It had all started with a joke Taalviel had had no right to make.
That she had made a joke to begin with was the witnessing of a greater supernatural phenomenon than her shifting into a bird and back, and under typical circumstances Caspian might have found this worthy of jeering, if not celebration, of the fruits of over a decade’s worth of incumbent proselytization. Typical circumstances - typical as to the parties immediately and intolerably involved - do not, however, involve said joke from one’s sister landing on the coattails of a snide comment that one’s boyfriend had elected to extrude. The -
collaboration, as one might dare to dub it without retching, had happened to such a degree of synchronicity between two individuals who had yet to profess anything less than loathing for each other, that Caspian wonders wildly, in the heat of a second, if it had not been planned. Scripted, even, and if scripted, then the result of premeditation, rooted in the basest of treacheries - and doesn’t the mere thought of that just so keenly irk and disturb? And from
both parties? Yes, he’s choosing to be irate and suspicious from here on out with
both, because he’s very readily made up his mind that his particular vantage point between sister and scruffed partner-in-proximity affords him the rights to be affronted as he sees fit.
And then, to top it all off, said sister and that infuriating other one had the gall to glance towards each other and
laugh.
One-two-punch, with a ripe giggle at Caspian’s expense, and he’s brought down for the count.
“They practically
conferred,” he’s emphatically exclaiming to Saticath, throwing a dramatic hand up over his eyes and casting himself backwards in defeat across one of her plush divans.
“Don’t think I haven’t taken note that I’m actually your third and final option when domestics don’t go the way you want them to,” Saticath replies with a snort. “First is Thance - and given what’s just happened, him we can rule out. Second is your classic smoke-and-sulk. And only
then third, is me. How you designate someone like me as what you do when you’ve nothing better -“
Caspian good-naturedly tosses a pillow at her as she, with an exaggerated sigh, begins despondently twirling a lock of hair round her finger. Giggling raucously, she hurls it back, but Caspian snatches it swiftly from the air, immediately slinging it the way it came. A scuffle erupts between them, Saticath leaping to her feat and pouncing on Caspian where he sprawls.
“Ridiculous-“ Caspian starts, but she’s digging her fingers into his ribs, making him double over with laughing gasps. She’s both legs over him now, straddling his waist, leaning over and sending her thick dark hair cascading across his face like a glossy curtain. The element of surprise having played its hand, it’s easy work for him to catch her wrists, and she presses a quick peck to his forehead in surrender.
“Not third,” he says as firmly as he can muster when they’ve settled in place, looking up into the eyes of the sincerest friend he’s made since coming to Ravok - maybe the dearest friend he’s made all his life.
“I’m not offended,” she replies, “so don’t feel the need to soften any blows for my own sake. I know you, Cassie. Third’s just fine with me.”
But it’s
not third, he wants to swear to her again, at least not
last resort, because it’s easy to define that one - the bottom of the barrel is likely along the lines of, say, the extremely abstract concept of confronting one’s problems head on, or worse, and truly dig down deep and retch at the prospect of this one -
speaking about one’s issues with one’s sister directly and without pretense -
Is it still in the realm of pretense, though, if that sister’s joke had been a barely veiled jab at how noticeably remiss he’s been at carrying through even the pettiest of thefts, and the declaration that he shouldn’t even bother coming back home without bearing back something that doesn’t belong to him? The criteria for earning back his credibility are blessedly finite - the thing must be in the relatively intimate possession of someone else and also
worth being stolen - pointless for him to nick something like a tribunal or a gazette, which they practically dole out for free.
“Let’s go out,” he suddenly declares.
Saticath raises an artfully tattooed eyebrow. “Thought you had a quest to mangle?”
“Oh, here’s you at third after all! First Thance, then Taalviel, and now
you have made it clear you think I’m - well -“
Saticath raises her other eyebrow and holds them comically suspended.
“ - slipping!” he finishes, and she bursts out laughing, how much he’s allowed his being heckled to grate on him.
“Don’t pout, Cas.”
“I’m not pouting. I’m just feeling rather - ganged up on, is all.”
Saticath rolls her eyes and slides off him, readjusting her robes and tying her hair into a bun.
“There must be a party you know of. Within the vicinity. And several beyond, that distance at this point negligible to me, the benefits of waiting this out long enough for Taalviel to find something shiny on the ground and forget this new fixation - well, I can tell you we won’t have to wait very long.”
Saticath does know of a party; parties plural, in fact, but she’s quite busy tonight, and can’t come with. As a personable and reliable makeup artist, residing just across from the most illustrious brothel the city has to offer, she’s plenty of business with her flicks of clientele. A little busier than usual tonight, though, for some reason, so she rattles off an address and vague directions for Caspian to follow.
“They’re good people,” she assures him of her acquaintances hosting.
“You’re quite sure it won’t be odd, my strolling in without you?” he asks, and is promised it won’t be a problem in the slightest, and the company he’ll find will be as effervescent and droll as they come.
Out of habit, after dragging himself off the regrettably comfortable divan and onto his feet, he flicks through the contents of Saticath’s closet and standing wardrobes, all of them bursting with trifles she’s collected over the years, many of them happily left behind.
At random, Caspian draws out
a grey suit jacket, its matching slacks to follow. A lot more unassuming than he’s used to - even now he’s got fine lines of gold across his lids and lightly lining the Cupid’s bow of his lips - but there’s something compelling in imagining himself doing something he wouldn’t normally. Even if that normal, it turns out, is performing exactly that.
“Never seen this one before,” he says to Saticath.
She’s blustering about, pulling cases of pigments and clasped collections of rouge in preparation for whichever courtesan might appear first on her doorstep, in need of her services, in preparing to give their own.
“Oh, that -?” She barely affords it a second glance. “Someone left that here ages ago. What they went out wearing instead, though ...?”
Suppose he treats this, plain as it is, as a canvas - could find a tailor to add some lace to it, a trim on the lapels, pearly buttons and a chain to drape across his shoulders...? Unabashedly - it’s just Saticath, after all - he shucks off his tunic and pants in favor of the new set in grey. What greets him in the mirror, though, is far from the aged anonymity he had expected.
The suit’s a deep amaranthine, covered in black flowers of lace, pressed flush against the fabric as if they’d been tucked between the pages of a book. The slacks are of a similar hue but deeper and darker, and when he steps back and regards himself in a shifted perspective to the light, he realizes with a glow that there’s a subtle gradient to the whole of it, the shade lightest at his shoulders, and most darkened by his ankles. The buttons at at his wrists and pinning the suit closed are silvered disks, reflective and in parts translucent, and when he scrapes a nail across them they tick with a pleasant rattle. And his
shoes - supple leather, toes coming to elegant points, the metallic heels at a modest but impactful height of at least an inch and a half, going on two, flashes of silver in the same vein as the buttons. He paces towards the mirror and away, twirling before it, reveling in the suddenness of what can only be a very lovely and convenient point of magic.
From across the room, Saticath’s jaw drops.
The excitement of the discovery aside, it doesn’t change the line of customers she’s anticipating, and in the Ravokian twilight, heels clicking and gleaming, Caspian sets off alone.
Whether it’s the directions, though, or Caspian excessively and gleefully marveling over the stunning article he’s come into by chance, he gets the address for Saticath’s party squarely wrong. The mistake isn’t wholly realized until he’s well past someone’s threshold, and at that point - Caldera Manor, it seems, is as good a place to distract oneself as any.
People seem to be filing into a dining room. How much anonymity could one maintain, trapped face to face? Plenty, arguably, if one is any good?
Later, maybe. The lot of them might be a little more forgiving and a lot more absentminded once they’ve been given a chance to get into the liquor that’s undoubtedly to be served.
Walking steadily, quietly, with a posture of purpose, Caspian winds through the manor out of sheer curiosity. He’s been in a fair share of nice homes but this one’s categorically an
estate, one that he finds that he envies more by the minute. What would one do if one had all these doors, all the rooms to which they lead, the exponentially and practically infinite number of things inside?
Quantifiably, so very many things, that one or even two of the still nebulous articles might not be missed?
And in a home like this, Caspian would have to try exceptionally hard to find something without value.
So there’s the criteria met, for his coming home following his being goaded, by a shoddy sister and shoddier boyfriend who dared claim something asinine about his being the shoddiest of thieves.
One-two-
punch -
And who’ll be down for the count now?
In a home of this size, of this level of resplendence, he might have turned down any corner and chosen any door, to great satisfaction - but the one he finds is a particularly grand one, the bed lush and draped with furs, one that he can really see himself sinking body and breath down into -
Preliminary triumphs are put to rest, for the moment, as he senses someone approaching. Quieting his breath, he steals further into the room, tucking himself out of sight behind a towering armoire.
