Private If I Had Wings I Could Fly

[Zalan]

Crorefell,

The Ashen Way, Between Murderer's Row, and the Ember District,

Stavros' Den

---

​

It'd been some time since he had stepped foot in a place like Stavros'. At least a month. The greasy smoke curling through air thick with the smell of tallow and old dirt. His fingers tapped quiet on the table as he eyed the faces around him.

None seemed to pay him or his client any mind. Absent of his usual fashion and regalia, it was just how he liked it for meetups like this. Though his eyes felt the more tired dealing with the strange light in places like this. The flicker of the candles, orange as such small fires were, while the shadows danced heavy beyond them. Were it not for the steady beam of sunlight that came in from one side of the hovel, well, he'd likely be dealing with an even bigger headache.

He pinched forefinger and thumb to the bridge of his nose.

"Shouldn't they be here by now?" the young half elf who shared his table asked.

"Could be they are," Zalan croaked, and dug a hand beneath the fold of his robes.

"What?" the youth asked, giving the room another look about.

"They're a professional, remember?" Zalan said with smirk, pulling a small wooden box out from where he'd been digging. "Wouldn't inspire too much confidence if we could spot them as plain as a palgris in heat, would it?" he pushed the two halves of the box apart easy. The top slid open, and he pulled from it a brown leaf roll of some smoking herb. Offered it to the youth.

"P-palgris?" he asked in disbelief.

Zalan shrugged, and put the roll between his lips. "Never seen a palgris?" snapped his fingers, just beneath the roll's head. A spark sizzled and caught on its end, and tongue of fire gouted up for a moment. Then two. Zalan dragged a breath in until the roll burned gold and bright.

"What does that have-" he realized he was speaking too loudly. Lowered his head down and leaned closer to Zalan as another customer passed by their table. "Mister Z-"

Zalan blew out a stream of smoke that washed across the young man's face. The young half elf seemed to choke on it, reeled back and tried to wave it away. "What did I say about names, hmm?"

"My mistake," the young man managed through a fit of coughs.

"They'll be here, don't you worry," Zalan promised. Though his reassuring smile didn't quite reach his eyes.

@Silk

 

[Silk]

​

A dirty boy, hardly older than thirteen, strode confidently up to the men's table, his big boots clacking hard against the floorboards. The boots were probably stolen from a corpse in some alley. His clothes were worn and full of moth holes. His cheeks rosy under all that grime that came with sleeping in the sewers. He smelled thereafter. But the young boy's dark eyes revealed that he had witnessed more horrors in his short life than these two men had committed together. His innocence hollowed by hunger and things worse than hunger.

"Oi! Wot a night, lads, eh?! Livin’ it up in like a pack o’ lords! Ain’t no room for a poor soul like meself to get a drop, is there?"
His voice almost reached a voice break, it was hoarse but still boyishly bright. Without waiting for an invitation, the boy plopped onto the vacant chair at the men’s table. His scrawny chest barely cresting the edge.

"Mighty kind of ya." The boy leaned back in his chair, all slender limbs and hollow cheeks, and tapped his small and scratched knuckles against the table. "Reckon I’ll have a cider, then. Ain’t much, issit? Keeps the rot from settlin’ in the gut. The name’s Sam.” He licked his lips before he flashed a grin, full of mischief and rotten teeth.

Then, Sam leaned in. His ribs pressed against the wooden tabletop. “Heard ya lot got work needin’ done...”

@Zalan

 

[Zalan]

The half elf near gagged at the mere smell of the boy, turned his whole body away from him as he joined their table, just beside him. "Gobinh guide us," he said beneath his breath as he gulped for different air.

Zalan but took a drag from his roll of smokes. Was this kid one of Silk's? He sat quiet a while, whilst the urchin made an order, gave a name. Even showed his teeth. What little was left of them anyway.

Poor little bugger.

Zalan blew the smoke up, like a curtain before his face. "Don't work with amateurs," he said behind the rise of sweet smelling haze.

The half elf looked from the mercenary he knew, and back to the boy. "H-how'd you know?" he whispered to Sam in a hush.

 

[Silk]

He flicked a glance at Zalan which implied that the boy was anything but professional. Sam rested his bony elbows on the table, unbothered by the half-elf's clear disgust. The boy was used to it. Expected it, even. The boy snorted, scratching at something crusted in his matted hair. Sam was a walking stench. The sour tang of a body left too long without a proper wash. His clothes were stained with gods-knew-what and stiff with filth, might as well have been his armor.

"Now, see… She got her reasons for sendin’ me, aye? Ain't ‘cause I’m pretty." A smile of blackened gums almost split the boy's face in two. "She ain't dumb enough to walk into somethin’ blind.. and I got a nose fer trouble."

Sam snorted as he side-eyed the half-elf. The way the man twitched, the way he gulped at the air like a fish outta water. It didn’t sit right. Nervous types were dangerous. Nervous types got you killed. "Ye ain't cut out for this, mate." The street rat said, tapping his fingers against the mug of cider a tavern wench served him. The boy's is nails were black at the edges.

Sam took a slow sip of his cider, letting the sour drink coat the whole inside of his mouth before smacking his lips. He looked the half-elf up and down again, unimpressed. "Look like you'd piss yourself soon as the steel comes out." Then boy turned his attention back to Zalan, the real guy to talk to. "So, what’s it gonna be? Ye want her ear, or should I tell her yer wastin’ her time?"

@Zalan

 

[Zalan]

Now, see... she... The boy, Sam, went on to explain.

Zalan cocked a brow behind the film of burnt leaf that hung in the air between them. A grin split its way across Zalan's lips. Something like amusement there in the glint of soft ember's glow come shine upon the dark of his eyes.

She didn't trust him enough.

Smart.

Yet Ain't cut out for this...

"M-me?" the half elf asked. "But I'm near twice your size!" he defended himself. Shocked that the boy would say he would piss himself, his brow wound up tight as he frowned. "Now you listen here!" he said all hiss beneath his whisper. "I-"

Zalan raised a hand, low and easy, palm towards the half elf, who came to quiet quick. "Sam, was it?" Zalan asked as he took a drag from his roll. The cherry crackled bright gold-almost-white. He let out a wash of hot silvery curls. "I'm at a loss, really, I am," he looked to the half-elf. "I'm in agreement, the kid here, he won't last long in a scrap, but he's the client," he leaned back again, took another drag. "Things go smooth, and that's where she comes in, isn't it? Helping things go smooth?" he smiled. "Things go smooth enough, kid here wont have to get into no scrap, and see, if we do find ourselves with steel out, and he does of course, piss himself," Zalan shrugged. Let his head hang behind his shoulders. Let out all the smoke he had been holding in. Up into a great bloom that unfurled and spread like a strange mushroom. A moment to smile and admire how it all rolled away.

"Well, that's why I'll be there, right?" he worked himself back up, and fixed his eyes on the kid. "So, if she wants in on a promising gig, she'll do well to lend us that ear of hers, hmm?" Zalan fished a coin out of a hidden pocket inside his robes. Silver. "For the mistake of calling you an amateur," he said, and flicked the piece up in the air towards Sam.

 

[Silk]

Sam snatched the coin before it landed on the table. The boy knew how real silver tasted, so he bit down on the coin. Obviously satisfied, he flashed a grin of cracked lips and tucked the silver coin into folds of dirty rags, before he slid off the seat. "Not as thick as ya look, are ya?" The boy stepped back and winked toward Zalan. "Aight then, I’ll go get ’er." he said before he melted into the crowd.

Silk watched from the gloom and greasy light of a dying lantern. Idiots. Flashing silver in an establishment like this shithole, was like throwing a lamb into a den of wolves. A glint of silver was all it took, every gaze lingered on Zalan and his company. Measuring, weighing, deciding. A heartbeat later, they looked away. However, the damage was done.

Now people would follow them and Sam, thinking they would have more coin tucked away on them. Already, she felt the shift, like a hunger moving through the room. Already she saw the shift. Minds and eyes that just a moment ago had been dull with drink now had turned sharp. Knives rested a little looser in their sheaths. Shoulders tensed and eyes flicked to Zalan’s direction.

Silk exhaled slow, steady. Like a draft from the door, she moved between the patrons over to Zalan's table. The thief eased into the seat that the boy Sam had left vacant. Her plain, earth-toned clothes did not stand out in this crowd.

Her steel-colored eyes scanned the room briefly, almost lazily, only for a moment. Her posture was unremarkable, shoulders slightly slouched, hands resting in her lap. She wasn’t trying to command attention, and as far as anyone could tell, she wasn’t even trying to exist. Her presence no more distinct than the flicker of a dying candle in the corner of the tavern.

“Smooth..” she echoed her voice flat. This woman did not have an ounce of charisma. There was nothing in her voice that made you want to listen to her. Her eyes briefly flicked to the half-elf, a faint shadow of disdain passing over her face. "If you think I’ll grease your path, you’re mistaken.” Silk straightened ever so slightly. "But… I will listen."

@Zalan

 

[Zalan]

The half elf double took, head shifting left, then right, as if he didn't see yet where the voice had come from. Or maybe he looked to see where she[/] had come from.

"How did you... When..." He muttered beneath his breath. A grin with missing teeth and a sour smile haunted him a moment. Reminded him to shut his mouth. He hunkered down instead, pretended he had been there before.

Zalan but smiled. "I'd thought after our last stint, I'd earned a little more trust than needing a canary," he took one last drag from his roll. The ember eating up the leaf and herb with bright crackle and warm hiss. He took it from his lips and smashed it against the table.

All the smoke trailed up black. Zalan saw it curl purple, blue, green and gold. He shook his head. Some as he smiled, toothy and grim.

"Pardon my mood," he said between them. Voice a practiced hush. "Lack of lenses makes the shroud all..." He wobbled his fingers. "Twisty."

 

[Silk]

The pair of grey eyes flicked to the half-elf. He stared at her like she was a ghost. Maybe she was? Or worse, maybe she was real? She let the look linger long enough to make him uncomfortable, then turned away.

She let her eyes slide slowly back to Zalan. “That’s it, isn’t it?” She said with the ghost of a smirk tracing her lips. More shadow than expression. “You thought.” She tilted her head, just a little. Not curious. Just considering.

"You don’t leave the door unlocked just ‘cause a man knocked once and didn’t piss on the rug.” she said, eyes on Zalan. It was just business. Always had been. Always would be. People turned soft in the head when it came to loyalty. Thieves had no loyalty. A coin passed hand-to-hand and a half-smile in the dark did not mean friendship. It did not make you the one the knife wouldn’t turn on, nor one the thief wouldn’t rob. The world did not work that way. She did not work that way. Zalan ought to know better than to trust thieves. "Nothing personal. Just a rule of thumb. Same as not bedding snakes, or sleeping in burning houses. Moody, are we?"

Silk watched the smoke trail up in lazy spirals. Black at first, then curling into color like oil bleeding on the cobblestones. Purple. Blue. Green. Gold. The kind of pretty that usually came before screaming. “Twisty?” she echoed, voice dry. “That what we’re calling it?” She shifted, just slightly, the way a cat might when someone kicks dust too close to its tail. Ready to vanish between blinks.

A twitchy fireweaver was trouble. That could be a tavern turned grave before dawn. No one never liked a moody mage. Silk flicked a sliver of burnt tobacco from her sleeve.

@Zalan

 

[Zalan]

"No," he answered dry, "Suppose you don't," he near laughed, bitter like. "All that skill, and still..." he shook his head. Stuffed the thought down and looked about the room.

She was still sitting, wasn't she? So why'd he have to go and act like there was any reason to his moodiness, as he watched the dingy hang out dip and rise, shimmer and shake like so much heat come off a flame. The shroud there about so many bodies. All gathered and breathing around so many little flames.

Candles and cookfires, lanterns hung from the wall as air warmed and cooled through the pump of so many lungs.

Like watching currents stir silt, after a stone had fallen into the mud.

"What else would we call it?" he poked along. Leaned on the back of his chair as he scanned across faces and frames. A few heads turned away. Huddled the closer to hide the threat there behind their keen listening.

Turned back to Silk and the potential employer. "You heard of the late shipwright, Leontel Durena?" he started simple enough. Omitted that Durena had recently been almost exclusively working on Air-ships. Tilt his head toward the half elf. "Has a son, you see,"

The half elf near rose from his seat at the mention. Zalan motioned him to still. Lucky for all of them, the youth had enough presence of mind to follow.

"His last ship, real fine piece of work,"

"It was stolen," the half-elf said, flat as a gravestone.

Zalan let it sit for a moment. "We've the opportunity to get it back, and you, finest friend, are just the sort to help us sieze the opportunity,"

 

[Silk]

“All that skill,” she echoed, quiet. Her mouth curved, not quite a smirk, but close enough. Bitterness always found its way to the surface, like blood through a white dress. “And still…?” She let it hang there, just like he had. Let it rot a little in the air between them. It was always the same, wasn’t it? Silk watched him from under half-lowered lid, grey eyes steady as stagnant water. She leaned back in her chair, one knee hooked over the other.

He turned talk back to the work. Good. At the mention of Leontel Durena, her eyes flicked to the half-elf, watching him rise like a cork bobbing to the surface. "That is Leontel Durena's son?" she repeated, not fully convinced. "No one steals a ship like that.,. Sounds like someone already did the clever part.” People did not steal airships for the thrill.

"His last ship, real fine piece of work."
"It was stolen."

"And you want it back?"

"Thieves aren’t known for returning what they take. So if I’m to help steal from a thief… " Her voice came low, but cut clean through the the noise and be heard at their table.

“…I want everything. Names. Faces. Maps, if you have ‘em. Who took it, how they moved it, and what we’re walking into.”

@Zalan

 

[Zalan]

The young elf nod. "I want it back,"

"Thieves... and what we're walking into."

A grin cut across Zalan's face, too pleased with the look in her eye. "Maps, we have," he glanced about the room with a lean. "Found the sky-ship being hidden away in the hills. Out beyond the city," slipped his hand neath his leathers, palmed folded bit of parchment and slipped it across grime covered table. "Map's newly graphed, can still smell how fresh the ink is," he offered it to her.

Opened up, the map showed the foothills north of Crorefell, the city gates there at its edges, and the sea, just some miles east of an x marked clean between the hills.

"Was Wil Vinolan's crew," he said. Didn't expect that part to go down too well. What with Vinolan's reputation. "Sark, Pila, and Little Jo, were with him the day of the take,"

"They took it not three nights ago," the young elf let on. Hollow voiced. Eyes far sighted and fragile as glass. "A test flight. They had posed as some of the guards stationed at the air-yard that day. Made off with the ship in the dead of night, but," he almost laughed. "Papa and I were still aboard," he sought the thief's eyes. "Last minute repairs, before our final flight to Altalusia,"

Zalan looked at the young man sidelong, shook his head. "Kid's father and him blew the engines, kid took a kite sail off the ship, and dear old dad well,"

"He died with his ship," the young man finished.

Zalan gave a nod. "Now," he pulled another roll from his jacket, and struck a flame about its head with a snap of his fingers. "You going to keep playing like you aren't interested?" he said behind the curl of smoke. Offered the smoking herb over to her. "Or are you going to help us with this take?" he grinned. Fire in his eyes.

 

[Silk]

Silk didn’t reach for the map right away. Just watched it. She let her gaze drift across the table, first to the halfelf then to Zalan, smoke coiling from his lips like a bad promise.

Wil Vinolan.

The name sat like a knife left in someone's ribs. “Wil fucking Vinolan.” she said at last. "The Black Devil and his crew..."
Her fingers ghosted over the map. “Sark kills for pleasure. Pila’s the one with poison teeth, she dips her damn knives in widowspider venom. And Little Jo…” she snorted, dry and joyless. Her steel-colored eyes turned to the half-elf. “Little Jo flayed a toll-keeper once. Wore his skin like it was a coat. These aren’t just pirates...” she said “They’re killers. Real ones." If there was a pirate born any more savage, she hadn’t heard of them.

"You say the engines were blown."

Her voice was quiet, thoughtful.

“Engines just don’t grow back. Then do tell, how in all the burning hells are we planning to move it?”

She studied the X with narrowed eyes. Just a scratch in a hill, but it reeked of blood already. She held out her hand, slow and deliberate. Her palm, calloused from rope and blades. Palm open and patient.

“How much is the coin?”

 

[Zalan]

His grin spread just the wider, and he passed the torch. "Kid's promising ten big ones," his flame licked fingers, nicked and rough with similar work, careful as they pressed the roll into her hand. Let go and looked back at his map. "Each..."

"If you can get me onboard, I can repair the shroud engines," the kid said in a whisper. His eyes looked over the map. Fixed on the X, as if the clean scratches of quill pulled on him. Put him right there, aboard the Suryathii. "I'll need five minutes," his eyes trembled beneath wide lids of his eyes. "Ten, at most,"

Zalan's lips pulled thinner at that. "Murderous as Wil's crew is," he showed teeth, a dog ready to bite. "They don't right have an engineer in their midst, and with their rep being as shit as it is... won't find one for a while I think,"

"They didn't get a good look at me," the young man's eyes looked to Silk, sure as the sunrise.

"We get onboard, rig the engines right," a slide of hands, palm against palm as calluses rasped and the right hand took off, up into the air.

 

[Silk]

Ten full damn ones.

Silk took the roll, fingers brushing over the paper. She let the figures sit in her mind for a few heartbeats. If it was all true, it was enough to buy silence for a dozen sins... Money could buy everything and everyone, even a skeptical thief. Silk leaned back in her chair, fingers tapping against the table. Her lips curled into a faint, almost invisible smirk as she looked back at Zalan. “Yeah, that’ll do.”

Her eyes darted back to the half-elf when he spoke. Five minutes? Ten, at most? “Five minutes?” she repeated, with skepticism coloring her voice. "You’re dreaming if you think they’ll give us even that long. Three minutes is more like it, maybe two, before things go from bad to bloodier than they need to be.” She didn’t wait for anyone to argue. They were facing pirates who’d rather see them dead than let them walk away with a damn thing. Those bastards will take and do everything they can before they lose their bounty. They’ll hunt them to the end of the earth to make sure they don’t slip out with their prize. Silk didn’t plan to die on a bloody air ship, not even for ten big ones. Money was of no use when you where dead.

"We need make sure they don’t know what’s coming until it’s too late. No hesitation. But we need a way out, if this shit goes south." A skilled thief didn’t just prefer to have an escape plan. A thief demanded it. Her fingers traced the edge of the map, but she wasn’t looking at it anymore. She was thinking, because only a damn fool could walk into a mess like this without a hundred ways to get out. Luck’s a whore that always had a price. And Silk would rather not trust Luck if she don’t have to.

 

[Zalan]

The half elf looked at the map. Stared at the X. "I know the ship inside and out," almost bolted up, electric with the promise of being so close. He took a breath to settle himself.

Missed the sidelong look from Zalan.
"If things go wrong," he said a little too loud. Shook his head and forced himself to speak lower. Whole body bent low to it. "There are several exit points," his hands went to his robes, sifted through pockets. Hesitated. Looked to Zalan, who jut his chin toward the thief they had come to hire.

As close to trust as one could get.

A nod from the young man, and he pulled a journal. Laid it on the table. Hand still over the well worn blue leather that kept its secrets. Small beads of colored glass adorned the red string that wound it shut. He undid the wind, and opened the pages.

"I even know where all the hidden holds are, and how we can get into them from the outside," his fingers found pages with technical drawings quick. Schematics with measurements and notations written in scratch, hardly legible script.

​

Zalan scratched the scruff at the side of his face, stretched his jaw to let his ears pop. Gaze cast out to the unsavory eyes that looked on, too eager, at their table. He raised his chin with a dare. Shameless smile there too.

"We should, wrap it up I think," Zalan said low to the pair of them. Turned back. Settled his eyes on the real pro. "Continue this elsewhere?"