The Officer watched in offended amusement as the Head Chef, his overly sized egg of a head nearly taking out the lights that hung from the ceiling, stormed his way out of the diner like a furious primate. His eyes scanned the rest of the room, the pathetic patrons each diving back into their bowls conveniently just as his gaze scoured over them.
His eyes turned back to the shambolic mess that he rather begrudgingly called his comrades- though he wouldn’t object to calling them children. Rocco remained slumped over the table, knocked out cold by a plain Minervan guard, while the other sailor, called Poco, stood by impatiently as the Chitite girl haphazardly scooped up the equipment strewn under the table.
He lamented the whole situation. The stench, the sound, the whole scenario irritated him to no end. And nothing brought him more rage than the sight of his imbecilic subordinates. He clenched his fist, just barely managing to steady himself.
As the girl rose from under the table, she handed Poco a handful of gold, shoo-ing him away as though he were a monkey placated by an offering of food. Rather hastily, she hoisted the two large rucksacks onto herself with little effort, surprising the Officer slightly. Must’ve been one of those Shafraturriyahn warriors, he mused.
The girl shuffled her way out of the diner, and Poco hunched himself over to count the coins one by one.
He rolled his eyes, sighing slightly. But something caught his eye. A singular coiled hempen cord, hidden within the shadows of the table and blended into the browns and reds of the diner floor. And though he could not say what exactly, something about it drew him closer.
The Officer approached the item, feeling its worn, rough surface against his fingers as he examined it more closely. Now, it reminded him of something. A few days ago, if he recalled correctly, the Captain of his ship held a meeting with the ship’s officers about a possible lead on the elusive head of the Resistance. There, his Captain presented three items, a luffa stained dark red, a worn-out, heavily stained pocket knife and a fragment of a rope.
A rope that bore an awful similarity to the one he ran through his very hands. Its texture was even similar to the one his Captain presented, its fibres fine and tightly wound, contrasting the much larger fibres that wove together to form ropes he knew the Minervan peasantry tended to prefer.
Curious, he thought to himself. He felt the embers of excitement stir within him for a moment, the kindling of hope flaming back to life before he quashed it, lest it let him down yet again.
He picked the rope up, calling out to Poco.
“Poco! Pick Rocco up, we’re heading back to the ship.”
“Aye, sir!”
Now, back at the ship, the Officer presented his findings to his Captain.
“You… found a rope?”
The Captain looked unamused, still sat reclined in his chair as the Officer slid the rope across the desk.
“Captain, I have reason to believe this rope is the same as the one you showed us, earlier this month. Look,” the Officer said, reaching out to point at the rope’s fibres. “It’s got the same-”
“Stop,” the Captain, raised his hand, blocking the rope from his view. “Officer Avar. This is the third time this month you’ve told me you found a lead.”
“Captain, listen-”
“No, Avar. You need to listen.”
The Officer set his hand down.
“Avar, you need to focus on your mission. Our goal as a crew is not to find the Defender. That is not our business.”
“But Captain, if we find them-”
“Avar. A single rope is not enough concern to get the entire city to shake down each and every one of its residents. Are- are you even listening to yourself right now?”
The Officer hung his head in silence, eyes fixed on the rope, his one conscious subordinate sheepishly standing behind him in the presence of the Captain.
“Not once have I ever seen any one of my crew members knocked out cold by a Minervan guard. And to have that go unpunished? Seriously?” The Captain widened his eyes in incredulity, staring into Avar’s avoidant eyes. He grabbed a pipe and lighter off the desk.
“You get back into that city and sort out the tax situation with the Xoplikos, or so help me I might just send you back to the dockyards.” The Captain paused, his stare latching onto Avar’s terrified gaze as his eyes widened in fear. “We’re not waiting any longer. Get it done, Avar,” the Captain said, spinning his chair as he clicked the lighter to life. “Get it done.”
“Tough, Officer,” Poco said, offering his condolences.
The two of them got off the ship, walking down the gangway and back onto the wooden planks of the dock’s piers.
“Ey! A penny!”
The water splashed as the coin flew off the pier, sent careening off the edge by Avar’s boot.
“Oh.”
Avar kissed his teeth in annoyance, pulling both his hands out of his coat’s pockets. It was just the two of them now, with Rocco having been left in the ship’s quarters to recuperate.
“Poco.”
“Aye, Officer?”
“That girl that paid you off earlier at the diner, did anything seem off about her?”
“The Chitite one?”
Avar nodded, though he refused to meet his gaze.
“...No.”
“Wasn’t it strange that she lifted all three of those bags so easily?”
“Can’t all those cat people from Shafraturriyah do something like that?”
Avar opened his mouth, stopping mid-word. He sighed, shaking his head as began down the pier. His slouched posture was entirely defeated, though Poco picked out hints of annoyance and frustration in the slight scowl etched on his face.
“Whatever. Let’s just get to the Duke and move on already.”
“Aye.”
As the light of sky slowly mellowed, turning from a radiant white to a warmer gold and then finally a near-scarlet orange, Avar and Poco shuffled into their waiting room, a floor below the Duke’s audience chamber.
The magnitude of the haggling and arguing they had forced themselves through to pry open a place in the line of appointments had tired them down to the bone, not to mention the several hours of sitting by on hard wooden benches lined outside in the Concourse in between negotiations. He mused over how it’d probably have been easier if Rocco had been around, even if he was only half-awake. Three bodies, at the very least, looked more intimidating than two.
The Officer sat himself down on the room’s grand sofa, as Poco slammed the door behind them in the midst of glaring down the two unimpressed staff stood stoically out in the hallway.
The vibrations from that slamming then travelled down the hallway, shaking down the party’s room slightly as it surged past them.
Pallas watched on in horror as the tower of coiled rope, held upright only by the friction between each length of the cord and the weight of the book sat atop it, buckled as the table it stood on shifted under it.
“No!” she said, clutching her forehead with her hands and bundling up some of her fringe in her fists as she did so.
“O-ho! That, is, unfortunate!”
Soleiman, victorious, looked over in glee as she hunched over the mess of books taken from the room’s shelves and rope that once stood tall and proud over the Tea Set Kingdom. His own tower, with thicker pillars of rope coiled twice onto themselves, remained standing- its structure reminiscent of the town hall.
Pallas moaned as she leaned back into it and slowly got to twirling the rope into spiral columns again.
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“Five minutes,” Qingxi said, sipping from a second cup of herbal tea as she glanced at the clock.
Pallas sized up Soleiman’s assembly out of the corner of her eye. It was sturdy, sure, though at the cost of its height. It stood at around 40 or so centimetres, a height she reckoned she could top given she was fast enough. Anything to not have to eat the singular stale ‘biscuit’, sat menacingly atop its ceramic bed surrounded by unused teacups and plates.
Pallas got to building her tower again, twirling two ropes at once with both of her hands as she put them into place and set the first book down temporarily to keep the columns in place.
They twirled and twirled, Qingxi sipping on her tea as the warmth of the scarlet sky seeped in from the window behind her, itself a portal to the ongoings of the Concourse below.
“One minute.”
Pallas held her hands tentatively out to both sides of her three-legged tower, now about the height of Soleiman’s a few minutes back. That being said, its structural integrity left much to be desired, not to mention the fact that Soleiman’s tower had gotten just a little bit higher.
Nothing she couldn’t overtake in a minute, though.
Pallas looked around.
Wait, where were the ropes?
Her head shot left and right, looking over her shoulder and under the table to no avail. Did they really use all the rope they had?
“Is there a problem?” Soleiman said teasingly.
“Where’s the rope?”
“Oh, there should be more in my bag. You might wanna hurry up, though.”
Pallas shuffled herself along the sofa, leaping from her seat as she dove into the rucksack. She dug past cloth, tarps, pegs, even little bits of string and a brand-new pocket knife, used only a few times. But her hands found no rope.
“Oi, it’s not here!”
“You sure?”
Pallas dug a little harder, though with every item she pushed to the side she felt the seconds slip by her faster and faster.
“Regrettable.”
“Soleiman!”
“Time!”
Pallas emerged from the rucksack, face flushed slightly from the panic, strands of hair stuck to her face.
“Are you serious?”
“It’s there- Pallas, I promise, why would it not be there?”
Qingxi looked at Soleiman, and then at Pallas, who’s face at this point had been set in a dark determination.
She marched over, scranning the entire biscuit in all its stale glory in a second, before pointing at the rucksack left agape.
Could she really not have found it? He hardly ever saw Pallas get so fired up over one of their friendly games, and really the only times she ever got cross at him was when he did something obscenely unfair.
“Okay, okay,” he said, raising his hands up in surrender. “I’ll have a look.”
He bent over, sticking his entire upper half into the rucksack to give it a good go. Funnily enough, yeah, it wasn’t there.
“Huh. You’re right. But, I could’ve sworn I put it in there… you remember back in the morning, right? While you were-”
Piak!
The crack split the very atmosphere of the room, powerful and foreboding enough to send feelings of sheer doom deep into whomever beheld it.
Qingxi’s dead, emotionless face broke its facade as her jaw dropped slightly in shock seeing Soleiman yelp in pain, jumping up and around as he clutched at his right bum cheek.
“Oh Minerva! That hurt man!” he exclaimed, falling to his knees before Pallas as he sort of collapsed onto her. The pain that now seared its way through his glutes and into his leg and pelvis pairing nicely with the suffering of his left bum cheek earlier that day.
“Yeah.”
Soleiman groaned, leaning against Pallas as she squatted down to hold him. “Did… did you really have to hit me that hard?”
“Of course, since now we’re even.”
“Even?” he replied in bewilderment as Pallas chuckled a little bit under her breath.
“Alright, I might’ve been a bit harsh. You okay?”
Soleiman breathed in.
“Yup, just about,” he said, though it wasn’t very convincing.
Qingxi set down her now empty teacup, placing it back onto the table as she regained her composure.
“You two must be… really close,” she said absentmindedly, her voice strangely detached.
“Mm. We’ve been going at each other for a whole decade now,” Pallas said, slowly helping Soleiman back up to his feet.
There was a series of loud, panicky knocks on the door, and the three of them broke from their conversation.
Pallas rushed forward, unlocking the door and peering outside to see a member of staff stood before her, presumably from the rooms next door given that two of them were left ajar with others peeking through.
“Yeah?”
“Is… everything okay, Miss?”
Pallas opened the door slightly more, moving to the side to let the staff see Soleiman straightening himself out. He waved at the staff member, smiling awkwardly.
“Absolutely.”
“Alright… well, just in case, your appointment with the Duke’s in about 20 or so minutes, at 6 o’clock.”
“Got it. Thanks,” Pallas replied, waving the staff member farewell as she slowly closed the door.
Avar stuck his head out in the hallway, disbelief written all over his face. As the staff slowly retreated back into their rooms, he continued to hang his head out, almost as though he was still in the midst of processing what he had just heard.
“Officer?”
That scream, that voice. He could’ve sworn they belonged to the three runts that caused a scene at the diner earlier.
“Officer? You good?”
“Poco!” Avar rushed forward to grab Poco’s shoulders, the door slowly closing behind him. “Tell me you heard that.”
“The spank?”
“The scream! Don’t you remember where it came from?”
“The scream? I… ohh!” Poco’s eyes lit up as it hit him too. “That was the feller from the diner, right?”
“Yes!” Avar disengaged, though his heart beat faster and he felt the blood leave his fingers in anticipation. He felt hope. A surge of excitement shot through him, electrifyingly enticing. “You have the knives on you?”
Poco pulled open his bag, letting the scarlet evening light glimmer off the silvery blades of the several darts and knives within.
Avar smiled, and then he waited.
He watched as the clock set up in the corner of their room struck 6, almost immediately followed up by the sound of a door opening. As the sound of footsteps slowly faded up the staircase leading up to the Duke’s audience chamber, Avar slid the last of the knives into his cloak. He sat by the door, ear pressed against its wood as he waited for the signal.
After some time, he heard a single pair of footsteps make their way from right to left, before disappearing down the stairs to the first floor.
Avar gave Poco a nod, and he opened the door. Swiftly, but confidently, the two of them made haste. They went down the hallway, turned right and headed up the final stairwell, the pure white light of the braziers below giving way to a more soothing, peach tint- a comforting mix of the warmth of the first floor and the brightness of the second.
As they arrived at the third and final floor, they u-turned to the right past a divider, finally coming face to face with the other staff member stood by the door that led into the audience chamber.
“Sirs, what are-”
Avar shifted forward, putting a hand on the staff’s shoulder as he leaned in and shushed him quietly. Avar’s gaze bore into the poor man’s eyes, glaring him into the floor.
“On behalf of Upper Admiral Timeo, we ask you keep your mouth shut.”
The staff nodded slightly, tensing up as Avar handed him over to Poco- who then stood by the corner next to the staircase to keep an ear out for anyone else.
Tenderly, Avar leaned an ear against the door.
“The ship’ll have enough rations and supplies for a few days,” the Duke said. He pushed forward a notebook, adding, “But you shouldn’t take more than a night to make the journey. The specifics of what you have are in here, and make sure you absolutely do not lose the two compasses.”
The three of them nodded in compliance. They sat before the Duke, all three of them with their identical armours donned. If it weren’t for their eyes, coloured red, brown and black, the Duke wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart.
“Lose both of them, and you lose your chances of reaching Kardia, understood?”
They nodded again, though Qingxi shifted uncomfortably this time, looking back over her shoulder and at Pallas and Soleiman’s bags set down against the wall by the door.
The Duke took out another scroll from under his desk, unravelling it to reveal a map of the coastal sector of Porthopolis.
“Now, Porthopolis has two ports. The one here,” he said, pointing to the one further west, facing out towards Merkez, “Is where Captain Fetacci has his ship moored. Your boat’s at this one,” he said, pointing at the port facing directly across the strait, separated from the western port by a series of piers, outcrops and houses on stilts inhabited by fishermen. “I advise you to sail east when you depart, so the chances of them catching you are kept as slim as possible, understood?”
Soleiman was the only one to nod this time. Though even she seemed to narrow her eyes slightly at the Duke’s new plan.
The Duke slid forward another notebook, saying, “This one contains all the specifics you’ll need to know when you get there, so if you forget anything about either finding them or getting into their Estate, check the book.”
“And… you said they were your cousins?”
“Kinsmen, more like,” he added, handing them a little metallic family crest pinning onto an elaborate silk napkin. “They’re what remains of our Duchy on the Continent after Minerva got partitioned between Calisura and Lord Gravitas. My heirs, actually. They’ll take care of you.”
“And Lady Rei will meet us there too?”
“Yes, after she finishes her mission.”
…
Qingxi shifted forward in her seat.
“Duke Thosmodeus-”
The door swung open, and the peachy light of the corridor cast the shadow of the Officer across the rug-covered floor.