The Frothing Otter's sign now showed a cheerful creature chewing soap and blowing bubbles, instead of a rabid animal snarling mad defiance. The tavern, once properly smoky and grimy, now had freshly whitewashed walls and clean straw on the floor instead of the usual compost.
"Spiffy inside and out," Arcie grumbled, as the unlikely pair made their way to the shadowy corner in the back, as tradition demanded. Sam grunted, the decor unable to make any headway against the inner gloom that filled his soul with sour spite and sorrows.
A couple of lush potted plants now blocked their usual table. Sam reached out unspeaking and broke their stems at the base as easily as snapping a spine, and they settled in behind the wilting vegetation like explorers in a hostile land.
A nervous waiter brought a bottle of port wine and a pitcher of beer and then fled, leaving Sam to bite the cork out with his teeth and Arcie to heft the pitcher like a stein. They clinked a bitter toast and drank.
Arcie, wiping foam from his nose, looked around. People were definitely noticing Sam's outfit and attitude, and Sam was starting to glower like a sullen teen. It was only a matter of time before there would be one hell of a distraction.
"Ye really shouldn't be wearin' the blacks," Arcie muttered under his breath.
"My costume's at the laundry," Sam snarled back sullenly. "And there's no law against black in public. Yet." Despite its suspicions, the new good and upstanding world seemed willing to play by its own rules. If they kept their heads down and didn't do anything wrong, ever, they might survive. But what sort of survival was that?
Arcie had already planned to leave the city tonight-- too many memories, and not enough shadows. Sure, he'd count Sam a friend when it suited him, but Arcie, despite his chirpy character, was a lot more intelligent than the assassin, and as ruthlessly practical as Kin tended to be. Sam was right, there was no place for him in this modern world, but he could still serve a purpose. Once Sam murdered a few of these innocent civilians, the law would focus on him. Like a crow following the harrow, a thief could find pickings in the scraps left behind.
Arcie took mental note of all the available targets; loose jewelry, full pouches, and so forth dangling like ripe fruit among the other patrons. But he felt uneasy, even despite the beer, and tried to work out why. His own trapsense was much better than Sam's, and it was giving him a faint warning ping even now.
Sam found the port to be a bit stronger than he'd expected. He normally wouldn't touch liquor, because his body and brain needed to always be at the peak of their lethal capabilities. But without a job, without even hope of a target, the aching burn of the fire within was slowly hollowing him out. Alcohol could fill that space, for a time. A lifetime of developing resistence to poisons had left some nasty marks on his liver, and he'd pay dearly for it later. But what was later, if not a gift from the gods?
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A faint muttering from the front of the tavern made Arcie peek cautiously through the downed ficus, and he spotted the cream-colored uniforms of the City Watch starting to clot up around the entrance. A glance towards the kitchen revealed another incursion there.
"Flippin' hack, they dinna even wait for us tae do anything?" he muttered in annoyance. His ears twitched; Kin ears were mouselike and mobile, but Arcie's were as tattered and scarred as an old tomcat's, down to stubs that almost looked Humanlike. "Bugger this backwards by the bell-end," he said, warily getting his feet underneath him while not changing his height at the table.
A couple of the Watch were coming this way, and Arcie could already see how this would unfold; they'd clap their hands on Sam's shoulders from behind, the assassin would go off like a startled wolverine, and Arcie would escape while they dragged Sam down, and it would serve the gloomy bottle-throwing bastard right.
A shame to leave without any score, though-- and then Arcie spotted the ornate belt-pouch at the waist of a well-dressed gentleman who was weaving his unsteady way towards the lavatories at the back of the tavern, past their table.
He should have listened to that trapsense warning, he should have been more cautious, less impulsive. But some flash of rebellious cussedness flicked through him; if he was going to be confronted by Watchmen, he felt he should at least deserve it. Like a cat unable to stop himself from batting at a string, his nimble fingers flicked up the flap--
The explosion was concussive; Arcie barely saw the flash of the magic runes activating as the sigil went off in his face, knocking him back like a thunderclap.
Explosive runes!? Who bothers with that sort of thing any more? This is hardly fair, Arcie thought muzzily, trying to blink his way free of the effects as the eruption began around him. Screams and shouts from the civilian patrons, and the loud blowing of Watch whistles as they closed in.
Sam scrambled to his feet, smashing the bottle on the table in a gout of purple before slashing the sharp ends across the throat of the first Watchman to reach them, adding a brighter crimson to the mess. It was all a single smooth movement, and he flung the bottle on the backhand, taking out another Watchman who was raising a crossbow.
Another Watchman swung a truncheon that bounced off Sam's blackslicked scalp, and Sam staggered back, panting, trying to summon the fire within him through the swamp of drunkeness-- and the Watchman hit him again, this time with one of the heavy potted plants, and Sam went down in a crash of crockery.
Arcie looked up at the Watchmen that surrounded them, and recognized the one who'd dropped Sam. It was a man he'd known as Haitchen, a year or so ago. He'd been too big to be a good thief-- but he seemed to make a very capable Watchman, now.
"Haitch! How's civvy livin'?" Arcie asked, trying the innocent smile, but felt hard hands grab him from all sides. "Thankee fer savin' me from that horrible assas-- here, leggo! Gerroff!" He struggled in their grasp as they lifted him up bodily, feeling a frustrated fury at the indignation of it all.
And Haitchen looked at him with only disgusted anger, and not a trace of recognition. Arcie's betrayed expression was wiped away in another swift swing of the truncheon.