Frirn, Fir of Julyla: 33 Xiven

That night was their first official watch over Ivar’s shop. In time for closing, they slipped inside to hide out of sight of the windows—but just in case, Ivar felt the need to shout, “Hila, everyone gone? No one inside the shop? Okay, locking up for the night!” Fero physically cringed, but since she still snapped at Kayin every chance she got, he didn’t say anything. Ivar’s heart was in the right place, even if he was being a bit obvious.

Rinesa had given the night sky to the moons several hours ago at this point. Kayin sat atop a wooden crate and leaned against the wall, legs swinging just to keep the circulation flowing. From this spot, he could just barely see out the window, enough to tell that the stars in the sky shone bright without a cloud to hide them. No fog, no thief.

From his slight perch, Kayin could see Karsarath over the display counter, crouched, waiting. He didn’t seem to get distracted very easily, and although it had been hours, he waited with his sword in his hand all the same, only periodically flipping the hilt to show that he wasn’t a statue.

Fero remained hidden behind some mannequins; Kayin couldn’t even see her. He could practically hear her teeth grinding, though. She let out an impatient sigh.

“Nothing yet,” Kayin whispered. In another hour or so, they’d probably consider this night a bust and head home to get what little rest they could. Until then, they endured an uncomfortable silence and just…sat there.

Doubt sewed throughout Kayin’s stomach. This was a wasted night. He was confident their analysis was right, after having literal hours to go over it again and again in his head; whether or not these Shadow Stalkers maintained their patterns for any extensive time, though, was another question. It would be smarter to change things up once in a while. What if they’d already moved onto a different potential target, or decided Ivar wasn’t worth the headache?

Silence from Karsarath and another annoyed sigh from Fero were the only answers in Ivar’s shop at the moment. Kayin frowned before opting to entertain an alternative notion of how to spend this night.

“Um, Fero…,” he whispered.

As expected, she hissed, “Quiet!”

“I wanted to apologize,” said Kayin instead, “for lying to you and Karsarath.” He took his eyes off the window for a moment just to see Karsarath’s reaction; the man stared at the set of mannequins where Fero hid, smirking. The light of the moons stole the color from his skin, making him look far paler than what fit someone as warm as him. Kayin continued, “I’m sorry. It was selfish not to consult you and I won’t keep any secrets from you again.”

“Oh….” While she digested what he’d said, Karsarath continued to stare in her direction, challenging. It was useless trying to figure out what sort of silent conversation he was trying to have with her, so Kayin didn’t bother attempting to decipher it and settled with his duty of staring at the stars instead. After a full minute, Fero finally responded: “Thank…you….”

“No more secrets?” Karsarath echoed; he had an edge to his voice, a smugness Kayin couldn’t figure out.

“No more secrets,” agreed Kayin with a shrug.

“Wasn’t talking to you.”

“What?” Fero snapped, whispering faster than Kayin could react.

Karsarath waited for this moment to catch her off guard, it seemed. Without stumbling, he asked, “Are you going to tell us why you know so much about the Shadow Stalkers?”

Fero hesitated. “Seriously? Right now?”

Well, that was important information to hash out before they faced the supposed criminal organization anyway. Kayin shrugged to the empty streets of Tornah.

“I don’t think anyone’s coming,” he said.

Karsarath sheathed his sword, hushing the trio in the store. “The sooner you answer, the sooner we’ll be quiet,” he said expectantly. He’d been holding onto that question for a while, waiting for the right moment. Perhaps that was why he was able to sit so still until now.

Finally, Fero rose from behind the mannequins, hardly more visible than a shadow from the limited light. Even still, it was easy to see her irritation, how rigid her silhouette stood. She started and stopped several thoughts, but eventually spoke through her teeth: “Fine. Just…keep your eye on the window just in case.” An easy enough direction. Kayin leaned his head against the wall and did as instructed, waiting, staring at nearly nothing.

“You worked for them?” Karsarath prompted. “Before you met Tidesa?”

“No,” came her resigned answer, her word twinged with a sort of sourness. “They—well….” Kayin’s eyes flickered over to where she stood just enough to watch her sit back down behind the mannequins. “They rejected my audition. Or I rejected their request, or something.”

Karsarath cleared his throat. “Do I have to ask for clarification or—?”

“No, just…thinking of how to word it.” As she took her time, Kayin tried to imagine a shorter, chubbier Fero with pig tails approaching a massive thug with a bag of stolen money, and crying when he turned her away. That didn’t sound right at all. When he imagined a shorter, chubbier Fero setting a massive thug on fire, though, that seemed more likely.

Finally, Fero drew in a deep breath and began: “So…the Shadow Stalkers, they’re not just here. There are rumors they’re everywhere. I heard of them in Tornah Docks.”

“Wait,” interrupted Kayin as he tried to think back, “didn’t you meet Tidesa there because you tried to steal from her?”

“I was born there,” she said instead, dodging the question. “And my parents were—are, I guess—phil…anthropists.” Weird pause, and not from stumbling over the pronunciation. “Just not…good ones.” Her hesitation remained, hanging in the air like an unfinished thought. Before Kayin could ask, Fero answered: “They’re giving, sure. I mean, they are philanthropists, but they just don’t exactly know when to stop giving. Like even when they shouldn’t. They keep giving even when nothing’s left. Whatever was in front of them was what mattered. No foresight at all.” Probably why she grew so attached to Tidesa, since the future was all she considered. “Like, if we had one meal for the week, and they saw the starving neighbor family next door, they’d just give it to them without considering us. Or if someone needed somewhere to live, they’d offer our house even when we didn’t have enough to get by for just the three of us.” Fero didn’t give them any time to digest what she’d said, just continued with her voice in more of a whisper, “Anyway, I just kind of—you know, started to take care of myself when I couldn’t rely on them. And when you’re too young to be useful at any jobs, you just kind of take what you need.” She said it so matter-of-factually, not a hint of remorse whatsoever.

“Bet your parents loved that,” Karsarath mumbled sarcastically.

Fero scoffed. “Maybe if they ever noticed. Anyway, I heard about the Shadow Stalkers when I was getting a bit too old to cry my way out of trouble. They do a sort of trade system. They sell stolen goods at a higher price and give you a cut, and they help you out if you’ve got nowhere else to go—supposedly.”

“Crime family,” said Karsarath. “Bit on the nose, you think?”

She ignored him. “I followed a member for a bit, asked to join…. They give you a task to do in a certain period of time, but the task they gave me wasn’t—I couldn’t do it, so that was that. You refuse or fail, you’re blacklisted.” And still, though it sounded so final, so much was missing from what she said. Kayin took his eyes off the window for just a moment as he struggled to fight the urge to look at her. He wanted to ask what the task was, what she refused to steal, but opted to take what he could get, instead. This was the most she’d talked about her time in Tornah Docks, and he doubted they would be granted too much more.

Instead, he asked the more pressing question to the moment: “Fero, are you’re saying they know you?”

“We have an unspoken agreement not to interfere with one another,” she said. For once, it was Karsarath and Kayin that held a silent conversation with just a glance. Skepticism, anxiety, uncertainty—emotions that were easy to read because it seemed impossible not to feel all at once with this revelation. Unlike Kayin, though, Fero seemed to be able to decipher their expressions just as fast. “They don’t know what I’m doing, and as far as after we turn them all into the Council of Tornah…well, I wasn’t planning on sticking around to find out what they would do to a snitch.” She only let the silence turn awkward for a few moments before she got up again. “Well, let’s head back. Tonight’s a bust. We’ll try again tomorrow.”

And even though he had much more information than before, Kayin couldn’t help but feel the confidence he’d felt earlier slip away.

Sunern, Fir of Julyla: 33 Xiven

“Do you think the rodents that live in the walls feel weird about us just sitting here again? Do you think they think we live here now?”

“Gods silence you if you don’t do it yourself, Kayin,” swore Fero in a hiss. Fair enough. After literal hours of the air filled with sniffles, scurrying creatures, and the occasional shifting boot leather against the floor, maybe it was jarring to hear Kayin speak so suddenly. He felt the urge to ask, anyway, if only to disturb the monotony.

It was night three of sitting on the very same crate in Ivar’s shop, face squished against the wall while he stared into a still, fogless night. On this night, the moon Orinel remained partially hidden behind the only cloud in the sky. And though people claimed the moon of evil sway looked exactly like the moon of good sway, Kayin liked to pretend that he could tell them apart, ever since he was a child. Tonight, he assigned the brighter moon the name of Irinel as he willed something good to happen. Or, well, for anything to happen at all, for that matter. If he was getting bored enough to start to put stock in superstition, Kayin needed something to think about before he found the wall a suitable bed and fell asleep.

At what point did they admit failure? Return to Ivar and say that maybe they must have gotten something wrong, that maybe there was a piece to this puzzle missing—or that the Shadow Stalkers moved onto a different motive? Ivar was nice enough, though. Gave them hot meals before and after they sat the very long, boring nights in his shop. Ivar and his wife Hila were on the wealthier side of the merchants, so the food had extra spices and flavors Kayin couldn’t place but enjoyed discovering.

Despite his duty of only needing to watch out the window for fog or suspicious activity, Kayin’s eyes wandered. In the dim light, right behind a roll of white fabric, two tiny eyes hardly larger than the head of a nail stared back at him. He’d heard of people with the ability to manipulate animals into doing their bidding. What if the reason this rodent stared at him was because it was someone watching from afar? Or, more likely, it was just confused as to what this creature was doing in its space.

“What?” he asked it, half-expecting it to respond with words.

“Hm?” Karsarath sounded as if he was waking from a nap, even though out of the three of them keeping watch, he was probably the most disciplined.

“The rodent,” Kayin whispered. “It’s staring at me.”

“And you should be staring at the window,” came his tired reply. Eh. Good point. Reluctant to look at the same thing again, Kayin returned to resting against the wall and memorizing the bricks of the buildings of the street.

But his prayers were answered this time.

“Fog!” Fast-approaching fog, dense and low. Heart in his throat, Kayin hopped off the crate to ready himself by the door. Karsarath shifted into his support position by the hinges with his sword stretched out and hand at the ready to slam the door the moment the thief entered; and, based on the way a mannequin rocked, Fero sprang up to prepare as well.

The fog very nearly had a distinct outline with its shape. Rounded, sure, but with how intensely it focused on a particular moving part of the street, no more than ten feet wide and six feet high, it was certainly a sight to behold. What sort of power granted this? The ability to manipulate water, or maybe atmosphere? Or maybe it was all just an illusion?

Drips of dew formed on the window over Kayin’s head; the skin on his cheeks grew cold as the moments ticked by and the thief grew near.

The door knob rattled. And rattled. And rattled.

Kayin had never picked a lock before, but this felt like it was taking too long. He even relaxed a bit, risked a glance to a just-as-confused Karsarath. Eventually, the telltale click of a lock being undone prompted Kayin to bend his knees and hold his breath.

The fog leaked into the room, dousing them all in a layer of icy mist. The moment the heat of a body passed in front of him, Kayin shut his eyes and lunged. His arms wrapped around the midsection of the thief, carrying them into a full fall onto the wooden floor. They thudded together, loud, limbs tossing haphazardly in an attempt to overpower the will of the other.

The thief yelped; and when the sound of the slamming door cut into the shop, they fervently jolted in every which way possible. A hand, an elbow, maybe even a knee all hit Kayin’s face at some point in the scuffle, but he kept hold tight and waited, just like he’d planned with Karsarath and Fero.

“Stop there!” Karsarath shouted. Kayin adjusted his foot to try and pin down the criminal’s flinging leg, but doing so, he learned very quickly that he left a very vulnerable part of him wide open for one of the most painful counter-attacks he could have ever anticipated.

Somehow, getting kicked between the legs in this moment felt worse than when a soldier of Wakino stabbed him with a halberd. At least from that experience, he passed out from blood loss before he could really register the implications of a stomach wound. Right now, it certainly felt like his digestive acid resided much lower than where it should have been, and that it was working its way up and through his body with sharp pangs.

The shock of the attack only left a slight delay, a false sense of security that the initial rush was all there was to this feeling. It only took two moments for the feeling to return tenfold, bringing with it nausea that rose all the way to the back of his throat, cutting off his tight whine.

A bright flame evaporated the fog just above him. Fero sounded, “Drop the fog or lose your eyebrows, your choice.”

As Kayin curled in on himself, he stared up from the ground to watch the standoff form: Fero holding an entire ball of flickering fire in her hand, holding it up to the source of the fog that still remained behind a concentrated collection of clouds; the reflective metal from Karsarath’s sword shone, revealing that he stood right behind the thief, ready to defend. Fero nudged Kayin with her foot.

“Get up.”

“I—can’t,” he squeaked uselessly. As a compromise, he clicked the button on his wrist to brandish his hidden dagger in the air, letting it reflect Fero’s flame. Not exactly threatening, but a sign that he’d keep fighting if he just had a minute to breathe.

Fero willed her ball of fire just a little brighter. The chill almost completely evaporated around them, now, though the atmosphere stuck to the ceiling and the criminal’s face, stubborn and thick. Time was the only factor in learning who they were, now. “Fog: drop it. I won’t ask again.” Mercifully, she granted a few extra moments for the decision to be made, let the person calculate if it was worth making them all wait for the heat of the fire to dry up the atmosphere.

Bit by bit, the chill in the air peeled back from the corners of the shop, arching over the fire in Fero’s hand and into the arms of the person that now stood over Kayin. Their loose sleeves soaked in the gray air, billowing as it returned to its master. Their stretched fingers curled in when the last of the fog retreated. From on the ground, Kayin passively noticed pitted and pink skin on the forearms, scars not unlike the ones he bore on his shoulder. Even though he could think clearly, now, seeing this proof of past pain hit a familiar anxiety deep in his stomach.

It was jarring to only see these awful, undoubtedly recent scars while the arms blocked his view from the face. Taunting, almost. Sure, he would learn this person’s identity, but not without understanding that they had suffered first.

Fero continued, “We don’t want to hurt you, but we will if you try to run.” Without Fero’s command, Kayin let his dagger arm fall to the floor. He used the edge of the floorboard beside him to click the dagger back into its casing. Ignoring him, Fero demanded: “Now, tell us: Who are you?”

The thief took her time, but began to relax, her arms slowly drifting down to her sides. She took stock of her surroundings without moving much more, eyes first glancing at Karsarath’s blade over her shoulder, then to Fero’s ball of fire, then down to Kayin. When he recognized her brilliant brown stare, Ichaemi stole his air.

The blood drained from his face completely. The scars on her arms, he realized, were fresh because he saw their cause. He saw the mace that created the tears in her flesh being brought down full-force as she protected her face and crouched in the rubble of their home.

Though it was from months ago, before his eyes he could still see the gold fleur-de-lis of the Wakino soldier’s armor, smell the smoke from the fires. The screams from the people of his village filled his head, screams he assumed were of defeat. Tidesa said there were some survivors from the war, but he never even considered or even dared to hope she was among them.

Dania stared at him as if he, too, was a ghost. “Kayin?”