Legend of Ransera

If Aurin thought his wandering days were done when he finally settled in Kalzasi two years prior, he was wrong. His running days were over for the time being, though. He had employment that he didn't hate, that wasn't what he was trained for but for which is training made him strangely suitable, and he now had a small home of his own, though he hadn't let anyone into his fortress of solitude yet. Perhaps he never would. Life left scars on the most fortunate of people. His wounds, forever unexamined, might just never heal. But few people knew he was wounded, and those who did probably assumed he had bled out by now.

In Kalzasi he was charming, even when prickly. But if it was going to be his home indefinitely, he had to have something more than just managing a brothel-cum-cabaret for an exigent Hytori woman. And so he was listening, sutbly training those around him to listen as well. Alcohol was the least of the intoxicants running through the veins of the Velvet Cabaret's clientele. Neither was lust. But so far, he hadn't weaponized the things he had learned. He was only now beginning to monetize them. It was a subtle knife, information. And now, having time and space to breathe, he was able to play the long game. He might never be Shokaze of Kalzasi, but there were many ways to rule. Politics was only one of them.

Chasing this lead out of the city served another purpose, too. Lunaria had been an inch from ordering him to take a vacation. He didn't fuck her whores. He didn't skim her profits. Well, he didn't make a habit of fucking her whores, and if it happened, it happened without drama so she didn't have to deal with it. Three years of exemplary service was uncommon in her experience and so, while she took care of all her employees, she was motivated in seeing that he stay happy because he kept the money flowing into her coffers and he dealt with the minutiae that would give her headaches or a heart attack.

Wheeling around back to Antiris, nobody remembered him, but he knew the lay of the land. He could practice old skills to whittle the rust off them and bring them back to a killing sharpness. In Kalzasi, he was wicked. Elsewhere, he had been bad. He was content to be wicked most of the time, but if he had to be bad to survive, he wanted to be good at being bad.

Affecting dress and the dialect of a man from Haqs, he was haggling with a merchant. The merchant thought he was haggling over jewelry—his stall was affixed to the front of his shop, and only the flashy, but ultimately not priceless things were displayed there. Inside, there were valuables. Deeper still were goldsmiths and jewelers producing things to bring him wealth. He was a spider sitting atop his supply chain, thinking he was spinning his web around a rich man whose purse needed lightening, not knowing the man wasn't rich at all, and was angling for his inner sanctum to draw intelligence out of him.

And so the mummer's farce continued, Aurin's attention on the merchant and the boy manning the stall with its trinkets and dross, pretty baubles for pretty maids who would spread their legs for any shiny thing, not on the thief who wanted his candy. They were all of them going to get more than they bargained for that day.

The kid had skills. The problem was, Aurin had them as well. Were they bosom buddies, they might have shared stories and found a surprising amount of similarities, but they were not and they did not. The kid wasn't even sloppy about it, but under his clothes were scars that would explain why any unexpected touch, and even many expected ones, read to his lizard brain as the precursor to a lighter pocket if he was lucky, the cold, sharp kiss of a blade if he was not.

Adder quick, he snatched the wrist of the hand that had touched his arm, grip strong enough to be uncomfortable and promise pain. Turning, he instinctively poured aether through one of his Runes, and looked into his attacker's soul as much as his golden eyes. Surprise. Alarm. Fear. He could have seen those without magic. Aurin wouldn't call himself a magus, despite his Runes. He wasn't powerful, but he was quick and dirty and he took the path of least resistance to the source of as much fear as possible and it connected to his lips almost without the editing of his own mind.

"Struggle," he hissed, low and quiet, "and I break your wrist. Move, and I will make sure you live and die in this town, never amounting to anything anyone would call an accomplishment of note."

Fortunately for the lad, the unskilled use of this magic couldn't hurt him. Given time and more skill, Aurin might have come to know him better than he knew himself. But in a trauma-fueled reaction moment, one existential dread was about as much as could be expected with which to pair with a very real threat of violence. The quickest way to a man's heart isn't through his stomach, she had said. Even if you're using poison. It's between the fourth and fifth ribs. Right here. But he wasn't trying to reach the boy's heart. He just wanted to control him, to control the situation, so his own heart would stop hammering against his ribs and he could get back to his own grift.

Turning back to the merchant, his vicelike grip unchanged, he smiled.

"I'll be back, sir, but first to find the constabulary..."

And then he turned away from Troskey's shocked apologies for the state of the neighborhood and stuttered directions to the nearest constabulary, dragging the lad along. He could do it by sheer force, he figured, but he hoped the kid was smart enough not to struggle until he spotted a proper opening. He thought he had caught creditable intelligence in the structure of his aura, though such things were subtler than his skill could pin down. He only headed toward the constabulary until he gauged himself out of the merchant's sight, then turned a corner.

"Calm down," he said then, "I'm not going to turn you in. I'm not going to hurt you unless you struggle."

That said, he pulled him into the first tavern he saw. A quick, surreptitious inhalation told him the taproom had a decent kitchen attached.

"We're going to sit in the corner," he told the bar wench. The bar wench nodded his head. "Two ales. Two meals. Thank you." Then, when they approached the table in the corner farthest from the door, he released him in that direction with some momentum. "Sit." Aurin did so, his back uncharacteristically toward the door, but he wanted to be between it and his prey.

Not his prey. He didn't even ask for his pouch back. It had been fairly stolen; he just had to recuperate before he could focus on his own objective again.

"Not bad," he said, though he couldn't quite bring a smile to his face that wouldn't look like a caged beast snarling. "Just unlucky."

"You can tithe to Zedros all you want, kid," he said, not unkindly. "The old dragon helps those who help themselves. Not just to other people's pouches. Keep it, by the bye. You're young. Stash it somewhere. Start saving. You're going to need an escape plan and the capital to see it through someday. I'm a bad man, but I'm not the worst one out there. And fuck the constabulary." He made a face that meant he probably would have spat upon the ground if they weren't indoors. "Hypocritical cunts."

Some of his scars came from 'upright men of the law' abusing their power.

Ale came quicker than food, and the bar wench brought them over. He said, "Food will be just a few moments."

"Thank you," Aurin said, still in a dialect that wasn't his own, nor of this place. The lad nodded and returned to his duties. Aurin pushed one tankard toward the thief and pulled the other closer. He was about to drink when he looked hard at the thief for just a moment, then laughed quietly. "I didn't pour it. I didn't tamper with it. It's not poison."

Then, he took a gulp of his own, his pulse starting to slow.

"I figure, after a spot of lunch, I can get back to my grift. Maybe use this to my advantage if I'm clever. Need to get something from that cunt that he won't want to give me. More delicate than thieving. You should look into branching out. Picking pockets is a child's scam. Smaller hands. You can call me Darus. It's not my name, but it's passing for it here."

And then the food came. Aurin's smile was kind enough; he was polite to wait staff, which made him better than most constables, who mostly wanted free drinks and free gropes.

"Here, wait." He gave another quick glance about the room. Seeing no observers who worked there, he fished out sufficient silver from some other part of his person and set it on the table. There were at least two more silver coins than the meal and the drinks would warrant, and the lad could pocket those without a supervisor seeing in case this was the sort of place where the people with power garnished tips as a matter of course. "We might stick around for another round of drinks, but I don't like outstanding debts." He laughed convivially enough, and the bar wench also looked around the room before bending down to drop the extra silver into his shoes, one in each so they wouldn't make noise.

It was the sort of place where the people with power garnished tips as a matter of course, then.

"Thank you, sir," he said, and the relieved, grateful smile got turned on the thief as well before he returned to his work.

The food smelled good to Aurin, but he glanced askance at the thief.

"Please stop scowling at me like I just broke up with you. Or your mother. Shit."

"All constables are bastards," he amended, albeit without rancor, at least at the kid.

Aurin-called-Darus shrugged off the kid's sass. He had been in a similar strait, albeit owing tithes and fealty to an actual parent, which maybe ought to have made things better, but truly only made them worse, the traumas betrayals on top of everything else. He didn't say anything until after they had broken bread and taken a few bites. To be fair, he didn't know why he hadn't released the lad once he turned the corner. I like him, he realized, which was stupid and probably just an echo of his inept, knee-jerk use of magic resonating with his intuition. So the kid was a good kid probably. So they had things in common probably.

"You stole my purse. I squeezed your arm. Would it help if I apologized...?" There was a hint of incredulity in his voice as if the idea of apologizing for anything done in retribution—especially when he was letting the kid keep the coin—seemed a bit silly. "Unless you bruise more easily than a bleeder, it won't even hurt tomorrow. And you've probably made it sorer from jerking off than it is now." He scoffed, then spread his hands to indicate their meal.

"Consider this my peace offering if you want. Or fuck... leave if you want. Just don't go back around his shop until tomorrow and you'll never have to see me again." The food and drink had been improving his mood, but his inability to connect with this kid was spoiling it, which he also realized was stupid, but feelings, in general, were stupid. She had been right about that. Even though he could read a soul, albeit with only a moderate level of literacy, he was bad at making friends. It was one thing to charm and beguile the patrons of the Velvet Cabaret. It was one thing to earn the trust of courtesans who counted on him to protect them from overzealous and overamorous and overintoxicated clients.

Simple things that most humans should be able to do, though, were beyond him. Fuck this city anyway. He would not be here long. A gulp of ale, a couple of spoonfuls of stew. He stared at his hands. They were no longer small. His fingers were still long, though. Several of the instrumentalists he knew claimed they were good hands for making music, but he just laughed it all off or deflected with assertions about how good they were at finding pleasure spots. There were faint scars; there from a knife fight; there from barbed wire and a narrow escape; that half-moon from a lit cigarillo. He had looked into those golden eyes and seen a fair amount, but what they reflected back was more damning.

What did he think he was going to do in Kalzasi, become like him?

"Well, that makes two of us," he said, of bastards. The term itself wasn't offensive to him, though, even if applied to him. Perhaps he had reclaimed it, so to speak. At least, it had never been a badge of shame in his youth.

There was a lot being said, and a lot to unpack. He didn't speak for a while, but listened. He ate slowly while the kid inhaled his. Without words, he took the plate with his untouched bread and moved it over toward the Hytori boy. He was Hytori, after all. There were probably knife ears hidden under his hat, but there was no hiding his eyes without glamour.

"I'm sorry I hurt you," he said finally, his voice twisting like his throat hurt. "I'm sorry I made you feel like garbage. It was a trick, meant to keep you still." A trick, which is what he considered his meager magics. "A dirty trick, I admit. I don't... like to be touched. When I don't expect it, especially when I'm in the middle of... what I was doing... my body assumes a knife is coming and my mind sort of... gets turned off while I react. It's not an excuse, but I figure maybe an explanation might help. A little. Regardless, I'm sorry. You aren't garbage. You just need to look out for you. If you survive long enough, eventually you will age out and Demitrov will deal with you. Or Demitrov will age out of his position and someone will deal with him, which could fuck you over too. Be adaptable. Be prepared.

"Fuck, who am I, right? Never mind. Just keep your eyes open."

He looked down at his stew and started eating again, politely eating around the bread that had been impolitely shoved into his food. He almost wanted to laugh at the kid's nerve, but he didn't. Apologizing hadn't made him feel better, though it made things feel slightly less off.