Rebellious Tendencies

[pirateoftherings]

Kjan stared at Eledhe for a moment before reaching the conclusion that she evidently expected some sort of reaction. "Probably," he replied offhandedly, glancing over at Phaerin. He might not have ordinarily worried much about cost, exorbitant though it was, but it wasn't as though either of them was going to be able to go home and ask father dearest for enough money to pay the mercenary for information that could potentially undermine the kingdom as they knew it. This would obviously be coming out of their own purses, and Kjan happened to have better uses for his money. "Five hundred is a ridiculous amount to pay for something that might be nothing more than a dead end."

"I could always walk out right now," Eledhe suggested carelessly. "Your five minutes are almost up."

Kjan merely shrugged. "I'm relatively okay with that."

[Meldawen]

There was a moment in which Phaerin and Eledhe eyed each other. "Twenty crowns," said Phaerin, testing the waters.

"Did I say five minutes?" inquired Eledhe archly, turning to touch her fingertips to the door handle. "I'd wish you both farewell but you look like the type who might be able to tell a bald-faced lie when you see one."

"Right, fifty crowns," said Phaerin hastily.

"Oh, I rather thought you might warm up to the idea," purred Eledhe, smile curving her lips. She held out a hand expectantly. "Well?"

Expression resigned, he dug a purse out of his pocket and extracted what was ostensibly the amount of gold past fifty crowns that in contained. The sum total of this amount would not have purchased a cart horse. Then, rather as if resigning a beloved possession to one who was sure to utterly demolish it, he gave Eledhe the money.

She smiled almost angelically - except for the fact that with Eledhe, it wasn't possible - and promptly pocketed it. "Pleasure doing business with you." The angelic smile started to go rather the other way. Quite as if finished, Eledhe turned and was halfway out the door before both of them started forward with slightly inarticulate noises. She poked her head back in. "Oh, did you want information in exchange for that?

[pirateoftherings]

Fifteen minutes of urging, demanding, wheedling, and otherwise persuading later, Kjan and Phaerin emerged from the room empty-handed. Well, almost empty-handed. They did have one small scrap of parchment, on which was written a single word: Xhire. "I don't care how much you actually paid her," Kjan commented once they were a reasonable distance from the room. "We got swindled on that one."

He grabbed the scrap from Phaerin, examined it briefly, then handed it back. "So," he said at length. "Our next step is...."

[Meldawen]

"Er," said Phaerin intelligently, turning the scrap upside down to see if it said something more illuminating that way. "What kind of a name is Xhire, anyway," he muttered disconsolately. "Right, we need a library. It has to be in there somewhere."

Mercifully, Kjan had not yet used the phrase 'wild goose-chase', which was providential, because Phaerin was beginning to feel the tiniest bit silly.

About an hour later, he was browsing the shelves of the large library occupying a whole block in the middle of the noble section of the city, and sneezing profusely. "You'd think," he said, coming out to dump an armful of books on the desk in front of Kjan, "that what with how much I bet this place cost to build, they could keep it a bit cleaner. Those are old records of mercenaries that served various lords sometime or another."

There was a brief silence. "I don't know if he or she is a mercenary," said Phaerin somewhat testily, answering what he felt was an implied question. "Or, for that matter, whether they're male or female, but I paid fifty crowns for that name and it's worth much more if we know who it is."

[pirateoftherings]

Kjan blew off the cover of one of the nearest tomes and instantly regretted it as he began coughing and attempting to wave away the cloud of dust that resulted. Once the coughing subsided, he did mutter something that sounded remarkably like 'wild goose-chase,' plus or minus an expletive or two.

Taking care to disturb as little dust as possible this time, Kjan slowly opened the large text and stared dismally down at the seemingly endless columns of information that dominated the pages. "And here I thought I'd finally escaped pointless reading when I had my last lessons five years ago."

[Meldawen]

"Pointless reading indicates that nothing's accomplished," retorted Phaerin. "This happens to be accomplishing something."

This comment was decidedly out of place, especially considering that they were standing in the middle of a very old and dusty library with a scrap of paper detailing the one measly clue they had toward their goal. "...well, then, it has the potential to accomplish something," amended Phaerin defensively. "We came all the way here, so we might as well look."

He vanished back into the shelves and came out sneezing explosively, and squinting at a roll of parchment. "Does that say Xhire? Why does every bloody chronicler have to write like they're inebriated?"

[pirateoftherings]

"Wouldn't you be, if this was all you did every day?" Kjan pointed out as he made his way over to examine the parchment. "I don't think I'd survive the monotony if I were forced to record endless bits of tedious, meaningless information and stay sober all day."

Grabbing the scroll from Phaerin, he squinted at it and began turning it at different angles in an attempt to make some sense of it. That one squiggle did look somewhat like an X, and there couldn't be too many names that started with that letter.... "Your guess is as good as mine," he declared at length. "But I'm content to say that it does, if that's what'll get us out of here fastest. Says here that he or she was hired by a 'Lord Branth' for an unmentioned job, about - what is that number? - two years ago."

Kjan returned the scroll to Phaerin and hesitated slightly before asking, "Worth checking out, then?"

[Meldawen]

Phaerin held the crinkled document at arm's length and squinted until his eyes were almost shut. "It looks a bit like 'Lord Branth of Faldonstead' from here," he said after a few seconds of tilting it to view in different lights. He put it down, looking thoughtful. "I wonder if this Lord Branth was a cover. Maybe this Xhire person was actually employed by the Regent, but the records won't have that, because no self-respecting monarch employs an assassin."

He drummed his fingers on the desk, pondering. "Meaning that Faldonstead probably exists, but it won't have a Lord Branth, and the people who live there won't know of one. So we're not much closer...I will, however, poke around for some census records. He might actually be a person."

Speaking as though this would come as a surprise, he went to immerse himself in more parchment, with much sneezing. "Kjan," he eventually called, voice muffled, "do you think the Mercenary's Guild has records?"

[pirateoftherings]

"Probably?" Kjan replied without looking up from his own highly interesting list of whatever-it-was. "I mean, they're technically legal, right? So they have to have some kind of official report to file with whoever's in charge of that stuff at the end of the year, mostly likely. But, as we already know, there are plenty of off-the-books services available for the right price. I'm fairly certain that whoever set up the job would be smart enough to make sure that it 'accidentally' never made it into the records. Might be some mention of our mystery person, though." Shrugging, he went back to the fascinating piece of parchment before him.

They spent almost another hour searching through various bits of meaningless information and receiving the occasional disparaging look from the aide in charge of that section, who apparently didn't appreciate the growing mass of documents being tossed onto the table without any sort of discernible method.

Finally, they gleaned enough information to lead them right back where they'd started - the Mercenary's Guild. "Hope you brought a lot more money," Kjan muttered under his breath as they entered the building.

[Meldawen]

"Not really," muttered Phaerin out the side of his mouth. "I'm wondering if promises in that direction will suffice. Not all nobles like carrying their money around with them."

Turning around, he met the nonplussed page who was - with an air of resignation - making her way across the courtyard. Phaerin gave her his best I-have-a-lot-of-money smile, and was about to begin, but she'd evidently experienced his type before.

"You're expected," she said coolly. Amazing, thought Phaerin, that someone probably not past eighteen could manage such a icy expression. Maybe they taught classes in it. Eledhe had an identical one. She thrust a roll of parchment at him, and turned on her heel.

Bemused, Phaerin opened it.

The Thief and Servant. Inn. Smith's Street, eleven o'clock. Tonight. Your pockets had better be lined with bloody flaming gold, or dark gods help me...

E

"Right, that explains nothing," said Phaerin cheerily, handing it to Kjan. "Should we do it?"

[pirateoftherings]

Kjan read over the note quickly before folding it up and merely arching an eyebrow at Phaerin. "Why do you still even ask that?" he replied. "You know perfectly well that my answer is going to be no. And then you're going to say yes, and then I'm going to say no again, and then you're going tell me how much fun it would be, and then I'm going to say that I don't really care. Then you're going to pressure me, and I'm going to remind you that our pockets are not, in fact, 'lined with bloody flaming gold' at the moment, and then you're going to plead and urge and harass and cajole until I finally just give up and say 'Fine, let's do it.' So, I'm just going to save both of us time and instead say yes to start with. Besides, we've gone too far to just give up now. I'd like to know that this whole trip wasn't a complete waste."

-----------------

Thus it was that at two minutes before eleven o'clock that night, both men found themselves sitting in the common room of a somewhat seedy-looking inn. Both had ordered an ale and were slowly drinking while trying to wait without looking like they were waiting. "You know, I wouldn't put it past Eledhe to tell us a location and then never show," Kjan commented as he glanced casually around the room. He didn't tend to frequent the taverns in this part of town, though the overall atmosphere seemed to be more or less the same. Except that the two men brawling in the corner were fighting over a maiden's honor and not over who had first encroached on the other's million-acre estate, and there were a few less colorful words involved.

"How are we planning on paying her, exactly, by the way? I only brought twenty with me this time, and I have a feeling that her price is going to be higher than that."

[Meldawen]

"Do you think it would be foolhardy to say we want information before money, and then make a quick escape before quite producing said money?" said Phaerin thoughtfully. All he needed was a glance at the look on Kjan's face to finish with a defensive "All right, it was just a suggestion!"

There was a lapse in which both were silent, taking intermittent gulps of ale and eying the various seedy personages in their immediate proximity. Phaerin made to settle his boots on the table, but was discouraged by the unimpressed eye of the innkeeper. "Tough crowd," he muttered to Kjan.

He was idly playing with a coin and wondering just how far he could prod Eledhe without ending by being impaled on something lethal when an officious 'ahem' caught his attention.

The innkeeper, a pudgy man forever wiping his hands on a dishcloth, was standing at their table looking decidedly discomfited. "Gentlemen," he said, sniffing as though something unpleasant were passing under his nose, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to remove yourselves from the premises."

Phaerin blinked. His boots weren't on the table. "Good sir," he attempted, standing and half-bowing. "I'm uncertain as to why -"

"Ale is a copper apiece!" squeaked the man, eying Phaerin, who was probably at least a foot taller than him. "No no, never mind!" In one sweep he collected the mugs off the table. "Off with you, then, or I'll have in the authorities!"

Deprived of ale and seating space, Phaerin started to complain, and then cast Kjan a look and swept his cloak off the hook. "Ever so grateful for your hospitality," was his sarcastic parting comment, and then they were out in the dark street.

"Idiot innkeeper," muttered Phaerin. "What was that all about?"

"Took you long enough," someone hissed as they rounded a corner, and a black-cloaked Eledhe was glowering at the pair of them.

[pirateoftherings]

Kjan started to protest that they'd arrived long before she, but was immediately silenced by an especially deadly glare. If Eledhe had been intimidating before, then now she was positively terrifying. The fact that he was now two or three inches taller than the mercenary made Kjan no more at ease concerning his own safety.

Eledhe wordlessly thrust a piece of parchment in their general direction, still looking like she'd rather be anywhere but there. Neither Kjan nor Phaerin said anything as they quickly skimmed the message. Eledhe had apparently been feeling loquacious, as she had used two whole words this time: Pyreva, Theta.

When the silence continued far beyond the normal amount of time required to read two short words, Eledhe made a sound of exasperation and expounded. "Place, password. Try to keep up."

[Meldawen]

"For what?" said Phaerin instantly. "And why are you being so helpful?"

With Eledhe standing with her best I'm-going-to-stab-you-in-about-three-seconds expression helpfully displayed, this question seemed a tad strange. "More helpful than usual, then," Phaerin amended.

"Certainly not out of my great desire for your good health," snapped Eledhe. "You have a person, a place, and a password. Go and make yourselves useful. Or at least keep yourselves busy so I don't have to keep tipping off innkeepers in order to play errand girl."

She didn't add 'because if I see you one more time you might as well kiss seeing your next birthday goodbye' but it seemed implied.

"Right," said Phaerin. "But -"

Eledhe was already halfway down the street. "This is all quite confusing," said Phaerin, frowning. "I rather hope it's worth the explanation my mother's going to demand when I'm back."

[pirateoftherings]

"Oh, that's the least of my concerns," Kjan replied offhandedly. "I'll just tell my parents that it was your fault again. They accept that excuse very easily, for whatever reason." He shrugged and looked down at the parchment again.

"I've never been to Pyreva," he said after a moment. "Have you?"