45th Day of Summer, 517AV || Pridesun Pavilion
"What in it for me?"
Yacob couldn't believe the balls of the walahk. They were surrounded on all sides by dead grass, bare dust, dried up river beds and animals turns to hollow husks by Syna, and yet th bastard was actually asking for payment.
"You gather water, it is for us all," he said, trying his best not to sound like he was speaking to some horse-kicked idiot. He knew how prickly Hansel could be. "It means you have water, too. For your skin, for your food, for-"
"I get water now," the man said with a shrug, smiling and doing naught but stretching his scars a little. "Can get tomorrow, too. Why can get, is why you come to me."
He considered himself a patient and understanding man, or tried to be. He'd seen what Jonas had turned the pavilion into, even if he didn't see it properly until after he was dead. The way he twisted loyalty and gratitude into shackles, desperation into adoration... Yacob cursed himself for not seeing it sooner, and going to The Seven with what he'd feared.
He did not want to be a leader, but he had to be. That means compromise, negotiation, patience, welding together men and women and children from a half-dozen places scattered across the continent, many of whom barely spoke Pavi. He had done so, because they needed him, and he could not do everything alone.
But now, with Hansel, he felt his hands ball into fists... and the big bastard kept smiling.
Aye, don't feel too good, does it, boy?
Konrad crossed his arms and spat out a hefty gob into a puddle. An actual puddle! Such a thing was rare indeed on the Sea of Grass those days; like rivers and streams and great, storming deluges that washed away tents. Konrad remembered when such storms were feared; now people actually prayed for them. Because within a bell, maybe three or four, Syna would bake the smear of rain off the ground and into nothing. Unless it could, somehow, be scavenged and harvested.
But how? How, indeed? Me. That's how.
"There are others we could ask," Yacob said, and Konrad could hear the iron behind his words. The way he had to stop himself from snarling them. Too good a soul, that one. Thinks everyone is as nice as him. "Other mages that can draw water from the ground."
"Yes, but they make you pay."
"Which is why we are asking you. You are one of us!"
Konrad knew his role, or what Yacob assumed it to be. The outsider-turned-good, happy and content among his new people, willing to take on duties and risks for his adopted... what? Family? Konrad didn't stop smiling. Just injected something hard and bitter into his face that curdled it even more.
"I am not you." He spoke slowly, making sure the words sank in. His Pavi was improving every season, but some of the pronunciations still tripped him up. "I help, I hunt, to help me. This thing?" He gestured to the sodden ground around them. "You want from me? Only I can do. Not need you help. So why I give?"
He didn't wait for an answer. It would only be more useless prattling about honor and gratitude from the stunned young man, and Konrad had no desire to hear it. Besides, Syna was up and burning: they didn't have much time. He held up a hand and tried his best to make his face look... a little more neutral.
"My traps? Now on, I trap, is mine. Not share. You let me do, and when have rain, I get water for all."
"You could be taking food from people who need it, the old, the sick, children-"
"Not me children." Another shrug. Another flush of color into Yacob's face. "Yes or No? Come. Waste time."
Konrad flexed his fingers, inhaled... and when he breathed out and shook them, he willed a brief stream of djed into them, so they seemed to glow at the tips, gaseous green-black djed dancing around them. He winked, and heard Yacob's teeth grinding.
"I ready. You take deal?"
Sedon had never hated Hansel, but watching his sheer, uncaring battering of Yacob into agreeing brought him pretty damn close. A whole pavilion's worth of people were watching it unfold, and Hansel seemed oblivious to them. Dozens who would remember his indifference, his lack of care for them. People who'd helped him in the past, tried to make him feel not so alone and isolated... and this is how he repaid them.
Still a sellsword, he thought, shaking his head at his own foolish hopes. Still a man who deals in death, whether he's holding a sword or not.
"... fine. You keep what you trap." Yacob's finger shot up before the grinning cunny could wallow in his success, words flowing fast and mean, now. "But you come whenever I say. We find a puddle the size of that hat you're wearing, and I tell you to use your wyrd, you do it. We clear?"
Konrad shrugged and nodded. That worked. His traps weren't the best but every other day he caught at least something. Having them all to himself... well, that made things much easier for him.
Yacob kept the glower on his face, and quietly marveled at how short-sighted the man's greed made him. Two traps? For the contents of two snares, he would earn the hate of everyone in the pavilion? State to all that he cared nothing for them, that all his help would come with a price? And what was his concession? That now, whenever Yacob needed him, he would come. Without complaint. All for two snares.
Walahks, he thought, allowing himself to shamefully slip into the old prejudice that Jonas had been so famous for. They understand nothing of honor.
Konrad didn't seem to see things that way. He sighed, one of those peculiar sounds that was halfway to a laugh, and thus so strange to hear from his lips. He turned on the younger man, arms stretched out, shaking his hands and tipping back his hat a little once they were good and loose. He closed his eyes and turned up his face to Syna.
Come out, come out, he whispered, and within that ruthless frame, terrible energies stirred. Time to work...
