Post by Eurydice on Aug 13, 2008 19:40:47 GMT -5
((This was part of Kevin's birthday present, and I'd forgotten until now that I hadn't posted it. Been a while since we RP'd Valas and Kiri's initial meeting, but I think it's decently accurate))
... 
Thirteen paces from the top of the staircase, he found the first unlocked door in the hall and thrust it open without hesitation, rapier and dagger poised; Lord Aldamir’s hired goons weren’t so close that they were even in the building yet, although they’d doubtlessly seen the one he’d entered. If the room was empty, if he kept his movements quiet, he could make it to the neighboring rooftops without a fight.
If not… well, then things would get messy, and that was that.
The room was not empty. Of course it wouldn’t be.
The weapons that had swung up into their customary positions of readiness were pointing at an elven woman with delicate features and soft blonde hair, sitting by the window. Her expression—and mental make-up—shifted rapidly from calculating concern, to cold fear, to unhappy acceptance.
Valas nodded. At least there would be no hysterical pleas or bouts of crying for him to deal with. He swiftly checked the lock on the door and advanced towards her, just close enough that the blades pointed at her soft skin were slightly more palpable in her gaze, to reinforce the assessment that she had already registered: that she was entirely at his mercy.
Her voice, a shaky, mellow mezzo, asserted itself. “What do you want?”
Something stirred, low in his line of vision, and Valas whipped the blades around to find himself staring down a lean, shabby, fierce little cat, all stripes and bared teeth. A pet, maybe a familiar or animal companion—he wasn’t sure.
Slowly, stoic, he returned his attention to the girl by the window. Her face—pretty, beyond a doubt, but by no measure beautiful, with too-pale blue eyes and too-flat reddish lips—was still frozen on him, as if stuck in time, awaiting the next move, knowing that it was his. The mind roiling beneath the icy calm exterior was another creature entirely, tantalizingly complex, steeped in deception. He’d have stopped to explore it, were the situation other than what it was.
A quick once-over of the room showed him bare-bones accommodations: a wash stand on the opposite wall, a dresser, and a bed wedged in the corner, farthest from the door and window. He indicated this last with a swift flick of the blades. “Go. Sit.”
She eyed him skeptically. “I don’t have anything worth stealing. Search the room if you want, but it’ll profit you nothing.”
“Don’t care. I need you quiet and—“
The shout—the one that he had been dreading—sounded on the street before the tavern. Valas looked down sharply as a cadre of guardsmen, wearing the symbol of House Lenwë, started rushing into the building that he occupied, as well as all of the directly adjacent ones, and any notions that Valas had entertained of trying some sort of daring leap to the next window went up in smoke. Gods above, if this room had only been empty, if he’d had just seven more seconds and hadn’t needed to pause, he’d be out of here by now. He was better than this. It was all too embarrassing to be believed.
The elf girl was staring at the troops below, suppressing a flash of muted panic as some part of her psyche screamed out with flight-or-fight instinct, clearly favoring the former, and Valas suddenly realized he was safe. Whoever she was, this girl was as threatened by prospect of capture as he was.
“Sit,” Valas repeated, his voice hard as stone, his eyes still on the street below, “and keep quiet.”
Only eight had come into the building, he thought absently, and perhaps half of them would stay to check the downstairs rooms. If it came to a fight up here, he could easily take them four at a time. The question was, of course, whether he could take them out quietly enough that each group of four wouldn’t have time to sound the alarm, along with the question of whether or not the first group he attacked would make enough noise to warn the second group what was going on. Well, if it came to that and he eliminated the upstairs group, he could risk the rooftop path; they’d be expecting it, but if he could get enough of a lead on them, he could disappear completely, with the open road before him, shadows and crowds aplenty for him to intersect.
“What if I don’t?”
He’d almost forgotten she was there. Valas’ gaze snapped to the girl, regarding her disbelievingly. He closed another step between them, annoyed, let her see the dagger’s point still more clearly. “Then I’ll keep you quiet. I’d rather not have to.”
The girl’s shrewd eyes were trained on him. What’s it worth to you? she seemed to ask silently.
Oh, for the love of—Valas held back a sign of exasperation, his expression hardening as he took her by the arm, forcibly steered her to the bed, and sat down with her, cold metal resting comfortably close to her throat. He heard the fall of heavy boots on the steps. “Quiet now, talk of compensation later.”
The cat snarled and silently padded over to the bed, hopping up into the girl’s lap. Ignoring the steel grazing her skin, the girl adjusted herself slightly to better accommodate the creature, lavishing attention on the little thing, as if out of spite, bluntly ignoring her captor but mercifully content not to give him away. Outside, the patrol seemed to be doing only a cursory examination of the place; when the occasional tavern patron would complain, someone would shout that it was the authorities and warn them to keep their doors locked against intrusion. Valas felt himself begin to breathe easy. No diviners or expert trackers to determine he was in the same building—just strong, stupid servicemen that he’d have to wait out. He could wait.
In the meantime, he considered his unlikely hostess. She was dressed in dark reds and purples, the colors of nobility, emphasized by the tasteful gatherings of silver jewelry about her person, little baubles and trinkets on each ear, every finger. He would have recognized her, though, were she a local noble of any importance, which meant she was either from some lower tier of nobility or another part of Doria altogether.
Or even further. Valas mentally rewound to the first she’d spoken to him, played it for himself and listened to the subtly broader than usual vowel sounds, the clipped word endings. Most interesting—unlikely of course, but interesting.
Looking over the room a second time, Valas noted a couple books on the dresser, one of which looked like something to do with runelore, the other of which was arcane but otherwise unrecognizable. Probably a mage, then, which made the cat her familiar. So. He was sitting with maybe a lesser noble, maybe a foreign princess, who was probably a mage and definitely on the run. All interesting.
Outside, the disgruntled cadre was beginning its retreat from the building. The mage girl half sat forward, as if curious to see where they were going. The cold threat at her throat made her still. She seemed half-tempted to call after them, take her chances with the dark-eyed, bright-haired man who had burst into her room, but thick fear held her tongue. She stared down at the dagger he held to her rosy skin with strange, dull interest.
Only after his pursuers’ retreating footsteps had left the periphery of street noise entirely did Valas stand and check at the window. They’d left only a smattering of guards, spread out and eyeing the block half-heartedly. Valas allowed himself a moment’s satisfaction before turning back to the girl, who was petting the cat absently and staring daggers at the floor.
He did not envy the floor.
Back to the business at hand. “Apologies for my rudeness, milady, but yours was the first open door.”
Her eyes were on him; he could feel them as he idly paced along the wall. She was taking in his gait, his defenses, the cut of his clothes, the sparse, cold formality in his bearing. When she spoke, the shaking that had infected her voice before was gone. “Never mind. You spoke of compensation for my silence.”
“I did.” Valas took the chair by the window. He didn’t have a lot on him, but he could see from her look of appraisal that she would be content to be paid in trade. “What did you have in mind?” he added, although he already had a fairly good idea of what it would be.
The cold gaze flicked quickly to the knife at his side once more, with that same dully insistent curiosity. Raising an eyebrow, Valas extended it to her, hilt first, curious himself at what she wanted to see. If she thought he’d give it to her in repayment, she was going to be sorely disappointed. He was very fond of that blade, and no pretty little elf maid was going to part him from it. Mentally, he gave her a cursory inspection, waiting patiently for her to try and turn the thing on him, as unlikely a possibility as it was.
Nimble fingers, ringed in silver, held the dagger, tested its balance with easy practice. Her eyes focused carefully on the area just beyond the dagger’s tip, scrutinizing it for some property invisible. After a moment, she spoke again. “I need protection. Passage to somewhere safe.”
Valas nodded. Easy enough. “Any ‘somewhere’ in particular, or just out-of-the-way?”
“Anywhere,” she said. “I… don’t know these parts so well, so I’ll have to…” The word trust dangled in the forefront of her thought, and Valas watched it flicker back into the shadows. “… your judgment will be sounder than mine.” Flipping the dagger, she handed it back to him.
“Suits me fine.” He checked both his weapons, sheathed them, and watched the guards below squirm. Lord Aldamir was not going to be happy at his escape. “The people after me are expecting me to be alone, so traveling with another person will be a helpful element of disguise.” Valas eyed her finery. “You might consider disguising yourself, speaking of which, if you’re worried about pursuit.
A spike of her silent laughter rang in Valas’ mental ear. “I’ll be fine,” the girl said drily.
Valas sighed and rolled his eyes. Cocky nobles. Always assumed that this sort of thing would just work out effortlessly. Well, it was her loss. “Your choice, of course,” he muttered, not disguising the disdain in his voice. “What’s your name?”
“Kailyn,” she said curtly, her cool eyes flashing dark fire at him. “Yours?”
Valas smirked. The girl was a good liar, but it certainly was not her real name. Of course, when it came to that, he had not expected her to give it, and that was fine. “You can call me Kirdan,” he said wryly, listening to her mental echo of his doubt—she had used an alias and thus assumed that he had done the same. If she only knew.
“Very well, Master Kirdan,” she said flatly, bleakly, scooping up the cat from her lap to hug against her chest as she regarded Valas with apathy. “When do you propose we depart?”
“Closer to sundown. They’ll be changing up the guards in a few hours; if we can time it right, they’ll miss us completely, and we’ll be safely across the border in a matter of days.” Settling in his chair, Valas yawned, tilted his head to either side, arched his back, listening to the stiff cracking it produced. He could do with a nap, but better to keep an eye on the street and be sure of things. He glanced at the girl who called herself Kailyn. “You might want to rest. It’s a long hike to the nearest inn on the road.”
She studiously ignored him, fussing over the cat, who purred contentedly under her ministrations.
Rolling his eyes again, Valas opened his bag and began sorting through various bits of disguise, his attention easily filtering away from the girl, even though he was curious and knew nothing of her origins, nor what had brought her here, nor what she fled. That was fine. He didn’t know what had painted that undercurrent of bleak resignation into her mind, what force had left her numb with subdued terror coursing through her veins, but he didn’t have to. He most certainly didn’t know why he felt compelled to keep her safe.
He didn’t know that his role as her guardian would redefine his world. He didn’t know that she would collapse beside him two nights from now. He didn’t know that she would sleep in his arms, a month and a half later, and every night following, just as he didn’t know that she would die in his arms five years after. She’d rise from the dead to be with him again, and he didn’t know any of it, any of what was to come.
All he knew was that a standoffish little elven noble was sharing his corner of the world from now until he got her to safety. She would be left in Lord Darian’s protection, then, and Valas would leave with a new assignment in hand.
... Thirteen paces from the top of the staircase, he found the first unlocked door in the hall and thrust it open without hesitation, rapier and dagger poised; Lord Aldamir’s hired goons weren’t so close that they were even in the building yet, although they’d doubtlessly seen the one he’d entered. If the room was empty, if he kept his movements quiet, he could make it to the neighboring rooftops without a fight.
If not… well, then things would get messy, and that was that.
The room was not empty. Of course it wouldn’t be.
The weapons that had swung up into their customary positions of readiness were pointing at an elven woman with delicate features and soft blonde hair, sitting by the window. Her expression—and mental make-up—shifted rapidly from calculating concern, to cold fear, to unhappy acceptance.
Valas nodded. At least there would be no hysterical pleas or bouts of crying for him to deal with. He swiftly checked the lock on the door and advanced towards her, just close enough that the blades pointed at her soft skin were slightly more palpable in her gaze, to reinforce the assessment that she had already registered: that she was entirely at his mercy.
Her voice, a shaky, mellow mezzo, asserted itself. “What do you want?”
Something stirred, low in his line of vision, and Valas whipped the blades around to find himself staring down a lean, shabby, fierce little cat, all stripes and bared teeth. A pet, maybe a familiar or animal companion—he wasn’t sure.
Slowly, stoic, he returned his attention to the girl by the window. Her face—pretty, beyond a doubt, but by no measure beautiful, with too-pale blue eyes and too-flat reddish lips—was still frozen on him, as if stuck in time, awaiting the next move, knowing that it was his. The mind roiling beneath the icy calm exterior was another creature entirely, tantalizingly complex, steeped in deception. He’d have stopped to explore it, were the situation other than what it was.
A quick once-over of the room showed him bare-bones accommodations: a wash stand on the opposite wall, a dresser, and a bed wedged in the corner, farthest from the door and window. He indicated this last with a swift flick of the blades. “Go. Sit.”
She eyed him skeptically. “I don’t have anything worth stealing. Search the room if you want, but it’ll profit you nothing.”
“Don’t care. I need you quiet and—“
The shout—the one that he had been dreading—sounded on the street before the tavern. Valas looked down sharply as a cadre of guardsmen, wearing the symbol of House Lenwë, started rushing into the building that he occupied, as well as all of the directly adjacent ones, and any notions that Valas had entertained of trying some sort of daring leap to the next window went up in smoke. Gods above, if this room had only been empty, if he’d had just seven more seconds and hadn’t needed to pause, he’d be out of here by now. He was better than this. It was all too embarrassing to be believed.
The elf girl was staring at the troops below, suppressing a flash of muted panic as some part of her psyche screamed out with flight-or-fight instinct, clearly favoring the former, and Valas suddenly realized he was safe. Whoever she was, this girl was as threatened by prospect of capture as he was.
“Sit,” Valas repeated, his voice hard as stone, his eyes still on the street below, “and keep quiet.”
Only eight had come into the building, he thought absently, and perhaps half of them would stay to check the downstairs rooms. If it came to a fight up here, he could easily take them four at a time. The question was, of course, whether he could take them out quietly enough that each group of four wouldn’t have time to sound the alarm, along with the question of whether or not the first group he attacked would make enough noise to warn the second group what was going on. Well, if it came to that and he eliminated the upstairs group, he could risk the rooftop path; they’d be expecting it, but if he could get enough of a lead on them, he could disappear completely, with the open road before him, shadows and crowds aplenty for him to intersect.
“What if I don’t?”
He’d almost forgotten she was there. Valas’ gaze snapped to the girl, regarding her disbelievingly. He closed another step between them, annoyed, let her see the dagger’s point still more clearly. “Then I’ll keep you quiet. I’d rather not have to.”
The girl’s shrewd eyes were trained on him. What’s it worth to you? she seemed to ask silently.
Oh, for the love of—Valas held back a sign of exasperation, his expression hardening as he took her by the arm, forcibly steered her to the bed, and sat down with her, cold metal resting comfortably close to her throat. He heard the fall of heavy boots on the steps. “Quiet now, talk of compensation later.”
The cat snarled and silently padded over to the bed, hopping up into the girl’s lap. Ignoring the steel grazing her skin, the girl adjusted herself slightly to better accommodate the creature, lavishing attention on the little thing, as if out of spite, bluntly ignoring her captor but mercifully content not to give him away. Outside, the patrol seemed to be doing only a cursory examination of the place; when the occasional tavern patron would complain, someone would shout that it was the authorities and warn them to keep their doors locked against intrusion. Valas felt himself begin to breathe easy. No diviners or expert trackers to determine he was in the same building—just strong, stupid servicemen that he’d have to wait out. He could wait.
In the meantime, he considered his unlikely hostess. She was dressed in dark reds and purples, the colors of nobility, emphasized by the tasteful gatherings of silver jewelry about her person, little baubles and trinkets on each ear, every finger. He would have recognized her, though, were she a local noble of any importance, which meant she was either from some lower tier of nobility or another part of Doria altogether.
Or even further. Valas mentally rewound to the first she’d spoken to him, played it for himself and listened to the subtly broader than usual vowel sounds, the clipped word endings. Most interesting—unlikely of course, but interesting.
Looking over the room a second time, Valas noted a couple books on the dresser, one of which looked like something to do with runelore, the other of which was arcane but otherwise unrecognizable. Probably a mage, then, which made the cat her familiar. So. He was sitting with maybe a lesser noble, maybe a foreign princess, who was probably a mage and definitely on the run. All interesting.
Outside, the disgruntled cadre was beginning its retreat from the building. The mage girl half sat forward, as if curious to see where they were going. The cold threat at her throat made her still. She seemed half-tempted to call after them, take her chances with the dark-eyed, bright-haired man who had burst into her room, but thick fear held her tongue. She stared down at the dagger he held to her rosy skin with strange, dull interest.
Only after his pursuers’ retreating footsteps had left the periphery of street noise entirely did Valas stand and check at the window. They’d left only a smattering of guards, spread out and eyeing the block half-heartedly. Valas allowed himself a moment’s satisfaction before turning back to the girl, who was petting the cat absently and staring daggers at the floor.
He did not envy the floor.
Back to the business at hand. “Apologies for my rudeness, milady, but yours was the first open door.”
Her eyes were on him; he could feel them as he idly paced along the wall. She was taking in his gait, his defenses, the cut of his clothes, the sparse, cold formality in his bearing. When she spoke, the shaking that had infected her voice before was gone. “Never mind. You spoke of compensation for my silence.”
“I did.” Valas took the chair by the window. He didn’t have a lot on him, but he could see from her look of appraisal that she would be content to be paid in trade. “What did you have in mind?” he added, although he already had a fairly good idea of what it would be.
The cold gaze flicked quickly to the knife at his side once more, with that same dully insistent curiosity. Raising an eyebrow, Valas extended it to her, hilt first, curious himself at what she wanted to see. If she thought he’d give it to her in repayment, she was going to be sorely disappointed. He was very fond of that blade, and no pretty little elf maid was going to part him from it. Mentally, he gave her a cursory inspection, waiting patiently for her to try and turn the thing on him, as unlikely a possibility as it was.
Nimble fingers, ringed in silver, held the dagger, tested its balance with easy practice. Her eyes focused carefully on the area just beyond the dagger’s tip, scrutinizing it for some property invisible. After a moment, she spoke again. “I need protection. Passage to somewhere safe.”
Valas nodded. Easy enough. “Any ‘somewhere’ in particular, or just out-of-the-way?”
“Anywhere,” she said. “I… don’t know these parts so well, so I’ll have to…” The word trust dangled in the forefront of her thought, and Valas watched it flicker back into the shadows. “… your judgment will be sounder than mine.” Flipping the dagger, she handed it back to him.
“Suits me fine.” He checked both his weapons, sheathed them, and watched the guards below squirm. Lord Aldamir was not going to be happy at his escape. “The people after me are expecting me to be alone, so traveling with another person will be a helpful element of disguise.” Valas eyed her finery. “You might consider disguising yourself, speaking of which, if you’re worried about pursuit.
A spike of her silent laughter rang in Valas’ mental ear. “I’ll be fine,” the girl said drily.
Valas sighed and rolled his eyes. Cocky nobles. Always assumed that this sort of thing would just work out effortlessly. Well, it was her loss. “Your choice, of course,” he muttered, not disguising the disdain in his voice. “What’s your name?”
“Kailyn,” she said curtly, her cool eyes flashing dark fire at him. “Yours?”
Valas smirked. The girl was a good liar, but it certainly was not her real name. Of course, when it came to that, he had not expected her to give it, and that was fine. “You can call me Kirdan,” he said wryly, listening to her mental echo of his doubt—she had used an alias and thus assumed that he had done the same. If she only knew.
“Very well, Master Kirdan,” she said flatly, bleakly, scooping up the cat from her lap to hug against her chest as she regarded Valas with apathy. “When do you propose we depart?”
“Closer to sundown. They’ll be changing up the guards in a few hours; if we can time it right, they’ll miss us completely, and we’ll be safely across the border in a matter of days.” Settling in his chair, Valas yawned, tilted his head to either side, arched his back, listening to the stiff cracking it produced. He could do with a nap, but better to keep an eye on the street and be sure of things. He glanced at the girl who called herself Kailyn. “You might want to rest. It’s a long hike to the nearest inn on the road.”
She studiously ignored him, fussing over the cat, who purred contentedly under her ministrations.
Rolling his eyes again, Valas opened his bag and began sorting through various bits of disguise, his attention easily filtering away from the girl, even though he was curious and knew nothing of her origins, nor what had brought her here, nor what she fled. That was fine. He didn’t know what had painted that undercurrent of bleak resignation into her mind, what force had left her numb with subdued terror coursing through her veins, but he didn’t have to. He most certainly didn’t know why he felt compelled to keep her safe.
He didn’t know that his role as her guardian would redefine his world. He didn’t know that she would collapse beside him two nights from now. He didn’t know that she would sleep in his arms, a month and a half later, and every night following, just as he didn’t know that she would die in his arms five years after. She’d rise from the dead to be with him again, and he didn’t know any of it, any of what was to come.
All he knew was that a standoffish little elven noble was sharing his corner of the world from now until he got her to safety. She would be left in Lord Darian’s protection, then, and Valas would leave with a new assignment in hand.