Diatre - Bard in Training
Diatre did not stay at the cottage the entire time Kenthim was away. She had decided, in seeing him, that she would learn her own lesson – the wetwork part of being a bard. For in that moment she had seen that she was a glorified musician and that she needed to get her hand in with knowing what there is to know.
The hike to the witch she trusted had been short, especially as she had been one step short of running the entire time. Just past the small town Kenthim had lived and worked in, was the hut of her witch friend and the bard burst through the door in a flurry of energy.
“I need a job.” She didn’t bother with words, hoping that the woman who was experienced in everything else was smart enough to work out Diatre’s hand signing. Or knew someone with their own hand-language.
“Not song, one presumes.” The witch replies, eyes gleaming with mischief. Diatre suspects the young witch has had more adventures than Kenthim and her both, though her heart says her dead troll mentor Sen’thal knew more than the witch could possibly know.
“Not song.” Diatre replies, adding the sign for secret as context, even though the witch was wise enough to get the implication. “Easy though, rotted.” She motions to herself, hiding strength within, but coming from inexperience though she hopes the witch is not that perceptive.
“Knife, words, or sneaking?” The witch asks, trying to be vague. And then she says aloud a word that Diatre has only vaguely heard of: cogsiliare. The dead drops of Levis are much more magical than those of clandestine work in Tyr. While she had not worked the illegal of her time back in Tyr, she had passed the taboo between those she trusted (but maybe didn’t like) and the complexity and subtlety of the bard hidey holes impressed her. Mainly because of the implication that a mage must know part of a bard’s information network – and Diatre has never been one to trust a stranger.
“Sneaking. And no holes, clean Passover.” Her eyes narrow, hoping that the one hiring her will be the witch and not a third party, especially with her name in This work not made yet.
“If I vouch for you, what you get traded gets split.” The witch counters, her smile filled with teeth and menace, their friendship straining over the idea of sliding into the acceptable illegal together.
“This is fair.”
She had left a note with the town that she was headed north for a few days, that if Kenthim returned he should be told that she is trading a blanket she wove for something city-fancy. It would not be a lie, and did provide a nice story for why the bard was up that way – Diatre not brave enough yet to use the songbird lie that other bards cling to and not willing to talk to other bards until she is more than novice in her game.
She has been asked to procure a binding kept in the chambers of a Grandmother, something apprehended as proof that its owner needed a certain Exile tattoo – or needless community service. The chamber was high up, on the third floor of a winding tower covered in vines. A quick look had made the task more than hard – the vines were the type she’d found in life were fine to foliads, but extremely toxic to her human skin.
One torn and sewn shirt later and Diatre has fingerless gloves that work up to her elbows and still no further idea of how to cover the rest of the skin that Levis outfits liked to show. There is an equally tall building a few over, but that would require enough rope and a hook, and both supplies are more the kind of thing sourced closer to a river or Oceanus.
Diatre wants to use as little outside help as possible, so getting a case of the place is a day spent shopping in the nearby market, straining her energy to activate long dormant brain implants to collect as much information as she could on the tower. She asks nothing about the tower itself, instead asking about local politics and gossip; wanting to see if she could also work out her employer.
Up the side, in the dead of night seems to still be the best option, entering the base like you own it has the complication of a very large troll receptionist, and gossip has it that she threw the last person trying to get into the tower three whole people’s lengths. Her employer is likely the local academy mage – and the impromptu projectile. The mage was around the city, brandishing his binding and talking about realm ending space rocks, and desires to overthrow the Grandmother. Hence the confiscating of the book. And the charging of the tower by the mage. Diatre cannot for the life of her imagine why that would mean Exile though.
“Someone’s about to do something illegal.” Comes the very soft but sing-song voice of someone by her shoulder. She turns to see a slightly younger woman skin dark as to be almost purple, foliad, neck and shoulders tattooed with black ink, and wearing one of the tighter corsets Diatre has ever seen over a baby blue billowy shirt. Mmm – hot.
Attraction is not something Diatre has had to deal with much in her time in Levis – but the sudden bolt of it distracts her enough that she falls down onto her arm, spraining her wrist and shoulder with a sharp sting that just keeps going. That WILL complicate things.
She rolls to her side to look up at the lady with the voice and the moves. “Can help you?” Diatre quickly checks to see if the fall has damaged the paint on her wrist, feeling already a sticky feeling on her palm that hints at blood.
“I did not know I could knock such a blossoming flower off her feet.” The purple skin foliad teases, grasping under Diatre’s elbow and effortlessly pulling her up, only to notice the vines around the woman’s feet rooted into the ground. “I’m Assandre, but I still think we have much to discuss.”
Assandre starts to walk, just assuming Diatre will follow, and the way she smiled at the bard along with those mischievous but kind eyes causes teeth to bite and smudge green lips into pink. Her steps a quick to catch up, blood lightly dripping down fingertips to soil the rough pressed earth behind her.
The tower becomes just a point at the top of the town skyline, as Assandre makes her way to a place only she knows, making weird circles and swirls through city streets as if she is trying to shake the idea that she is being followed.
“Can wait up? You take many breaths.” Diatre strains herself to match the relentless pace of the purple lass, her many skirts flowing like a dancer’s troupe around her as that throbbing arm pains her the more she gets into the obsession of the one who drives her heart aflutter and her mind to confusion.
Eventually they stop, beneath a porch that is more two massive drooping leaves than anything stylised. Assandre grabs her by the shoulder of her good arm and tugs her intimately close. “Whisper now, lest they hear you.”
“Words not strong.” Diatre says with much more patience than she has in this moment. She tries signing to the cheeky woman, though she doesn’t expect much: “I’m much more fluent here.”
Her new ‘friend’ looks confused, and a little put out, the ease of simple communication lost in a language barrier that leaves Diatre chuckling in a growing sense of familiarity. Clandenstine is lost to the bard in the amusement of watching Assandre trying to think this through while Diatre gingerly grabs her own knees, bent over and laughing with only her diaphragm and the soft wheeze of expelled air.
“Come. I know way.” Diatre stands, flicking Assandre on the nose before lightly grasping the woman by the wrist – she knows what she’s doing and her heart does a flip when she sees the tips of the woman’s ears a deep burgundy. Good, yes, this will do.
They huddle at a morning drinking establishment, the smell of amheriste laced kefbalga brew soaking the air around the little spot as bard and chaos lean against each other, heads propped over a journal like binding.
They have waited until their drinks have arrived to start their conversation, though the pair of them seem flushed from the secretive way they press together to keep this all clandestine. Diatre alone seems hyper aware of how Assandre’s thigh presses to hers, and the woman keeps glancing to the hand Diatre has on her hip to keep them pulled together as they trace words mixed with circuits on the screen.
<You have been too eager in the Grandmother. That will get you in trouble if you plan to attack her.>
Diatre snickers at the idea, her – a killer? Not likely with the kinds of secrets she’s still trying to keep even now.
<I am eager in getting into the tower. I was hired to remove something.> She knows she has to give this woman something, but still can’t put all her trust in a pair of pretty eyes and pretty thighs.
Assandre leans back to take a sip of her drink and Diatre stays stock still, thinking about her counter question and why the woman might be trying to help her. Apart from the community thing.
<From your look, and your positioning, you’re an out of towner?> Assandre says, giving Diatre a once over that leaves her feeling hot all over. She’d worn a simple top and pants combo, the gloves packed away, and not much jewellery in case something could get caught in the job she was hired for.
She pulls at the neckline of her shirt to let in some air, and feels herself nervous when she sees greyed skin poking back out at her. The sweat from the running and her movement have smeared her paint onto her clothes – which is not so troubling when she is local, but here in the big town with all the eyes on her? She pulls her top up firmly and thinks about getting back to the room she is staying at for a song.
Assandre grasps her by the wrist and draws her attention back to the binding. <Your secret is safe Che, no one notices.> And with a flourish the lady of chaos flourishes a scarf, wrapping it around Diatre’s neck and shoulders before biting the base of her ear. <We must assume our roles, che?>
Diatre just nods, brain fried from unexpected pleasure. As she sits there, rebooting, her implants draw up a memory; a certain symbol of twisted vines, which she sees on Assandre’s neck, nestled in a more complex design – a mark she’s seen on the wrist of a certain witch. Diatre thinks and then grins, taking Assandre by the hand and bringing her lips to kiss her lightly on the neck, kissing the tattoo. <What does this mean?>
She watches in delight as Assandre flushes in return, her dark grey hair swaying in its ponyt-tail, as the bard gets to watch her consider her words, and probably the confidences she might be breaking just to get Diatre to be a little more careful. Her rebooting brain has already worked out the ‘why’ of what is going on: that Assandre alone or with a crew is doing her own little illegal job on the Grandmother, and that Diatre stumbling in with inexperience would definitely make things harder should that crew be slower than the bard.
<You should not be so bold. We have just met.> Assandre slips back, judging her and sneaking propriety into the gap between them, when shock value and chaos was moments ago the woman’s weapons to keep Diatre off balance. It is here that the bard realises the game and is disappointed – that they are not two teams trying to work together, but she is one individual trying to warn Diatre off while working out what else to nick.
<Were I not your Che moments ago? What can a simple symbol mean so much that I could lose Che status so quickly, missy?> Her heart hardens and the infatuation she felt starts to simmer down, powering a cold rage that’s building to motivate her.
<I just wish to warn you about how the Grandmother is and how far her reach goes. I would hate to see you caught and exiled like so many before you.> She watches the one beside her lie so easily and it leaves a bitter taste along with the cold rage that causes her hands to be so very precise when scribing out the next part.
<Exile keeps being broached around town like it is nothing more than a light shunning. Those Exiled are deemed never to return to all of Levis.>
<If a Grandmother cannot trust the people around her, then she cannot trust herself to make the unselfish choices. I do not know how they did it where you are from, but attacks against the Grandmother are the highest wrong here.> That brings back memories for Diatre, where death and killing were seen as nothing but attacks against… she puts those memories behind her lest they travel to her face and instead focuses on the wrongness of that statement, where theft or sedition against one woman is more than murder. Power more than life.
Woman needs taking down a peg, if you ask Diatre. Noone will, but that’s her opinion.
<Sound like you are a supporter of the silver tyrant.>
Assandre gives Diatre a strange look, but Diatre can’t work out what she said wrong, or how the other is taking the supposed critique of the Grandmother, when all Diatre wants is a rise.
She moves to grip Assandre by the wrist, a Levis gesture of affection, though whether its region wide or just the towns she travelled in her youth she hasn’t worked out. All she knows is that she wants to press the advantage, keep the thief off kilter so she can learn what the other knows without revealing more of herself to scrutiny. Especially with her cover dripping down her cleavage.
Assandre wrenches her arm away, leaning back to take all of Diatre in. “Human.” She whispers, caution marring her face as she taps on the binding after a moment. <I thought you just a bard.>
<Two facts can be true.> Diatre says, hiding the rattling at being caught with the smugness of having the upper hand. She lightly tugs her ‘friend’ back to shoulder to shoulder, to maintain the illusion of lovers or deep friends. <So how do you work for Grandmother, or are just just another thief?> Press the advantage while she has it, dig deeper and mine this thief for information.
<I’d rather die than be one of Grandmother’s pieces. She acts for herself and I will find a way to let the people know –“ She starts to try to delete the words by scratching through them, damaging the binding but aware that this recording has no way of removing words said in accident.
Diatre grabs her by the shoulder less she damage the binding so much that Diatre cannot use it again. It took too long to gain this one to have to burn it and destroy all evidence. She looks to the thief, the revolutionary; a thing impossible except in folklore where she was born, and remembers it is the bard’s role to play gardener to politics – usually at the hire of someone, but if getting the book and ending the Grandmother’s rule might line up… who is she to stop a tale from being told?
<What must I steal to help you, and how can you help my plan?>
Diatre was head to toe covered in layers and creams, a root pressed on her tongue and corded vine between her fingers. The bitter taste makes her eyes tear up, even as gravity and her own weight dig the vine into the flesh on her hand. Each step, each push up the tower is slower than she would like, but in reality is just her perception, her body trained from years of tasks around her cottage and the muscles she’s trained from being a Levis bard.
She catches the lip of the tower with her arms the outer layer of her outfit torn from vines, though thankfully no skin beneath. Pulling herself up she comes into the chambers, looking for two bindings, the mage’s book and the red ledger of the Grandmother for her thief friend. She has to trust Assandre, not to snitch, not to sabotage, even though the rope and weight have been such a help as was the circuit that helped launch it up there.
Her search is slow, thorough. Someone would have to have caught her against the deep pink night’s sky, her outfit blending against vine and sky. She sees the Grandmother’s touch all around the room, thorough, methodical, perfect for moving a city around with all the wisdom her age gives her, and the control she seeks, to get exactly what she wants. With gloved hands and covered face she breathes through the cloth, pretending the room is surveilled like the very steps of her home, touching nothing unless she needs to.
She presses her tongue down on the root, trying to maintain concentration as she seeks a safe or lockbox. Searching for many moments she eventually realises there is none, that the bindings are not in one of her shelves, and that the room is precisely empty of many things of import.
She has no ability to see invisible things, but she can think things through and the chambers seem too small, too cozy in dimensions from the silhouette outside. Diatre paced the wall to wall of the chambers and nods, yes, there is a wall hollow here somewhere. She begins to tap slowly, listening for any change in tone until “thunk thunk thunk”, the deeper tone belying that the wall furthest from the window is not entirely wall.
Diatre dare not rub the wall, the alive nature of the buildings here leading her to fear natural toxins or defences if the Grandmother were smart about things. She picks up a small fire-blossom, using its heat to trace the wall, wanting to see if any circuits sing to the heat or any panels curl away from it.
The curling happens first and soon she is descending down the vine, having left everything where it was. Unhooking took a moment of time, playing the vine forwards and pulling, until all she has to do is wind up the vine and depart.
Good, clean, gone.
While getting out of town was easy, as was getting paid by the witch, it is getting the book to Assandre that seems challenging. The witch lies and says the twisted vine markings mean nothing, and that she has never in her life seen a purple foliad. She cannot travel back to the town so soon, and the bindings, both of them, burn holes in her pack. Complications and adventures await her, and she still has about two years before Kenthim returns.
Lessons were hard.
The hike to the witch she trusted had been short, especially as she had been one step short of running the entire time. Just past the small town Kenthim had lived and worked in, was the hut of her witch friend and the bard burst through the door in a flurry of energy.
“I need a job.” She didn’t bother with words, hoping that the woman who was experienced in everything else was smart enough to work out Diatre’s hand signing. Or knew someone with their own hand-language.
“Not song, one presumes.” The witch replies, eyes gleaming with mischief. Diatre suspects the young witch has had more adventures than Kenthim and her both, though her heart says her dead troll mentor Sen’thal knew more than the witch could possibly know.
“Not song.” Diatre replies, adding the sign for secret as context, even though the witch was wise enough to get the implication. “Easy though, rotted.” She motions to herself, hiding strength within, but coming from inexperience though she hopes the witch is not that perceptive.
“Knife, words, or sneaking?” The witch asks, trying to be vague. And then she says aloud a word that Diatre has only vaguely heard of: cogsiliare. The dead drops of Levis are much more magical than those of clandestine work in Tyr. While she had not worked the illegal of her time back in Tyr, she had passed the taboo between those she trusted (but maybe didn’t like) and the complexity and subtlety of the bard hidey holes impressed her. Mainly because of the implication that a mage must know part of a bard’s information network – and Diatre has never been one to trust a stranger.
“Sneaking. And no holes, clean Passover.” Her eyes narrow, hoping that the one hiring her will be the witch and not a third party, especially with her name in This work not made yet.
“If I vouch for you, what you get traded gets split.” The witch counters, her smile filled with teeth and menace, their friendship straining over the idea of sliding into the acceptable illegal together.
“This is fair.”
She had left a note with the town that she was headed north for a few days, that if Kenthim returned he should be told that she is trading a blanket she wove for something city-fancy. It would not be a lie, and did provide a nice story for why the bard was up that way – Diatre not brave enough yet to use the songbird lie that other bards cling to and not willing to talk to other bards until she is more than novice in her game.
She has been asked to procure a binding kept in the chambers of a Grandmother, something apprehended as proof that its owner needed a certain Exile tattoo – or needless community service. The chamber was high up, on the third floor of a winding tower covered in vines. A quick look had made the task more than hard – the vines were the type she’d found in life were fine to foliads, but extremely toxic to her human skin.
One torn and sewn shirt later and Diatre has fingerless gloves that work up to her elbows and still no further idea of how to cover the rest of the skin that Levis outfits liked to show. There is an equally tall building a few over, but that would require enough rope and a hook, and both supplies are more the kind of thing sourced closer to a river or Oceanus.
Diatre wants to use as little outside help as possible, so getting a case of the place is a day spent shopping in the nearby market, straining her energy to activate long dormant brain implants to collect as much information as she could on the tower. She asks nothing about the tower itself, instead asking about local politics and gossip; wanting to see if she could also work out her employer.
Up the side, in the dead of night seems to still be the best option, entering the base like you own it has the complication of a very large troll receptionist, and gossip has it that she threw the last person trying to get into the tower three whole people’s lengths. Her employer is likely the local academy mage – and the impromptu projectile. The mage was around the city, brandishing his binding and talking about realm ending space rocks, and desires to overthrow the Grandmother. Hence the confiscating of the book. And the charging of the tower by the mage. Diatre cannot for the life of her imagine why that would mean Exile though.
“Someone’s about to do something illegal.” Comes the very soft but sing-song voice of someone by her shoulder. She turns to see a slightly younger woman skin dark as to be almost purple, foliad, neck and shoulders tattooed with black ink, and wearing one of the tighter corsets Diatre has ever seen over a baby blue billowy shirt. Mmm – hot.
Attraction is not something Diatre has had to deal with much in her time in Levis – but the sudden bolt of it distracts her enough that she falls down onto her arm, spraining her wrist and shoulder with a sharp sting that just keeps going. That WILL complicate things.
She rolls to her side to look up at the lady with the voice and the moves. “Can help you?” Diatre quickly checks to see if the fall has damaged the paint on her wrist, feeling already a sticky feeling on her palm that hints at blood.
“I did not know I could knock such a blossoming flower off her feet.” The purple skin foliad teases, grasping under Diatre’s elbow and effortlessly pulling her up, only to notice the vines around the woman’s feet rooted into the ground. “I’m Assandre, but I still think we have much to discuss.”
Assandre starts to walk, just assuming Diatre will follow, and the way she smiled at the bard along with those mischievous but kind eyes causes teeth to bite and smudge green lips into pink. Her steps a quick to catch up, blood lightly dripping down fingertips to soil the rough pressed earth behind her.
The tower becomes just a point at the top of the town skyline, as Assandre makes her way to a place only she knows, making weird circles and swirls through city streets as if she is trying to shake the idea that she is being followed.
“Can wait up? You take many breaths.” Diatre strains herself to match the relentless pace of the purple lass, her many skirts flowing like a dancer’s troupe around her as that throbbing arm pains her the more she gets into the obsession of the one who drives her heart aflutter and her mind to confusion.
Eventually they stop, beneath a porch that is more two massive drooping leaves than anything stylised. Assandre grabs her by the shoulder of her good arm and tugs her intimately close. “Whisper now, lest they hear you.”
“Words not strong.” Diatre says with much more patience than she has in this moment. She tries signing to the cheeky woman, though she doesn’t expect much: “I’m much more fluent here.”
Her new ‘friend’ looks confused, and a little put out, the ease of simple communication lost in a language barrier that leaves Diatre chuckling in a growing sense of familiarity. Clandenstine is lost to the bard in the amusement of watching Assandre trying to think this through while Diatre gingerly grabs her own knees, bent over and laughing with only her diaphragm and the soft wheeze of expelled air.
“Come. I know way.” Diatre stands, flicking Assandre on the nose before lightly grasping the woman by the wrist – she knows what she’s doing and her heart does a flip when she sees the tips of the woman’s ears a deep burgundy. Good, yes, this will do.
They huddle at a morning drinking establishment, the smell of amheriste laced kefbalga brew soaking the air around the little spot as bard and chaos lean against each other, heads propped over a journal like binding.
They have waited until their drinks have arrived to start their conversation, though the pair of them seem flushed from the secretive way they press together to keep this all clandestine. Diatre alone seems hyper aware of how Assandre’s thigh presses to hers, and the woman keeps glancing to the hand Diatre has on her hip to keep them pulled together as they trace words mixed with circuits on the screen.
<You have been too eager in the Grandmother. That will get you in trouble if you plan to attack her.>
Diatre snickers at the idea, her – a killer? Not likely with the kinds of secrets she’s still trying to keep even now.
<I am eager in getting into the tower. I was hired to remove something.> She knows she has to give this woman something, but still can’t put all her trust in a pair of pretty eyes and pretty thighs.
Assandre leans back to take a sip of her drink and Diatre stays stock still, thinking about her counter question and why the woman might be trying to help her. Apart from the community thing.
<From your look, and your positioning, you’re an out of towner?> Assandre says, giving Diatre a once over that leaves her feeling hot all over. She’d worn a simple top and pants combo, the gloves packed away, and not much jewellery in case something could get caught in the job she was hired for.
She pulls at the neckline of her shirt to let in some air, and feels herself nervous when she sees greyed skin poking back out at her. The sweat from the running and her movement have smeared her paint onto her clothes – which is not so troubling when she is local, but here in the big town with all the eyes on her? She pulls her top up firmly and thinks about getting back to the room she is staying at for a song.
Assandre grasps her by the wrist and draws her attention back to the binding. <Your secret is safe Che, no one notices.> And with a flourish the lady of chaos flourishes a scarf, wrapping it around Diatre’s neck and shoulders before biting the base of her ear. <We must assume our roles, che?>
Diatre just nods, brain fried from unexpected pleasure. As she sits there, rebooting, her implants draw up a memory; a certain symbol of twisted vines, which she sees on Assandre’s neck, nestled in a more complex design – a mark she’s seen on the wrist of a certain witch. Diatre thinks and then grins, taking Assandre by the hand and bringing her lips to kiss her lightly on the neck, kissing the tattoo. <What does this mean?>
She watches in delight as Assandre flushes in return, her dark grey hair swaying in its ponyt-tail, as the bard gets to watch her consider her words, and probably the confidences she might be breaking just to get Diatre to be a little more careful. Her rebooting brain has already worked out the ‘why’ of what is going on: that Assandre alone or with a crew is doing her own little illegal job on the Grandmother, and that Diatre stumbling in with inexperience would definitely make things harder should that crew be slower than the bard.
<You should not be so bold. We have just met.> Assandre slips back, judging her and sneaking propriety into the gap between them, when shock value and chaos was moments ago the woman’s weapons to keep Diatre off balance. It is here that the bard realises the game and is disappointed – that they are not two teams trying to work together, but she is one individual trying to warn Diatre off while working out what else to nick.
<Were I not your Che moments ago? What can a simple symbol mean so much that I could lose Che status so quickly, missy?> Her heart hardens and the infatuation she felt starts to simmer down, powering a cold rage that’s building to motivate her.
<I just wish to warn you about how the Grandmother is and how far her reach goes. I would hate to see you caught and exiled like so many before you.> She watches the one beside her lie so easily and it leaves a bitter taste along with the cold rage that causes her hands to be so very precise when scribing out the next part.
<Exile keeps being broached around town like it is nothing more than a light shunning. Those Exiled are deemed never to return to all of Levis.>
<If a Grandmother cannot trust the people around her, then she cannot trust herself to make the unselfish choices. I do not know how they did it where you are from, but attacks against the Grandmother are the highest wrong here.> That brings back memories for Diatre, where death and killing were seen as nothing but attacks against… she puts those memories behind her lest they travel to her face and instead focuses on the wrongness of that statement, where theft or sedition against one woman is more than murder. Power more than life.
Woman needs taking down a peg, if you ask Diatre. Noone will, but that’s her opinion.
<Sound like you are a supporter of the silver tyrant.>
Assandre gives Diatre a strange look, but Diatre can’t work out what she said wrong, or how the other is taking the supposed critique of the Grandmother, when all Diatre wants is a rise.
She moves to grip Assandre by the wrist, a Levis gesture of affection, though whether its region wide or just the towns she travelled in her youth she hasn’t worked out. All she knows is that she wants to press the advantage, keep the thief off kilter so she can learn what the other knows without revealing more of herself to scrutiny. Especially with her cover dripping down her cleavage.
Assandre wrenches her arm away, leaning back to take all of Diatre in. “Human.” She whispers, caution marring her face as she taps on the binding after a moment. <I thought you just a bard.>
<Two facts can be true.> Diatre says, hiding the rattling at being caught with the smugness of having the upper hand. She lightly tugs her ‘friend’ back to shoulder to shoulder, to maintain the illusion of lovers or deep friends. <So how do you work for Grandmother, or are just just another thief?> Press the advantage while she has it, dig deeper and mine this thief for information.
<I’d rather die than be one of Grandmother’s pieces. She acts for herself and I will find a way to let the people know –“ She starts to try to delete the words by scratching through them, damaging the binding but aware that this recording has no way of removing words said in accident.
Diatre grabs her by the shoulder less she damage the binding so much that Diatre cannot use it again. It took too long to gain this one to have to burn it and destroy all evidence. She looks to the thief, the revolutionary; a thing impossible except in folklore where she was born, and remembers it is the bard’s role to play gardener to politics – usually at the hire of someone, but if getting the book and ending the Grandmother’s rule might line up… who is she to stop a tale from being told?
<What must I steal to help you, and how can you help my plan?>
Diatre was head to toe covered in layers and creams, a root pressed on her tongue and corded vine between her fingers. The bitter taste makes her eyes tear up, even as gravity and her own weight dig the vine into the flesh on her hand. Each step, each push up the tower is slower than she would like, but in reality is just her perception, her body trained from years of tasks around her cottage and the muscles she’s trained from being a Levis bard.
She catches the lip of the tower with her arms the outer layer of her outfit torn from vines, though thankfully no skin beneath. Pulling herself up she comes into the chambers, looking for two bindings, the mage’s book and the red ledger of the Grandmother for her thief friend. She has to trust Assandre, not to snitch, not to sabotage, even though the rope and weight have been such a help as was the circuit that helped launch it up there.
Her search is slow, thorough. Someone would have to have caught her against the deep pink night’s sky, her outfit blending against vine and sky. She sees the Grandmother’s touch all around the room, thorough, methodical, perfect for moving a city around with all the wisdom her age gives her, and the control she seeks, to get exactly what she wants. With gloved hands and covered face she breathes through the cloth, pretending the room is surveilled like the very steps of her home, touching nothing unless she needs to.
She presses her tongue down on the root, trying to maintain concentration as she seeks a safe or lockbox. Searching for many moments she eventually realises there is none, that the bindings are not in one of her shelves, and that the room is precisely empty of many things of import.
She has no ability to see invisible things, but she can think things through and the chambers seem too small, too cozy in dimensions from the silhouette outside. Diatre paced the wall to wall of the chambers and nods, yes, there is a wall hollow here somewhere. She begins to tap slowly, listening for any change in tone until “thunk thunk thunk”, the deeper tone belying that the wall furthest from the window is not entirely wall.
Diatre dare not rub the wall, the alive nature of the buildings here leading her to fear natural toxins or defences if the Grandmother were smart about things. She picks up a small fire-blossom, using its heat to trace the wall, wanting to see if any circuits sing to the heat or any panels curl away from it.
The curling happens first and soon she is descending down the vine, having left everything where it was. Unhooking took a moment of time, playing the vine forwards and pulling, until all she has to do is wind up the vine and depart.
Good, clean, gone.
While getting out of town was easy, as was getting paid by the witch, it is getting the book to Assandre that seems challenging. The witch lies and says the twisted vine markings mean nothing, and that she has never in her life seen a purple foliad. She cannot travel back to the town so soon, and the bindings, both of them, burn holes in her pack. Complications and adventures await her, and she still has about two years before Kenthim returns.
Lessons were hard.
Thank you for reading, feel free to give feedback.
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