• Mature • [Bolstrum] Silk and Parchment (Graded)

[Kasoria]

23rd Trial, Vhalar, 718a
Bolstrum
23rd Bell

Continued from here





Life didn't flash before Mary's eyes. Nothing so poetic happened. There was no eight-bit-long speech or choir of angels in the background. None of the mummer's farces played out, and chief among them all, she did not even think to fight back. She wasn't the plucky heroine of those more progressive tales, where the damsels got themselves out of distress, and conquered the rogues or monsters assailing them.

She was just a woman in a bathtub, and she pissed in it in terror the very instant she felt the knife on her throat.

But you're not dead. That means he wants something else.

It took a few trills for her mind to start working again. The water lapped against her naked body and he didn't even glance down at her curves. Every man did that. She was proud of that, almost thirty in a game where the real money was barely out of maidenhood, and men wandered into the gutters rubbernecking when she walked by. But this man... his eyes didn't waver from hers. They were wide, stark against the black of his hair, but colored so dark they were almost midnight in their severity. She couldn't even see her own reflection in them, just an endless, yawning chasm.

But she was alive, and he was awaiting an answer.

She nodded, not daring anything else. The knife stayed, but the hand vanished. He spoke to her, and she heard the Big Rock in his voice. Not just the accent of the Oh'Pee, but the general harshness of that city, the hard stones and choking air, roiling out of this little man who was no taller than her. He spoke lowly and carefully, ensuring she understood every word.

"I know Yancy keeps it here," the man said, pressing the knife a fraction tighter, and a world more painfully, into her neck. "The ledger. He hides it here. Not his office, not his home. Here. So you must know where it is." Closer. So close she was sure it was already breaking her skin. She could feel the impossible... fragility, of the thing. How thin it was, and yet how absurdly dangerous. "Once I have it, I'll be gone. You have my word on that."

As if to provide some good faith, the man backed up a foot or so. The knife left her throat... only to trace up her face, tip resting on her rosy cheek... and then flicking off and away from her. She could see it now: curved oddly, unlike many blades. Held in reverse, with a ring at the very end, hooking around the man's thumb. Everything else about him reeked (literally) of the street and the poverty that came with it. But beggars were rarely so well-spoken; vagrants were never so... specific.

"My trouble is with him, not you. That ledger is the key to resolving it."

"He..." Mary found her voice, syllable by syllable. "He'll... kill me. Y-You don't know him like I do-"

The knife twitched in his hand, and the silver flash blinded her. Catching the lamplight, the thing seems like molten moonlight in his hand. His fingers flexed around it, and her eyes flickered up into a face stony as the cobbles back in the mutual home.

"What do yo think I'll do, Mary?"

That was the question, wasn't it? The one that she didn't have an answer to, or at least, not an option she enjoyed. Yancy would rage and yell and scream, if he ever found out the truth. Probably toss her aside, never do be even glanced at by him again. But even as her heart rebelled at the possibility of betrayal, her mind was following that blade, those words, those eyes. The will behind them. Sharper and crueler than a mere dagger. She found no lie in any of it, and right now, that night, he was the problem. Not her lover.

"W..." She gulped a few warm breaths down before finding enough air to speak normally. "Will you knock me about a bit? Like you forced it out of me?"

The man seemed to consider this. His lips even pursed in a grimace, as if he hadn't expected the idea. They unfocused for a moment, the universal look of a man closely considering in short time... and then nodded.

"Sure. Few digs around the face, split lip, swollen eye-"

"M-Maybe not the eye?"

"Okay, fine," he waved away her objections like a thespian denied an ad-lib, and sighed like the old man she realized he was. Almost her father's age, when he'd had her. Strange that she'd think of him now, but there it was. "Now where is it?"

"Un... Under the bed. R-Right corner, under the-"

"Floorboard?"

"Yes."

"Knew it." His shoulders rolled under his coat and some corner of Mary's mind started screaming, though she knew not why... and frankly, a few others were drowning it out. "Gotta warn yeh, though: if yer lying, it'll hurt when you wake up."

A frown creased her pretty face, and Mary's voice was actually more quizzical than annoyed when she said, "What do you m-"

CRACK

Tried to say, rather. Kasoria's hand lashed out before she could finish the word, let alone the sentence. Leading with his karambit-gripping hand, he snapped out a punch that was as precise as it was ruthless. No warning, no mercy: just an explosion of metal-and-bone powered by muscle that landed against Mary's temple with a sound like a heavy spoon smacking into a chopping board. Her eyes crossed as her mind was scrambled by the blow, black shards shattering her vision, spreading to her tongue before she could find the will to scream, and speaking of that...

Easy, now.

His other hand reached out and caught her by the shoulder before her body could slide under the water. He propped her up over the edge, hanging arm anchor enough to prevent her from drowning herself. Will, awareness, questions, deals, suggestions, chances of escape and evasion... all of it was gone, with one punch. He flexed his hand, wincing a touch at his bruised thumb. Punching with the karambit around his thumb was a boon, to be sure, but Hell's Fuck did it hurt after. He sheathed the blade behind him and backed out the room. Keeping his eyes on the woman until he was out the door... then swept away towards the bedroom.

Better not have been bullshitting me, girl.

[Kasoria]

Kasoria was lying his arse off for most of his little speech, but sometimes vim and verve can carry a performance more than substance. He'd seen enough Etzori street theater to know that.

He suspected the ledger was in the house, but she didn't know that. The conviction was all he needed: the projection of knowledge, of certainty, that would make thoughts of lying useless to her. He knew her name, and the name of her lover, hells, the fact that he even had a ledger. All those things could present quite the formidable obstacle to any deception, especially when delivered with the merciless savagery that he could fill his face and tone and form with at a moment's notice. And if all that didn't work...

A knife to the throat always makes folk less likely to fuck about.

He hid his excitement as he walked into the bedroom and kicked the bed frame without even breaking his stride. Like he'd planned to do it in the first place. His foot smacked into the frame, just below the pillows, on the side she'd mentioned, and with a scrape and a screech of brass across wood-

-the bed jolted over, and Kasoria saw a wooden board jump a little as it passed. He grinned, and dove for it.

"Gotcha!"

He was hardly one for talking to himself, especially not exclamations of joy, but he couldn't help it. A break wasted last night, fiddling with that fucking lock, then another just as wasted, searching a room that contained nothing of note. But now he ripped away the board and reached into the darkness... and grinned. His fingers closed around a cover, a spine, and the sound of rustling parchment graced his ears. He yanked it out, opened it up-

Fuck me... Francis would fill his breeches if he could get his hands on this.

Reams and ranks and pages of numbers and dates were carefully codified within. He flipped through a few pages, and found some rudimentary understanding of them. Clearly a man with learning from the exchanges and banks would be needed to dissect this mystery, but Kasoria could still read dates... and these numbers went back a long way. He flipped to the end, and could still smell the fresh ink, see their recent smudges on the pages.

Between first page, and last, there was a half-inch of paper. Everything the man had stolen from Bangun Vorund.

So Kasoria was happy, and he smiled... and then the smile started to fade. This was a victory, but it was not the end. It was not even the end of his night. He'd succeeded in his mission for the evening, but snatching the loot and running out the door, leaving the girl to awake and alert her lover... no, no, that wouldn't work at all. First of all, he put back the loose board, and dragged the bed back over it, just as his kicking foot had found it. Then he stood there, ledger in hand, knowing what he had to do.

So he went and did it. Because it needed to be done.

[Kasoria]

He did not say he was sorry. Not before, not during, not after. Such a thing was unthinkable to him. An insult to the dead, and to his own soul.

She was pink and clean and glowing when he trudged back into the bathroom. A far cry from his earlier swooping, was his entrance. It was slow and reluctant, but in the same way an avalanche through a forest was. There were obstacles and complaints and regret of geography, but there was no stopping it. Once things were in motion, they stayed as such until something greater stopped them. Whether it be another force, different terrain, or simply time itself chipping away at the energy of all things, it was a law of creation. Kasoria knew that. Knew it better than many others.

He did not say sorry to the sleeping girl, with her mouth open a little and her arm hanging out the bath. Instead he treated her with all the respect his necessity of moment could allow. With both hands he laid her flat back in the tub, with her head propped up against the cushioned back of it. Nice little touch, that was. Yancy clearly liked keeping her in comfort.

She'd die in it, at least.

Her arms dropped into the water with little "ploops" of sound. He fished one out, and his other hand found his karambit. Kasoria looked at her face. He wondered if he would remember it. So many he'd forgotten. Scores, even hundreds. So many he barely remembered the fights and the reasons, let alone the faces and the blood. He looked at her with cold eyes and an empty mind. That polar place his soul went to when his work was more a chore than a business, or nay, at its best moment, an art.

This was none of those things. This was a naked young girl in a bathtub, and him opening up the vein in her arm, from the crook of her elbow, to the pulse in her wrist.

The karambit was perfect for the work. Tapered into a wicked curve, it was like a needle at the very end. It parted soft, silken skin like scissors would paper. It split open and deep red blood dribbled then ran then gushed. The scented water was forever fouled, stained, soiled by life that was useless outside of the body. Still the girl slept. Face immobile. Kasoria reached over and grabbed her other hand.

Did the same thing. Without a twitch upon his face, or a light in his eyes. Because that's how one did such things.

Another "ploop". Less comical, that time. The water was reddening so fast it was concealing her body under it. Kasoria turned away and plucked up the razor he's spied on the table next to the wash basin. Some cream and brushes, probably for when Yancy wanted to shave after a night of passion. He walked over to the bathtub and dropped it in the water. Only it wasn't water anymore. Water didn't swallow the shape of the razor so quickly he never saw it hit the bottom of the tub. Just heard the tink of metal hitting metal and then a gasp-

-a gasp-

-from dying lips-

-as Mary woke up to a world of blood. Pouring out of her. Draining her like a pig over a grate. So much of it that she couldn't feel her arms anymore. They were there, but like lead weights pinned to her as one would artifacts to a costume. She tried to move them and her fingers barely twitched. The man was there, too. She turned to him, to her...

Kasoria reached down to press his hand to her forehead. As the word "please" danced silently across her lips, unable to find the breath and life to be heard over the lapping water. Like a priest before a begging penitent, and without a word he pushed down... baptized her in the scarlet waters.

She could not see him. Could not see anything. Cried salt and water that mingled with scarlet and water and soon her lungs were filling with all of it. She heard distant things, from far away. Footsteps across the floor. A door opening. The merest suggestion of a lock being turned, and then all was just a void where her tears and anguish could not purchase any attentions.

Continued here

[Oberan]

Review Rewards

Not a good man indeed

Points awarded: 10

Knowledge:

Blades (Karambit): Thumb-ring Critically Enhances Punches (at a price)
Blades (Karambit): Slicing Lengthwise Down Limbs and Through Arteries
Deception: Staging a Bathtub Suicide
Interrogation: Appearing Too Informed To Lie To
Intimidation: Replacing Fear of Others With Fear of YOU
Philosophy: Empty Apologizes are Useless and Insulting

Magic: No magic exp

Other: N/A

Notes:
Damn. Poor Mary became a little lamb, slaughtered lamb. At least she was out of it for the most part.

For a moment, I believed Kasoria's words. Mary would live, I thought. An unknowing bystander kept out of it as much as possible.

AND THEN YOU BRUTALLY BETRAYED ME!

Have your damn points, monster!

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