The Past
Summer in the sprawling city, the crowds swaying like wind-blown grass, a field of flesh shot through with sudden eddies of need and gratification. He sat beside Ava in the sunlight filtered through clouds, sprawling himself on the edge of a dry fountain, letting the endless stream of faces recapitulate the stages of his life. First a boy with hooded eyes, a street boy, hands relaxed and ready at his sides; then a teenager, face smooth and cryptic behind a hip swoop of hair. Oren remembered fighting on a rooftop in Cathena City at seventeen, silent combat in the rose glow of dawn.
He shifted on the stone, feeling it rough and cool through the thin black fabric of his trews. Nothing here like the lightning dance of Cathena City. This was different commerce, a different rhythm, in the smell of street food, perfume, and fresh summer sweat.
Their equipment was waiting back in the loft, expensive things that Galeas required Oren to check and approve. He would be using it, after all.
"Where'd he go?" he had asked Ava.
"He likes fancy places these days, big ones where he can be more anonymous. Near ports or airship terminals if he can manage it. Let's go down to the street." She had added an old vest with a dozen oddly shaped pockets and a hat with a short veil that hid the predatory gleam in her eyes.
"You know about that necromantic shit before?" he asked her by the fountain. She shook her head. "You think it's true?"
"Maybe, maybe not. Works either way."
"You know any way I can find out?"
"No," she said, her right hand coming up to form the sign for silence in the battle language peculiar to the two of them. "That kind of kink's too subtle for aura glass, probably most seers as well." Then her fingers moved again: wait. "And you don't care that much anyway. I saw you stroking some of those weapons; man, it was pornographic." She laughed, leering.
"So what's he got on you? How's he got the working girl kinked?"
"Professional pride, baby, that's all." And again the sign for silence. "We're going to get some breakfast now. Eggs, sausage. Probably kill you with what you've been eating for so long. Yeah, come on, we'll get us a real breakfast."
Later, he was picking at a shred of bacon that had lodged between his front teeth. He had given up asking her where they were going and why; jabs in the ribs and the sign for silence were all he had gotten in reply. Instead, she had talked about local fashions, sport, and a political scandal in Atinaw he had never heard of. He looked around the deserted dead-end street. A lonely broadsheet went spinning in a breeze past the intersection. Freak winds—he couldn't seem to read the weather outside Cathena City. He didn't know this city, though she led him through a dozen bars and clubs he had never seen before, taking care of business, usually with no more than a nod—maintaining connections.
He let himself idle in her wake, occasionally trying to concentrate on that semblance trick, trying to suss out all the strange things he saw, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt as his mind tried to process all the new information that wasn't coming from his actual senses. Sometimes, it would overwhelm him and he would clutch one of Galeas' prizes, a runeforged bit of abjinurium that blocked his tricks. It also blocked out some of the hallucinations. Sometimes.
Something was moving in the shadows. Ava's hands flowed through an intricate sequence of gestures that he couldn't follow. Not just particular to them, then, though she hadn't told him who else could use it, which made it useless for him unless she was using it to communicate with him. That was frustrating, but just her style. He caught the sign for cash, a thumb brushing the tip of her forefinger. That wasn't even a secret sign, though.
A makeshift door swung open and she led him into the smell of dust. They stood in a clearing, dense tangles of junk rising on either side to walls lined with shelves of crumbling books. The junk looked like something that had grown there, a fungus of twisted metal and wood. He could pick out individual objects, but then they seemed to blur back into the mass. He heard the door close behind them, but didn't look back.
The tunnel ended with an ancient blanket tacked across a doorway. Bright light flooded out as Ava ducked past it. Inside, everything looked clean and expensive. Four square walls painted white, ceiling to match, floored with pristine white tiles raised just enough for good traction. In the center stood a square, white-painted wooden table and four white chairs.
The man who stood blinking now in the doorway behind them, the blanket draped over one shoulder like a cape, seemed to have been hit with a hurricane in the face when he was born. His ears were very small, plastered flat to his narrow skull, and his teeth, revealed in something that couldn't rightly be called a smile, were canted sharply backward. It gave Oren an atavistic response, a shiver running through him like he had come upon a vampyre. He wore an ancient coat and had a strange weapon in his hand, though he blinked at them and then dropped it into his pocket. He gestured to Oren, pointed at a slab of white ceramic that leaned near the doorway. He crossed to it and saw that it was inscribed with arcane symbols. He helped the man lift it and position it in the doorway. Tobacco-stained fingers tapped something against it and it seamlessly erased the door.
Oren gaped as his ears popped and a faint thrum vibrated either against his eardrums or the rune scarred into his bicep.
"Time," the man said, straightening up, "and counting. You know the rate, Ava."
"We need your senses, Phergus. For, ah... things inside."
"Well, stand up against the wall where I can see you, then. Straighten up, yeah. Turn around. Give it to me slow." Oren watched as Ava turned around for the man, who seemed to like it a bit too much. But while the man start listing off weapons, magical items, and more. But Oren's attention was lulled by the flare of the man's own rune; it resonated with one of his, the one that let him sense what was going on, though the man obviously knew better what his senses told him.
"Get over here, Oren," she said, breaking his reverie. "Turn around. Slow."
He swapped positions and did as he was told. Phergus whistled.
"Some of his insides are brimming with power," he said. "Necromantic enhancements. Divine energy. Fuck. Who cut two runes into him at once? Never mind. I don't want to know."
"Anything degrading?" she pressed. "Magical trick trap or whatever?"
"Can't say. There's so much going on right here it'd take me too much time. Nobody's got enough coin to keep me on it that long." He looked almost sad about that, as if he would enjoy cracking Oren like a nut to figure out what all he was seeing on the aetheric. "Climb on the table, kid. We'll cut you open and take a closer look." He laughed, showing more yellow teeth. "Nah, Pherg's word, sweetmeat, nothing looks particularly dangerous as long as he doesn't let go of his lucky charm there. You want me to shut the wards down?"
"Just for as long as it takes you to leave, Pherg. Then we'll want the wards back up for as long as we want it."
"Hey, that's fine by the Pherg, Ava. You're only paying by the second."
They sealed the door behind him and Ava turned one of the white chairs around and sat on it, her chin resting on crossed forearms. "We talk now. This is as private as I can afford."
The Present
The Golden Peacock Theater's ledgers were in order, so he had finished his seasonal report hours ago. Neat copies of relevant figures were already waiting for Elric and Yserloo whenever they returned to their offices, the same being sent via courier to the bank and other bodies under whose jurisdiction they fell. But he remained in his office because it was the most comfortable place to go over the investments of Portions for Foxes, as well. He saw no reason to acquire an office space when he could use this one for free. Perhaps someday, he would need to expand. After all, he had acquired another employee this season.
Yshvold would probably want to work with Elwes in the Low-City more than with Aurin in nicer places, but he wasn't offended. He trusted Elwes, too.
He poured himself another tumbler of whiskey, then left his figures behind to stand in front of the windowed doors that let out onto the balcony.
"Fuck it," he grumbled, then opened the door and walked out into the brisk air. It was the last day of Ash. By tomorrow, he would need a lot more whiskey before he would want to stand in the cold for no reason.
Aurin took a bracing sip of his drink, then set it down on the balustrade, then leaned down to rest his elbows there too. He took in the sweeping scope of the city from this upper floor, high enough to see some ways. More and more lights were coming on as daylight faded into the gloaming.
The backs of his fingers ran along the inside of his bicep. Semblance on the left, Masquerade on the right. Someone had told him the left hand symbolized receiving and the right hand symbolized giving, so it made sense that the passive rune would be on the left and the active rune would be on the right.
"Esoteric bullshit," he muttered, but he pulled aether through the left-hand rune anyway, letting his senses sweep across the vista before him. There was so much to know, and while he had his tools, he knew he had to practice with them even as he practiced with his blades if he wanted to hone his skills.
If he wanted to be powerful.
The ebb and flow of so much energy moved before and around him now. It might take his life to understand it all, though if the Pherg could do it, Aurin could. He scoffed at the memory and looked out over the city he wanted to make his own.
