Placeholder Flick and Fan

[Caspian]

60 Winter 522

They meet at Old Bridge. There are plenty of bridges around that one might consider old, and from the southern bank of the Castle Commons, it’s not even the only bridge in sight. But this is the uninspired moniker nevertheless given to this particular structure, which from childhood Caspian has been able to most readily identify from the streak of red paint someone had splashed across parts of the railing. Caspian gets there on time, which is 5 a.m. He’d tossed and turned all night, unable to sleep, and eventually had given up, tugging on his trousers and boots and slipping out so quietly, Taalviel hadn’t even stirred. He’d wandered for about an hour before making his way here, and more than once, with his growing headache, had he found himself wishing he’d brought along some Winger.

Because it’s Taroko, of course the overly dramatic bastard’s decided to perch right on the apex of the bridge. Instead of, say, parking himself at the base of one side or the other. He must know how he looks, his dark figure silhouetted against the dawning sky. Must be aware, Caspian is sure, of the languid arc of his body as he leans against the railing, as if he owns it.

Taroko doesn’t even bother looking up at the clear sound of Caspian’s footfall. He goes on staring at the murky water before him, as if Caspian is no more important than one o f the moths tardily flitting by his shoulder.

“Did we really have to meet this late?” Caspian says, cringing internally when his voices comes out as more of a croak. Makes sense, though. Given the absurd hour and that his body and mind are both longing for his bed.

Yet, even at this absurd hour – he can’t help the slight stutter of his heart when Taroko turns his face towards him.

Handsome, still handsome – and Caspian hopes that in the dim light Taroko doesn’t catch how his face is burning.

As if he’s, what – got a crush?

How can one have a crush, specifically, if one has already dated and bedded and –

“Late, early, the clock’s just a figment in your mind,” Taroko replies, straightening up. He gives Caspian a once-over. A shiver runs up Caspian’s spine that has nothing to do with the chilly winter air.

“And the calendar, what’s that to you? A joke and a dream?” Caspian retorts, following Taroko across the bridge, up into the Castle Commons. “Roll around outside in short pants last week, did you?”

“Will you join me next time, if I ask nicely?”

Resolutely, Caspian turns away, taking especial interest in a tatty-looking cat that’s just slipped into the next alley.

“Where are we going?” he asks in an undertone, after they’ve walked several blocks with no further comment. “And why have you been such an ass about not telling me the plan beforehand?”

Information is king, information is key – but after a certain point Caspian knows people just derive a little too much enjoyment from messing around with him.

“We’re going to rob the safe in the back of a certain tavern. And I didn’t tell you what we were doing today, because, to be honest – I was leaning towards storming a poker game and holding the sorry lot at knifepoint while you emptied their wallets. But the game called off, so. Here’s the next best thing.”

A reasonable explanation, Caspian supposes – but again, he knows Taroko is just one of the many people who gets off seeing him sweat.

Word count: 590

[Caspian]

The name of the tavern they’re robbing is –

Caspian squints.

Is it The Gray Grrr…?

Grasser?

Grander?

No, neither of those would make any sense. Maybe it’s a really poorly painted Goose –

“Hey!” Taroko hisses from the back of the alley.

Startled, Caspian turns away from his post observing both sides of the street, peers back at Taroko who’s been working on jimmying open the tavern’s back door.

The door’s open now. With one last glance up and down the street – no inhabitants at this middling and sideways hour save for a very drunk old man, who had long ago slumped over on a stoop, and has been lying still ever since – he hurries down.

It makes sense, now, that Taroko had wanted to meet at this time. There are a few establishments in the city where the party never stops, but this is one of the many bars that maintain a respectable closing hour of 3 or 4 am, depending on the flow of customers. The air is cool and still here, and the chairs and stools have been turned upside down and propped up on the tables. All the surfaces are more or less wiped down, though the smell of souring ale lingers. That’s to be expected, for no matter how fervently one mops, there’s a mélange of substances embedded deep into the grooves between the floorboards, and – he wrinkles his nose at the thought – all other manner of nooks and crannies.

He can’t think of the last time he was in an entirely empty bar. They’re one of his favorite haunts, where the noise and light and sound can lead him firsthand into forgetting the troubles that await him just outside its door. It’s a comforting oppression. But here, in the dark where his and Taroko’s breaths and heartbeats are the only ones in the room, he finds none of its usual solace. And it feels, funnily enough, very much like he’s somewhere he shouldn’t be, and up to no good.

Taroko shuts the door behind them, throwing them into darkness. Something suddenly skitters in a corner. Caspian jumps, backing away instinctively, bumping into Taroko’s firm and very warm chest.

Taroko laughs, and it isn’t very kindly. But the reverberation sends a similar wave up Caspian’s toes all the same.

“There should be a lamp somewhere in the corner by the – oh, never mind. I got it.” There’s a crack and a snap, and Taroko’s face is illuminated. Raising the lantern, he gestures at Caspian to follow him towards the bar, then the small hallway beyond it.

The light, as Taroko pushes his way into the back office, grows dim. Nevertheless, Caspian pauses behind the bar, glancing over the shelves. Tankards, glasses, trays for cutlery. Stacks of dish cloths and rags. A basket of citrus fruit, the rinds patched and scabby. Then there’s the till. Caspian isn’t expecting much at all, so the half-dozen silver mizas and handful of bronze he discovers give him a fun swoop of satisfaction to pocket.

“C’mon, Custard!” Taroko whispers impatiently. “Gods, you’re not a child anymore. Who cares for loose change?”

Ignoring him, Caspian makes his way for the back office. Loose change or not, it’s more mizas than he had before.

Word count: 541

[Caspian]

There isn’t a single surface in the back office that isn’t covered in clutter. Old rags, rusted canisters, a tattered map half-torn from the wall on which it’s pinned. Frowning, Caspian eases open the front cover of a dusty ledger on the desk, but the page is covered in stains and the handwriting is mostly illegible.

The minor distraction keeps him from beating Taroko to the punch. Pulling aside the tea towel that had been thrown across it to conceal it, Taroko reveals the safe behind the desk. It’s rectangular, about two feet long and one foot high, and made of wood and bands of metal.

Caspian stares at the keyhole.

The keyhole stares back at him.

“Did you bring your skeleton?”

He blinks at Taroko, confused at the shorthand. Sighing impatiently, Taroko kneels in front of the safe, whipping out a ring of skeleton keys. They jangle too loudly for the illicit activities happening at what can only be described as an illicit hour, and reflexively Caspian glances over his shoulder at phantom guards that never come.

There’s a bit of shuffling around and swearing, but in a couple minutes there’s a click, and the lid to the chest swings free. It’s empty save for a bag, cinched shut, a leather-bound notebook, and a small clamshell-shaped box made of wrought iron.

“Great job keeping watch on a closed door, Custard,” Taroko says sarcastically, pulling the strings of the pouch open. “Super glad you came along.”

In the past, such a comment and in that tone would have likely resulted in Caspian fumbling in embarrassment. Accepting the blame and humiliation, however arbitrary and ill-founded. But he’s cold and tired and not as young as he used to be, so he snorts instead.

“Why’d you invite me, then? Not exactly a two-man job, is it?”

At this, Taroko scowls, rising to his feet. The drawstring pouch had only held a few silver mizas, the amount easily fitting in his palm. They glint in the lamplight, Caspian’s eyes instinctively drawn to the pile. Gaze still locked there, even when Taroko snaps his hand shut.

He doesn’t ask for his cut. It’s about even, he supposes, when compared to what he’d taken from the register behind the bar.

“It is a two-man job. Or at least, it was supposed to be.” Casting his gaze angrily around the room, he runs his hands along the walls, pulling at the seams, picking at the paint.

“What are you doing?”

“Stop asking stupid questions and help me look.”

“Look for what?”

Straightening up, Taroko scowls at him. “Think, Custard. This tavern is open seven days a week, with enough patrons that the seats are constantly full, and most of them are left standing. Yet this”—he holds up the fist of silver mizas—“is all that’s left in the safe? How can that be? No, they’ve definitely got the rest stashed somewhere else. And my tip came from a good source. It’s a two-man job because what we’re about to find needs that many hands to carry out.”

Taroko returns to running his hands along the walls in frustration. It’s not the most relaxing energy to be around, and Caspian schools his own rising nerves, peering down into the chest that Taroko had just opened.

Word count: 549

[Caspian]

The leather-bound notebook is a diary, about three-quarters full. Thumbing through the pages, Caspian compares the handwriting to that in one of the ledgers on the desk. For a few moments he thinks it might be a match. There are some similarities, something about the way the round parts of certain letters stand out – like an older man’s gut hanging over his waistband. There’s also something about the persistent slant of each line. But the closer he looks, the more he comes to terms with the sense that his believing the author to be one and the same was simply wishful thinking.

“Move.” Stomping over, Taroko edges him away from the desk without waiting for a response. Yanking the desk drawer open, he rifles through the contents. There are stacks of envelopes, more ledgers. The smell of mildew persists with each shift of the neglected pages. Something rolls – a miniature telescope, the outermost lens punched out and beside it, a long crack running down the middle. Finding nothing that might serve as a potential lead, Taroko makes a noise in frustration and goes back to his inspection of the walls, dragging the furniture aside for better access.

It’s yet more noise. If someone were to enter the tavern, they’d without a doubt hear that someone was in the back office, and it would be easy enough to determine that said someones certainly shouldn’t be there.

But there’s little one can do to stop Taroko once he’s started on a rampage. Doing his best to ignore the other man’s escalation, Caspian returns to the chest they’d already opened. He’d only been able to decipher a few sentences of the diary. It was incredibly old, even more worn and dry than the ledgers on the desk, seemingly old enough that if someone had told him it was not the tavern owner’s own diary, but their grandmother’s, he would believe them. All this being said, it’s not useful to him. He’d meant to return it to the chest, but his hand stills. The dimensions are small enough to fit into his pocket, and, well – it could be amusing, he thinks, to try and suss out what’s written in it, when he’s got nothing better to do.

The wrought iron clamshell-shaped object is still in the chest. It’s cool to the touch, and he turns it over in his hands. There are hinges on the back, and he flips open the lid. A delicate bird made of twisted, braided wires rests within it. There’s a dial on the back too, between the hinges, and he twists it a few times. When he lets go, an eerie, tinkling melody begins to play.

Taroko’s head snaps up at the sound. “Will you stop screwing around and get to work?”

It’s not the most refined thing, but there’s something especially precious about anything artful or decorative in a place like Sunberth. The labor that had gone into making it would have been put to much better use towards, say, securing food or shelter. Yet someone had made it all the same, and someone – the same, or another? – had locked it into this chest for safekeeping.

He snaps it shut, the hinges resisting the pressure but giving in the end. The music ceases, and though the song had held a sinister quality, he feels the bleakness of the hour and of the dark more forcefully in its absence.

Tucking the music box into his other pocket, he joins Taroko’s search of the office for another chest.

Word count: 588

[Caspian]

You think there’s some kind of trap door?”



“No, I like touching moldy paint for fun.” The ensuing search hasn’t improved Taroko’s mood. Together, they’ve made a massive mess of the back office. To begin with, it had been chaotic, claustrophobic, and unwelcoming, but now it looks positively ransacked, and whoever comes in after them will know without a doubt what’s happened here.



The idea of a trap door, though, Caspian’s own particular phrasing – Taroko has been preoccupied with checking the walls. What about the floors?



There’s a rug beneath the desk and its worn leather chair. The fringe coming off each of the rug’s sides had proven particularly frustrating to Taroko, whose boots kept getting tangled in it. In his anger he’d kicked it aside, and one of the askew corners had revealed the very tip of a seam in the floorboards. Lowering himself to one knee – not enjoying the cloud of dust billowing up into his face – Caspian pulls the rest of the corner aside. The seam is in fact two, connecting perpendicularly, and – yes. As he pulls the entire rug aside, he discovers a panel.


“Gods, finally,” Taroko says, not sounding particularly grateful. Caspian watches him get on the floor and - yep, no, he’s not going to acknowledge Caspian helped, and he isn’t going to say thank you. “You open it,” is his next command.

“Why me?” Caspian narrows his eyes in suspicion.

“There’s no handle, and your fingers are thinner. Mine aren’t going to fit into that gap.

Is his guard too high if this is what sets off his nerves? Perhaps. The reason makes some amount of sense, though. Doing as he’s told, he strains against the door, his fingertips providing the scantest of contact and leverage until he manages to lift the panel open by half an inch. Taroko swoops in, swinging the panel over the rest of the way.

Beneath the floorboards are three sacks each the size of their skulls, like the drawstring pouch they found in the first chest, but much more satisfying to uncover. Dipping forward, Taroko grabs one of them, grunting against the weight as he heaves it onto the floor beside them. With greedy expediency he unties it, and reveals the unmistakable glimmer of silver.

“Oh perch yes,” Taroko hisses with delight. They both know what they’re seeing, but just to be sure, Caspian grabs the oil lamp and brings it closer and - yes. There’s no doubt that the money they’ve just come upon is enough to feed a few Sunberth families for a year.

And that was just the first sack. What about the other two?

They don’t get to find out. There’s the scrape of wood from the barroom just beyond the door, and the sound of heavy boots.

Caspian shoots a look at Taroko. His instinct is to shove the sack back beneath the floorboards, cover it all up, and hide under the desk. The boots aren’t necessarily approaching; they’re moving back and forth, at an easy pace. Has someone who works here decided to come in this early?

But Taroko is on his feet, with murder in his eyes. There’s too much at stake here, and he’s made the easy calculation that whoever’s out there isn’t worth half as much as what he’s here to rob.

“Wait!” Caspian hisses, but it’s too late.

Knife drawn, Taroko exits the office. Caspian sucks under the desk, and there’s a crash and a scream -

And all falls silent.

He stays where he is, silent and unmoving, for what feels like eternity. When Taroko returns, it’s all sneers. They’re well aware which one of them hid, and which one got up and solved a problem.

That sneer falls to ash when they inspect the sack of silver more closely.

Only the top layer had been mizas, resting on a bed of sawdust and tin.

The other two sacks have top layers of bronze, the majority of each bag then filled beneath with soil.

It’s good informant Taroko has - or someone with a mind for a good prank.

They come away with 20 silver mizas apiece, plus 30 bronze each. It happens to split evenly down the middle. When they part - Taroko still fuming - Caspian remembers that quantifiably, he’s actually come out on top after all this.

Loose change indeed.

Word count: 731
Total: 2,999