Closed Tales (Kit)

[Wrenmae]

Summer 37, 512 AV

Ravok's sun hung in the sky directly above the city. At noon's height, the weather was still a comfortable warmth relieved by the touch of wind. Wrenmae eyed the sky skeptically for a moment before returning attention to the square.

He wore one his silk shirts today and well stitched pants that had been sitting at the bottom of his bag for what felt like years. Back in the room his hand had hovered, even paused, over the long brimmed hat he had worn so fondly in Alvadas. But Ravok was not a place of such eccentricities and in the end, he had left it.

"Coin for a beggar?"

Wren blinked, starting from his chair. His hand twitched reflexively to where his dagger would have been had he deigned to bring it. Instead, it settled on his coin pouch. The speaker was a disheveled creature with thinning grey hair atop the crown and a spreading forest below the chin. Proffering both hands, cupped together, he kept his eyes on Wrenmae's feet. Perhaps it was to avoid the kick some beggars oft receive, but it seemed more respectful than that. There was none of the nervous energy that lanced from fingers to shoulders, the shake of guilt.

"There are no beggars in Ravok," he answered, "Rhysol provides for all."

The beggar made a noise, somewhere between a sigh and a whine. To Wrenmae it sounded like a fat summer fly, bloated and buzzing its wings so fast it was almost the note of some annoying song. He crossed his arms.

"Aye, sir, the good Lord Rhysol provides for all. By His grace and glory we live and by His Will we will die. Let it not be said that I do not thank the Lord Rhysol for-"

"That's enough." He stomped one foot against the cobblestones and the beggar fell silent. There wasn't time for this kind of distraction. He was to meet Kit here around this time and he still had no idea what she would have chosen to look like. Knowing her character, he fully expected her to try and fool him. Leaning to the left of his chair, Wren craned his neck, trying to catch a hint of the old man's face. Was it Kit? Could she have been so blessed as to have this illusion?

"Sir, I ask not for Rhysol's benefit but Priskil. A coin for the lovely goddess of hope?"

"Blasphemy," Wren said without conviction, looking past the old man and out among the people, "You would entrap me giving coin to another god than Rhysol?"

"Never, my lord. I seek only a bit of coin for food. My vice, I fear, is gambling...if you must know, and I have lost all the fair Rhysol has given me. Take pity on an old fool."

He frowned, exploring the space between two teeth with his tongue before finally sighing out his resistance and wrestling two silver mizas from his coin purse. The noonday sun glinted off the silver edges and he placed them in the proffered hand.

Immediately, two things happened. The first was the old fingers that curled around his hand, surprising in both speed and strength, and second was the calm pressure of blade against skin where his neck met shoulders.

"We have watched you, Wrenmae," Came the voice from behind him. It was quiet, almost murmured, but without malice. Did he detect a certain coyness? Perhaps. "We feel you are a man with talents we could use."

He dared not try to yank his hand from the beggar, instead clearing his throat and trying not to let a quiver betray his helplessness. "Men who introduce themselves by blade and to my back are hardly the trustworthy type."

"We are not your enemies," the voice assured, "But in a city of betrayers, one must be careful."

It occurred to Wren that he hadn't really seen the beggar's face at all, and suddenly the point of keeping his head tipped to the ground was clearer. The beggar released his hand and turned away from the hypnotist, scuttling back out across the square and vanishing around a merchant's booth selling assorted fruit. "Well," Wren said, "You have my attention."

"You are a foreigner," the voice said, "And a powerful wizard. Why are you here in Ravok?"

"Rhysol bid me come, personally." Wrenmae answered, wincing as the dagger point burrowed past the first layer of his skin.

His guest was quiet behind him for a moment more, "You are not Ebonstryfe, nor are you Black Sun." It was a statement. The voice was informed.

"Neither," he answered truthfully, "And I am guessing that is part of my worth to you."

"We may still have use of your talents. I will speak to my superiors."

The hypnotist nodded once, arching his neck away from the blade. He waited a minute before turning, only to find the area behind him empty, save for the dark discoloration of stone stained with the few drops of his blood left to fall.

He rubbed the back of his neck, licking off the blood and closing his eyes. Ravok grew more dangerous the longer he stayed...and the Lord of Betrayal was quiet on his instructions for being here. Clicking his tongue against his teeth, he returned to watching the movement of people, seeking the gawky figure of his niece among the unfamiliar faces.

For all he knew, she was already there.

[Kit Rowan]

Kit had known the moment Ionu emblazoned their mark into her arm that she could conjure any small thing, so long as it touched one sense. She could cobble a great, massive man or a tall, regal woman out of her thoughts and lay in a skein around her body, but the slightest bump in the street would betray her true height, her true shape. Caution warned Kit against taking too many liberties with her body type. It was best to play with caution.

The mask she wore today was of a dark-haired boy with unremarkable features, with enough of youth's roundness and smoothness in their face and form to excuse Kit's diminutive height as a child's shortness rather than a dwarf's. The shape wasn't quite right still, but it didn't need to be; she scarcely expected for the illusion to need to hold up under extreme scrutiny. Then again, this didn't need to hold up longer than a bell or two.

Kit meandered her way through the streets toward where she had agreed to meet with Wren and finding frustration in the rushing crowds. Each had their eyes forward and walked sure and without glancing around them, knowing exactly where they meant to go and how they meant to get there and what time they meant to arrive. And since they had no intention of altering their course for her, Kit was forced to bob and weave and pitch through the crowd like a salmon struggling up the river's current. Perhaps she could have picked a better route? A less busy route?

In time she squeezed herself from the slow of people and to the little canal-side spot she and Wrenmae had arranged for their rendezvous, and found her uncle with a knife to his back.

Kit stopped, swaying where stood for a moment as she processed what she was looking at. Dagger to his back. Dagger to his back. Her hands clutched into helpless little fists while her mouth twisted back into a snarl; everything she touched, every little bit of hope she happened across wilted and died. Did someone see her meet him before she escaped? Gods, could Ravok even have watchers that keen, to look so hard for one little escaped slave? Akajia shield her from their eyes, Trickster grant her the cunning to stay one step out of their reach.

There was little she could do but watch and wish.

Three forevers later the dagger was drawn back and the shadowy figure made its way leisurely back into the alley, around a bend, and Kit let loose a breath she had not known that she was holding. She pretended interest in the passersby for a chime, two, three . . . Still nothing happened. Small miracle the thugs had let her uncle alone!

. . . Why had they let her uncle alone? Kit tucked the thought into the back of her head to stew for a while.

Kit made her approach and flipped her bird's tongue back up from underneath her tongue, leaving it in the back where it could disguise her voice properly. "Mister!" Kit said, her voice high, perhaps a bit too high for a boy the age her seeming appeared to be. "I saw you swimming in the canals." Kit said, clasping her hands behind her back and smiling up at Wrenmae with her false face. "You're really good."

[Wrenmae]

At first, the word 'mister' went completely missed. Absently, he had continued to rub the back of his neck in the time it took for Kit to make up her mind to approach. Each time it had come back with a little less blood. That said, it was still blood, enough to convince the hypnotist that this was no small matter. Someone had watched him fight the Dhani, someone had been observing him since he'd entered the city.

As always, he hated the feeling of being observed, of seeing lazy eyes in stonework and swift departing figure in the shadows. He ran his tongue over his teeth behind a closed mouth. Zan was at home guarding his things, else he'd have sent the little creature after his assailant. Now he had to wait in the uncomfortable space between possible ally and enemy. A higher up suggested a group, the beggar disguise and the approach suggested a gang...perhaps a noble family? No...they'd use far more brazen routes if they were as untouchable as he had been suggested they were.

Canals...the word snapped him up into swift focus, a scowl crawling across his face before he'd even seen the speaker. The boy finished speaking and grinned, catching his scowl off guard and melting it into a confused line...somewhere between bemusement and annoyance.

As far as he had remembered, no one had seen his dip into the canal but Kit...if they had, the child had seen Zan appear and help pull him out. The skin around his eyes pulled that brown gaze into a glare before he could actually think of an approach.

Aware of his facial acrobatics, he put a hand up to his face and kneaded the skin there. When he removed it, he was smiling.

"You're mistaken," he said to the boy, "I may be a foreigner, but I know enough to see the canal is not a place to practice treading water." A quick glance around told him there were no guardians in sight...somewhat suspicious, and there was something off about the boy as well, minor perhaps, so much so that he couldn't put his finger on it...only a sense of confusion.

It never occurred to him that Kit would wear a disguise not of her sex. The meeting before had completely broad-sided his focus.

"I apologize young ser," he said with a hapless shrug, "I'm waiting for someone. Perhaps I can entertain you on another day."

He glanced down the path one way, and then the other, sighing. Scrutinizing the boy, Wren rubbed his chin, blinked, sighed again and then arched his back. Starting with his shoulders he twisted till bones cracked and popped, stretching before taking his feet.

"I may not be able to show you the fool man who takes swims in the canal," He said, "But I can tell you a story if you have the time to listen." He bent down to the young man's height, "You see, I come from a faraway place called Alvadas...a city of Illusion. Back then I was something of a storyteller for coin, but I suppose I can offer one to you if we can keep any resemblance I have to any man who swims in the canals between ourselves, eh?"

[Kit Rowan]

Oh, the joys the Trickster still allowed her! Her uncle was even more dense than she'd supposed. The glamour she'd woven for herself held up even to the point of deliberate sabotage. All things forgotten, Kit felt a sudden thrill run through her; why not sustain this? Why . . . She looked spared a quick glance around into the alley, back into the fruit stands where the beggar-who-was-not-a-beggar had vanished.

Kit turned back, an honest smile saving her from having to manufacture a false one. Oh to the Void with practicality! Her chances to make a tribute to Ionu for trickery's own sake were few and far between since her enslavement, since her escape. It was a chance she dared not turn down. "All-vee-dus?" Kit announced, and nearly continued till her nervousness betrayed her her with a giggle.

Would Wrenmae really try to impress her with stories of her own city? Moments like this were a gift from the Trickster to her, Kit was certain, to keep her properly sane. "I've never heard of that!" Her smile was so wide, so wide she nearly laughed again! An actor Kit was not. But perhaps it would not look so unnatural on a young boy asking for stories? Kit could only hope.

Kit stepped back. "What do you mean, mister? I didn't see nobody." Kit asked, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. "No one swims in the canals. Everybody knows that." Kit offered her uncle the most sickeningly sweet smile she could muster.

Aaaah but what about the man with the knife? What about the beggar? It could wait, it could wait. Her god demanded attendance. And every moment since she was ripped off the Kabrin Road had brought a tragedy of its own damnable shape into her life. A past danger was not reason to throw away a chance to have fun.

[Wrenmae]

"They say beyond the Suvan sea, nestled on a beach at the feet of the Great Kalea Mountains, there is a city named Alvadas." He sat back in his seat, talking low and back in his throat, adopting a husky beginning. Stories were about entertainment, setting the scene and weaving a potent illusion. In many ways, storytellers were some of the greatest illusionists of all. They crafted present, future, and past in equal measure...all could be lies and yet the mind was permitted to believe them. The strength of the illusion was based solely on the individual listening.

"Once, when the world was younger, a young man slipped the bondage of his slavery and ran into the mountains. While resourceful, this young man had never been outside the home of his master and soon found himself lost, hungry, and cold." Grinning, he hugged himself and mock shivered, his body trembling as his eyes widened. "In Ravok you'd never know the bitter cold...but the mountains, in those days, they envied the warmth in the blood of man. You see," he tapped the stone near his feet, "The stone is not hot, the stone cannot be. It is stone and must steal its warmth. The mountain was jealous of that young man and sent its servants on the wind to claim the heart that pumped blood through his body."

He raised a hand over his heart, made a fist, and beat it against his chest. "Pa-pump, Pa-pump, Pa-pump. Can you feel it, boy? That young man had a heart like yours."

His hands clasped together while he hunched over, as if concealing some grand secret, beckoning the boy in closer. "That young man would have died, surely, if he had not found, in the back of stones he clung to, a passageway cut through the mountains themselves." Smiling, he clapped his hands together and sat up straight, "That young man took the passage to the sea, but his back was still to the greedy mountains and ahead of him was only the vast dead-sea Suvan. What was the man to do?"

The storyteller shrugged his shoulders, leaning back against the bench. "What would you do, young man?"

[Kit Rowan]

Ha! Was her uncle telling a sideways spin of his own story, like it was some heroic epic? Kit supposed it may have been quite impressive for someone who didn't know exactly what the roots were, but she had a vague idea of what path the story was going to follow from this point on. Still, she imitated her uncle's gesture, resting a hand over her heart as he brought up the imitated beating.

He had a certain . . . If Whet had been here with her, Kit was certain he would call it showmanship. Whet had always said that controlling the audience's flow was the most important part of any performance, where it be acrobatics or singing or anything. Kit could understand how that touched storytelling when Wren spoke, the way his tongue lilted some words and spat others. Let nuance guide his story and try to pull her deeper in, deeper . . .

But Kit was shook out by his artistic license. She remembered marching out to the Patchwork Port, seeing Svefra playing and whooping on their ships while honest sailors kept to a safe distance. To call the Suvan dead was the same as calling Sylira a wasteland. She frowned, opened her mouth to say so before remembering that a Ravokian child simply would not know.

She didn't need to pretend thought when Wren brought up his question. She was already caught on the problem; what would a Ravokian child think? What would their answer be? "A ferry!" She said. Ack, stupid answer. Maybe she was pretending to be a stupid child, then? "He took a ferry across."

[Wrenmae]

A warm chuckle came quick to the heels of the child's answer and Wren shook his head. "In the time before the Svefra tamed the seas, Laviku filled them with life, before ferries were invented...the man could no more cross the sea than he could fly straight into the clouds." He gestured to the sky with his right index finger, bringing his hand up as if his finger were about to take flight and then turning it at a slant downward and letting it fall back to his lap. Smiling, he knotted his fingers together again.

"The man asked the mountain, the very being that had almost stolen his warmth. He asked that it take the warmth from his body if only he could have a home to live in. Well, the Kalea Mountain was surprised. Man did not usually speak to mountains and in that time, such respect was not without merit. The Mountain agreed to take his warmth, shape him of stone itself and give him a home on the coast of the sea. It even agreed to bring other lost souls to this place, giving them a city to live in. They say that is where the fire mountains come from, that sometimes the warmth of that man bursts from the surface of mountains suddenly-" He tore his hands apart, spreading his arms wide, "And then go silent once more."

"Now, the masters of that man eventually came for him, having heard tales of the man who had built a home of stone to match his body. They came across the mountains in droves and slowly filled the city, looking to capture him again." Wren feigned wide eyed fear and ran a hand through his hair. "What was the man to do? He could not leave his home, he had nowhere to go...and he had people, other lost souls to protect. Ah! But he was a part of the city as much as it was a part of him, so he came to the people of his city and said 'Let us go and dress ourselves in our finest clothes. Let us throw a party for these slavers and wear many masks. They will not remove the masks so as not to interrupt the entertainment...and in this way, we will be free even with them here.' Now-"

Wrenmae grinned and made a steeple with his fingers, before raising them up to cover his face. "With their faces obscured, no one could find the man they sought or anyone else for that matter. The masks and the dancing kept the slavers entertained while the master of the man grew more and more frustrated."

"Finally, he recognized a voice and tore a mask from one of the servants-" At this, the storyteller yanked both hands form opposite sides from his face, "To find the face of his slave looking back."

A frown touched the corners of his mouth, as if the story would have an unhappy ending after all. "So the master dragged his slave toward the edge of the city, content to take his property. But...when he got there..."

The smallest indent turned up into a smile again, "There were the people of the village there and all removed their masks...each bore the face of that man atop their own."

Wren clapped his hands together, adopting the hunched and angry expression of the oaf of a slaver, "Which one of you is my slave? Which one of you is mine?"

"All of us." Wren said, cupping his hands around his mouth to echo his voice, as if speaking in many voices.

"Well, that slaver left, unable to take his man with him and in time that city grew and grew. The slavers who were there saw the exchange but when they had gotten home, could not tell anyone the name of the small town that had grown...all they could remember was the story and that phrase. All of us. All of us. Allofus. Alluvus, Alvadas."

Grinning, the storyteller crossed his arms, "And that, boy, is one story of how Alvadas came to be."

[Kit Rowan]

Ah, but she'd read the beginning wrong! This was a story about . . . Alvadas? It was a story of Alvadas! What a story to pick. She'd heard a hundred at home; Alvadas had as many origins in the stories as Ionu had faces. Not that Kit had ever grown tired of hearing them.

In Kit's opinion, no story of Ionu or Alvadas was complete without some illusionary images to support it, but given his terrible handicap Wrenmae did well enough. His voice drew her in a tide; she wondered how well his story would come across someone who did not know Alvadas? Would they take it worse? Better? Worse, probably here. Ravokians had small minds, with no praise for anything that didn't float in the middle of an evil lake. They might take the implication of a city as grand as hers as a threat.

Wait, wait, wait . . .

There was a problem here with story, a much bigger problem. The smile flopped off her face. She crossed her arms and tapped her foot on the side of the canal. "Uncle," she said, not bothering to remove the bird's tongue. "You are a witless boob. Were you really about to tell a story about an escaped slave," she held out her hands in a gesture that indicated the streets, the canals, the city as a whole, "to a Ravokian? Talk about making noise. No wonder you're being ambushed by thugs! Do you want someone to give you Lhex's smile?" Kit propped both her hands on her waist and stared at him in consternation. "You've gotta be more careful!"

[Wrenmae]

Startled, his eyes widened for a moment and his mouth drew in a gash across his face. It was a moment though, and it wasn't as though he hadn't been expecting her. Still, to have so easily pulled off the guise of another and without morphing...

For a moment, he looked down at his own hands, wiggling his fingers. One day, they would not be his any longer.

Taking in a deep breath, he let it out in a sigh and raised his head, smiling. "Clever girl, but shame on you for startling your Uncle, I-" He paused. Ambushed by thugs, it settled on his shoulders for a moment and then plummeted into his stomach. The skin around his eyes pulled them into a narrowed glare and for only a moment, there was a bit more spit in his expression that surprise.

But he swallowed it, putting a hand to his face and smoothing out the wrinkles, crossing the puckered flesh of his scars, before looking up at her again.

"You're looking well," He said, refusing to finish the earlier thought, "Or I would say that if I could tell you were you. Truly, Ionu's blessing is an impressive one...were I to earn the Trickster's favor..." Shaking his head, he stood and pat Kit roughly on the shoulder. "A child is still a child, Kit. Simply talking about an escaped slave is not tantamount to freeing one...besides, I wasn't telling the story for an Ebonbstryfe or a slave owner, just a child."

He shook his head and chuckled, but his eyes were in the alleys and the streets, looking for familiar beggars and wandering eyes. "But perhaps you have a point. It's been awhile since I've had a chance to tell a tale...perhaps I enjoyed myself a little too much."

A raised eyebrow, "Though no more than you, I'd wager."

[Kit Rowan]

Kit thought she saw something stirring behind her uncle's face, shrugging momentary away the bumbling uncle she'd just called a moron and revealing something strange and unfamiliar. Kit breathed once, deeply, her smile stiff as a plaster figurine's for a few ticks. "Ha, ha!" She pretended a short laugh, hoping to disguise her unease behind mirth. "I gave you a hint, too." Kit's foot traced a circle on the street with her toes, she squelched her worried questions in their cribs, suddenly sure the thugs were not a topic worth approaching.

The little acrobat gave her uncle a once over, planted her feet in a wide stance and planted both hands on her hips. ". . . Well, excuse me if I'm a bit paranoid." She said, only the slight shaking of hands betraying a break in composure. "You just thought they were a child." And, marvel of marvels, she let it drop with just only that; more ripostes swam through her mind but none of them seemed worth it.

"Ah, Rhaus help my uncle." Kit rolled her eyes. "It's stories and stories and stories with you. How long is a while? A chime? A bell? A day?" Kit remembered when Wrenmae left Alvadas, with her not far behind, going in her own direction for her own reason. Her uncle left chasing stories. "I can scarce remember a day you didn't try to whittle a story out of me." Kit made a face.

The girl spared a glance at the city around her, and mirth began to drain from her as she remembered where she was. How she got here. "You gotta take fun wherever you can find it," Kit said. "What are you even doing here, uncle? This isn't the place for storytellers unless Rhysol's glory is the only tale their tongue knows how to tell."