Things That Go Bump in the Night (Cyrah & Ifran)

[Ifran]

"Ah, well, then you are lucky. I am sometimes lonely when I am not careful to distract myself from the loneliness." His smile, a trifle indulgent, widened when she revealed her face. "It is a shame your work requires a veil," he finally said. "That is the sort of face that could drive a man to suicide. Or a woman for that matter. Some of them, anyway." It was, rather than mere flattery, an observation of aesthetic truth. For all that beauty was a thing to be worshiped in a sense, it was also a tool, and either a gift from the gods or a curse. Or an accident of birth. Whether he was one of those men who would die for a face to launch a thousand ships, well, that seemed unlikely given his level of self-control, but such things were difficult to know for sure.

[Cyrah]

Cyrah flushed nearly scarlet, a bit bewildered by the compliment, whether it was simply an aesthetic observation or not. People did not often give Cyrah compliments on her physical beauty, stark though it may have been. Too often, such notice might lead to missing eyes or lost fingers, depending on her mood. But she just kind of blinked at Ifran, utterly befuddled by his kind words. Somewhat unconsciously, she lifted a hand to touch her own face, like she wasn't entirely sure that he was seeing the visage that she saw every day in the mirror. Not that she spent much time in front of the mirror, but if she was a striking beauty, nobody had ever gone out of their way to tell her as much. Not even her parents. “I guess – I guess the city can be kind of lonely,” she said, after a minute, instead of acknowledging the compliment he paid her face. A wrinkle of her nose, as she tried to ignore the warm, fuzzy feeling he inspired in her belly. When she couldn't, she did get to her feet again. “I'm sorry, it's the middle of the night, I'm sure you have to sleep. I shouldn't have woken you.”

[Ifran]

"I told you it was fine," he said, trying to reassure the skittish girl. "This is probably the safest time for you to come if you want to keep your identity a secret. Our slaves and servants are tight-lipped so far as slaves and servants go, but gossip continues." His smile, too, was aimed at bolstering her self-confidence. "You can stay if you like," he said. "I'll put clothes on and put out the light and nobody will have to be lonely until morning when you sneak away." At least, he assumed she would sneak away. While his rank and person were certainly attractive, she did not seem like the type of person to throw over for that.

[Cyrah]

She stood as though frozen between one decision and the next, hands clasped before her, pale eyes shifting from Ifran to the far window and back again. Eventually, though, she gave him a short nod and started sinking back to her seat. Of course she'd sneak out – it wouldn't serve either of them for a son of the North Winds to have some grimy little girl crawling out of his window in the morning sunlight. Even as she sat, she looked half-ready to run. Muscles tightening in her shoulders and arms, probably in her legs as well, as they lowered her to the bed's edge. Caught between obedience and survival instinct. Still, she sat, and pressed her hands between her knees as before, and tried to smile. “Okay.” She tried not to fidget. “I'll leave before it's light out. Promise.”

[Ifran]

His chin ducked in a quick nod and he slipped out of the bed on the other side where he donned loose trousers of fine Eypharian cotton before climbing back in. If it wasn't for modesty's sake, as they both had little, then it was an assurance that he wouldn't try any funny business were she to climb under the thin silk coverlet. He lay on his side, head propped up by one hand while another worked imaginary tangles out of his nightmare black hair. "So what do you do when you aren't working?" he finally asked, curious as to what an assassin did in her down time.

[Cyrah]

She watched him climb out of the bed, and looked politely away, though he attracted her eyes in a way perhaps more sincere than simple curiosity. When she felt the mattress give again beneath his weight, she looked towards him once more, her expression not unlike a hungry animal waiting to see if one might toss it a morsel. “Oh --” She blinked. What did she do when she wasn't working? “Well I'm usually working.” Plenty of people to kill in Ahnatep, after all, and plenty more that people wanted to kill. She almost told him about her ledgers, but then decided not to. That was too private, to personal a detail, really, for how young their friendship was. She supposed she spent quite a bit of time fighting with Clement, when she thought about it. And learning – she was still teaching herself to write in a smoother hand, and Clement made her read so that she didn't forget how. She liked reading about history best of all because it wasn't so boring as things like slavery and economics and the prices of wheat and barley in Eyktol. Just thinking about it made her slightly sleepy. “I read a lot,” she said, after a moment. “And I'm learning Arumenic, but I'm not very good at it. I hunt. What do you do when attempts aren't being made on your life?” She made a joke; a smile flickered in her eyes, even if it didn't make it onto her lips.

[Ifran]

"Arumenic?" he asked, eyes lighting up. "Well, I can help with that." He spoke the words of poets as often as his own, and he even wrote some of his own; he wrote and wrote and hoped eventually to edit what he had into something resembling brilliance. But that was just one of many secrets. Turning the full force of his smile upon her, the smile that had been compared to the sun rising, he considered which of his activities might thrill her most. Perhaps none, but some might at least be interesting. "When strange and beautiful women aren't crawling into my room to slit my throat and I am not working, well, I often practice my singing and sword-dancing. I read, too." His smile went conspiratorial there, then relapsed. "I study people. I attend parties. I consider the politics of the art world and the aristocracy. People are fascinating things."

[Cyrah]

“I don't like people,” she murmured, rolling one shoulder in a shrug as she looked away from him. She didn't like people, so she didn't watch people. Or find them fascinating. She thought they were mean-spirited creatures, over all, destructive and selfish and stupid – and she would not have exempted him from those categories, not yet. Fortunately, she knew better than to tell him so. “And I've never been to a party.” Well and who'd invite her? Next time Dira through an evening gala, maybe she'd get a nod. It didn't seem to bother her, though, and the idea of Cyrah Anubis at some sort of soiree might have been hilarious if it weren't for the very likely possibility that she'd kill an entire roomful of people simply for being uncomfortable. His smile coaxed a smile of her own onto her lips; it was a simple expression, far more difficult to engender for being so uncomplex, and therefore truly beautiful. Unaffected, uncomplicated good humor – and so rare. It vanished off her mouth in a blink, though the warmth of it may have lingered in her eyes. “I'm not very good at the Arumenic – and I'm apparently a poor student. So. I wouldn't trouble yourself. What's sword-dancing, then?”

[Ifran]

"Never been to a party!" He stared at her. "I was under the impression that parties were not solely the province of my class, but a matter of scale. Haven't you had a birthday party at least?" he asked. Quietly, he considered his options: 1) invite her to a party as a servant, especially if Ahmet was going to be there to frighten witless; 2) find out when her birthday was and throw her a bit of a party, which would require finding out if she had any friends, which she might not take well and then shank him; 3) well, he would continue thinking about this later. "Sword-dancing. I don't know how you learned to fight, but my teaching was split between the skills of actual combat and those for the stage. I was taught to fight in order to protect myself, but also to dance... a martial art with a focus on the art. On stage, it is different, and the goal is not to cause anyone actual harm. They are two separate disciplines, really."

[Cyrah]

“I don't like people,” she said again, stiffening a little at his surprise. “So there's no reason I'd ever go to a party. Or have one for myself.” And nobody knew her birthday, but her. She'd never even told Clement, because it seemed pointless. He'd seen her grow up, and so could have marked the years by how much older she looked from one to the next, but if she had gone from one to two, or two to three, she wasn't sure he could have said. Or that he'd have even wanted to know, really. She dismissed thoughts of parties and birthdays, and listened instead to his description of sword-dancing, which was much more the sort of thing that Cyrah would be interested in anyway. “So,” she said, thinking about it. “You can fight for real, and for fake. I see.” It seemed odd to her, but she understood it. Performance and whatnot. Cyrah could not have fought for fake though, ever, because it was too much an instinct for her, and not a thing learned. There was no style, only fang and blade and bloodshed. She smiled a little, again. “You have an advantage,” she said. “All those bloody arms.”