Private [M] The Carousel of Hearts

[Osytha]

That goading little barb about the coin looks to catch Osytha hook, line, and sinker.

“Alright, alright— point taken.” She scoops up the pouch, pulling its drawstring tight and tied closed before going to secrete it deep within her pockets… before realising she no longer has her usual array of pockets. Mild confusion crosses her face as she searches for an acceptable alternative. “Was plannin’ on collectin’ payment after the job, but if you insist…”

It’s rude of her to leave Rois holding the door, though, so Osytha quickly shrugs and settles for stuffing it under her leather belt. It’s a bit of a squeeze, but snug does mean secure, plus it stops the coins from jangling out their tantalising symphony to any would-be cut-purses.

Osytha slips past with a grateful little ‘ta’ — which probably isn’t all that warranted given what Rois is having her step out to; Munas Kuvak’s unkempt streets, which seem to double as a midden judging by their reams of rubbish and pervasive, cacky reek. It’s almost a blessing to have the fresh day’s smog choke everything else beneath its own thickening pall, as forges all over toil away at adding another layer to the town’s crust of soot and grime.

“… I want it to match my hair and my clothes.”​

If Osytha feels any derision toward the man’s vanity, she doesn’t show it. She simply nods her head along while making a mental note of all his criteria. Rois is paying her very well, after all. For this sum? He could demand that it can sing a little tune for him as well, and she wouldn’t bat an eye.

“The palette matter is an easy one,” she informs Rois, looking him up and down. Lustrous cinnabar locks which tumble in fetching swoops and waves, contrasted on one hand by the rust-dull sigils banding across his face, and on the other, by a gaze so sharply scarlet that it seems to cut right through you. “… Red seems like your most consistent theme, but it’s your call. So long as we find some leather in a shade you like, I can change out the cover on your scabbard, and re-wrap the blade’s grip while I’m at it.”

A choking tendril of something almost sulphurous weaves through the air, causing Osytha to wrinkle her nose in disgust. They — that is, those who knew anything about Munas Kuvak when asked — said the place isn’t somewhere you want to actually live, and not just because of its general lawlessness, hostility, and indefatigable air of misery. ‘They’ said the air here is also poison, and that a few months of breathing it uninterrupted will make your body waste away until you’re good as dead. Something about the unnatural smells of heavy industry filling these streets tell Osytha that ‘they’ are right. These are not the relatively gentle notes of wood-smoke; furnaces around here are spewing out fumes from things which the human body was never meant to allow fill its lungs.

“I recommend we look at used as well,” Filly adds, trying to ignore the way her sinuses are panicking, “for three reasons,” to which she holds up a hand and begins ticking off fingers. “First: it’s cheaper, so we might find somethin’ of especially fine make without breakin’ the bank. Second: if your aim is to intimidate, then a blade which shows a bit of wear is goin’ to be that much more convincin’. And third: quality.” Her hand lowers, and she offers another little shrug. “Happen that last one sounds counter-intuitive, but you never truly know what you’re gettin’ with a brand new blade. Sometimes the metal has faults which don’t show until you’ve used it a few times — and then it snaps apart like glass. But a sword that’s still in one piece after five years of bein’ smacked around, well, you can be fair sure it’s got another five or so in it left.”

As they walk, Osytha notes that daylight’s since lost the soft, honey hue of dawn, and with its waxing harshness the streets have come to life. Apprentices run shit-job errands for their masters, skirting out the way of dour-faced labourers trundling their wheelbarrows laden with deliveries of coke and raw materials. Some are other shoppers like themselves, perhaps; moving more idly and unburdened than the rest. Hawkers try to ply their sundries from blankets upon the filthy ground — too many of whom seem like they’re flogging personal effects out of desperation — while queues form at tiny, hole-in-the-wall establishments from which come the aromas of baking bread, fried potatoes and onions, and sometimes even tantalising, roasted flesh. Welcome, but ephemeral, reprieves from Munas Kuvak’s medley of much less pleasant fragrances.

“As for the actual type of blade — I’ve got a couple clear ideas already.” Osytha dips behind Rois, moving out the way of a surly-faced and hulking aurochs-kin ploughing through the sidewalk, before she re-appears at Mr Crocodile’s other side. “But happen it’ll be easier to just show you when we get to that bit.”

She glances up at him. “So… what’s this stop we’re makin’?”

 

[Rois Sinclair]

A hidden smirk when she takes the money; somehow he knew the idea of it going towards someone already rich would get beneath her skin. In a vague attempt to not sound like a complete idiot the man nods at Osytha’s observation on thematics, because mentally a question had popped up almost immediately… what was a scabbard? It was best not to talk when you had nothing intellectual to say whatsoever, for the sake of appearances and pride.

And Munas Kuvak is, indeed, a very smelly place.

The only reason the sun is at all visible is because the wind is blowing westerly, sending black waves crashing haplessly against the shadow-y peaks, it is the reason for the lower-snow high up upon the mountains craggy face to be nothing more than grey, brackish sludge. Every single person that passes them is a worker of some sort entirely immune to the cacophony of soot and ash and burnt steel as it already had a home within their diseased lungs, manifesting the sickness known as ‘black lung’ but never truly striking them down until they least expected it… they wear the mixture against plain-clothes in smears and speckles and hand-prints. Tan slacks and once-grey shirts barely held together by prickly thread eager to snap. The rare person not blackened by the tar-laden air is a trader in reasonably better clothes (but not by much) that lacked fanfare but were at least clean, so long as none of the workers touched them, prancing too and fro with hired muscle for both protection and stock-carry, if the air is smoke than the noise is metal. Metal being struck, metal being cooled in barrels, metal jangling against itself in boxes, all fringed by the acrid burning of waste and wood and coal alike.

Where the stone has been withered away by repetitive, heavy footsteps the paths have not been fixed but rather ‘patched’… planks of wood against mud attempting to keep ones feet from sinking downwards into run-off from metal-workers carelessly dumping their forge-barrels out where they worked instead of carrying them anywhere, and in time, this water has stagnated. The alae-bloom of prettier places is dashed aside in lieu of what appeared to be rotting wood-pulp, cigarette papers and loose tobacco, discarded fibers of all sorts from cloth to woven baskets and the occasional glittering of smashed glass. As Rois listens to her explain why a used blade would probably be the better angle here (her points were too good to argue, and he had begun to argue with a sort huff before settling down), a blade-workers apprentice carrying a load of crude steel veers his wheelbarrow into a puddle and almost splashes them, almost--

“I swear, I swear--” The way the red-head abruptly rears up like a cobra causes the poor youth to go scattering off at a lightning pace before something awfully violent occurs! Rois scowls at the retreat with curled hands outwards, indicating the phantom wringing of ones neck, “I prefer this place at night-- but the stores aren’t open at night-- AWTSH.”

That last strange noise was the onset of a sudden sneeze, claws cupped at mouth and eyes squinted shut… even someone that smoked as much as the vaunted Crocodile himself was not immune to this different kind of smoke. Another level of toxicity.

“Ugh…” A pathetic sniffle, “Lets get this over and done with as fast as possible… I am an idiot for wearing white.”

Indeed he is, doing a little dance about a mosaic rug upon the ground where a poorly looking woman was selling what appeared to be home-crafted ceramics. No matter how pale the lass seemed, no matter how bubbly her breath, all the half-beast could think about was the incessant desire to stomp everything into pieces-- get out the damned way--

And people are looking.

Well, men are looking, for every eighty men seen there was a fleeting glimpse of the opposite sex sticking to visible sale-spots where they could not suddenly ‘go missing’, cleaning business fronts or surrounded by men they trusted in turn to protect them from others. All those hungry eyes… burn. Well-off seeming and pretty, the foreign pair stand out like sore-thumbs and thensome, severed thumbs, people twist heads to steal a glance at them eagerly, perhaps catch the corners of their gaze with a half-hearted wave or batting eyelashes-- Rois seems absolutely oblivious. He isn’t, he is aware they are ogling at them like fresh prey to a meat market, he just doesn’t care enough to spare them even a warning glance. Confident in the fact that no-one would come near,

“Thankfully, what I ordered is already made and paid for. I just have to pick it up from him.”

As they walk through the fetid streets Osytha can firstly note that there is a touch of organization here, stores that are selling weaponry seem to be composed with speciality in mind; though many lack names due to the uneducated nature of the people who came to such a place, a shop selling rapiers, for example, seemed to only sell blades of its ilk, estocs, smallswords, stiletto daggers. This was done to serve the legions of bandits who oh-so adored their variety and usually came with hot tempers and a lack of patience, it did no-one any good to be a generalist in a forge-town; this is of course mirrored by the blacksmiths, who seemed to likewise be sticking to certain types of weapons rather than every single kind… after all, if everyone was good at making everything, the competition would be beyond fierce indeed-- it was better to fight with the three or four people that specialized in shortswords or cutlass-type blades rather than go against everyone at once.

The pricier a store, the more likely it was to have a name as a building, the more apt it was to have a lick of paint no matter how worn. The shadier a business-- the kinds of establishments that raided dead bodies and sold the spoils of war-- were likewise the spots that were very much just holes in the wall with a door sometimes hanging from the hinges of bleak, battered stonework. The street where Rois leads them is actually of a ‘higher class’, there are signs here, and as such it is a little emptier and away from the fray of the sprawl of muddied paths… but Osytha cannot read the sign they stop at none-the-less. This is because it is written in Kiakiasan, a Southern Suldazan tongue she has heard frequently during her stay in this dreadful place. Desert-talk, Rois regards her for but a moment,

“Hold on.”

A knock upon a door that was very much locked for imaginable reasons-- the man who peers through the cracks is a short, heavy-set male with a beard quite like the flowing water of Rois’s own curls swept outwards, tanned skin, he takes a moment to adjust to the harsh light of day before,

“Mister Crocodile…!”

There comes a flurry of harsh tongues lilted with friendliness, the Suldazans chat with easy familiarity before a disappearance occurs from the shadows of the building and a box is retrieved, handed over like it was comprised of gemstones… once their little reunion is swiftly settled and the door is once again closed and bolted, the man turns to her with childish wonder and opens the box for Filly to gander at what marvellous thing he’d had specially made…..!!

It’s………….. two pairs of hoof-nippers.

Tiny, tiny pairs, exact one-to-ones, but miniature in a mix of steel and flawless silver….

“Incredible. Sa’taish can make anything tiny…” Look, Osytha!! Look at the glorious hoof trimmers!! The butcher gets one out and tries it against the thick black of a pinky-- not wanting to blunt it, he catches the side of the nail and clips off a slither of it with a bit of pressure… a gasp, “Finally, finally I will not have to break scissors and files…!”

Because of course Rois custom ordered nail clippers hundreds of years before their actual invention in their original form for horses. Of course. The little box is snapped shut and hidden away within the confines of the purse in case someone-- somehow-- really wanted the order and plucked up the bravery to snatch them from his (soon to be manicured) claws!

“Now we can do the real shopping.” A soft hum, mood clearly lifted ten-fold since gracing the horror of the streets. It would be her turn to lead, her turn to decide… stay in the rich quarter, or head back to the poorer streets? Forgo stores all together and head straight to see what newly forged things blacksmiths had, or go to the spots of stolen valor, where steel had tasted blood a hundred times before…? The woman had money, too, is there anything she’d want…? Rois looks at her with a sort of owlish expression,

“Lead the way, Miss expert.”

It’s ‘owlish’ because he is usually the one leading, and following felt a little odd.