Ulric couldn't really say anything to that. There were happy people back there, some of them. In his generous moments, he could even think that it was possible that he could have been one of them if he hadn't been so withdrawn. All it took to dispel that illusion though was to think again of that first pristine moment of waking, with the boughs of [Godtrees] towering over him and the smell of magic in the air. Yeah, this world and this life had his old beat to shit, he thought.
"Which brings us back to our current topic: if we don't figure out who targeted us we both of us might be dying young. I don't know about you, but I am far too pretty to be watering the roots." He exclaimed.
A very unladylike snort, preceded his Shadow's assessment, "Let us turn our attentions to those who have access to the shipping logs for Trachn'ir."
Next, she threw a real curveball, "It would be for the best if you stay behind in the rooms to await me. I can blend more easily than you in the crowds an-"
"BUUULLSHIIIT!" Interjected Ulric loudly. If they hadn't been walking down a narrow side alley that saw not much traffic, other than some disturbingly large rats, he'd have worried about upsetting the neighbors.
"You pull eyes everywhere you go, lady. No fewer than three times I've had to make clear to some passerby that they are better served by fucking off to wherever it is they spend their time that isn't nearby. The disguise worked to make you not look like an Iriel'en work of art. Now, you just look like a merely stupendously attractive Aes'r woman, absent your kin's reputation for casual murder. If you take off wandering around this city by yourself, you'll end up with more little incidents like in the merchant's office. Aaaaand," He counterargued, "you said it before that we neither of us draw as much attention together as separate, not to mention being able to watch each other's backs."
She smiled at his assertions and made to offer her own but Ulric was not willing for even a second to relent on this. Especially not when the only reason she was along in the first place was that she refused to be left back in Irielhos to guard her little brother while he was learning the ropes, after a previous assassination attempt had nearly gotten to him.
"Denied. Negative. Nope. Nein. Ain't gonna happen, Taipan." Ulric pronounced, cutting her off, stopping at the mouth of that ally's intersection with another, larger, thoroughfare.
"While the Twins are up, you don't go anywhere I don't go. We are not playing into the hands of some jerkwads that want to do a grab and smash on you in the first place by having you sashaying that tush solo." He ordered.
His Shadow didn't take that lying down, "I could simply disappear into the city, leaving you behind regardless of what you say." She declared, weirdly set on this idea.
"You could, but you won't." He told the woman completely serious.
"Oh?" the lovely voice said, falling dangerously, "And how will you stop me, Glade Chief?"
She was bluffing here. She was good at it, and she'd probably fool most people but he'd been around her long enough. Besides, he had a solid counteroffer.
"I'll grab my shit and start walking out of this city is what I'll do, and you can follow, or you can hang around playing spy. I won't just sit around waiting for you to get captured without my being around to cover you though, I'd rather leave you behind. Mark my words Taipan." Ulric matched her tone to the T.
They stared at one another, neither moving, each with their own thoughts.
The key to bluffing was to never do it. Then, when somebody else tried, they inevitably backed themselves into a corner. It was a little like entropy, they just naturally ended up losing.
Ulric had learned a lifetime ago that you always got fucked when you played games others chose. The failure to do that, to accept Elf games, had got him saddled with a Shadow in the first place, and now with a wife as well. That they were the same person did nothing to take the sting out of the lack of agency he'd had in much of it. He appreciated Taipan, now, after all of their time together, but he hadn't forgotten that it was her father's little gambit that had led to all of this in the first place and those decisions had been made with her good in mind, not his.
Well, he had to live with that part, he'd long since passed being able to simply tell her to fuck off. He was committed, damn his eyes. But. Being committed didn't mean being subservient or allowing someone to do whatever they wanted when what they wanted was stupid.
There was only one way their little operation worked: he was in charge of it or he was not part of it. He was ready to admit that he might love this thorny rose but he wasn't going to play second fiddle to her, that wasn't who he was. Problem was, it might not be who she was either, and that was important to know. A successful marriage demanded that there be partnership. It also demanded someone be in charge. The only couples he'd ever seen last were the ones where one person, with due respect, consideration, warmth, and involvement of their partner made the final calls. When that went away, there came problems. Things got complicated first, then ugly later.
If there came a time when his back was to the wall, he knew he'd trust his own instincts, his own judgment, and jump. Taipan had to be ready to jump where he did, or she wasn't going to fit into things long-term. Times like now, when she wanted to go one way, in direct counter to the stance she'd taken to be coming along in the first place, against his own better judgment. Disregarding her, by now voluntary, role of Shadow, that had to be part of their relationship. He trusted the woman to be competent, fierce, and knowledgeable with regards to some specific things. But he didn't trust anyone to take the reins of his life and he'd never be able to change that, no matter what else had changed since his Reforging. The nagging influence of [Lord of the Ancient Glade] didn't even have to whisper at him for this to be so, he was born this way.
Hal'et had offered him a piece of advice regarding his proud consort that had always proven sound: Do not let her think you weak. It was in Taipan to rule a partner that was not strong enough to resist her, even if they could withstand her abrasive personality. He could guess that was why none of her other relationships had ended well, that and she appeared to reject anything close to the traditional concepts of settling down to a family. His Taipan was a hunter, a predator, and she would waste away in captivity. Which is why he could do nothing but offer her freedom: to follow or not, as she wished.
It hadn't taken them long to come to this point but Ulric knew it was good for both of them to settle it now. He wasn't an Elf whisperer but these Iriel'en viewed many aspects of life in terms of a challenge or contest. Far be it for him to tell them that they were wrong, Elves weren't Humans and he didn't have any intention of trying to put their behaviors in terms of his old world, that place had long since lost any right to tell anybody how to live correctly. One world ruined was plenty, thanks.
She had lost some of her obvious heat, had gone coolly considering. He knew that it wasn't gone though, she was merely thinking it over for herself, revealing less overtly to him. She did that when they sparred, to make herself harder to read. He was going to make it an easy decision for her. Yes or no.
Turning, Ulric started back to the inn where their travel gear was stored. His stride didn't deviate when he heard the disgruntled shout behind him, nor did he look backwards. He'd intended to go do this thing alone in the first place. If this aggravating, distracting, wonderful Elf couldn't get with the program he wasn't going to hang around waiting for things to come apart.
He was firming up the straps on his pack when the scowling visage of his Shadow stalked into the room.
"You will not be leaving Ulric! I will not allow it." She declared angrily, her posture blocking the door as she kicked it shut behind her.
Cold anger started battling calm at that.
"You will not allow it." Ulric stated, as if tasting the words.
He shouldered out of the pack and let it fall to the floor. Stretching as he did. Rolling up to his toes to loosen legs.
"Very well then, Taipan. Come. Let us see whether you can stop me." He challenged.
Ulric had a feeling he knew where this was going. He regretted the furniture that he was going to have to destroy, if necessary. He'd learned much in his time in that arboreal fortress. The best warriors in Orlethrem had trained with and against him. All the while, he'd held the form of this Huntress in front of him in comparison. The only enemy he hadn't really beaten. This time though, he was going to go one hundred and ten, right from the start.
He saw his partner's expression shift from outrage to determination. She took a step forward, accepting his proposition, her mouth shaping some cutting statement or another. As soon as she did, Ulric let her have it, ignoring whatever she'd said.
[Warrior's Instinct]
[Battle Rhythm]
[Surge]
Time dilated and Ulric came alive. His senses burned, his core pulsed to his heart beat, Ceraun empowering his limbs and his perceptions. The edges of the room hardened and he could see the wooly fibers of his Shadow's clothes waving, disturbed as her weight settled forwards into that one step.
The floor creaked ominously when he pushed off of it, bowing under the stress, and he rocketed forwards, erasing the distance between himself and his opponent in a single step, Fyir root forward, the Dance imbedded in his motions far more completely now than in the past. As he closed, he saw Taipan's eyes widen slowly, her blued irises expanding, her pupils dilating with her own flood of adrenaline, or whatever passed for it in Aes'r biology. The shadows behind her started to squirm, her mana controlling them even as he completed his step. Too late, he thought, grimly satisfied.
He caught his enemy flat footed, his leg between hers and his hands secured to her form, her hands scrabbled weakly, ineffectually against his for a moment, her shadows too slow to manifest under her control, and he whipped her over his hip. The womanly, if solidly built, frame of his Shadow, rotated easily over his center of balance, and hit the floor boards, back squarely absorbing the momentum to blow the wind from her lungs, in a gasp.
The shadows receded to the floor, absent their master's conscious control but Ulric had fought this opponent enough times to know that Taipan wasn't beaten until she was completely neutralized. Before she could obey gravity's pull to fall back to the floor Ulric had his arms around her neck in what she'd called a "Death's Embrace" and what he'd known as an Ezekial choke, for some ancient warrior, his fore arm under her lifted chin, compressed against his other arm, locking tightly and shutting off blood flow through her arteries to her brain. Stunned by the throw, he felt her resistance crumble and she was limp within a few more seconds, the vital circulation halted completely. Against his strength, even had his opponent managed to duck her chin, that would have been a delaying tactic, perhaps enough to fight free, but probably not. Absent those extra few seconds, he'd buried her.
Ulric stood over her form, releasing his combat skills, putting the tyrannical creature in his hind brain to sleep, and lifted Taipan gently to lay on the bed. She'd be around in a few seconds and none the worse for wear. He'd have had to be rougher with her had she not been hit like a thunderbolt by his bullrush. Chalk one up for the Glade Chief.
The limp frame jerked and his Shadow rose to a fighting crouch on the bed, scrabbling for an opponent that wasn't there, before she realized that he wasn't fighting her any longer. From there she dropped heavily back to her supine position and stared at the ceiling for a few moments, considering.
Throughout this process, Ulric stayed where he was, standing nearby in case she needed assistance, but very carefully out of knife range. He decided better against saying anything. Best to just let the last minute sort of simmer on the stove.
"Next time," the melodic voice declared, without any of its prior heat, from her comfortable repose, "I will not answer your challenge with a door to my back and no room to maneuver."
He nodded his agreement. Yep, that had been a poor decision on her part. Better if she'd set a time and a date, preferably outside the city to settle the contest.
"Also, Ulric, you have been, what do you call it again?" She hummed lightly a second before she found it, "Ah! Yes! Sandbagging. You have been sandbagging me in our practices."
Again, he nodded. He had very definitely not been giving her his fullest and best effort, that is true. Partly because he anticipated such a day, long ago, the writing being in florescent, neon letters on the wall. Partly, because he didn't want to hurt her when they were only practicing. She wasn't coming after him with all she had either, after all. He had also not had this newest addition to his class abilities, probably manifest by the combination of his core's awakening and the recent incident with the Raging. [Surge] took what was already a high spec set of physical parameters and made them frightening. His body dimly ached from the brief use of this skill.
Ulric hadn't even noticed the seventy kilos of her weight. He'd crossed the space between them before she could even have her own skills ready, before her core could utilize its mana fully. Even better, his perception had been amplified with the rest. There was none of the potential mismatch between heightened speed of motion and his brain's ability to comprehend and direct it, which would have rendered him too clumsy to even utilize or coordinate the accelerated movements. The result was that his Shadow had been entirely unprepared for how rapidly he could press his attack. He'd also been able to control, to an incredible degree, the exact amount of force with which he wanted her to hit the floor; Ulric had been able to take quite a bit off of it at the last second, or he might have done this lovely woman real harm, which was not the point.
It was a mild surprise to him, Ulric had very much expected slightly less grace from his normally so staunchly proud partner. Even as well as he thought he knew her, she still periodically surprised him with her oddness.
Rolling to her side, Taipan propped her head up on her arm, and her features wore that gambler's mask, erasing what went on from behind her gaze from his sight. Ulric maintained his silence, allowing the Elf to digest fully this experience. He was self-aware enough to understand that anything he said could and would be held against him and he probably lacked the tact to not piss her off.
"Fine." Conceded his Wife, at last dropping her flat expression, and transforming it with the smile that made his ears burn, "We will remain together, at all times. I will not leave you behind to investigate the city and you will not depart it without me. You will lead our Dance and I will support you as far as I may. Are you satisfied, [Lord of the Ancient Glade], husband?"
Ah. Well. Between that second part of her address, which still just got him rightly in the mood, and her tugging her dress down to reveal the softness therein, they did not accomplish much else that afternoon. Nevertheless, Ulric felt that they had come over a dangerous impasse and more tightly bonded than before. Elves can be a little strange, what could he say?
Thanks, Halet, he told the silence of the room, later.
The afternoon 'wasted' *ahem*, they made dinner in the common room a sedate affair, though free from booze. Pillow talk had largely consisted of the two of them plotting on how to get their hands on shipping manifestos without being caught or how to isolate the ones that had penned those letters. That it had not been the same hand was clear, the elegant lines, smoothly controlled, of the one Twice Dead carried was distinct from the stiffer, less precise hand on the catch crew thug. If they could get a match on the authors of these two documents, they'd have a pretty solid connection.
After Ulric and his disguised partner stuffed their faces with meat and some kind of spiced cabbage, with a loaf of bread split between them, they solidified their plan of action. Tonight was a night on the town. They'd head to the docks and try to observe the movements of boats into or out of the city.
Taipan was certain that the slaves would be most likely extradited from the city outside normal traffic hours, on personal vessels, not mercantile ones. It was simply too obvious that merchants liked to smuggle goods, even the 'honest' ones. And, on the smaller vessels, it would be easier to hide along small inlets or up tributaries too narrow for the larger ships to navigate, which vastly opened up the number of launch or unloading points such ships could access. For the cost of a single Aes'r slave, a run of a single live capture would be more than adequate compensation to take the chances and run the entire length of the river.
Ulric remarked on the incredible temptation for so lucrative a venture. Taipan set him straight.
"Ulric, any person caught buying or selling a sentient being on Orlethrem territory is brought to the city street and flayed alive. They are then slathered in honey for the insects to consume, all the while a medicos remains on station to keep them alive for as long as possible, and to reapply the honey. Slavers are not suffered. That my Celestin cousins are involved in this is sickening, rot has clearly infested the realms of the Aes'r. Perhaps this war was necessary, to burn our lands free of corruption." Judged his Shadow, harshly, in a whisper.
That was a distinctly Iriel'en take on the situation. Very all or nothing, no greys about it. For a matter as heinous as the buying and selling of your fellow man, he couldn't hold himself in disagreement, however. Some things shouldn't be done. The rest of their discussion was mostly cover, discussions of the expected breakup of the rivers
It was a fortunate thing that the Elven peoples tended to socialize in very distinct, very tight nit social circles. The relative isolation of he and his partner was patently unremarkable, almost no direct interaction occurred between tables. Sometimes one member would drift away from their group to chat with another, but only rarely. That was less the case amongst the humans or beastkin who were more open than their pointy-eared neighbors but still not exactly gadflies.
Ulric's ears didn't catch much of the floating talk but what he did mostly centered on the effects of the expected hostilities. It was, more or less, an open secret that war would be coming. According to the floating rumors he could pick up, nobody knew that the strategy was not the same business as usual. Good. Lord Brighteyes was going to give the border cities of Prespang a proper kick in the pills and their armies were going to find out what it was like when the Orlethrem stopped playing defense.
To outward appearances, Ulric was a barbarian merchant hashing out the coming trade season with his local partner. None who overheard their discussions regarding how long to reach certain villages, probable resting sites, dangers on the road, expected patrols, the odds of bandits, would have reason to think anything differently. Before they retired to stroll amicably up the stairs, half that common room would only remember that the Human merchant had an odd accent and that his partner was clearly slumming to be with him.
They dropped quietly out of the window, long after the Twins had set, their bed arranged to make it look like two sleeping forms side by side should anyone enter to check, though they'd have to open the locked door to do so. Agile crouches absorbed the momentum of their fall and they were off, down predetermined streets into the cold dark of the city to track down whoever it was that was trading in sentient lives at the docks.
Torches burned in sconces in the poor districts. Glowlamps put off a soft yellow brightness in the richer ones. The flickering, dancing shadows cast by the torches were far better for stealthy travel so Taipan led them along the narrow alleys through the more destitute parts of Trachn'ir. They made next to no sound on the cobbled streets, their soft boots padding under deft steps. Compared to trying to match his Shadow's quiet tread upon leaf litter and fallen branches, this was easy. Absent her wig and wearing an imitation of the Iriel'en black warrior's underclothes over top of her travel robes, the former Huntress truly did resemble more a shadow than a person. Ulric had not had a similar likeness made, it would have put up flags for a Human to be wearing the traditional garb of a Deep Woods Elf. He was, instead, wearing the charcoal overcoat he'd had made and doing his best not to be drastically more visible than the woman in the lead.
Only twice did they catch notice of any as they made their way through the city. Once, by one of the city's more proficient catburglars, on his way back from a haul along the rooftops, his practiced eye catching the motion of others of similar ilk to himself. The two of them were obviously not guards and he had two more jobs before dawn so he returned to his rooftop run. The second, by a duo who were active serial killers, impersonating a drunk couple and killing any would be muggers who came along to take advantage of the 'inebriated' pair. The woman's eyes saw heat, a skill of her class, Ripper, and noted the flash of easy movements along parallel trails. These were not the prey the couple sought though, they loved the thrill of turning an aggressor, so confident in their power into a weeping, powerless thing before savoring the end. Neither time, were either Ulric or his Shadow aware of the attention.
So it was that they came to the docks, half a Round after leaving their rooms behind. The scarves they'd wrapped around their faces caught the mist their breaths would have produced against the cold night air next to the frozen highway of the river.
There was a surprising amount of active transport going on despite the season. It might not be a peak season but cities as large as Trachn'ir didn't sleep through the Winter. Goods all the way from the Atun, Svartalfin for crystal, sea where a narrow inlet permitted birth of the Zelus, initially a salt river. That changed drastically once it was fed by the myriad tributary rivers that poured off the Heaven's reach glaciers, year round flows. Not far North of its birthplace in the Crystal Sea, the Zelus grew incredibly large, the salt flow diluted to near nothing by the fresh waters coming in from the Heaven's Reach Mountains to the East and the Plateau of Ancients to the West. It was a strangeness to the geology of Varda that an ocean should flow towards an inland sea but there was, according to the Orlethrem, a deep trench that occasionally poured molten rock, Ulric recognized the signs of continental separation, that shifted the flows of water. Whatever the case, deep keeled ocean going ships were able to travel from the warm clear blue waters of the Atun ocean, down the Zelus, all the way to Prosper's gate at the Vatyn sea.
For a Celestin city like this, food was of paramount importance. This kind of a population needed large volumes of food, food that outstripped its local production. The docks reflected that reality. There were grain bins, crates loaded with bags of crushed or powdered cereals. Rice in staggering quantities. A surprising amount of fresh produce, kept under cover against the frost, but preserved by the cold of the season. Ulric noted many fish barrels on the docks, the tang of salt in the air slightly foreign to him. Iriel'en did not frequently eat fish, but it occurred there regularly in their communal eateries, mostly caught from the rivers. There were exotic fish on drying racks, curing here and there, scales glittering silver as they caught the light of an enormous half-moon. Yerial, the moon, stood high in her track across the night sky, making stealth difficult. Guards patrolled here with regularity, in the shuffle of cold, bored, men and women wishing they were most other places that described guard duty across every world.
Taipan had them crouched next to a few stacked crates of what smelled like animal furs until a particularly dense cloud draped itself over the bisected silver disk masking its moonlight. Under cover of this new dark the pair of them whispered across the cut stone of the dock, flitting from cover to cover, sometimes on their bellies, crawling along in the shadow of a collection of baskets, icy stone pulling the heat from their bodies.
Their destination was an unadorned shack surrounded by torches, and with a single Elf guard, hands tucked under armpits against the chill air, in attendance. According to Taipan's memory of arriving to Trachn'ir by ship, this is where the shipping logs would be kept under lock and key. Copies of the reports were delivered to the powers that be, their numbers pored over by those who had a stake in making sure those numbers read profit for the city and its peoples. The originals, however, were never to leave this shack, not until they were archived at the end of the year. It was a new year, celebrated only a few months ago, which meant that he and Taipan wouldn't have boxes and boxes of documents to hurriedly scan through. Before they could scan anything though they had to get to that shack and break in without raising an alarm.
The good news was, the docks were absolutely fucking massive and there weren't enough patrols to completely cover them. That was by design. Everybody had something to hide, especially the powers that be, and they had a vested interest in being able to make covert movements possible. Impenetrable security hurt the interests of nearly everyone, which made Ulric grin when he considered it. Planned incompetence was something that tickled every funny bone in his body and he was glad to see that some things were truly universal, multiversal, even.
Naturally, his Shadow was more in her element, being able to see freely with her empowered night vision. Ulric was basically as blind as the guards. The good news was that he was deliberately not looking into those torches, ruining his night vision. The Elf standing bathed in their light, and heat, the bastard, would have effectively no vision beyond their reach. He stood looking into a vast abyss of dark, relying more on his hearing to pick up signs of disturbances than his eyes. Or, he would have, had he not been nodding against sleep.
So far, they'd been able to, over the course of a carefully considered, well planned hour, manage a completely undetected approach to the shack. This next part was tricky and would require tight timing. Several hours of discussion had gone into this, both sides arguing their cases and presenting refinements to the approach. At the end, he and his long-eared comrade had come to an agreement: simple was best, and the simplest distraction was a bait and switch. A good ol' Kansas City shuffle.
Ulric was, of course, going to be the distraction. He'd explained how he was going to do it and Taipan had refused to believe him. "Believe me," He'd said to her, "Unless you grew up on my world, in the particular social environment of my home country, there's no goddamned way you see this coming. It gets, literally everyone the first time." And it did. She fell for it, and he'd warned her it was coming. It was like mind control. He felt, more than heard, his Shadow's sigh as she retrieved a small vial filled with booze and handed it to him.
The rough stink of a single distilled raw brandy he slathered himself in. Game time.
Ulric made his way without particular hurry from their place of concealment, his partner in crimes to be long departed to her planned location behind the shack, out of sight. He strode with an uncertain gait, sometimes stiff, sometimes too flexible, the awkwardness aided by a large pebble in his boot.
The uneven shuffle of boots pulled the guard from his stupor just in time to see a Human buck, a large one, stumbling into the torch light reeking of booze and with a glazed look in his eye that said he had no idea how he'd arrived at this point. Rolling his eyes, the guard righted himself and checked his weapons, just in case, before he addressed the drunk.
"What ho! You there, what are you doing on the docks this late?" He tried, reasonably.
"Aye?" Ulric answered, his slurred voice drawling, "Havn't ta seen me'm any overclocks em?"
The stream of nonsense hit the guard physically. Eyes scrunched in confusion he shook himself to approach the Human.
"Look here, manling, you cannot be here at these hours, the docks are closed. You're lucky to have managed to get here, rather than stroll onto the ice and fall into a hole. Turn yourself about and be off!" The guard ordered.
The Human looked around suddenly, hands patting their coat, looking for the pocket that they kept barely missing, which proved surprisingly irritating to the guard to behold, but straightening made them lose balance and they caught themselves just before they fell into him. His hands roughly took the shoulder and set the blurry eyed man straight and he heard a muffled, "Mmthanks, em, gut sirrah." as the man finally found his coat pocket and fished around.
Ulric had accomplished his goal, having gotten close to the guard and distracted him. Now, for the coup de grace. He pulled his hand free of his coat, turning to sidelong to the Elf, and announced, with a surprised, "Dropped my pocket!", his hand forming a ring with forefinger and thumb, remaining digits fanned, and the guard's gaze was drawn like a lodestone to magnetic North, eyes falling into the ring. He never saw the hammer fist that clubbed him across the back of the head but he did see the flash of light inside his brain that announced he'd been concussed, moments before he dropped like a sack of potatoes to the dock. Quickly, before the next guard came at a pass he dumped the rest of the booze vial on the guard's uniform and fished into his coat pocket for a second vial.
At the same time as his nonsensical, but indisputably effective, pocket announcement, Taipan left her own hiding spot, passed behind the both of them without so much as a flutter of air, and worked the door's lock, bypassing it about the time that her companion had propped the unconscious guard against the wall of the shack. They had no idea how long he'd be out so Ulric administered a potent sleep aid, manufactured by herself that evening, the vile smelling liquid poured down the guard's gullet quickly so he didn't aspirate on it. When the guard swallowed the concoction without spitting it back up Ulric threw Taipan a thumbs up and she entered the shack. They had another minute, tops before the guard rotation brought someone in view who would see that the guard was laying asleep, as he would remain for hours unless a remedy for the sleep aid were applied. Even if he woke, he'd be drugged into stupor, hence the booze on his coat.
Ulric was counting seconds, he reached forty-three and was starting to get nervous that they'd wasted this one chance, there wouldn't be another after tonight, when Taipan exited the shack with an extra bit of padding to her chest and flashed the thumbs up, that announced it was time to make their getaway. The lock clicked shut as she closed it and they darted into the night. Thirty seconds later, the pair, huddled beneath an upside-down empty rice basket, heard the guard cry out, "Roric you fookin' louse, that's the third time! They'll have yer ass!" The guard, and his three companions who abandoned their posts to investigate and harangue their intemperate colleague never noticed the rice baskets that glided quietly down the dock.
Ulric couldn't really say anything to that. There were happy people back there, some of them. In his generous moments, he could even think that it was possible that he could have been one of them if he hadn't been so withdrawn. All it took to dispel that illusion though was to think again of that first pristine moment of waking, with the boughs of [Godtrees] towering over him and the smell of magic in the air. Yeah, this world and this life had his old beat to shit, he thought.
"Which brings us back to our current topic: if we don't figure out who targeted us we both of us might be dying young. I don't know about you, but I am far too pretty to be watering the roots." He exclaimed.
A very unladylike snort, preceded his Shadow's assessment, "Let us turn our attentions to those who have access to the shipping logs for Trachn'ir."
Next, she threw a real curveball, "It would be for the best if you stay behind in the rooms to await me. I can blend more easily than you in the crowds an-"
"BUUULLSHIIIT!" Interjected Ulric loudly. If they hadn't been walking down a narrow side alley that saw not much traffic, other than some disturbingly large rats, he'd have worried about upsetting the neighbors.
"You pull eyes everywhere you go, lady. No fewer than three times I've had to make clear to some passerby that they are better served by fucking off to wherever it is they spend their time that isn't nearby. The disguise worked to make you not look like an Iriel'en work of art. Now, you just look like a merely stupendously attractive Aes'r woman, absent your kin's reputation for casual murder. If you take off wandering around this city by yourself, you'll end up with more little incidents like in the merchant's office. Aaaaand," He counterargued, "you said it before that we neither of us draw as much attention together as separate, not to mention being able to watch each other's backs."
She smiled at his assertions and made to offer her own but Ulric was not willing for even a second to relent on this. Especially not when the only reason she was along in the first place was that she refused to be left back in Irielhos to guard her little brother while he was learning the ropes, after a previous assassination attempt had nearly gotten to him.
"Denied. Negative. Nope. Nein. Ain't gonna happen, Taipan." Ulric pronounced, cutting her off, stopping at the mouth of that ally's intersection with another, larger, thoroughfare.
"While the Twins are up, you don't go anywhere I don't go. We are not playing into the hands of some jerkwads that want to do a grab and smash on you in the first place by having you sashaying that tush solo." He ordered.
His Shadow didn't take that lying down, "I could simply disappear into the city, leaving you behind regardless of what you say." She declared, weirdly set on this idea.
"You could, but you won't." He told the woman completely serious.
"Oh?" the lovely voice said, falling dangerously, "And how will you stop me, Glade Chief?"
She was bluffing here. She was good at it, and she'd probably fool most people but he'd been around her long enough. Besides, he had a solid counteroffer.
"I'll grab my shit and start walking out of this city is what I'll do, and you can follow, or you can hang around playing spy. I won't just sit around waiting for you to get captured without my being around to cover you though, I'd rather leave you behind. Mark my words Taipan." Ulric matched her tone to the T.
They stared at one another, neither moving, each with their own thoughts.
The key to bluffing was to never do it. Then, when somebody else tried, they inevitably backed themselves into a corner. It was a little like entropy, they just naturally ended up losing.
Ulric had learned a lifetime ago that you always got fucked when you played games others chose. The failure to do that, to accept Elf games, had got him saddled with a Shadow in the first place, and now with a wife as well. That they were the same person did nothing to take the sting out of the lack of agency he'd had in much of it. He appreciated Taipan, now, after all of their time together, but he hadn't forgotten that it was her father's little gambit that had led to all of this in the first place and those decisions had been made with her good in mind, not his.
Well, he had to live with that part, he'd long since passed being able to simply tell her to fuck off. He was committed, damn his eyes. But. Being committed didn't mean being subservient or allowing someone to do whatever they wanted when what they wanted was stupid.
There was only one way their little operation worked: he was in charge of it or he was not part of it. He was ready to admit that he might love this thorny rose but he wasn't going to play second fiddle to her, that wasn't who he was. Problem was, it might not be who she was either, and that was important to know. A successful marriage demanded that there be partnership. It also demanded someone be in charge. The only couples he'd ever seen last were the ones where one person, with due respect, consideration, warmth, and involvement of their partner made the final calls. When that went away, there came problems. Things got complicated first, then ugly later.
If there came a time when his back was to the wall, he knew he'd trust his own instincts, his own judgment, and jump. Taipan had to be ready to jump where he did, or she wasn't going to fit into things long-term. Times like now, when she wanted to go one way, in direct counter to the stance she'd taken to be coming along in the first place, against his own better judgment. Disregarding her, by now voluntary, role of Shadow, that had to be part of their relationship. He trusted the woman to be competent, fierce, and knowledgeable with regards to some specific things. But he didn't trust anyone to take the reins of his life and he'd never be able to change that, no matter what else had changed since his Reforging. The nagging influence of [Lord of the Ancient Glade] didn't even have to whisper at him for this to be so, he was born this way.
Hal'et had offered him a piece of advice regarding his proud consort that had always proven sound: Do not let her think you weak. It was in Taipan to rule a partner that was not strong enough to resist her, even if they could withstand her abrasive personality. He could guess that was why none of her other relationships had ended well, that and she appeared to reject anything close to the traditional concepts of settling down to a family. His Taipan was a hunter, a predator, and she would waste away in captivity. Which is why he could do nothing but offer her freedom: to follow or not, as she wished.
It hadn't taken them long to come to this point but Ulric knew it was good for both of them to settle it now. He wasn't an Elf whisperer but these Iriel'en viewed many aspects of life in terms of a challenge or contest. Far be it for him to tell them that they were wrong, Elves weren't Humans and he didn't have any intention of trying to put their behaviors in terms of his old world, that place had long since lost any right to tell anybody how to live correctly. One world ruined was plenty, thanks.
She had lost some of her obvious heat, had gone coolly considering. He knew that it wasn't gone though, she was merely thinking it over for herself, revealing less overtly to him. She did that when they sparred, to make herself harder to read. He was going to make it an easy decision for her. Yes or no.
Turning, Ulric started back to the inn where their travel gear was stored. His stride didn't deviate when he heard the disgruntled shout behind him, nor did he look backwards. He'd intended to go do this thing alone in the first place. If this aggravating, distracting, wonderful Elf couldn't get with the program he wasn't going to hang around waiting for things to come apart.
He was firming up the straps on his pack when the scowling visage of his Shadow stalked into the room.
"You will not be leaving Ulric! I will not allow it." She declared angrily, her posture blocking the door as she kicked it shut behind her.
Cold anger started battling calm at that.
"You will not allow it." Ulric stated, as if tasting the words.
He shouldered out of the pack and let it fall to the floor. Stretching as he did. Rolling up to his toes to loosen legs.
"Very well then, Taipan. Come. Let us see whether you can stop me." He challenged.
Ulric had a feeling he knew where this was going. He regretted the furniture that he was going to have to destroy, if necessary. He'd learned much in his time in that arboreal fortress. The best warriors in Orlethrem had trained with and against him. All the while, he'd held the form of this Huntress in front of him in comparison. The only enemy he hadn't really beaten. This time though, he was going to go one hundred and ten, right from the start.
He saw his partner's expression shift from outrage to determination. She took a step forward, accepting his proposition, her mouth shaping some cutting statement or another. As soon as she did, Ulric let her have it, ignoring whatever she'd said.
[Warrior's Instinct]
[Battle Rhythm]
[Surge]
Time dilated and Ulric came alive. His senses burned, his core pulsed to his heart beat, Ceraun empowering his limbs and his perceptions. The edges of the room hardened and he could see the wooly fibers of his Shadow's clothes waving, disturbed as her weight settled forwards into that one step.
The floor creaked ominously when he pushed off of it, bowing under the stress, and he rocketed forwards, erasing the distance between himself and his opponent in a single step, Fyir root forward, the Dance imbedded in his motions far more completely now than in the past. As he closed, he saw Taipan's eyes widen slowly, her blued irises expanding, her pupils dilating with her own flood of adrenaline, or whatever passed for it in Aes'r biology. The shadows behind her started to squirm, her mana controlling them even as he completed his step. Too late, he thought, grimly satisfied.
He caught his enemy flat footed, his leg between hers and his hands secured to her form, her hands scrabbled weakly, ineffectually against his for a moment, her shadows too slow to manifest under her control, and he whipped her over his hip. The womanly, if solidly built, frame of his Shadow, rotated easily over his center of balance, and hit the floor boards, back squarely absorbing the momentum to blow the wind from her lungs, in a gasp.
The shadows receded to the floor, absent their master's conscious control but Ulric had fought this opponent enough times to know that Taipan wasn't beaten until she was completely neutralized. Before she could obey gravity's pull to fall back to the floor Ulric had his arms around her neck in what she'd called a "Death's Embrace" and what he'd known as an Ezekial choke, for some ancient warrior, his fore arm under her lifted chin, compressed against his other arm, locking tightly and shutting off blood flow through her arteries to her brain. Stunned by the throw, he felt her resistance crumble and she was limp within a few more seconds, the vital circulation halted completely. Against his strength, even had his opponent managed to duck her chin, that would have been a delaying tactic, perhaps enough to fight free, but probably not. Absent those extra few seconds, he'd buried her.
Ulric stood over her form, releasing his combat skills, putting the tyrannical creature in his hind brain to sleep, and lifted Taipan gently to lay on the bed. She'd be around in a few seconds and none the worse for wear. He'd have had to be rougher with her had she not been hit like a thunderbolt by his bullrush. Chalk one up for the Glade Chief.
The limp frame jerked and his Shadow rose to a fighting crouch on the bed, scrabbling for an opponent that wasn't there, before she realized that he wasn't fighting her any longer. From there she dropped heavily back to her supine position and stared at the ceiling for a few moments, considering.
Throughout this process, Ulric stayed where he was, standing nearby in case she needed assistance, but very carefully out of knife range. He decided better against saying anything. Best to just let the last minute sort of simmer on the stove.
"Next time," the melodic voice declared, without any of its prior heat, from her comfortable repose, "I will not answer your challenge with a door to my back and no room to maneuver."
He nodded his agreement. Yep, that had been a poor decision on her part. Better if she'd set a time and a date, preferably outside the city to settle the contest.
"Also, Ulric, you have been, what do you call it again?" She hummed lightly a second before she found it, "Ah! Yes! Sandbagging. You have been sandbagging me in our practices."
Again, he nodded. He had very definitely not been giving her his fullest and best effort, that is true. Partly because he anticipated such a day, long ago, the writing being in florescent, neon letters on the wall. Partly, because he didn't want to hurt her when they were only practicing. She wasn't coming after him with all she had either, after all. He had also not had this newest addition to his class abilities, probably manifest by the combination of his core's awakening and the recent incident with the Raging. [Surge] took what was already a high spec set of physical parameters and made them frightening. His body dimly ached from the brief use of this skill.
Ulric hadn't even noticed the seventy kilos of her weight. He'd crossed the space between them before she could even have her own skills ready, before her core could utilize its mana fully. Even better, his perception had been amplified with the rest. There was none of the potential mismatch between heightened speed of motion and his brain's ability to comprehend and direct it, which would have rendered him too clumsy to even utilize or coordinate the accelerated movements. The result was that his Shadow had been entirely unprepared for how rapidly he could press his attack. He'd also been able to control, to an incredible degree, the exact amount of force with which he wanted her to hit the floor; Ulric had been able to take quite a bit off of it at the last second, or he might have done this lovely woman real harm, which was not the point.
It was a mild surprise to him, Ulric had very much expected slightly less grace from his normally so staunchly proud partner. Even as well as he thought he knew her, she still periodically surprised him with her oddness.
Rolling to her side, Taipan propped her head up on her arm, and her features wore that gambler's mask, erasing what went on from behind her gaze from his sight. Ulric maintained his silence, allowing the Elf to digest fully this experience. He was self-aware enough to understand that anything he said could and would be held against him and he probably lacked the tact to not piss her off.
"Fine." Conceded his Wife, at last dropping her flat expression, and transforming it with the smile that made his ears burn, "We will remain together, at all times. I will not leave you behind to investigate the city and you will not depart it without me. You will lead our Dance and I will support you as far as I may. Are you satisfied, [Lord of the Ancient Glade], husband?"
Ah. Well. Between that second part of her address, which still just got him rightly in the mood, and her tugging her dress down to reveal the softness therein, they did not accomplish much else that afternoon. Nevertheless, Ulric felt that they had come over a dangerous impasse and more tightly bonded than before. Elves can be a little strange, what could he say?
Thanks, Halet, he told the silence of the room, later.
The afternoon 'wasted' *ahem*, they made dinner in the common room a sedate affair, though free from booze. Pillow talk had largely consisted of the two of them plotting on how to get their hands on shipping manifestos without being caught or how to isolate the ones that had penned those letters. That it had not been the same hand was clear, the elegant lines, smoothly controlled, of the one Twice Dead carried was distinct from the stiffer, less precise hand on the catch crew thug. If they could get a match on the authors of these two documents, they'd have a pretty solid connection.
After Ulric and his disguised partner stuffed their faces with meat and some kind of spiced cabbage, with a loaf of bread split between them, they solidified their plan of action. Tonight was a night on the town. They'd head to the docks and try to observe the movements of boats into or out of the city.
Taipan was certain that the slaves would be most likely extradited from the city outside normal traffic hours, on personal vessels, not mercantile ones. It was simply too obvious that merchants liked to smuggle goods, even the 'honest' ones. And, on the smaller vessels, it would be easier to hide along small inlets or up tributaries too narrow for the larger ships to navigate, which vastly opened up the number of launch or unloading points such ships could access. For the cost of a single Aes'r slave, a run of a single live capture would be more than adequate compensation to take the chances and run the entire length of the river.
Ulric remarked on the incredible temptation for so lucrative a venture. Taipan set him straight.
"Ulric, any person caught buying or selling a sentient being on Orlethrem territory is brought to the city street and flayed alive. They are then slathered in honey for the insects to consume, all the while a medicos remains on station to keep them alive for as long as possible, and to reapply the honey. Slavers are not suffered. That my Celestin cousins are involved in this is sickening, rot has clearly infested the realms of the Aes'r. Perhaps this war was necessary, to burn our lands free of corruption." Judged his Shadow, harshly, in a whisper.
That was a distinctly Iriel'en take on the situation. Very all or nothing, no greys about it. For a matter as heinous as the buying and selling of your fellow man, he couldn't hold himself in disagreement, however. Some things shouldn't be done. The rest of their discussion was mostly cover, discussions of the expected breakup of the rivers
It was a fortunate thing that the Elven peoples tended to socialize in very distinct, very tight nit social circles. The relative isolation of he and his partner was patently unremarkable, almost no direct interaction occurred between tables. Sometimes one member would drift away from their group to chat with another, but only rarely. That was less the case amongst the humans or beastkin who were more open than their pointy-eared neighbors but still not exactly gadflies.
Ulric's ears didn't catch much of the floating talk but what he did mostly centered on the effects of the expected hostilities. It was, more or less, an open secret that war would be coming. According to the floating rumors he could pick up, nobody knew that the strategy was not the same business as usual. Good. Lord Brighteyes was going to give the border cities of Prespang a proper kick in the pills and their armies were going to find out what it was like when the Orlethrem stopped playing defense.
To outward appearances, Ulric was a barbarian merchant hashing out the coming trade season with his local partner. None who overheard their discussions regarding how long to reach certain villages, probable resting sites, dangers on the road, expected patrols, the odds of bandits, would have reason to think anything differently. Before they retired to stroll amicably up the stairs, half that common room would only remember that the Human merchant had an odd accent and that his partner was clearly slumming to be with him.
They dropped quietly out of the window, long after the Twins had set, their bed arranged to make it look like two sleeping forms side by side should anyone enter to check, though they'd have to open the locked door to do so. Agile crouches absorbed the momentum of their fall and they were off, down predetermined streets into the cold dark of the city to track down whoever it was that was trading in sentient lives at the docks.
Torches burned in sconces in the poor districts. Glowlamps put off a soft yellow brightness in the richer ones. The flickering, dancing shadows cast by the torches were far better for stealthy travel so Taipan led them along the narrow alleys through the more destitute parts of Trachn'ir. They made next to no sound on the cobbled streets, their soft boots padding under deft steps. Compared to trying to match his Shadow's quiet tread upon leaf litter and fallen branches, this was easy. Absent her wig and wearing an imitation of the Iriel'en black warrior's underclothes over top of her travel robes, the former Huntress truly did resemble more a shadow than a person. Ulric had not had a similar likeness made, it would have put up flags for a Human to be wearing the traditional garb of a Deep Woods Elf. He was, instead, wearing the charcoal overcoat he'd had made and doing his best not to be drastically more visible than the woman in the lead.
Only twice did they catch notice of any as they made their way through the city. Once, by one of the city's more proficient catburglars, on his way back from a haul along the rooftops, his practiced eye catching the motion of others of similar ilk to himself. The two of them were obviously not guards and he had two more jobs before dawn so he returned to his rooftop run. The second, by a duo who were active serial killers, impersonating a drunk couple and killing any would be muggers who came along to take advantage of the 'inebriated' pair. The woman's eyes saw heat, a skill of her class, Ripper, and noted the flash of easy movements along parallel trails. These were not the prey the couple sought though, they loved the thrill of turning an aggressor, so confident in their power into a weeping, powerless thing before savoring the end. Neither time, were either Ulric or his Shadow aware of the attention.
So it was that they came to the docks, half a Round after leaving their rooms behind. The scarves they'd wrapped around their faces caught the mist their breaths would have produced against the cold night air next to the frozen highway of the river.
There was a surprising amount of active transport going on despite the season. It might not be a peak season but cities as large as Trachn'ir didn't sleep through the Winter. Goods all the way from the Atun, Svartalfin for crystal, sea where a narrow inlet permitted birth of the Zelus, initially a salt river. That changed drastically once it was fed by the myriad tributary rivers that poured off the Heaven's reach glaciers, year round flows. Not far North of its birthplace in the Crystal Sea, the Zelus grew incredibly large, the salt flow diluted to near nothing by the fresh waters coming in from the Heaven's Reach Mountains to the East and the Plateau of Ancients to the West. It was a strangeness to the geology of Varda that an ocean should flow towards an inland sea but there was, according to the Orlethrem, a deep trench that occasionally poured molten rock, Ulric recognized the signs of continental separation, that shifted the flows of water. Whatever the case, deep keeled ocean going ships were able to travel from the warm clear blue waters of the Atun ocean, down the Zelus, all the way to Prosper's gate at the Vatyn sea.
For a Celestin city like this, food was of paramount importance. This kind of a population needed large volumes of food, food that outstripped its local production. The docks reflected that reality. There were grain bins, crates loaded with bags of crushed or powdered cereals. Rice in staggering quantities. A surprising amount of fresh produce, kept under cover against the frost, but preserved by the cold of the season. Ulric noted many fish barrels on the docks, the tang of salt in the air slightly foreign to him. Iriel'en did not frequently eat fish, but it occurred there regularly in their communal eateries, mostly caught from the rivers. There were exotic fish on drying racks, curing here and there, scales glittering silver as they caught the light of an enormous half-moon. Yerial, the moon, stood high in her track across the night sky, making stealth difficult. Guards patrolled here with regularity, in the shuffle of cold, bored, men and women wishing they were most other places that described guard duty across every world.
Taipan had them crouched next to a few stacked crates of what smelled like animal furs until a particularly dense cloud draped itself over the bisected silver disk masking its moonlight. Under cover of this new dark the pair of them whispered across the cut stone of the dock, flitting from cover to cover, sometimes on their bellies, crawling along in the shadow of a collection of baskets, icy stone pulling the heat from their bodies.
Their destination was an unadorned shack surrounded by torches, and with a single Elf guard, hands tucked under armpits against the chill air, in attendance. According to Taipan's memory of arriving to Trachn'ir by ship, this is where the shipping logs would be kept under lock and key. Copies of the reports were delivered to the powers that be, their numbers pored over by those who had a stake in making sure those numbers read profit for the city and its peoples. The originals, however, were never to leave this shack, not until they were archived at the end of the year. It was a new year, celebrated only a few months ago, which meant that he and Taipan wouldn't have boxes and boxes of documents to hurriedly scan through. Before they could scan anything though they had to get to that shack and break in without raising an alarm.
The good news was, the docks were absolutely fucking massive and there weren't enough patrols to completely cover them. That was by design. Everybody had something to hide, especially the powers that be, and they had a vested interest in being able to make covert movements possible. Impenetrable security hurt the interests of nearly everyone, which made Ulric grin when he considered it. Planned incompetence was something that tickled every funny bone in his body and he was glad to see that some things were truly universal, multiversal, even.
Naturally, his Shadow was more in her element, being able to see freely with her empowered night vision. Ulric was basically as blind as the guards. The good news was that he was deliberately not looking into those torches, ruining his night vision. The Elf standing bathed in their light, and heat, the bastard, would have effectively no vision beyond their reach. He stood looking into a vast abyss of dark, relying more on his hearing to pick up signs of disturbances than his eyes. Or, he would have, had he not been nodding against sleep.
So far, they'd been able to, over the course of a carefully considered, well planned hour, manage a completely undetected approach to the shack. This next part was tricky and would require tight timing. Several hours of discussion had gone into this, both sides arguing their cases and presenting refinements to the approach. At the end, he and his long-eared comrade had come to an agreement: simple was best, and the simplest distraction was a bait and switch. A good ol' Kansas City shuffle.
Ulric was, of course, going to be the distraction. He'd explained how he was going to do it and Taipan had refused to believe him. "Believe me," He'd said to her, "Unless you grew up on my world, in the particular social environment of my home country, there's no goddamned way you see this coming. It gets, literally everyone the first time." And it did. She fell for it, and he'd warned her it was coming. It was like mind control. He felt, more than heard, his Shadow's sigh as she retrieved a small vial filled with booze and handed it to him.
The rough stink of a single distilled raw brandy he slathered himself in. Game time.
Ulric made his way without particular hurry from their place of concealment, his partner in crimes to be long departed to her planned location behind the shack, out of sight. He strode with an uncertain gait, sometimes stiff, sometimes too flexible, the awkwardness aided by a large pebble in his boot.
The uneven shuffle of boots pulled the guard from his stupor just in time to see a Human buck, a large one, stumbling into the torch light reeking of booze and with a glazed look in his eye that said he had no idea how he'd arrived at this point. Rolling his eyes, the guard righted himself and checked his weapons, just in case, before he addressed the drunk.
"What ho! You there, what are you doing on the docks this late?" He tried, reasonably.
"Aye?" Ulric answered, his slurred voice drawling, "Havn't ta seen me'm any overclocks em?"
The stream of nonsense hit the guard physically. Eyes scrunched in confusion he shook himself to approach the Human.
"Look here, manling, you cannot be here at these hours, the docks are closed. You're lucky to have managed to get here, rather than stroll onto the ice and fall into a hole. Turn yourself about and be off!" The guard ordered.
The Human looked around suddenly, hands patting their coat, looking for the pocket that they kept barely missing, which proved surprisingly irritating to the guard to behold, but straightening made them lose balance and they caught themselves just before they fell into him. His hands roughly took the shoulder and set the blurry eyed man straight and he heard a muffled, "Mmthanks, em, gut sirrah." as the man finally found his coat pocket and fished around.
Ulric had accomplished his goal, having gotten close to the guard and distracted him. Now, for the coup de grace. He pulled his hand free of his coat, turning to sidelong to the Elf, and announced, with a surprised, "Dropped my pocket!", his hand forming a ring with forefinger and thumb, remaining digits fanned, and the guard's gaze was drawn like a lodestone to magnetic North, eyes falling into the ring. He never saw the hammer fist that clubbed him across the back of the head but he did see the flash of light inside his brain that announced he'd been concussed, moments before he dropped like a sack of potatoes to the dock. Quickly, before the next guard came at a pass he dumped the rest of the booze vial on the guard's uniform and fished into his coat pocket for a second vial.
At the same time as his nonsensical, but indisputably effective, pocket announcement, Taipan left her own hiding spot, passed behind the both of them without so much as a flutter of air, and worked the door's lock, bypassing it about the time that her companion had propped the unconscious guard against the wall of the shack. They had no idea how long he'd be out so Ulric administered a potent sleep aid, manufactured by herself that evening, the vile smelling liquid poured down the guard's gullet quickly so he didn't aspirate on it. When the guard swallowed the concoction without spitting it back up Ulric threw Taipan a thumbs up and she entered the shack. They had another minute, tops before the guard rotation brought someone in view who would see that the guard was laying asleep, as he would remain for hours unless a remedy for the sleep aid were applied. Even if he woke, he'd be drugged into stupor, hence the booze on his coat.
Ulric was counting seconds, he reached forty-three and was starting to get nervous that they'd wasted this one chance, there wouldn't be another after tonight, when Taipan exited the shack with an extra bit of padding to her chest and flashed the thumbs up, that announced it was time to make their getaway. The lock clicked shut as she closed it and they darted into the night. Thirty seconds later, the pair, huddled beneath an upside-down empty rice basket, heard the guard cry out, "Roric you fookin' louse, that's the third time! They'll have yer ass!" The guard, and his three companions who abandoned their posts to investigate and harangue their intemperate colleague never noticed the rice baskets that glided quietly down the dock.
