Rooftops and Rendezvous [Aurin]

[Rivin]

2 Ash, 122

The rooftops of the city were a veritable playground to someone with Rivin's ability to traverse them. He kept a middling strength wind spirit on call on the nights he couldn't stand to hide inside anymore and took to running along the tops of things. He'd never fallen, so far, but that was the key to it, so far. He might slip, a tile might break, he might get too high on the exhilaration of freedom and miscalculate a jump. If he did, the spirit would cushion his fall, save his bones, at least. He always ended up with a few bruises and his hands, were growing callouses to match those on his feet. He wore shoes, but they were soft and molded specifically to his feet with soles made for gripping and two sections to separate his toes for balance.

It seemed one could have almost anything made if one hand gold to spend. Rivin did, though he knew it might not last his whole life time, it would see him through a decade or more if he did not decide to purchase anything so easily traced as land or houses.

Sometimes, when he leapt from building to building, climbing terraces and slinking over balconies, he would follow someone on the ground. It was just an exercise, just for fun. In the same way he sometimes would slip into houses through high windows, or listen in on private conversations. It was harmless, he didn't steal, and the conversations he overheard were almost always simple domestic things. He did not stay and listen if those involved began to copulate, for he did not wish to listen, and if they spoke of things they seemed to want to conceal, Rivin did not know enough to make use of the information.

Tonight he was considering following someone, tail flicking back and forth from his perch on the corner of a two story tavern. He felt like it, he wanted the chase of it. He was just scanning the streets, looking for someone who might be intending to go further than the next street over when he spotted something unexpected. A Lysanrin.

He had seen a few of his own kind (one of his kinds), since coming to the city but they weren't common. Canting his head to one side his eyes shifted from pale blue to a bright silver; he'd found who he would follow.

[Aurin]

The Stormborn Lysanrin was, in fact, more than he appeared. Aurin had contacts all over the city, in all walks of life. Some knew him as himself; others knew him as one of his aliases. He had become so facile with his glamouring trick that he had been able to move in more and more circles, even those normally leery of people like him. The man had been all sorts of low in his life, and he knew that people often paid people little attention if they were beggars or whores, and he had been both. Lysanrin, too, were frowned upon, but most people thought them stupid, as if their people hadn't ruled the world. Aurin didn't think so.

In any case, he wore a borrowed skin, and if his other trick told him he was being watched, well, nobody trusted a Lysanrin. He turned a corner, then walked past a street lamp and into darkness. As he turned another corner, he became someone else. He did this again and again, his route not taking him anywhere of interest, but offering him opportunities to change. He wasn't running by any means, but he was moving too quickly to focus his trick and locate the tail. He didn't sense danger, else he might have combined his trick to extinguish his aura and shield himself entirely from prying eyes.

No, he wasn't fleeing, but he also didn't want to leave a tail unidentified, so he made a decision, changed his course, and found himself in a dead end. He turned, leaned back against a stone wall with his arms across his chest, and dropped his seeming, focusing his attention on finding whoever it was.

There. A Lysanrin—no, not quite. An aura shot through with darkness, though it was quiescent. He hoped this wasn't someone after the cursed key, or perhaps he ought to hope they were and then he might discover more about it. They were higher up somewhere, perhaps on a rooftop. He didn't look with his eyes, but rather waited. They would reveal themself, or they would flee. If they fled, Aurin would become the hunter rather than the prey.

[Rivin]

Rivin leapt to the chase, though not literally. There was an art to not being noticed. It was something he'd learned a little of in Ilex's ownership, the social side, how to be present and not interesting. More he'd learned since leaving the Doctor's...employ. How to walk streets and not be noticed was a different matter, sometimes easier, sometimes harder, but never perfectly easy when one bore the cursed horns of his mother race. How to hide, how to use shadows, how to be silent had also been a half-and-half education in and out of captivity. It was more of a game, and less, than it had been when he'd done it only to see if he could. The stakes were higher, so were the buildings.

It was almost sheer luck that he happened to be looking directly at the Storm-born when he...changed. For a moment Rivin's brain tried to tell him that someone had simply walked in front of the man and his eyes were confused by the distance and angle. But when he cast about for the Lysanrin he was nowhere among the thin crowd of the street. His eyes snapped back to the new face, the new form that had taken his quarry's place.

His senses tingled, as they often did when unexpected things surprised him and he called to his contracted air spirit, told it to get the scent of the man and stick close to him. Rivin could follow the spirit, even if his eyes were being fooled.

Over the next few minutes he actually saw the man change once more, but knew it to have happened more as the invisible air sprite darted to keep up with the one it had been sent to follow. He could taste aether in the air, he didn't know another way to put it, a part of him hungered for it. Nothing had ever come of the odd extra sense he had for magic, but it was there, like his ability to speak to spirits without using his rune. Never had the aether sense been useful for anything before, but now, now it was like he could smell this shape-changer in tiny bursts when he, or it, morphed.

It was good that Rivin's body understood how to move over the rooftops, for he was so concentrated on not losing the person in question that he barely paid attention to what his instincts had him leaping over or climbing. When he peered down into a dead-end ally and found the eyes of the person within looking directly at him he started. When he was 'hunting' his mind seemed to forget that the people involved were more than just constructs for his effort. Now he was caught, or had caught. Both.

A mage powerful enough to slip through magic as easily as this person had was not someone to trifle with, but nor did he want to offend and have something nasty sent after him so, for the moment, he stilled, waited.

The Demon woke. That was how it felt, like something in his head, not him, waking up. Perhaps it thought he was in danger, that was the most common cause for it to...come out. In that moment Rivin realized the man wasn't actually looking at him, just staring into the darkness. Perhaps he could just slip away? No. Too dangerous, he wanted to be forgotten, not wondered about.

He slipped down easily, jumping the last few feet and landing on a little stone outcropping a few feet over the man's head. He didn't want to stand on the ground and seem like he was blocking the only exit. Not sure what else to say he swallowed and then,

"I apologize, magus. You were not what I was supposed to find. I will leave you now."

[Aurin]

The darkness in the man's aura flared, and Aurin's stomach felt like a stone had dropped into it, or a heavy slab of ice. It didn't show on his face; at least, he hoped it didn't. He had let his illusions drop—the magical ones anyway.

His laugh was good-natured enough.

"Magus? I just have a few tricks up my sleeve. But no harm, no foul... What were you supposed to find? I'm good at tracking things down. And people, too."

It wasn't a threat, though this one seemed quite careful and diffident, which he supposed was a good trait to have when one came up against an unknown quantity, someone who might be powerful and irritated. Kalzasi had monsters under its surface; some even walked the streets. He liked to think he wasn't one himself, but he had seen and done things that might call that into question. This one must have been watching his Lysanrin contact or someone else nearby.

Aurin wasn't exactly being diffident, but he was certainly careful about an urban tracker with what might very well be a demon riding him like a horse. The last time he had seen one for certain, he hadn't been in reliable control of his tricks.

He supposed the Whispers were off duty tonight; generally, one or the other of them liked to follow him around at a reasonable distance. Part of him bucked at the idea of being followed, but on the other hand, it did feel good to have someone watching his back. He didn't know and trust them as well as some of his other people, but they did owe their safe evacuation to him, their new home and new work. It made sense they would want to keep their meal ticket safe. Aurin was just going to have to figure out how to give them the slip when he wanted to keep certain things from them. He wasn't going to give them carte blanche access to his life—not unless they signed one of those magical contracts.

Actually...

But he was paying attention to the here and now, curious what this acrobatic fellow might say.

[Rivin]

The magus was suddenly a human male, red-haired, a rare variant.

Rivin's mind was hyper analyzing, trying to categorize details to calm his anxiety. For all he knew, this was just another disguise. Why would a magus so powerful ever show their true form unless they wanted to?

The voice was rich and strong and... casual? While he understood the Common the words made no sense to him. He was being forgiven, he thought. That was reassuring, even if he wasn't sure it was wise to believe the 'man'. The question embarrassed him he felt the faint, purplish tingle warm his face at being caught playing childish games with himself.

"I was..." He fumbled more with the new language when he we nervous, "Hunting? No. Not hunting. I was," He cleared his throat and decided that honesty seemed the most likely to keep him out of trouble, "I like to see if I can follow others, who are on the ground, when I am on the roofs. It is practice."

There was no mention of the spirits helping him, but he would keep what secrets he could, if he could. If the explanation made him seem like a foolish child, well people were less likely to kill a foolish child then a man caught stalking them.

"I thought you were one of my kind and I don't see my kind very often."

He swallowed and waited, skin itching to slip away into the darkness of the city's roofs but aware that some mages could snatch a person up into the air as easily as breathing. As his mind ground through the brief conversation he realized the 'human' might have been offering him assistance. Someone as powerful as this magus might be able to keep him safe. Even disguise him. The thought was appealing.

Edging closer to the edge of his perch he peered down, leaning in a way that would have been precarious for anyone else but wrapping his tail and tightening his core for stability.

"Are you, perhaps, as good at hiding things as you are at finding them?" The eager curiosity slipped past his intention to be neutral and spilled out over the redhead.

[Aurin]

Aurin considered the pretty gargoyle on high. His own pose was less statuesque, more rakishly nonchalant.

"Oh, sure. Hiding things is as much fun as finding them. Secrets, valuables, people..." He smirked. "That's rather my business."

His hazel gaze cut hither and thither, then back to the Lysanrin. With a twinkle of mischief in his eyes, he suddenly bolted to the right, ran up a few boxes like impromptu stairs, leapt off to catch the building's eaves, coil, and launch himself across the alley. While his physical leap was hardly enough, he didn't drop like a stone, but rather disappeared. His body phased out, slid along a line of reality connecting one point to another, and reappeared, crouched on the edge of the roof he hadn't made on his own steam.

Now, perhaps, he could chase the stranger if that was the game they were going to play, but he made no move to give chase.

"There aren't many of your kind here," he admitted. "I've got a youngling in my employ, but he doesn't like strangers, not even his own kind. The ones I was talking to... well, I have various and sundry business interests. Lysanrin seem scared to gather in any kind of numbers lest people think them plotting the next Clockwork Empire." He shrugged. "Bullshit paranoia, but that's people."

That was the pot calling the kettle black in some ways; there were those who thought he was paranoid, but he was also still alive.

"Have you got something that needs hiding, Lysanrin?"

The man was more than just Lysanrin, or less than, perhaps; whatever mixture of blood, he had horns and a tail, so he was going to be seen as a Lysanrin one way or another.

[Rivin]

Rivin felt that he should have been able to react, but, instead he had remained still but for only his eyes and then his head following the redheaded man as he showed that he, took, was able to ascend with ease. When the man jumped, not nearly far enough, Rivin flinched forward as though intending to catch him though there was no chance of him reaching from his own perch. An actual gasp came from his throat when the man disappeared mid failed jump. There was not enough time to draw in another full breath before he reappeared on the same roof as the Lysanrin, else he would have repeated the sound, however stupid it would have made him sound.

"You are an employer?" Was what he said, eventually, before realizing how banal the question was, given that it had been answered in the very sentence that made the question pop from Rivin's dry lips. He cleared his throat, closed his slightly gaping mouth and tried to clear his head.

This was magic, but he knew of magic, he'd read on all the cardinal runes, even those that had been lost to time or trauma. The man had used Traversion. These were facts, as simple as that. And yet...

Reading dry information about the use of such magic was so, so far from observing it splitting reality apart in front of him. It took him a long moment longer to process that the man was condemning the condemning of his race, or the one he looked the most like, at least. It could be a ploy to get his guard down, but Rivin's instincts put together lots of tiny things that had happened since he'd began watching this man (if he was a man) and told him that it wasn't an outright lie. There were degrees of deception, but Rivin was not good enough, had not been exposed to enough types of sentient creatures in enough situations to have senses honed finely that they were sufficient to telling degrees of honestly from one another.

As his full cognitive functions came back on he straightened, no need to crouch now that they were on the same even (repetitively even) rooftop. Turning a little to one side, mostly on instinct to present a smaller target but a little on the instinct to let this man know he wasn't wholly lacking in wits he said,

"How would you hide something for me if I did? A person. A person like me." He said this last with the smallest flash of teeth that said something like 'As a supposition, so I can see if you are able to meet my needs, a test.'

Ilex had taught him that, sometimes, the best way to hide the truth was to speak it out loud.

[Aurin]

"I'm an employer," he assured him from his side of the roof.

This man didn't seem like the sort to patronize the Golden Peacock, but while that was a straight job, it was as much a cover as anything else, a means to other ends. It had helped start Arry's career, it had given him an in with the Zaichaeri covens, it had strengthened the position of his keiretsu, and it was another mask to wear. Aurin hid in plain sight. He stood when the other man did, then cocked his head, curious and amused.

"A thing or a person? Ah, a person. A person like you." He considered. "'Twould help to know from whom, but surely that's a secret and not one whose value I know. Well, you know to hide out of sight, you know to hide in darkness. But there are glamours..." He glamoured himself into a fair approximation of the man himself. Even his voice modulated and he attempted to match his cadences and word choice. "And distractions." He held an illusory mirror up to the Lysanrin's eyes, which were now hazel, human, his own.

"I could hide you in a hole and nobody would ever find you, but you would get bored, want to move around. Best disguise you. Magic works best, though it can be expensive. If you can't keep a guy like me around to turn eyes away, I know people who can fashion you simple glamours you can take with you." He shrugged, not knowing if the Lysanrin could afford even the simplest of Torin's enchantments, though Aurin knew he could ply his trick on his behalf to save him money and then he would owe him a favor. Aurin liked collecting favors almost as much as he liked collecting secrets.

[Rivin]

Rivin blinked when the human's appearance blended into his own unexpectedly. But, to his credit, blink was all he did to expression his discomfiture. Tilting his head to one side he examined himself, wishing he were brave enough to walk a circle around and see himself from all angles. Mirrors had not been absent from his adult life but this was... different. Very, somehow. He looked bigger than he felt, taller, and covered in lean muscle that the simple clothing he wore to run the roofs did not hide.

The words processed even as he continued to be fascinated by the sudden option to examine himself as he might another specimen. The eyes were somehow deeply disturbing but in a way he found difficult to look away from. Fascination and horror often went hand in hand, in his experience, though he typically fell on the side of interest rather than revulsion if there was a purpose to the examination.

Once the explanation offers were suggested he said,

"I have money. Though, it is true, I get bored." It was true, he'd discovered to his discomfort that sitting, alone, in a small rented room began to feel like being in a cell no matter how much he reminded himself that he was hiding to protect his freedom. Books helped, but, as his excursions proved, only to the occupation of his mind, not his body. "If I were to ask that you keep such a hole available, should I need an immediate place to not be found, could you? I would pay 'rent'."

The last word was partly a question for he was unsure what to call such an arrangement. If this magus proved trust worthy he might explain to him the details of why he was being hunted but, for the time being,

"If you have the ability, or know where I might hire someone with an ear to the ground for anyone searching for someone who looks like me, I would pay for that service as well."

His funds were not unlimited, and the idea of working was actually appealing, but being tied down to a shop or specific work place was untenable to his paranoia. Finding someone to invest his funds for him would likely result in him being able to live off the dividends so long as he could also obtain realistic fake identification with which to invest. It was a lot and Sivan, though proving to be a good friend, did not seem to be knowledgeable on such matters. Besides the fact that Rivin did not want to involve the one being that he was beginning to trust in his troubles. Ilex would not hesitate to cut down anyone who happened to stumble between the doctor and his quarry.

Sivan had suggested that he purchase a magical disguise and was making inquiries with a friend about the cost and options already but this man did not need to know that. If that deal fell through, a backup was always a good idea.

[Aurin]

Perhaps intuiting the man's curiosity, Aurin did turn around so he could see all sides of the glamour.

Perhaps it was strange to see a vulpine smile spread across Lysanrin features, but that was how Aurin responded to the man's questions. Portions for Foxes had several places let out for various things, many of them legal. Since housing Yshvold, he had also made hide holes available to Elwes and others. If the man truly had the money, they could be in business, though Aurin was a bit more circumspect than that. This would require some knowledge and negotiation.

"If you need an immediate place to not be found, I can take you there," he said.

"If you need an ear to the ground, I can provide that as well." He had his own, he had the Whispers, and his various other employees. Aurin was people who knew people, and he had a knack for knowing what was happening in Kalzasi, as well.

"And, as I said, I'm an employer. If you want to skulk about on rooftops trailing people and ferretting out information, I could make use of your skills and curiosities as well." Aurin was not above pressing the desperate into deals and services, but he wasn't a monster either. Most people he employed turned out to be trustworthy and loyal, and he made it worth their while. And if he was to consider this one as a possible employee, he would even venture to take a couple of financial risks to see how they played out.

Investing in people generally turned him a tidy profit.

He let the glamours fade, Aurin becoming Aurin, the Lysanrin becoming a Lysanrin once more.

"I'm Aurin," he said, putting out his hand to shake. They were already negotiating, whether the Lysanrin knew it or not. Aurin played to win, but he also tried to play for win-win situations when at all possible. It was better to be feared than loved, but he liked when he was both.