The shaky fingers turned those pages like they were a holy scripture. Her eyes didn’t lift from the journal. Hidden holds. Maintenance tunnels. Crawlways and choke points. “You’ve been in these, yeah? Not just drawn ‘em?” The thief leaned back from the table with a slow breath.

Her gaze swept the tavern, looking for the flash of teeth or the glint of steel, the kind of looks that could mean someone thought they smelled coin. Her eyes cut to Zalan, caught the look he was giving her, the we should go kind, the too many ears and not enough knives to cover ‘em kind. “Aye” she murmured.

Zalan’s suggestion wasn’t just smart. It was necessary. Then she stood, folding into motion as smoothly as smoke. "I'll meet you outside." She gave the tavern one last look before she turned and stepped away from the table. Out through the tavern. She didn’t wait by the door. Instead, she settled near the mouth of a narrow close tucked just off the alley, where flickering lanternlight barely reached. One boot up against the wall, arms folded, eyes scanning.

Waiting.
 
Tension ran up the half elf's spine. Zalan but pulled another roll from his coat pocket. Tapped its butt unto the table. Struck a lite with snap of finger and took a drag. Blew it over his head.

"Go on next," he told the kid as the bodies around them shift and coiled. Bunch of snakes. "But first," he turned in his chair to find the tavern wench. She stopped by. A tilt of Zalan's head told the kid to kick rocks. Get goin. "Some hard cider if you have it," he said easy as his eyes looked past her, took another drag.

The kid was up and going. A couple of broad shoulders and stout arms wobbled their way over.

"Yes of course, will your friend be-" her voice died in Zalan's ears as he saw hands moving. Reaching. For. Brass knuckled knife.

Lungs full of smoke. Zalan felt it swirling there behind his teeth. Huffed it out his nose in gouts.

Step, by heavy step. Them goons moved. Zalan gripped up the back of his chair. Legs raised him up with a screech of wood against hard floor.

The kid turned about. Saw the chair up and over Zalan's shoulder. Eyes wide. He looked forward. Stepped on out into the lantern light.

A crack and crash their behind him. Shouts. A scream.

The kid looked desperate for his way out.
 
Silk stood half in shadow, the lantern light carving her face in gold and ash. The thief was leaning against the crumbling stone wall when the kid stumbled out into the street. A crash hit behind him. She flinched. Inside the tavern, chairs were scraping and voices rising, that particular tone that meant knives were about to do the talking. Steel had an awful ring of it. Just watched he half-elf with narrowed eyes, he looked like a rabbit caught too far from its burrow.

She didn’t wait for him to speak, scream or squeal. Just caught the front of his robe and yanked him into the narrow mouth of the close. It swallowed them both in damp shadow and piss-stink, the cobblestones slick underfoot. Her back silently hit the wall. Silk turned to the half elf and her hand clamped down hard and fast over his mouth. "Don’t. Move." she breathed. “Stay quiet,” she murmured.

Behind them, the tavern boiled. Silk let go of the half-elf’s mouth slow, two fingers trailing along his jaw in warning. Then she leaned her head out of the close just enough to glimpse the street, to watch the door.

Zalan.

Either he’d be walking out in a moment or he wouldn’t. Either way, Silk wasn't going back in now! Silk told herself she wasn't going back in. She never went back in.She wasn’t bleeding for anyone but herself. Zalan had a few seconds more. She counted slow in her head. One… two… three.

The door slammed open again. A shape stumbled through the light. Not him.
Four… five...

"Shieet," she muttered. Steel-colored eyes flicked once to the half-elf, hard and sharp. “Stay here. I mean it.”

She didn’t run like someone rushing into glory. She ran like a cat that had just caught the twitch of a tail beneath the floorboards. Silent. Intent. Muscles coiled under leather and threadbare clothes. One hand near her blade, the other loosening her cloak.
 
Inside the den, Zalan held the broken leg of a chair firm in one hand. Back to the wrong wall, as a pack of hungry rats closed around him.

Breath high. Blood hot. Mind ablaze with the beat of his heart loud between his ears. Each pound a hammer that drove the pain all the more. A growl turned shout as he threw himself at one man. Went for the head. Pulled the blow short and slipped leg underhim. Wrenched him with one arm, hips thrown into center mass. A turn. A dip. A crash.

He still remembered where the last one was. Turned with an upswing. Caught the bastard flush on the chin with the makeshift club. A nasty crack. Teeth shattered and spat across the air with a spray of spittle.

Exit clear. He just needed to-

Fast steps to his left. Knocks clear in his ears. Could feel the way the air stirred there. Could see the threads of shroud swirl with the motion. His eyes alight with fire's light. A grin.

Blood ran hotter through his veins.

Faster than any normal man should move, Zalan turned quick on his heels. Dipped low. Caught wrist with both hands. They crashed to the floor. Steps from the door. Sprawled and angled. Desperate as dogs trying to rip into each other's throats. Zalan, two hands death gripped onto the knife blade, head spinning from the fall. The other, big grin on his face as he worked his weight onto the man.

"Shhhh, now, don't worry, won't hurt much," he grunt as he muscled his off hand under Zalan's frantic guard. Forearm pressed down on the soft of his throat. "Say, I know you, don't I?" the man laughed. "Big spender... yeah," showed off his straight teeth. A sadistic joy bright in his green eyes. "Never did like that look in your eye,"

A buck and a kick. Arms trembling as air starved lungs ached sharp for breath. Nothing but chokes through clenched teeth.
 
The man stumbled backward, eyes wild and too slow to notice her until she was already on him. Like one alleyway stray cats she sprang from the shadows, launched herself on his back. Her legs wrapping tight around his waist.

Her left hand grabbed a fistful of hair and yanked his head back. Exposing the throat, while her right raised her dagger, blade dark and thirsty. She slammed the knife deep into his throat, shredding flesh and sinew. Blood exploded, hot and heavy, splattering his face and the walls. The man gurgled, hands clawing uselessly at her grip, eyes wild with panic. Silk pulled the blade free, only to drive it in again, this time into his jawline, a harsh, rasping sound when teeth cracked beneath steel.

She jabbed, slashed, and stabbed... and stabbed... and stabbed... and stabbed. The strikes weren’t clean... but hell, they didn’t need to be. Precision was for surgeons and this was murder. The man needed to die, and so he did. She stole his last breath. His legs gave out, and he fell forward. When the man finally went limp, his body slacking, she eased off, letting him lie onto the blood-slick floor.

Her breaths were fast, like a hunted hare as she turned back to Zalan. "Not bad, Z " she said with a crooked smile. "Thought the place be ash by now...”
 
No time wasted to get up, a wobble step as feet found the ground under him. Saw his blood stained hero. Breath greedy and full with each pull. Lips twisted into a smile turned grin, as one hand rubbed at the rawness where the man's hand had nearly squeezed the life from him. Eyes locked on to her. If only for a moment. Motioned to the door. "Night's not over yet,"

He looked back to the mayhem. The would-be muggers cautious and wide eyed as they eyed the pair. Eyed the blood spilled. Their fellow, or something too similar to them, dead and wasted on the floor.

Out the door they went.

The kid, half peered over the alley wall, waved them over. Too big. Too visible.

Zalan coughed as he hurried in his direction. Hid in the shadows.

Kid looked to the professional. Wide eyed. "What-" looked to Zalan, who coughed with the brief moment of respite.

"You got a place we can lay low?" Zalan asked Silk. Voice ragged and raspy.

The kid crept a step away. Gulped down some spittle and made sense of what just happened. Tried to wrap his head around what would come next.
 
Blood, none of it hers, wet on her sleeves and speckled across one cheek. Dagger still slick and dripping, her breath a ragged hiss between clenched teeth. Blood was cooling fast on her leathers. Silk looked Zalan over, his face was wild.

“I’ve got a place,” she said. It was an old root cellar, the north end of the Rookery. Damp and cold, and it smells like something died down there. But no one watched it, and it’s got a bolt door thick enough to laugh at a blade.

She turned and started moving. They passed through streets that didn’t have names anymore. Past butcher alleys and forgotten shrines, through piss-stained corridors of cobblestones and yellowing lime walls, where no one sane went after dark. Finally, down a lane so narrow even the moon didn’t bother.

She stopped at a sagging building, hundreds of the birds nested here. Silk led them through a low gate half-swallowed by ivy into what might have been a garden once. At something that looked like a pile of compost, she knelt, hand brushing aside old boards and leaves, then found the iron ring hidden beneath the dirt. A grunt, a heave, and the door to the root cellar groaned open like a hero dying.

The stink of wet earth and old onions spilled out like a ghost’s breath. She climbed down first, boots hitting the cold, hard mud floor. A stub of wax candle pulled from her coat and she turned to Zalan. "Would you...?"
 
Green. In a place like Crorefell. Painted in the grey and white of bird shit as it was, and full of that sweet sting and bite of old onions. Their puffball flowers still stubbornly popping out of down feathers, and lost plumes that the tangle and warm earthy rot hadn't quite claimed yet. Was an odd respite from the brick and mortar, dust and heat. Like a place that was rooted in a time before any fool set foot upon this spot. The spiral scapes growing from a timeless bulb.

Silk pulled free the overgrowth, and the plants hissed and snapped. Bitter scent full on the air as the thrush fell by the wayside. Zalan watchd as the thief pulled open their would-be-sanctuary. The stench of the underground hit him like a burp left from a drunk's mouth. Foul tang to its sticky warmth.

His nose scrunched and brow pinched, teeth showed in doggish grin. "Tender's taint," he muttered as he fanned away the scent. Climbed down into the hole, his own boots thud there against the mud, as moonlight spotlit them from above.

The Kid watched, wide eyed and skittish as the two went down. Moved through the tangle. A foot caught on a bramble vine. A whoop and flail of arms before he caught his balance. Fixed his headband, and peered down the hole.

Would you...?

Zalan leaned over toward Silk and the candle. His jasper colored eyes on her hands, up the length of her fingers, to her knuckles, stained with a dead man's blood. Cupped his own hand near the candle's wick, brought the other up and snapped thumb to middle. The curl and whip of black smoke, swirled between his fingers, the glow of fire's gold and orange light painting arms, dotted dark and sprayed with red. His eyes followed the trail. How it ran up neck, and cheek. Dried in flecks there about her eyes.

"Didn't think you would though," he confessed. Let his hand fall from the candle, and the little flame glow against the darkness.

The kid came down the ladder rung by loud rung.
 
Her swell of breath was too fast to be calm.

The grey gaze dragged across him like a knife checking for soft spots. That throat, raw and gasping. She watched the light crawl up his throat, the bruise already blooming purple on his skin. His collar, sweat-dark and sticking to skin that smelled like fire and metal and something bitter. Her eyes caught the spark before the flame. That twitch of fingers that coaxed fire to life. The flame caught, casting the dark in a warm red light.

She lifted her eyes to meet his, and in the waxlight, they looked like something feral. Silk didn’t answer Zalan right away. Just looked at him for a long moment, the candlelight flickering against the cold iron in her eyes. Whatever she'd meant to say was caught somewhere between blood and breath.

“Don’t get any ideas, I didn’t save you,” she said instead, her mouth curled into a smirk. “I saved my ten big ones.”

“Close the hatch behind you,” she called to the half-elf before she ducked low through the arched doorway ahead. The first chamber was tight, a stone throat that funneled into blackness. She stepped in, boots landing soft on packed earth. She shoved the second door open with her shoulder. The air inside the cellar proper was thick with the smell of old dust, rusted iron, and something faintly sweet, spilled liquor or rotting grain, hard to say. Shadows leapt away as she stepped inside and lifted the candle. One by one she lit the squat lanterns along the walls.

What had once been shelves for pickled beets and stored root vegetables now held two rough mattresses and blankets folded at the foot, all patchwork and thick. A sagging table with three mismatched chairs stood like in the center of the room. She nodded toward the battered chest tucked beneath the table. “There’s food in there. Salt bread, dried meat, maybe some old cheese if the rats didn’t get clever. Bottles too. Cheap stuff, but it keeps better than water.”
 
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A look there between them. Almost a dare. The pair sized up and ready for whatever came next. Would it be a knife? Some part of him asked there in that breath that mingled between them. Almost seemed to hope for it. Twisted as she had been. All strong limbs, and sure hands.

No strangers to a bit of mess. Real funk.

Come the curl of a smirk. Might as well have been the knife.

"I'll wish on a rat down here, my head never costs so much," he said, a grin, almost proud.

Few bounty scripts made it to ten. Most pulses came to an end well before that prize was backed and signed for.

A reminder for the Kid. "Oh, right, of course," he sounded, clambered up another rung, then two, and pulled shut the latch. Creek of hinges, and candle glow the brighter, saw Silk off under the arch, Zalan followed, the kid soon after.

A narrow entry-point, had Zalan breathing harder than he would care to admit. He had been in too many narrow spaces to ever feel at ease between them. Or maybe it was the swelling round his neck. Whatever the case, he was glad to hear the second door come open, gladder still when he came into the chamber proper, and the flames were lit.

"Real cozy like," Zalan said absently, in the warm musk of it all.

Wasted no time in making his way to the table and the chest. Crouched low and pulled it open with a creek. Eyed the goods through the dance between the fire lights and the shadows cast. Grabbed up the old bottles one by one. "Old Henhouse Mash Liquor," he laughed. "Weren't kidding about the cheap stuff," pulled the cork. "Stuff's always been lousy,"

Gave it a swig.

Made a face like a cat that'd stuck its nose somewhere it shouldn't. Tongue out and face scrunched behind a show of teeth. "Still just as awful as I remember it," he offered some to the Kid. The Kid shook it away, but sat at the table. Zalan shrugged. Took another pull. And Took a seat across from the Kid. Offered the bottle to Silk.
 
She stood for a long heartbeat, lit from the side like some statue half-saved from ruin. Coat peeled back, dagger at her hip, blood dried in arcs across her wrists like old jewelry.

“You think I stock good liquor down here?” she asked, tone flat and tired, but with the ghost of humor. “No... I save the decent stuff for cellars I don’t have to abandon.” Silk took the bottle from his hand like she was taking back a stolen coin. Fingers wrapped around the neck.

She tipped it back. One long pull. A twitch at one corner of her mouth when the burn caught halfway down. The liquor hit hard. Like drinking varnish. A hiss between her teeth. “Still better ... than gutter water,” she rasped and coughed, another swig, before handing him the bottle back. Wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist before she turned her back on the "guests" at her table.

She hauled herself up onto the old shelving, jars long gone, dust thick as ever, but she'd laid out something passing for a mattress there. The thief folded one arm behind her head and shut one eye against the candlelight. The other stayed open, fixed lazily on Zalan. Watching.
 
Something like a laugh there in Zalan. "Most things are," he added, and snagged up the bottle. Tilt it his way and spied down its neck as the old glass hummed in his hand with the resonance of its motion. Eyes slid to find the thief stalking away, and pulling up onto old shelves. Watched her settle in. Most curious.

His eyes flit back to the Kid. Jut his chin at him. "The ship," he cut. "You are familiar with it?"

The Kid looked down, his eyes on nowhere. A place where only his eyes could find, and his mind could follow. "I helped my father build it," he said without a doubt.

Zalan took a swig of the drink. Gulped it down, pushed the heat out with a hiss. Low as smoke. "Welp," he gave a small cough. Pain sharp in his throat. "We'll lay out a plan come morning," he spied around the place. "Assuming we can tell when the sun rises," his eyes went back to the bottle. The liquor's warmth started to bloom across his face.

Beat the cold that crept up the floor. Beat the hurt around his neck.

"Bed's yours, kid," he nod to the dusty shelf with the one roll. "I'll uh" he rasped, free hand pressed fingers against the purpled flesh of his neck. Rolled his head slow. "Keep watch," he said. Hand dug about chords of his shirt. He pulled them open. Loosed the fabric and twine from his neck wide open.

The Kid nod slow, and moved to his bunk.

Zalan let out a long breath. Still feeling those hands squeeze about his windpipe. Still remembering the rabid look in the bastards eye. The uptake was ragged. Stained in old sweat as he was. He could've burned his way out. So why didn't he?

He sat back, slide digits and palm up and across the muscles under his jaw. Felt the dry blood from the spray bead and roll beneath callouses, burns, and the pads of his finger. He looked up to where Silk had slunk up to.
 
Silk stayed there on the shelf-bed like she belonged to it, like she'd been laid up in the dust like a sack of old turnips. From her perch, she watched with one eye cracked open. She watched his hand fumble at the laces, watched the shirt come loose. The steel grey eyes followed the line of his collarbone, the swell of rising breath beneath skin gone dark with violence. His bruises were ripening now. Nasty things.

But the thief didn’t offer comfort. Silk wasn’t a healer, and she didn’t pretend to be. She wasn’t anyone’s gentle touch, didn’t keep salves or soft words tucked in her coat. What she had, she’d already given, a bottle of booze, a hole in the ground to lie low, and her dagger in a man’s throat.

The flicker of candlelight painted Zalan’s so he looked like something carved from old bronze. The way his fingers moved, slow and careful across bruised flesh. They hovered over pain and blood like they couldn’t decide whether to soothe or press harder. His loosened shirt hung half off one shoulder, collarbone gleaming faint with sweat and blood-roses. Bruised, battered, breathing.

The thief just laid there. One arm behind her head, the other resting loose across her belly, one leg dangling off the edge like it had forgotten how to rest. “Don’t worry about that.” she said, voice low. “I know when dawn comes." The candlelight guttered in a draft and threw long, dancing shadows across the packed earth walls. Across Zalan. Across the thief. Across the boy.

He met her gaze when he looked up at her. "You could’ve cooked him." she said, flat as a coin on the table. "Could’ve left him smoking in his boots," she added. She watched him, that mess of an open shirt and bruises. The way his throat worked, scarred and swollen. "So why didn’t you?"
 
A laugh. Bitter as soot. A show of teeth, and a gleam in his eye. "Not too many cinder slingers in the Fell," His look wandered. Down gleaming line of her neck, across shoulder, then the bend of her arm, and the stains of red that marked his debt to her.

Something twist inside him. Beneath the fresh bruises and old scars that marred him.

How she sat there, all languid and lax. Toes dangling from the ledge.

His jasper gaze snapped back up to her eye, a beast met by a steeled arrow. Strings waiting to be drawn. Limbs ready to spring and flex. His mouth had curled into a wolfish grin as the shadows went on with their dance.

Maddening in their own rhythms.

As if the candles could feel the hard pull of breath. The rasp in his throat. The rise and fall of chests, and slow beat of hearts. Too loud in his head. Too bright in his eyes.

He pulled his glance off her. Back to the dusty old glass, and the rough engraving there upon it. Cold. Head swimming with the shroud, the drink, and the trace of the flame kissed thief. "Would've blown cover," he pulled another drink from the bottle. Wiped lips clean after the burn. "Risked the job,"

The kid settled on his roll. Eyes wide open as he stared at the darkness that hung over him. The light that danced there too.

Zalan let the bottle go, hot in his own skin, he peeled out of his shirt. Let the cool cellar air kiss the heat off him. Wiped off the blood that had stuck onto his neck. Crusted behind his ears. "Not like you would've stuck around," he grinned again, head low as he dabbed up the mess behind his neck. "So compromised," he laughed at the thought. "Couldn't say I'd blame ya any which way,"

Was why her coming back was all the more shocking. Pointed as it was.
 
She shifted a little on the shelf, not to leave it, only to get more comfortable. Then heard the scrape of fabric, and then she looked. Of course, she looked. No shame in it. Her eyes dragged slow over the fire mage’s bare shoulders, the cut of old muscle honed by years of ruin, and the bruises blooming across his ribs like storm clouds. He looked better half-ruined than most did dressed for court.

Her lip curled. Not mocking, more like amused at her own weakness. Not every day someone takes his shirt off in her safe house. Felt rude not to look. She let her eyes linger one more beat, then looked away. Head tilted back to the low ceiling, to the dark wood beams.

“Our cover’s blown six ways to piss,” she stated. “Choking in a tavern floor... that’s not blown cover, I don’t know what is. So don’t act like a flame would've tipped the scales. We were already burned.” Her head rested against bundled-up old potato sack, eyes half-lidded in the dark, but there was nothing sleepy in her voice.

“You wanna talk risk?” she added, smirking. “You took that the moment you left without lighting those bastards up.”
Silk snorted. A sound, low and through her nose, like something offended. Grey eyes still on the damp earth ceiling overhead. Some slimy, stringy moss was clinging to the cracks. She turned her head then, just a little, just enough to see the curve of his v-cut abs stretch as he was rubbing the dried blood off from his neck.

“I'll take that as your version of thank you."
 
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