The Past
Oren wasn't alone. He could feel his tail returning, the prickle of hairs rising on the nape of his neck an atavistic reaction requiring no magic. He felt a stab of elation, the intoxicants and his natural humors mingling with something else. He was enjoying this, he thought. He was crazy.
But he was only enjoying this because, in some weird and approximate way, this was like the old days when he was flying high rather than circling until he found the most satisfying vector to nose dive. When he was just wasted enough, he could find himself in some desperate, arbitrary sort of trouble, and his instincts came alive — self-preservation warring with self-destruction, hunt or be hunted, kill or be killed, winner-takes-all, zero-sum games. Then he could throw himself into his life, such as it was, careening through the streets, drifting and skidding, engaged but apart, and all around him, business was being transacted, information being bartered, the black market a living thing with its own dark pulse and predatory, scavaging nature.
He psyched himself up for a reckless, feckless plan. He was only half a block from the arcade where he had first met Jamila. Bolting across the street, he plowed through a group of sailors who yelled after him indignantly in a language he didn't understand. Then he was through an arch, the sound of commerce crashing over him like a wave, and then he turned a sharp corner and loped up a set of rickety wooden stairs. He had been here once before with Dett to discuss a deal with a man from Kalzasi. He remembered the hallway with a row of identical doors leading to tiny offices and workspaces. One door was open now and he poked his head in. A woman in a dark, sleeveless tunic was weaving something.
"Someone's running around, armed... be careful."
And then he was running again, her scream of alarm already muffled by walls and the oceanic thrum of his pulse in his ears. The last two doors were closed and, he assumed, locked. He reared back and kicked the last. It was cheap and it splintered from the force of his blow. There was darkness inside, the only light coming from past the broken door and his whip-thin frame. There was another on his right, and he wrapped both hands around the knob and shoved his shoulder into it as he had been taught in his youth. Something snapped, and he was inside. This was where he had come with Dett to meet the man from Kalzasi, but whatever front had been running here was gone. A layer of dust coated everything now, just the detritus of a cover story.
There was one window, cheap and milky. He quickly doffed his sweat-soaked shirt and balled it around his fist. It took two or three good punches to break it all and then he was swiping the razor-sharp shards away. He heard more yelling, whether from the girl's screamed alarum or in reaction to the sound of breaking glass. Oren turned, pulled his shirt back on, and flicked the cobra to its full extension. With the door closed, he was banking on his tail to assume he had gone through the door he had kicked half off its hinges. The bronze pyramid on the cobra began to bob gently, the spring-steel of the shaft amplifying his racing pulse.
Nothing happened. There was only the shouting, which began to die down, and the hammering of his heart, which continued apace. When the fear came, it was like some half-remembered lover. Not the paranoia that sometimes came from his drugs of choice, but a simple animal fear. He had lived so long dancing the knife's edge of constant anxiety that he had almost forgotten what real fear felt like. This was just the sort of place where people like him died. He might die here. He might have brought a cobra to a gunfight.
Then there was a crash from the far end of the corridor and a man shouted something in a foreign language. The screaming started again, this time in shrill terror. Another crash, and then footsteps coming closer in no particular hurry. They passed his closed door, then paused for a few heartbeats, then returned. A bootheel scraped the matting... and the last of his drug-induced bravado collapsed. He snapped his weapon back into its handle and leapt at the window, crawling blind with fear, his nerves screaming. He was up, out, and falling before he was fully conscious of what he was doing. The impact with the packed dirt floor drove sharp steel rods of pain up his shins.
He had fallen face forward into a pile of wet refuse, then rolled over into shadow. The square of the window let out a faint light, soon framing a human head. He could still hear the screaming, but it was faint from outside. There were too many other sounds competing. He couldn't smell any rotting so, if he survived this, there was the silver lining that he hadn't crashed through anything disgusting. The head disappeared, then returned. He still couldn't make out their features.
"Fuck," someone said. It was a woman and it sounded familiar. The head disappeared again and he lay there and counted to ten. Then he counted to ten again. Then he stood up. Then he stared at the metal thing in his hand, trying to remember what it was. That took a few more seconds, but then he was limping down the alley, going easy on his left ankle, which seemed angrier at him than the right.
The Present
Stealth was a skill and Aurin was out of practice. He was going to have to work on that. It wouldn't due to let his blades or his skills get rusty lest the people who depended on him lose their dark guardian angel. The Low-City was familiar as the back of his hand, though he had to be careful as he didn't live down there anymore and things changed. It was the nature of things to change.
He turned a corner and pressed his back to the wall.
His face changed. It went from one dead man's face to another; it was an old habit for Aurin to memorize the faces of people to wear at a later date. It seemed a better distraction to be seen as a ghost if someone recognized him than to be seen as himself. His clothes changed too, melting into something finer — rich, but not so gaudy as the things Arry favored. He was near enough the Commons that this wouldn't be tantamount to painting a target on his back, and this was different enough from his previous disguise that any pursuers wouldn't look twice at him.
With a deep inhalation and exhalation, he pushed off the wall, straightened his frame into a more entitled posture, and began to walk toward richer boroughs. He crossed the Commons and turned north into Adira's Promenade. He didn't stop until he could walk to a particular grounded mansion and around to its carriage house. The owners of the mansion had opted for more storage space than horses, which left the loft above them open to be let. It was a good arrangement all around.
He revealed his own face as soon as he knocked on door. A dark face even more vulpine than his own answered with a quizzical look that quickly flashed with a sharp-toothed smile.
"Why, Aurin Kavafis, as I live and breathe!"
"Not so loud, Lomri," he chided, pushing past the slender Rathari. He didn't seem to mind, taking a half step back, but also flirtatiously enjoying the slide of their bodies against each other. He shut the door behind them. Aurin's clothes melted into what he had been wearing when he left his home that morning.
"I really wish you would teach me that trick," he said admiringly. He straightened his peignoir and made a wide, sweeping gesture. "My home is your home. Put yourself at ease. And I love it when you use my surname. It feels so butch." His laughter was high and unabashed, recalling the sound of foxes.
"You know I aim to please," Aurin said dryly and sat upon a divan. Ashoka Lomri's home was elegantly appointed as was his person, the which he draped upon the divan next to Aurin. They had met years ago, the ginger fox and the Rathari fox, and struck up an unlikely friendship. Ashoka appreciated that Aurin seemed unbothered when he broke human norms of behavior and let him answer the calls of his animal nature, and for whatever reasons, he trusted the bad man from the Velvet Cabaret.
"I assume you're here to discuss the theater rather than to recount my myriad charms?" he asked, finally flipping over so he could rest his head in Aurin's lap and nuzzle against his hip like an orphaned kit.
"Had to hightail it out of the Low-City while investigating possible connections between Celisa and organized interests. Came here to catch my breath, ask if you have anything on their angel investor or the artistic director, and, of course, to bask in your myriad charms." His teeth weren't as sharp, but his smile was.
"The former is throwing a fête and I'm invited," he said, bragging but not quite. "You're welcome to be my plus-one even if you have to hide that pretty face. The latter might be there, so I could conceivably kill two birds with one stone. Mm... they served the most delicious pheasant at the last fête..." The hungry, appreciative growl was quite at odds with his overly civilized manner.
Aurin tapped his chest, then slipped his hand under the peignoir. "Focus, please."
Ashoka nipped at his wrist.
"Yes, well, I do hope the theater angle falls into place because it would be a suitable lynchpin to make my keiretsu idea work. But while I can be charming and keep my ears pricked, you are better at getting and vetting secrets, so you ought to come. Then I can work my magic with the books for you and we'll all be rich... even if Elwes won't want to move up in the world."
"She's more comfortable in the shadows," Aurin reminded him. "We'll just position her to have more power and agency there."
"I would say she should start a business as well, but with her skills, best to keep her where the right hand won't know what the left is doing." He wormed around a little, enjoying Aurin's hand on him. "But merge Kavafis Holdings with an interest in the Theater and your blacksmith's forthcoming shop and you will have the modest beginning of a perfectly legal financial empire."
"I appreciate the ambition," Aurin said, "but first things first..."
