Completed Family Man Pt. II

[Caspian]

5 Winter 522

The wine in Caspian’s cup is cool and sweet against his lips. It’s a harder swallow than his usual. For some reason it takes more effort to get it down his throat, and the noise his body makes seems sacrilegiously loud in this otherwise very quiet room.



It’s his room, or more accurately, was his, once. The evidence is still there – the stick figures he’d etched along the wainscoting near the floor, the dent in the plaster where Taaldros had once hurled a kettle helm that very narrowly missed his eye. The small chest in the corner most likely still full of tattered smocks and cracked marbles and perhaps the posters he’d been very enamored with, at age 14, advertising a traveling entertainer skilled in sleight of hand.



The infant in the moonlit crib before him doesn’t know any of this, the history of this room, of this house, of the things that have come to pass within its walls. She doesn’t know what goes on in the streets below them, or on the next block over. And she certainly doesn’t know that Caspian is her brother.



Half-brother, he internally corrects himself, with the same immediacy with which he has to remind himself that Taaldros is his step-father and not his biological one.



As if born from the shadows – speaking of family – Taalviel materializes beside him. There’s a mug in her hand, and even from here Caspian can smell alcohol stinging off it, dark and sickly sweet. More wine.



“You said her mother was a weasel, right?” he says, speaking in a hushed undertone. The baby is asleep, and no one in this house possesses the adequate parental instinct to deal with crying. “I’m realizing now that perhaps you weren’t insulting the woman’s personality, but meant she was an actual Weasel. As in Kelvic.”



Just like Taalviel; just like their birth mother Kharis. Just like their stepmother Zhassel who was likely gnawing chicken bones in the corner of the kitchen on the floor below.



Taalviel takes a sip, purses her lips. The wine isn’t the best quality, but for Sunberth standards it does the job just fine. “Correct, Tarima wasn’t exactly human.”



And he’d almost slept with her, as a means of distracting her while they kidnapped her child. Thinking back, there were certain physical features in her human form that should have tipped him off. A certain sharpness to her face, the willowy bend to her limbs. Even her voice had a bit of a shrill to it.



If Tarima is a Weasel – what does that make their infant sister?



Caspian just hasn’t seen her shift yet. Unlike Taalviel and essentially everyone else in this house, he’s been kept wildly misinformed and notably out of the loop.



And by virtue of his having a question, no one is particularly interested in expending the energy to answer it.



“Why didn’t Dad tell me sooner?” Caspian asks. “That Tarima exists, that Ricca does?”



Taalviel crosses her arms, turns away from the crib. Bored already. “I think he was worried that if you were given too much time to think about it all, you’d have second thoughts.”



“Second thoughts about kidnapping a baby away from her biological mother? Right, because that would be completely out of line of me to do.”



Even though it’s dark, Caspian can tell she’s rolling her eyes.



“Come on,” she says. “Dad wants to talk to you. He says he has another assignment.”

[Caspian]

When Caspian joins his stepfather in the dining room, any impulse to ask him about his intentions for Ricca dissipate. The older man has his arms crossed, his permanent glower radiating off him in waves. No matter how valid or pressing Caspian’s questions may be, they won’t be answered.

Has Caspian ever seen the man happy?

You’d think he’d be at least a little cheerful, having just accomplished his latest objective – that being obtaining essentially full and aggressive custody over his newest daughter.

“Taalviel said you wanted something from me?” Caspian tries to come off gruff. Possibly even nonchalant. But it’s flimsy and unconvincing, and even if he had managed to pull it off, it pales in the face of his stepfather, who remains by far the most intimidating person he’s ever met.

In the candlelit dark, the bags under his stepfather’s eyes seem as deep as bottomless pits.

Not for the first time, Caspian wonders what his stepfather has been up to since he’d run away to Ravok some seven or eight years ago. But he doesn’t ask his stepfather, and in kind, his stepfather has not once made inquiry as to how he’s managed to survive on his own.

“You’ve been doing well lately,” Taaldros replies, watching him.

Yes, Caspian supposes that as far as executing the plot to kidnap his baby sister, he deserves a whole pocket full of gold stars.

He bites back the urge to say something snarky on the subject.

“There’s a former associate of mine who needs to be taught a lesson,” Taaldros continues. “Eckels. I don’t know if you remember him.”

Eckels?

“If it’s a friend of yours, I’m a little relieved it’s not ringing a bell.”

“Not a friend anymore,” Taaldros replies darkly, the rumbling baritone sending the hairs on Caspian’s arms to stand on end.

“Is there any point in asking what Eckels did wrong?” When Taaldros conspicuously doesn’t reply, Caspian continues, “Alright, well. What is it you’d have me do?”

“Take your sister. And that friend of yours, if you want. Taroko. I want the three of you to ransack his house. Loot as much as you can. You don’t even have to bring all of it here. I won’t check. I just want you to make sure he knows he’s a dead man.”

At the mention of Taroko – not a friend any more than Eckels was to Taaldros. No, unfortunately more than one – Caspian grimaces.

“Do I have to?” he asks. “I don’t even know where to find him. He finds me-“

“Yes,” Taaldros interrupts in the tone Caspian learned many years ago means his word is final. “He’s got a good knife arm. Can’t hurt to have someone around who actually knows what he’s doing.”

The insult is apparent, but it’s an old one.

So – they’re bringing Taroko into the fold?

For all Caspian knows, it might take longer to get ahold of Taroko than it would to handle the actual mission.

“Fine. And Eckels lives…?”

“I’ll take you,” Taalviel says, idly toying with the tassels on one of the curtains behind him.

Well.

Time to track his terrifyingly sadistic not-boyfriend down.

Word count: 525

[Caspian]

The events of the previous night had left Caspian sore, morose, and most importantly, even less interested in helping his stepfather than he already was.

What doesn’t help is the way Taalviel’s eyes flicker up and down him as he approaches, noting, surely, how in-step Taroko is at his side.

She doesn’t comment on their being a quarter of a bell late. Probably because Taroko’s here too, and she’d rather stay silent than offend someone their father wants to keep close.

They’re out in the Dust Bed, on the fringe of the city limits proper. A younger Caspian would have found their surroundings unsettling, what with the crypts with their caved in roofs, and the misaligned tombstones dotting the hills.

The moon covers Taroko’s dark skin with a silvery glow. In the midst of the darkened land, the lamplights and the sounds of the city streets tucked yards away, and with the three of them dressed in black – it’s easy to feel, for a bit, that they’re specters in their own realm, one that they own and roam freely.

“Custard says he’s in the unclaimed part of town, right?” Taroko says, referring to Eckels, and looking to Taalviel.

Caspian ignores the unwanted nickname. Is thankful for nightfall shrouding the red tinge spreading across his cheeks.

Taalviel hums in affirmation. “Right on the edge of the Dust Bed.”

The city is to their west. She points at a house well within sight of them, slightly northward, at a house with a lamp flickering from the second floor window.

“All okay?” She looks at Caspian. But the true statement lingering in her eyes is – Are you okay?

With, perhaps, a side of –

What did you two do last night?

“Let’s get this shyke over with,” Caspian growls, stalking ahead of both of them.

There’s a shoddy excuse for a fence along parts of the city that push up against the Dust Bed. Eckels’ stronghold is fortified with splintered planks of wood, so rotted by rain and termites that the tips that had once been sharpened into spikes are visibly dulled.

Without consulting his companions – because he’s terribly, awfully fed up with both of them, with everyone in this petching city if he’s being quite honest – he takes one step onto the fence. There are horizontal planks of wood used to bind and fortify the vertical ones that are staked into the ground, jutting out thickly enough that he can use them to gain some purchase. Part of the fence is collapsing, sagging and resting right against the side of the house, and it’s straightforward enough getting both feet up – he digs his fingertips into the crevices between the bricks, finds places where he has room to grab, and hoists himself up.

He looks skyward. There are two windows on this side of the house. The leftmost one has the lit lantern light; the one on the right is dark.

There’s no way to know for sure, though, at this juncture, whether someone is in one room or the other.

But it’s safer to choose the dark window; it’s easy risk assessment for him to make, that if someone’s in the dark room it’s possible they’re asleep.

“Can’t reach the ledge, can you?” Taroko, a good five inches taller than him, whispers from below him.

He could jump, perhaps, and try and catch it. Struggle against the side of the building, hope he finds a few more exposed corners of bricks, and scrabble up. But that might upset the rather dilapidated fence; might even destroy it, loudly.

“Hold still,” Taroko says, and before he can protest, the other thief has hoisted himself up onto the fence too, in the same manner.

“I’ve got this,” Caspian whispers back angrily, though in truth he hadn’t yet come up with a plan to scale the remaining distance.

“Hush,” Taroko says. “Here, let me give you a hand.”

And there’s not much he can do now, with both of them testing the precarious sturdiness of the fence. Taroko crouches down, finding a lower grip on the wall to steady himself. Then grabs at Caspian’s ankle, urging him upward.

“Oh – petching hell – fine – “ Caspian grumbles, stepping on the shoulder Taroko offers him.

Taroko boosts upward. “Shyke, you’re about as light as a bird. No offense,” he adds to the remaining thief on the ground.

Taalviel doesn’t reply.

Neither does Caspian, who foregoes his instinct to insult the man, in favor of grabbing the window ledge with both hands. Taroko offers him another hand, offering another platform for his left boot – then, though they wobble terrifyingly unsteadily for a moment, a hand for his right. To take the strain off him, Caspian searches with his foot, thankfully finds a brick he can rest on. They’re all holding their breath as Caspian pulls himself, finally, level with the window, his knees dug painfully – though fortunately somewhat stably – into the ledge.

Breath fogging against the glass, he peers into the darkened room.

Word count: 832

[Caspian]

“Wobbly, just like custard too,” Taroko observes from somewhere down below.

Gritting his teeth, Caspian ignores him, the retort that was ready to erupt from him instead bubbling hotly in his throat. But Taroko’s not entirely wrong. It’s a precarious position he’s found himself in, with the soles of his boots not exactly glued to the ledge, and slipping ever so slightly whenever he shifts. Already his fingertips and their first joints are beginning to ache. He shifts to his left foot, and –

“Petch,” he growls under his breath, his heart plummeting for a moment as his left foot slips a bit too much for his liking. Reflexively, he digs his nails into the soft, splintering wood, as if that will give him better purchase. It helps only marginally. He’s not a rodent or a cat, after all.

But back to the window.

From what he can make out between the parting in the curtains –

Ugh.

It’s not much.

There’s the corner of a bed off to the side. The rumpling of the duvet on top of it suggests, maybe, that someone’s in that bed. But it’s not a sure thing, could be perfectly likely that no one’s there, and whoever lives here just hasn’t tidied up.

“What’s going on, Custard?” Taroko hisses up at him.

“It’s a bedroom,” he replies. “But I can’t see much else.”

Taroko sighs. Then adds, with open annoyance, when Caspian falls silent again – “If your scarecrow arms aren’t strong enough to lift it, just break the glass!”

“And let Eckels know we’re here?” Caspian hisses back. “Why don’t we just knock on the front door, in that case? Would be a lot simpler than shimmying up the back wall like a – “

“Caspian,” Taalviel cuts in, even further down on the ground. “Decide.”

This has Caspian’s face burning. He can already imagine what Taroko is thinking – that things are just the same as before, that Taalviel is the competent one that everyone prefers, that he needs to be managed and handled.

Thank the gods, again, that it’s dark. He doesn’t trust the telltale flush of red across his cheeks.

Shoving his feelings aside – he shoves at the window. Upwards. If someone’s in that room, they’ll need to move quickly, which starts with him opening this window as swiftly and ideally quietly as possible.

It gives. Just a little. But that’s good, it means it’s unlocked. The less-good part is that it’s going to take a lot more strength, which would be easier if he had a solid place to plant his feet, and the idea of falling and cracking his skull wasn’t so heavily on his mind.

“Hurry up! Petching hell,” Taroko says, who can clearly hear him struggling.

“I’m trying!” Caspian grits back.

The window gives another few inches, suddenly, and the lurch almost has him slipping from his hold. It gives off a terribly loud squeak, and he holds his position, pressed nearly flat against the window like a bug that’s run right into the glass, anxiety coiling in his stomach.

But nothing stirs within the darkened room.

With new confidence, and ignoring the exasperation of Taroko below – the looming, dark presence of his sister, somehow scarier when she’s silent, not helping either – he crouches down carefully, pries up the rest of the window with the gap he’s created.

Once he’s got a couple feet of clearance, he slips into the room.

Word count: 570

[Caspian]

It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust. The moon had provided a surprising amount of light when he was outside, and with only some of it being able to shine through the curtains, he feels like he’s been plunged into a new world, one possibly something sinister lurking in each corner.

But after that moment, he sees it’s just a bed, as he’d spotted from outside the window; just a dresser, about as high as his shoulder; and just a writing desk on which a stack of books rests, with a chair pushed neatly beneath it.

More importantly, though –

His eyes dart towards the bed.

No one’s in it, but the covers have been tossed open, suggesting someone recently was. He approaches the bed carefully, learning, on the go, which of the floorboards in this room might squeak. Feeling the sheets, he senses a lingering warmth from the body that had just been there.

And from what he’s sensing, very recently.

Well, petch.

Has that person gone off to the bathroom? How long would that take? Not long at all. Would be better if they went all the way to the kitchen for a midnight snack and –

“Custard,” Taroko hisses, audible through the open window. “All clear, or not?”

From somewhere else in the house, a door squeaks on its hinges, opens, then closes again.

Petching petch –

If he were alone – if this were meant to be a silent, typical thieving job, and not a loud message to be sent to his stepfather’s enemy - he’d hide under the bed, possibly, and wait it out. Sneak down alone once this person falls asleep again. But this isn’t his situation. Darting to the window, he heaves it open, sticks his head out.

“Up! Now!”

Taroko uses a quick boost from Taalviel, to leap up and take the arm that’s offered to him – Caspian wincing under the weight but bracing himself with the wall beneath the window – and hauls himself up and into the room. Taalviel’s next, finding enough grips and footholds to bridge the distance up the side of the house, to grab Caspian’s hand. Thankfully she’s a lot lighter than both he and Taroko – not for the first time, he wonders if her bones, in human form, are still bird-hollow. She hops up and onto the ledge with ease, then slides into the room as if returning to the shadows harbored within.

Footsteps approach the door.

Taroko and Taalviel’s heads snap towards him, as if someone living in this house is his fault.

But even through their ire, they don’t stop moving, Taalviel slipping into the shadows to crouch by the writing desk, and Taroko drawing his dagger, and hiding behind the door.

Leaving Caspian standing alone in the pool of moonlight in the middle of the room.

At this juncture, slipping beneath the bed appears to be the sensible choice after all. He holds his breath to keep from inhaling the dust he’s sure is beneath the bed – and yes, he’s right, a whole cloud of it brushing against his face and tickling his nose. Petching petch, he refuses to sneeze and be the one to ruin their advantage here. The door opens just as he’s tucking his right boot beneath the bedframe. But none of it matters – for there’s a muffled scream of a woman, the clear signifier that Taroko had pounced.

Word count: 566

[Caspian]

“This wasn’t part of the plan!” Caspian realizes too late, however, that his opposition to the current proceedings may not be particularly effective, given how awkwardly he’s struggling to come out from beneath the bed. He brushes dust and dead roaches from his jacket. “Taroko, let her go.”

The woman in Taroko’s hold lets out a muffled scream.

“Shut up! Gods, you are wrinkly.” Taroko reminds the woman of the blade at her neck, with marked disdain. The woman looks old enough to be someone’s grandmother, her limbs frail and spindly, and even without the presence of intruders in her home would likely still be full of tremors.

“Taroko – “ Caspian begins again.

“What, Custard? What exactly are you hung up on right now?” Taroko wheels around to glare at him in the gloom, the woman dragged along with him.

Taalviel lights the oil lamp on the table writing desk, illuminating the woman’s paper-thin skin, the full extent of Taroko’s ghastly expression. Unaware, until now, that Taalviel had also been in the room, the woman screams again. Taroko curses at her, clamping down tightly, the edge of his knife biting into her throat. A red rivulet of blood spills down beneath her nightgown.

“I just – “ Caspian begins. Stops. Something about the woman being this petching, well, old. It just doesn’t seem right, what they’re doing. If she had been especially young, that would have been a problem too. He’s seen Taroko hurt children before, and it’s never failed to turn his stomach. What is the appropriate age range, then, the dark side of his brain asks him. What terms and conditions, precisely, would need to occur for him to find any of this acceptable?

“Let me remind you, Custard,” Taroko says, taking a menacing step towards him, then another, “that this is the plan. Destroy Eckels’ house, and let him know one way or another that your father isn’t someone to be crossed. We’re doing exactly what we’re meant to, and if you’re not onboard you can shimmy back out the window the way you came.”

Though he knows it’s going to be noted, Caspian can’t help it. He looks at his sister. The look she’s affixing him with – he could have predicted it without seeing it, could have drawn it, given how many times over the year he’s been treated to it. So looking had been a waste of a movement, especially with the ammunition it’s giving Taroko.

“You can make your own decisions, you know,” Taroko sneers. “We’re all grownups here now.”

Us or them. That’s always the crux of the matter, the crossroads at which Caspian frequently finds himself lingering.

But wasn’t his return to Sunberth, in the first place, meant to be his deciding once and for all whose side he’s on?

So he chooses; he had chosen long before he’d even scaled the wall.

“Just keep her quiet, then,” Caspian says, more dismissively than he truly feels. But things take practice, and that goes for playing the fiddle just as much as being a hardened criminal. “I can’t stand the sound of screeching.”

He knocks over the trinkets on the dresser on his way out, brushing roughly past Taroko and into the dark hall of what had once been a quiet house.

Word count: 548

[Caspian]

The second Caspian steps foot out of the room, the old woman screams. It’s a strangled, abruptly abbreviated sound, and then there’s a loud thump – the sound, he knows, of a body hitting the floor.

But Caspian is older now, and he doesn’t look back, instead proceeding stolidly into the gloom, towards the next closest door down this hallway.

Wrenching open the door – they’re done being subtle, right? – he realizes it’s just a linen closet. But perhaps that’s not the worst thing; he’s already up to the gills in excitement for the evening and he’d rather some dish towels than some other tenant, for example, up in arms. They’re here to make a mess, he reminds himself, so starting from the topmost shelves, he grabs everything he can reach, flinging it all down to the floor. There’s nothing worth taking in here – he remembers, even with the blood pounding in his ears, that his stepfather had instructed they loot the place as well as ruin it – so he works quickly and mechanically, scattering quilts, sheets, brooms and mops and even the shelves themselves, which aren’t bolted down and he can slide right off. The slabs of wood strike the hardwood with a bang. From behind him he senses a shadow moving. But because it says nothing to him, he figures it’s his sister. Taroko never comes within five feet of him without having something to say, and none of it particularly kind.

There’s likely only a few more seconds before Taroko emerges from the bedroom. There’s still no sound from the old woman – but he doesn’t want to think about what that might mean. Wanting to avoid Taroko, and having finished with the closet, he strides towards the last door down the hall. This one is a bedroom, as he’d expected and braced for, but no one’s occupying it. Just as well. It looks to be a young girl’s room, from the little desk crammed into the corner, with a tarnished looking glass set on top. A cosmetic puff rests beside a small collection of jars. They’re shabby and not particularly clean – as if the owner simply uses it all, day after day, without washing – and not interesting to him, so he sweeps those off the desk, and after a moment’s consideration, also knocks over the mirror. Glass shatters amongst the fallen jars. Inside the vanity drawer – ah, that’s a bit more interesting. He pries open a jewelry box and takes a moment to admire the glint of the golden necklace he draws out beneath the moonlight. He pockets that, along with a golden bangle.

Just like the hallway closet, he grabs this closet’s contents – more quilts, worn dresses, a sorry collection of leather boots – and throws them onto the broken glass. Before leaving the room, he tips over the vanity table, which cracks and splinters irreparably.

The bottom floor might prove more interesting, as far as looting goes. He emerges from the bedroom and hurries down the stairs. There’s already a commotion going on, and the sound of – many somethings hitting the floor, and the angered voice of someone who isn’t Taroko or Taalviel.

Word count: 525