Recoup

[Dorcas Tansy]

Udorl had a look of disengaged amusement as she leaned her back to the earthen wall at the foot of the stairs. She swept the fingers of one hand repeatedly through the underside of waves of dark hair, strumming out a shimmer of burnished bronze midtones. With the other hand she vacantly cradled one breast in her palm and flexed her wrist as if to test its weight. Her gaze tripped over the proceedings on the stairs every few moments; she acted like a spectator to a particularly frivolous opera.

Mydjeken didn't give her a second look when Chrishton openly criticized him to Dorcas.

"I think 'e should let us do whatever we want, 'n keep his hands ta one woman."

The boy growled voicelessly in his throat and reached a hand past Chris to place a hold on Dorcas. Because she was a few steps above him, his hand caught her thick thigh. He was fighting to keep his gaze steady, somewhere in the ambivalent zone between the two motives of hostility toward Chris and entreaty to Dorcas.

Dorcas cringed when she was touched by Mydjeken, having no immediate defense to this unexpected act.

"That's right, what do you want, Dor?" asked Mydjeken almost levelly, but a slight tremor gave away his nervousness at his own clearly compromising situation.

Dorcas pursed her lips uncharacteristically daintily as she looked down at the boy's grip on her thigh and a more characteristically dark scowl pulled over her brow. "What do you want?" she retorted quietly.

Mydjeken's response was to inch his hand slightly higher on her thigh, rotating his wrist around toward the back so his hold was nearly possessive. His look was rapt.

Dorcas jerked her leg back and pulled up at the waist of her skirt to loose the material of his grip. "F--fuck off!" she stammered. She put a hand on Chrishton's shoulder and squeezed in appeal to his alliance against this perceived violation. She didn't even notice he was still injured.

[Chrishton Radu]

Chrishton's eyes glanced down at the hand that reached past him. He saw it touch her leg, and if he knew either of them any better, or indeed if he simply wasn't relying on them for a place to stay the night, he would have done something about it right away. But what was their situation, and how strange was it to Dorcas to have him touch her like that?

She didn't react too harshly at first. Perhaps they did have a close enough relationship for that kind of thing already. Chrishton did nothing but watch Dorcas with a slightly bemused air about him.

Ah, girls. He took the opportunity to size Dorcas up just then. Subtle, since Mydjenken's hand was the object of attention. She was a little too young for him although the prospect was not entirely out of the question. Mydjenken, incestuous little urchin that he was, didn't understand the kind of social graces that Chrishton still followed, even after years of not being fully human. Animals, even the less social species, have a very different set of rules which Chrishton understood at least as intimately as the most nature driven ranger. He operated on a system that mixed the two when appropriate, which placed his behavior somewhere along the lines of a tamed neanderthal. Mydjeken was generally at odds with the latter customs as well.

The hand shifted, and that got a reaction out of Dorcas.

F--fuck off!

That was enough for Chris. Mydjenken needed another lesson. He had his warning. All Chrishton needed to do in his position was give his elbow a jerk back and it would meet the young man square in the nose...

And that's what Chrishton decided was most appropriate.

[Dorcas Tansy]

Mydjeken's hand flew back from Dorcas's leg as she rejected it in no uncertain terms. He was so dumbstruck by her reaction that he didn't notice Chris had a reaction too. His gaze was squarely on Dorcas, his jaw dropped with shock, and presently, Chrishton's elbow was squarely in contact with his nose.

In time with the muffled crack that accompanied the elbow-nose collision, Mydjeken's head jerked up and back. The next moment, he cried out in surprise and, while attempting to step back to balance himself against the inertia of the blow, lost his footing. As the boy began to fall back, he cried out again, this time an infuriated roar of pain. It was garbled by a gush of fresh blood from his nasal cavity.

There was no banister on this staircase, and Mydjeken's attempts to grab hold of the walls only resulted in dirt-smeared palms. He landed on the bottom stair, on his tail bone. Immediately thereafter, his shoulder blades smacked into the floor. He gave a loud groan and coughed, spraying his chest with droplets of red.

Dorcas gasped in delayed reaction. She stared down at her fallen friend wide-eyed, her lip drawn back in disgust. A moment later, she looked back down at her leg where he had grabbed her, and she scoffed scornfully.

"Dorcas," said Mydjeken beseechingly. His voice cracked with exertion. He pushed himself up to a shallow sitting position with some effort. "Dor, I thought it was different," he groaned. He spit a bit of blood onto the floor sloppily.

Dorcas's face crumpled and she squeezed Chris's arm for a moment. She shook her head vigorously in answer to the boy's plea, looking at Udorl and Mydjeken in turn. Dorcas looked at Chrishton now, pursing her lips and raising her eyebrows in an expression of exasperation. She was certainly surprised he had done what he'd done, but a hint of gratefulness was there in her eyes too. She turned on her heel and stomped quickly up the stairs.

Mydjeken lifted a hand to wipe some of the blood that streamed from his nose to his chin and stared dumbly at the shining red. Udorl watched the boy at her feet and her lips twisted into a humorous smile. She stepped over him in the direction of her room and, with her back turned to the stairs, lifted her lightweight tunic up over her head. She dropped in over her shoulder onto the ground beside Mydjeken. The garment would make a suitable gauze to mop up his blood. At that, Udorl sauntered back to her room, fully nude, and shut the door behind her.

[Chrishton Radu]

Chrishton watched the young man topple and collide with the floor. He was concerned that the move would more damage than he intended. If the boy fell wrong he might hit his head on god knows what.

He didn't, and Chrishton felt the aggression had gone exactly as intended when Mydjeken tried dumbly to say Dorcas' name and explain himself. It wasn't obvious whether the nose was broken or not, although it seemed rather likely.

He felt a squeeze on his arm and looked back over to Dorcas. Chrishton was not smiling at first, showing the seriousness with which his sucker's blow had been delivered. After all, he had just taken out someone he still suspected was her friend.

When he saw that she wasn't incensed he did crack a smile flash a wink. He had no plan to sleep with her at all, and presumed that she knew that as well as he did after their time spent together.

Dorcas turned and left. Chrishton thought twice about following her immediately. Instead he turned again to look at Mydjeken, ready to say something vulgar and smug. What he saw was Udorl taking the shirt off her back and giving it to the lad. The scene gave him pause, and he let it play out until Udorl closed her door.

That was at least a moderately human action on her part, even if she did essentially snub him afterward. The display helped to redeem herself in Christon's eyes.

He decided to say nothing and get some sleep for a change. Chasing after the girls he heard somewhere in the building for a free ride was going to take decidedly too much effort at this point. He needed a bath and a night to heal what remained of the various wounds he had accumulated.

[Dorcas Tansy]

Dorcas's heavy stomp up the stairs was hardly theatrical given the proceedings below. Myjdken's face was buried in Udorl's shirt as he mopped at the flow of blood around his face. His coughs sounded wet and impaired. As he cleaned his face, a bright bruise across the bridge of his nose a profound swelling became apparent.

It wouldn't have been immediately obvious that Dorcas hadn't left for the front room when her stomps stopped at the landing between staircases. As Chris ascended the stairs, her face, yellowish in the light, peered around the corner of the upper staircase. She was sitting on its bottom step.

Dorcas grimaced at the sight of Chris's bare feet. She stood up with effort, and the grimace held. It might not have been a reaction to his feet after all. The big girl shrunk back into the alcove of the staircase and watched him as he alighted at the landing.

She turned down her chin and pressed her lips together tightly. She produced a few short, strange, high-pitched squeaks. Any woman, and maybe an astute man, would know she was holding back tears. The girl finally looked up at Chris with sheepish eyes and an almost comically pronounced frown. "There're sluts upstairs . . ." she said slowly, and very clearly impregnated with a tone that said "if you absolutely must." She swayed to the side slightly in a gesture of allowing him passage up the stairs.

Dorcas cast a long look at the lower staircase, though she couldn't see all the way down. "He's alright, right?" she whispered, cringing at her own ability to feel concern in this situation. She turned her watery gaze back to Chrishton, and she looked much younger than usual.

One large hand fell down to her thigh, where, while wringing her greasy apron, she vaguely stroked the spot where she had been grabbed. "Why'd he go an' do that . . . ?" she murmured. Dorcas had seemed like the kind of girl who would react with swift and effective violence to an unwelcome grope. She didn't seem likely to run off crying were any bar patron off the street to make a lascivious advance. Yet here, with her face reddening, a thin tear streaked the inner crease of her cheek.

[Chrishton Radu]

Little red spots stained the places where Chrishton hobbled up the steps. The lack of care he showed earlier must have reopened the wound, and he was no longer trying to hide the fact that it bothered him. It hurt almost as much as it did outside when he first got the injury.

It didn't take very much for him to tell that Dorcas was upset, and was only hiding her feelings from Mydjeken because he meant something to her too. Games of love tag were something he no longer played. It seemed like a century had passed since he'd last been confused about where he stood with a woman, but when he saw Dorcas' face it brought him back to a time long forgotten. Her emotional vulnerability had not been so apparent before.

Sometimes he forgot who he was dealing with, and her difficult situation in Marn.

"There're sluts upstairs . . . if you absolutely must."

He smiled knowingly at her, a forceful expression that lacked the churlishness of his usual self-indulgence. Whether it was an illusion brought on by the lighting, or just wishful human expectation, the look of insanity that always tainted his eyes took on a dimension of sincere empathy.

He looked down to watch his feet and hobbled until he was beside her, hand sliding across the wall.

He's alright, right?

"He'll be fine." The words came out quietly, like he was distracted by the procedure of climbing the stairs.

Why'd he go an' do that . . . ?

Chrishton ventured to put a big hand on her shoulder to try and comfort the girl.

"Ya c'n ask him later. After e's had some time t'think about it. We should all just get some sleep."

[Dorcas Tansy]

Two tears appeared to be all Dorcas needed--one down each cheek--before she firmly blinked the impending flood back into her eyes. There was some unexpected comfort in Chrishton's words. She gave a concerned look at the lower staircase once more before shaking her head.

Dorcas stiffened in mid-headshake when Chris's hand landed on her shoulder. She turned her chin to look at it, and then grudgingly leaned her shoulder slightly into his hand. She eyed his face to seek out intent, and spoke sheepishly. "Ye're awlder than my dad," she warned him, but the warning was idle. He clearly intended nothing ill.

"Hobblin' like an awld man too," she muttered, sniffled once. "But that's 'cause ye're still hurt, i'n't it. 'Sthat . . . 'sthat why ye didn' finish wot ye started with Udorl? Ye won 'er, didn' ye, from Kenny . . . jus' now . . ." Dorcas stared at Chris with her mouth in a slack, sad pout, her eyes conflicted with judgment and affinity.

"Whatever," she added hastily as she took her gaze off him, waiving her right to an explanation from him. "Ye wan' me to help ye with yer foot then? I'm not goin' t'bed until he's settled. My bedroom's the other one down there."

She dropped her apron from her hands and craned her neck to peer at Chris's bare, bleeding foot.

[Chrishton Radu]

"Ye're awlder than my dad"

He squeezed her shoulder when she leaned into it. Something, either about Dorcas' situation or his own, bothered him, because he kept smiling that uncharacteristically mournful smile of his. He appeared on the verge of saying something that refused to leave his lips. Thankfully she changed the subject before he let himself go further.

Responding to his thoughts, the voice of a lone fox spirit echoed in his head: Careful stupid. Why would you even say that? More spirits whizzed between Dorcas and Chrishton, circling his head like annoying insects. He's nowhere near here, what difference would it make? Another spirit interjected, arguing with the first. A third piped in: You don't know that. The first two, taking apparent offense to this statement, retorted: of course we know, we know everything you idiot.

Soon the swearing and bickering began, and the spirits apparently forgot all about Chrishton. Adept at ignoring their voices, he was unphased.

But that's 'cause ye're still hurt, i'n't it. 'Sthat... 'sthat why ye didn' finish wot ye started with Udorl? Ye won 'er, didn' ye, from Kenny... jus' now ...

Before he could respond she waved him off and offered to help with his foot, but he gave her an answer anyway.

"Girly, ain't nobody wins with a woman like that. I didna finish 'cause I lost interest. Dun go thinkin' it means anythin' else, cause it's a sucker's game."

He followed her gaze down to his dirty, bloody foot, and finally spoke in a way that was absent of his temporary malaise. While he spoke, he wiggled his toes for her benefit.

"I could use a better nurse though."

[Dorcas Tansy]

Dorcas lifted the heel of her hand to scour the dampness from her bleary eyes. She peered at Chrishton's hand and pushed at it gently as she leaned away from him. She looked down from a few moments, hiding her motivation, but lifted her gaze once, briefly, so Chris could see her mood was still grudgingly grateful. The brush-off was simply a prelude to what she would say.

"I'm sure Udorl woulda licked yer feet better if ye'd asked. Not 'zackly a locked box, that one, eh?" Dorcas lifted her eyes again, quickly; they were full of humor, but without mirth. Given her situation, dark jokes were all she could muster.

"Anyway," she said as she stepped beyond Chris to the curtain, "don' go pritendin' like ye weren't taken with the bitch at the start. We saw ye weren' so masterfully judicious then." Mydjeken's muffled curses a flight below went unheeded.

Dorcas lingered with her back to Chrishton after pulling the curtain. She jerked her head in the direction of the front room, where the bar was, and also the hot water and clean rags. When she gave Chris another backwards glance, her lips were pressed tightly together. Apparently she preferred not to speak in earshot of Mydjeken as he nursed his likely broken nose.

[Chrishton Radu]

The most Chrishton could do to argue with Dorcas right then was to roll his eyes and smirk like she didn't understand his motivations, which was largely true. He was smitten because he wanted to be, because he needed to let go after what had happened over the past week. But she couldn't know that.

She had really nice... One of the spirits broke off from their internal quarrel to speak to Chrishton again. His glare shut it up immediately, though all Dorcas could see was him squinting at a spot in the air.

The assassin left. The fox said, as if in an effort to justify its presence. It grinned at him, and then vanished. Somehow he knew it was telling the truth this time.

Chrishton did not share Dorcas' tactful quietness. He wanted to get cleaned up and get some sleep in a real bed.

"C'mon. I'm tired, girly..." He all but pushed her through the curtain to get a move on.

[Dorcas Tansy]

Dorcas stepped away from Chris as he nudged her forward. The scowl she gave him served as indication she was feeling a little more herself. "Don' call me that, I'm nobody's girly. . . Or I'll call ye it too, an' maybe then ye'll understand." She blinked at him deliberately. Her manner was diagnostically adolescent: amused by her own ability to practice wit, but unwilling to share the joke.

The ungainly girl left Chris at the curtain and went about her task in a practiced way. She first fetched the bowl of water Chris had been presented with earlier; its blood-pink water had gone tepid. She pulled the front door open a mere crack to slosh the water outside. Chrishton's diluted bodily fluids reported with a cascading slap against the cobblestones. She glanced back at him and wrinkled her nose. The action has been so like emptying a chamber pot. Her impudence was shed temporarily, but in that, so was her spirit, and she looked like another dull scullery maid.

Dorcas stared at Chrishton before she ducked her gaze again and continued. At the bar, she grabbed the large ceramic jug from which Mydjeken had produced hot water before. With the stoppered jug held by one ear-like handle in one hand, and the emptied bowl with its damp rag in the other arm, Dorcas approached Chrishton again.

Her stance was stout and unmoving when she held out the offering, but her reluctance to meet his eye gave away her slight embarrassment. A maid's work didn't suit her. "Ye're tired, so ye should jus' tek care of yer foot on yer own," she said in nearly a mumble.

She forced the items into his hands before she would continue past him, onto the upper staircase. "Kenny's room," she said back at him. Her tone had lightened to one of softness with the relinquishing of the heavy ceramics.

Up the staircase Dorcas went, the fabric of her skirt grabbed in one fist to keep it from tangling between her feet and the stairs. At the top, she turned around to face Chris and pointed to her left. "Second door down. Yer friend's in the firs' one. I think Kenny's e'en got some soap in there, so . . . knock yerself out."

[Chrishton Radu]

He stood by the curtain and watched her change the dirty bowl of water. When he realized what was going on, around the time she withdrew the jug of water, he began to protest, albeit mildly.

"An' here I was hopin fer a proper bath..."

Before he could keep going, she shoved the things into his hands and, in the process, shut him up. He took them easily, dangling the jug from its little handle hooked onto his index finger.

He questioned after her, while she climbed the stairs. "Kenny?"

Her response was to direct him beside Dennison's room somewhere upstairs. He shrugged and limped after her, heading up to look for this room.

Chrishton whipped the cloth at one of the spirits the way someone would shoo mosquitoes away. It had no effect.

Determined to beat up the first person who dared disturb his sleep in this third rate slum, he went into his room and shut the door. His voice could soon be heard from the other side, arguing grumpily with orange ghosts.

[Dorcas Tansy]

Dorcas trailed after Chris as he made his way to Kenny's vacant room. Where the boy was expected to stay wasn't specified, and perhaps Dorcas preferred it that way. There were options open to him, and maybe even Udorl would take him in, broken face and all.

As Chris shut the door, Dorcas frowned with concern and nodded after him, the last he'd see of her before bed. She turned her back from the door and her concern deflated. The big girl put a hand over her mouth to quiet the few gasping huffs of breath that stifled her impending tears. Screwing her eyes shut for a few moments dispersed the threat of tears into a redness in her eyes and moistness on her lashes.

Dorcas took a few steps in the direction of the parlor, dark but for the tiny remaining pilots of two lamps on end tables. Slow, dragging steps took her slouching into the room where the figures of two--or maybe three--women were sleeping. A large armchair contained a small curled-up frail thing of a young woman, and a long couch appeared to hold two sleeping women arranged like spoons. They were ghostly and of indistinct beauty in the very limited light, but appeared peaceful in their rest.

Dorcas glanced back at the guest room where Dennison was supposed to be. She scratched her chin and wiggled her jaw thoughtfully. If Chrishton's little friend could be convinced to take one of the girls for the night, she could steal a spot to sleep in the living room. Dorcas had made clear to Chrishton her unwillingness to go back downstairs to her own room with Mydjeken still there.

Dorcas raised a fist and tapped on the guest room door. When no answer came, she cleared her throat and knocked again, this time louder. A girl in the parlor stirred but didn't wake. "Hey there," she hissed against the jamb; a faint flickering light showed through the crack at the bottom of the door. She knocked again.

Dorcas gave a long look over her shoulder, as if somehow afraid of being caught, then tried the knob of the guest room door. As if the room's very vacancy had created a physical vacuum, the door swung into the room quickly as soon as Dorcas turned the knob. It wasn't a spooky trick, though--the narrow muslin curtain over the open window flapped in the breeze. The same wind had created a pull on the door. There was no Dennison, and it was quite clear how he had gone about leaving.

Dorcas glanced around the room in the wavering light of the harried oil lamp. She shuffled quickly to the window and pushed it shut, and in a few moments the flame of the lamp realized its potential. Not a thing appeared out of place in the room.

Dorcas gazed for a while at the bed and began to pull at the strings of her apron. The knot was troublesome, and it took her the better part of a minute to navigate it. She dropped her apron to the floor; the strings were stiff and kinked with filth. Dorcas pulled the door shut and disrobed to her shift, a threadbare garment with no waistline. An unusually pretty orange linen scarf was wrapped several times around the upper part of Dorcas's torso, over the shift. She unwound this with both hands, and slowly released the compression and support of her overdeveloped bosom.

The room was still cold from the breeze and Dorcas shivered in her shift. Her orange scarf was balled up in her hands. She shuffled over to the little lamp, and twisted its knob down to a tiny, constant glow. Her shoulders hunched against the cold, she shuffled back to the bed and wriggled under the wool blanket. Just as she was closing her eyes, a low yowl came from the room beside her. Dorcas's eyes widened for a moment and she rolled over in bed to face the wall she shared with Chrishton's room. She closed her eyes again.

Meanwhile, as Chris was grumbling with his unseen companions, a pair of glowing eyes showed itself from behind the bedside table. Dorcas's big pet cat had been skulking around behind the furniture. He stared at the invisible presence with which Chrishton argued, then stared at Chris, as if assessing the value of either party's side. Then the cat bit at an unseen gnat and tested its imaginary taste with a few hearty snaps of his mouth. Perhaps in a sign of agreement with Chris, the shaggy cat chose to hop up onto the foot of his bed, where he settled down in a rather doglike fashion, without the common feline ritual of pacing. He continued to stare at Chrishton for a full few minutes before nodding his head down and closing his eyes to sleep. If it was a solitary sleep Chris had hoped for, the cat wouldn't provide, but he certainly didn't seem the type to interrupt.

[Chrishton Radu]

With his dirty clothes piled up on the floor beside his bed, the jug and bowl beside them, Chrishton sat on the edge of said bed, completely naked, and started doing as best as he could manage without the luxury of a modern bath, or even at least a big tub to sit in.

His body was a patchwork of scars, old and new. It was an improbable mixture of all kinds of injuries. Long shallow slashes, many obviously claw marks; deep small stab wounds around his gut, ribs, and back; burns restricted mainly to his back and arms; and of course the still fresh and very tender signs of torture around his hands, fingers, chest, back, and feet. On top of all this, he needed a shave or he would soon have a fully fledged beard. His hair was long, but that was on purpose.

With the damp rag in hand, he poked at some of the more tender areas and made grimacing expressions. The fox spirits hovered and watched, bickering amongst themselves about him. He listened to them and waited for a lull in their chatter to give him an opportunity to interject.

"Shut up an' tell me where Dennison went ya useless fuckin' ethereal snots."

They answered him all at once, each as desperate for attention as a child.

He left. He's sneaking around back. Who's Dennison? He means the assassin you buffoon. Talking to Moryldar. He's right behind you! Don't give it away...

Chrishton listened passively and kept rubbing the cloth where he saw blood or dirt. He was adept at figuring out which one of the voices was telling the truth based on their tone and the likelihood of their story, as well as which one of the spirits was feeding it to him.

"Why'd he be talkin t'Moryldar if he's s'posed t'be hidin'?"

What a pattybrain! Fuck him, go back down there and hit up that horny vixen. He's not talking to Moryldar, he's talking to Belata-whats-his-name. Vixen my ass. He struck a deal and he's checking up on it. Oh man look at his foot, that's disgusting.

Chrishton scrunched up his face and dealt with the open wound still on his foot. It didn't look good, and without at least some alcohol or salve of some kind, it was going to get infected. He shook his head.

"What kinda deal?"

To kill you. To become a battlemage. To work for Bela-whatsit. All he wants to do is sing. Hey look, a pussy. It's a spy!

The last one made Chris laugh. It was then that he noticed Dorcas' cat was in the room with him. It yowled and he shrugged at it in return. He wasn't sure if it could see the spirits or not, but to date nothing else ever managed.

"They're idiots I know, but they c'n be useful eh."

He threw the rag onto the floor and rested his elbows on his knees, tired of dealing with his own wounds and poorly maintained body. Looking down, he could see he was losing his physique as well. Every year he felt one step closer to ending up a fat, useless old man. He didn't like the sudden reminder.

The cat, whose name he could not remember, hopped up onto the bed beside him and Chrishton let it do what it wanted. He was tired, and sore, but he needed to figure out everything he could. Why would Dennison let him live if he was working for Bela? And if he worked for Moryldar, why would he help Chrishton escape?

A lone voice spoke to him. It was softer than the others, and discernibly female, yet it silenced their prattle like a hammer. Don't worry about it.

The sound of it made Chrishton look up. All he could see was a hazy orange fog of eyes and tails, but he recognized the voice from his past.

"My gut or Dennison?"

He could hear some humor in her next lines, as though she were smiling while she spoke. Dennison, the assassin. Other forces are taking care of him. You need to find the bard.

Chrishton's eyebrows shot up. "Oh yer gonna tell me why I'm 'ere now?"

That would be too easy.

"Oh fer fuck's..."

Find the bard. You know her. She will lead you to a girl who can undo magic. From there on you'll understand.

"Right, course."

Guided by some autonomic drive within him, Chrishton's next move was to lay down in the bed. He wanted to talk more - it was so seldom that he heard her voice or got anything resembling a straight answer - but there was no winning against gods. He was sound asleep in a dreamless abyss before he had time to pull the covers over his body.

[Frug]

Continued in "Things to do in Marn when you're Wanted" here: http://www.tharshaddin.com/rp/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1627