The hunt

[Daq Bekkar]

Morax found something about Pagusel's seriousness and composure to be sobering, and he managed to collect himself long enough to sit upright in his chair. He pressed his arms on the table and leaned forward conspiratorially.

"Listen," he said, feeling his eyelids grow heavy. "Lissstenn. There'ssss..."

His head began to sink, and his torso began to collapse toward the table, but his body was seized by a sudden vigor and his face filled with presence. Daq met Pagusel's heavy-lidded stare and spoke clearly and firmly.

"I told you it was dangerous. Do not fall into league with him."

Daq stared intensely at Pagusel for a few moments, and then his head shook lazily from side to side.

"N-no, nnno, no," a slurred voice said. Morax looked up and began to compensate in a similar fashion to Pagusel, although he only managed to keep one eye open. He cocked his head back and looked down his cheek at her. "That'ssss... that'ss not what I wanted to sssay at all."

Morax began to scratch eagerly at his scalp and massage his face with his hands. Perhaps thinking that Pagusel wouldn't notice, he allowed a single finger to slither into his nostril and pluck out a piece of hard, black snot. He examined it, eyes focusing on the close object, and even seemed close to putting it in his mouth.

"Err--" he muttered, flicking the booger sullenly at the wall. His focus returned to Pagusel. "Being... bothered.. with.. the presssssence.. of ssssuch a man.. sssuch as Daq.. iss a lot like.. heartburn. Unpleassssant thingsss... they come up periodically."

"But, right... Now that we've--ah--esssstablissshed the--ah--whaddyacallit--proffesssssional trussst?" he asked inquisitively. He nodded to himself. "I'd like to talk about sssstealing ssssomething."

His head lolled forward again, but he caught it with his left hand. Propping his forearm up at the elbow, he placed his cheek in a vice-grip with his index and thumb.

"I'd had," he said, pausing to smack his lips. "Uhh--I have--an assssociate in mind. With your help, though, thingssss would be a lot easier."

[Pagusel]

Daq came back again, briefly. Something about his fleeting presence was somehow so sad--or maybe otherwise distressing; Pagusel's emotions were not sorting very quickly at the moment. He wanted to give her some strong advice, but everything coming at her was muffled by the rolling haze. The haze took the edge off of urgency, though it did nothing to dilute the general anasthesia of melancholy he brought. Pagusel frowned at Daq and slowly blinked wet, slightly sticky-looking eyes.

For a few moments after the monster returned, Pagusel didn't register the change. Just after his slurred remittance of Daq's advice, he started to pick at his nostril, and the mental echo of his words accompanying the act stirred recognition in her. It startled Pagusel out of her stupor like bad news.

Her eyes followed his hand away from his nose for a fraction of a second, but she quickly reconsidered this and averted her gaze from the revolting act. She inhaled a shiver through lightly chattering teeth.

"You should not, ah . . ." Pagusel trailed off breathily, but regained her direction and sat up perhaps an inch higher. "You shouldn't beat around this, ah . . . bush. What services do you think I can provide?"

Pagusel maintained her soft-shouldered posture as she craned her neck looking at Morax. What was probably just a trick of the colorless morning light looked almost like the eye color she prefered on him. Hesitantly, she lifted a hand across the table, limp-fingered--as if by physical motivation she could inspire Daq's comfortingly morose presence to return. She dropped her hand, though, because she needed it to support the weight of her arm beneath it. Her fingers caught on the edge of the table on her side.

[Daq Bekkar]

A small "urp" escaped from Morax at Pagusel's response. The hand motion, the idioms, the stresses... he found them wholly confusing. What had she meant by services he thought she could provide? And did she want him to take her hand? His right arm twitched forward at this idea, but then he thought better of it and withdrew it in a big, sloppy gesture that swept over his half of the table and once again got syrup on his sleeve.

He lifted the aged leather to his mouth and began to suck at it. The syrup tasted sweet, but it was almost overpowered by years of caked on chemicals. Morax returned the arm to his lap.

"Mm.. Ah. You know," he said, somewhat lost. "Well, the detailss.. are in a ssstate of fluxsss.. depending on.. on... onn.. ahh.. the assssociate."

Morax once again brought the sleeve to his lips. The bitter mix of chemicals was pleasing to him--he could identify each individual one. Nitrates, amides, peroxides, alcohols... even some traces of strange, natural molecules.

"But.. ah.. the overall.. the overalll... ahh.." he trailed off and licked at his sleeve a few more times. Putting his mind through the paces of naming all of the flavors seemed to be focusing him. He was feeling the annoying weight of the 'other' receding from his consciousness.

"The.. overall idea.. would be a.. a.. break-in? Isss that what I mean?" Morax asked finally. Before an answer could come, he added, "I mean.. that.. ah a man named Melagone hasss.. quite the collection of.. reagentsss.. and they are a bit.. uh.. out of my price rrrange.. sssso to sssspeak.. but I'd like.. I'd like to.. acquire them.. and.. I ssssuppose your.. err.. your.. your.. you know... would help with-uhh-matterssss of infiltration?"

Morax finished with the sleeve and let his arm drop to the table with a dull thud that rattled the dishes and silverware. His head had begun to slip out of his grip and was now facing the table. He raised his eyebrows as far as he could to look at Pagusel earnestly with his inquisitive, yellow eyes. He even tried to smile at her, though it was unclear from the angle of his downturned face.

[Pagusel]

Pagusel’s best course of action seemed to be to keep her gaze from focusing on any point of Morax for more than a few moments. Her breaths were spaced several long seconds apart. With each slow breath, her eyes rolled in an arc from some spot to another, her eyebrows rose and fell, her heavy eyelids lifted and lowered in small degrees. Between these sighs, her gaze shifted about from within a still face so as not to inspect Morax’s unsettling mannerisms too closely.

Despite her lethargic, melancholy appearance, Pagusel seemed at peace, in that she wasn’t twitching with revulsion, and that she allowed the concave swoop of her relaxed shoulder blades settle against the back of her chair. Her thin lips relaxed into a perplexing line that was somehow a smile, but a pleasantly sad one.

“I, ah . . .” Pagusel paused to clear her throat, which had gotten thick and dry. She narrowed her eyes as she looked at Morax’s unconvincing smile. “I want to be clear—I don’t wish to mislead you. I have no monetary assets to offer whatsoever.”

She continued before giving him a chance to respond to this. “I have limited experience with any sort of infiltration, whether it be espionage or burglary. These things haven’t come up before. But, I believe I could demonstrate satisfactory skill, given natural abilities of mine which I am not of a mind to discuss with you at present.”

Pagusel inhaled once, deeply, and steepled her long fingers, inclined at a forty-five degree angle away from her body. She almost seemed to point at Morax. Her eyes caught the glisten of saliva on his sleeve, and she blinked to remind herself to keep her gaze off that part of him. “I’m willing to pursue a short-term contract with you under the terms of my services for your goods, after the completion of which I may be willing to discuss further agreements. I am also now going to register my preference for future contact with Mister Bekkar, with the emphasis that my continued cooperation could be influenced greatly by the consideration of my preference.”

[Daq Bekkar]

Morax wondered what it was, exactly, that had been on the sleeve. His head had started to hurt, but he seemed to be sobering up much faster than his metabolic rates should have allowed. A chelating agent perhaps? Whatever the case, he could deal with pain, and he was quite glad at the feeling of the gradual return of his faculties. He clicked his tongue a few times to test his motor control. He then wriggled his fingers, kicked back to flex his legs, popped his neck a few times, and rolled his eyes around in their sockets. He was so absorbed in testing his soberness that he didn't pick up on much of what Pagusel was saying. His attention waned as she moved from monetary assets to talk of natural abilities.

Her pointing at him captured his attention again. He noticed her blink deliberately, perhaps in annoyance at his obvious inattention, so he sat upright and concentrated on her. He pursed his mouth at the mention of Daq and allowed a jet of air to escape from his nostrils, an imitation of what he had seen done by an aggravated bull.

His usually indifferent face assumed the most morose and put-out expression imaginable, and he whined, "Daq? Really?"
He continued in this vein, perhaps trying to win sympathy in a manner he might have seen bratty children use with their ineffectual mothers. "Why don't you like me? I've tried very hard that we might be associates.. friends even. But ffffiiiiiiinnnne. I will talk it over with Daq. I'll do this one more thing for you, even though you don't seem to return any of the niceties I've attended to you."

He gave her one last little pout before leaning against the wall comfortably, closing his eyes, and receding into himself.

***

Morax found Daq reclining in a red-leather armchair near the fire with his legs propped up over one armrest and his head lolling back on the other. An open book on veination patterns in Eyropan plants was rested on his face.

"Quite comfortable, I presume?"

"Bored, really," Daq replied. He closed the book, put it aside, and straightened himself out to sit properly. He looked Morax in the eye. "You were supposed to leave her alone."

"Nuh uh! No. The deal was that you interact with her one last time and convince her to leave."

"Well..." Daq said ineffectually. "You knew what my intentions were."

Morax moved to sit in an armchair facing his. "I don't plan on harming her."

"I don't like being stuck in here," Daq said, changing the subject. It was obvious that appeals to Morax's decency were not going to get him anywhere, though he had suspected that already.

"Then you're in luck," Morax said. "Pagusel has requested more of your presence. She said it was her 'preference' to work with you."

Daq smiled in amusement. He knew it wasn't Morax's intention to just release control and let him work with her, so he was eager to see what he had come up with.

"I need your help impersonating.. well.. uhh.. you. Yourself, that is," Morax said. "it would put you closer to consciousness, give you a peek at things outside, get you out of here.. et cetera.. but you'd need to be on your best behavior. No funny stuff, and I mean it."

"What about the rest of the time?" Daq asked.

"What rest of the time? This is a full-time job!" Morax said.

"After this little.. arrangement you have.. or whatever.. after Pagusel leaves. Then what? I'm stuck here again?"

Morax drew his legs up into the chair and cradled his knees. He twisted around until his legs were propped against the back of the chair and his head dangled off of the seat and toward the floor. From this upside-down position, he considered Daq. They'd lived together for years, but he was still almost impossible to figure out. There was a little, though, that Morax thought he understood.

"I have an idea," he said. An arm swung out and pointed. "The curtains."

"What curtains."

"The ones behind you. Go draw them back."

"There's nothing there but a window you can't see anything out of."

"Do it."

Morax observed as Daq walked, glued to the ceiling, to the curtains he had indicated. There was no mistaking the look of surprise on his upside-down face when he drew the curtains back and saw the woman moving in the daylight behind the glass.

"Zilke..." Daq whispered. "What is this?"

"My memories," Morax replied. He slithered out onto the floor, stood, and moved over to Daq. He extended his hand.

"Do we have a deal?"

***

The body slumped against a wall in the damaged lab snapped awake. The eyelids opened to reveal a familiar pair of blue eyes. It spoke in familiar, slightly world-weary tones.
"I agree to your terms, but only if we get moving immediately. I'd like to track down the associate of whom I spoke. Do we have a deal?"

It extended its hand abruptly, much like Morax had done just seconds before.

[Pagusel]

The line of Pagusel's shoulders softened into something just less than symmetrical as she was confronted with Morax's childish display. Her fingers tensed and remained pointed that way at him--the tips pressed together to form acute angles with their mirror-image twins. "Now is not the time to be taking things personally," she said soberly to Morax's closed eyes.

Despite his pout, he looked peaceful there in the makeshift dining chair, like a grouchy child settled in for a much-needed nap. Pagusel stared at him; her pupils dilated as she allowed her vision to blur. Everything in the lab seemed still, and the gray morning light was gradually giving way to an equally drab sepia cast. Pagusel lowered her eyelids so that she viewed Morax through her lashes, and lost herself in a placid, drug-induced reverie.

***

Pagusel sat lotus-style on a marble bench in the middle of an encircled courtyard, under a wide sky. The sky was dark, but the bench was warmer and softer than one might expect of cold stone. She flexed her bare toes against the powdery surface of the marble.

Several feet away stood a beautiful man with pale skin and dark tattoos that glared through his thin cotton shirt. His stance was wide; he folded his arms over his slim chest. His tattoos appeared to encircle his extremities rather in the same way as Pagusel's, but these marks were as black as coal, the lines thicker. His black hair was like the mess of feathers on a crow's corpse, but he was beautiful.

Pagusel rolled her gaze up toward the sky. A mass of gray, yellow, and pink clouds churned above. A knot of red-robed monks stood gossiping at the edge of the yard. In the halls surrounding the courtyard, a laugh echoed, wet, dry, and hysterical like a hyena's call.

She turned her dark, mournful gaze on the back of the man nearby. Her brow was knit with deep concern. As he began to turn, she uncoiled from her position as if to spring up. She lowered herself again as he looked past her and waved an impatient hand at the monks. As he walked by her, he muttered something meaningless, and she murmured something dimly in return.

***

Pagusel's eyelids lifted when the sudden movement of a hand in front of her startled her. She withdrew her steepled hands and glanced up to see the blue gaze she had requested. Her eyes narrowed with distraction, and she averted her gaze from him. "Yes," she said in reply. She didn't shake his hand. "Immediately."

With a nominal push of her fingertips on the edge of the table, Pagusel lifted herself from her seat. She looked down on her partner with something akin to sternness. Her manner was far from warm, but it was more familiar yet than she had used with Morax.