adultery and homosexuality, but the whole subject makes him amazingly uncomfortable. Liall has done a lot to break him of his more offensively bigoted ideas, but some things are too ingrained for her to fix.)
For all that they never see each other, he and Aya remain close friends; this meeting is the last one they'll have before he joins the Guild and her mother dies.
I need...to get off my ass and stop being emotionally/mentally paralyzed. I can't afford paralysis right now- I won't be able to afford it for the next few months, possibly years. I'm not sure how to deal with this.
Anyway, that's not why I'm posting. I'm posting because I've got crap in my head that needs excising, so here goes: early Fourth Era Silverlock, in a nutshell! Sort of.
Silverlock gets really attached to people he cares about. Part of this is just the way he was conditioned- the best way to keep slaves from rebelling was to make them part of the family, and he considered his fellows at the House his family. The House Mother and House Steward were his parents; the other slaves were his brothers and sisters. And he was happy growing up with them, and he loved them all dearly. (The rest of it is the way his magick works and the way his soul interacts with the world around him, but more on that later.)
Hundreds of years later, he wouldn't trade his magick for anything- but when Gannet Sorlin took him away from the House as his apprentice, Silverlock seriously considered suicide, rather than leave his family.
He was fairly miserable as Gannet's apprentice. They lived on the edges of Candlemark, where it borders Eastmark- it's not the nicest of neighborhoods, and at the time, he didn't really know anything about life outside of the upperclass. Sorlin, recognizing this, put severe restrictions on his movements, so as to prevent him from getting knifed in an alley.
The first castings he learned were defensive ones- he wasn't permitted to leave the house until he could construct a solid energy shield as a reflex. (Gannet was an asshole, but he wasn't stupid, and he wasn't about to waste a potential leechmage. Third class mages were incredibly rare, and having an apprentice was a mark of status among the leechmage community.) It took him the better part of a year to manage this, of course- and during that year, he wasn't permitted past the threshold of the front door.
Eventually, Gannet lets him wander about on his own, but for a while, he isn't allowed past the borders of the street they live on. (I have the name written down somewhere, but I can't recall it at the moment.) He spends a lot of time sitting on the front steps, writing letters to Aya. By this point, she hasn't spoken to him in years, and has more or less given up on him for dead. She hasn't met Nick and Liall yet, but she's joined the army and moved off of the DeLavrey estates.
(They meet when she's fifteen, and one of her mother's cast-offs hires Silverlock as an escort to one of Ninaya's parties. She's a rebellious teenager, he's representative of a million things her mother hates- and, to their respective surprises, they actually like each other. [The man who buys him for the evening is High Prince Ostrek Rehoren of Murundcar; Os is the reason Silverlock can curse fluently in High Murundic.])
They keep in contact through letters, since she can't get away from her duties with the army, and he's not allowed to wander on his own. (When he's a slave, Silverlock is incredibly obedient. Mouthy, yes, but obedient.) At some point, when he's sitting on the steps, writing a letter to her, one of the neighborhood kids wanders over and starts being annoying. Her name is Andra.
Gannet spends most of his time working at one of the universities, which means he's gone for most of the day. He'd give Silverlock some sort of task or assignment to complete, but otherwise, Silverlock would be left to his own devices, such as they were.
Andra is your standard six-year-old street urchin, but she doesn't throw rocks at him like several of the other street urchins do- she's just curious, because he sits on the steps every day, writing, and when the others do throw rocks, the rocks just bounce away.
He teaches her to read; she's a sweet kid, and bright for her age, and her mother works all day, so she's lonely. He can kind of relate. This is when he starts using the name "Silverlock," rather than his House name. (It was "Estri," which is Shrivish for "prince." Aya still occasionally calls him that, when she's feeling sentimental.) He'll say he chose that name because it was indicative of the person he'd become as a mage (the streak in his hair manifested when Gannet broke his magick), but it's actually just a nickname the kids on his street gave him. It's also the name Andra's mother uses for him, and he was a bit in love with her for quite a while.
Once Gannet is assured that he can take care of himself, he starts wandering the streets at night. He gets into a decent number of fights, but manages to stay alive. People learn to respect him after a while. He runs into a street-dance fight and convinces a few gang members to teach him the basics of street fighting and street dancing. Magick is all well and good, but one of the first things he learned at the House was to be comfortable with his body, and to use it to the full limits of its capabilities.
He takes to street dancing like a fish to water, and having an outlet for his physical energy (besides, y'know, having sex with Andra's mother [who totally has a name, I swear]) actually helps him concentrate better in his mage studies. He's a very physical person, even without his magick; he tends to touch people when talking to them, and he's very physically affectionate with people he considers friends. Sleeping around is an extension of this; sex is just another gesture of respect or regard, but not a particularly valuable one. It doesn't mean anything more than a friendly handshake, and it takes him a very long time before he finally understands that most people don't- or can't- feel the same way.
He's a remarkably sensitive empath, and he's had very thorough psychological training, but he's still occasionally clueless when it comes to dealing with people. (He figures things out for the most part by the time he joins the Guild, but he still has a number of gaps in his concept of "normal" human interaction.)
He becomes an active member of his neighborhood, and even though the local gangs don't completely accept him as one of their own, he still gets his own place in their hierarchy. He stops being miserable once he's got a group to belong to; the one thing discovering his empathy truly underscores is his need for people. It's as much an energy thing as it is an emotional thing; his own personal aether reserves are quite small, and if he isn't leeching energy from other people, he gets exhausted fairly easily.
He meets Vanick and Liall a few months before they die; he and Nick hate each other on sight because Nick has some very old fashioned notions of propriety, and Silverlock has dealth with traditionalist Akvarians in the past. He and Liall get along just fine, though, and they both half-jokingly lament the fact that Aya is terminally monogamous. (I've had Nick trying to explain Akvarian views on adultery and homosexuality, but the whole subject makes him amazingly uncomfortable. Liall has done a lot to break him of his more offensively bigoted ideas, but some things are too ingrained for her to fix.)
For all that they never see each other, he and Aya remain close friends; this meeting is the last one they'll have before he joins the Guild and her mother dies.