"Hell for sorry," He hacks, smearing the dagger onto a fold of shirt. Lazar slumps beside her at the bridge’s edge, checking the blade. "You got that bastard."
Got most of them, really. The mage’ll be dead by now, drowned on his own fluids. The man with gouged eye is still wailing. Lazar picks a chunk out from under his nail. A waste. Yeah, whole thing seems like a waste.
"Reckon we leave him?"
A jerk of his chin. The pony’s gone, and it'll be a bitch to haul Cyclops back without a cart. Then what? Dump him in a gutter? There are still some goods here worth saving: Plunder too new to make its way into a smuggler’s den. Time might be better spent going through it.
"Might know where they been storing the loot," He considers, gaming it out aloud. "But moving on that’d start trouble."
He’s thinking of the rings Bastien found, glittering in grey Crossroads light. The Coterie. All rivers flow home, they could be fucking with more than petty thugs.
A shrug. He straightens, unsteady, offers an arm up. Her call.
Astrid follows the jerk of his chin, looking over at their last remaining problem. Considers the dilemma, as she catches Lazar’s hand and lets him tug her away from the edge and back to her shaky feet. She’s trying to remember what was in the brief, what they’d been instructed about the situation, and what they’d actually been asked to do: Clear out the bandits from around the bridge, and keep all these merchants happy.
She bites her lip— which results in an inadvertent sting of pain, realising it was split from someone’s punch. She licks the blood, swallows it.
The smart thing, probably, would be to let this last bandit and the loot go. Let bygones be bygones. Go for a celebratory drink. Consider this resolution good enough: the blockade itself is gone and the bandits likely won’t set up shop again, now knowing that Riftwatch is keeping an eye out. Done.
But there’s still that scrappy survivalist streak to her, the kind that hates leaving any meat left on the bone. Who’ll make use of anything. Thinking it through aloud in front of Lazar:
“If we get him to show us where the loot is, we can recover some for the merchants. That’d make them pleased as anything.” Brownie points for Riftwatch. And, probingly: “Maybe not all of it makes it back, either. If we wanted a bonus for our trouble, like.”
He's thinking. Of that little room with Barrow, of how much a new quilt costs. Of soft cloth, rich butter, good soap. That rosy kind, the kind Sybelle likes -
(He's thinking of Sybelle. Pleased as anything.)
"Yeah," Wheels turn behind his eyes. There's enough rope to do for wrists. "I'll hold him over the edge, you ask the questions."
Astrid’s smile broadens — having encountered someone similarly opportunistic as her, who won’t shy away from something slippery — and says, “Deal,” resisting the urge to high-five him.
She’s not always this vindictive. But people are meant to help each other, and these thieves fucked over that social contract first, so…
So then it’s the pair of them working in tandem: pacing over to the last bandit, Astrid nudging him with a boot, his noises quieting to muted tears as they loom over him. Lazar pinning him in place while she makes quick work of the knots around his wrists. Not as well as someone used to the sea and tying things in place on a ship, but good enough, considering the supplies and camping equipment she was taught to rope together in the high mountains.
She runs an absentminded thumb over her bruised lip, considering her words. She waits until Lazar’s started to hoist the man over the edge.
“Look, we’ll let you go,” he gives a rising wail, oh, she didn’t mean like that, “safely, back on the ground, if you just tell us where the rest of your stash is. We’ve got some very worried merchants to answer to. You’ll even get to keep your other eye, which is more than we could say if we just drop you here, which would be quicker and easier and honestly just a better end to our day, all things considered—”
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Got most of them, really. The mage’ll be dead by now, drowned on his own fluids. The man with gouged eye is still wailing. Lazar picks a chunk out from under his nail. A waste. Yeah, whole thing seems like a waste.
"Reckon we leave him?"
A jerk of his chin. The pony’s gone, and it'll be a bitch to haul Cyclops back without a cart. Then what? Dump him in a gutter? There are still some goods here worth saving: Plunder too new to make its way into a smuggler’s den. Time might be better spent going through it.
"Might know where they been storing the loot," He considers, gaming it out aloud. "But moving on that’d start trouble."
He’s thinking of the rings Bastien found, glittering in grey Crossroads light. The Coterie. All rivers flow home, they could be fucking with more than petty thugs.
A shrug. He straightens, unsteady, offers an arm up. Her call.
no subject
She bites her lip— which results in an inadvertent sting of pain, realising it was split from someone’s punch. She licks the blood, swallows it.
The smart thing, probably, would be to let this last bandit and the loot go. Let bygones be bygones. Go for a celebratory drink. Consider this resolution good enough: the blockade itself is gone and the bandits likely won’t set up shop again, now knowing that Riftwatch is keeping an eye out. Done.
But there’s still that scrappy survivalist streak to her, the kind that hates leaving any meat left on the bone. Who’ll make use of anything. Thinking it through aloud in front of Lazar:
“If we get him to show us where the loot is, we can recover some for the merchants. That’d make them pleased as anything.” Brownie points for Riftwatch. And, probingly: “Maybe not all of it makes it back, either. If we wanted a bonus for our trouble, like.”
no subject
(He's thinking of Sybelle. Pleased as anything.)
"Yeah," Wheels turn behind his eyes. There's enough rope to do for wrists. "I'll hold him over the edge, you ask the questions."
no subject
She’s not always this vindictive. But people are meant to help each other, and these thieves fucked over that social contract first, so…
So then it’s the pair of them working in tandem: pacing over to the last bandit, Astrid nudging him with a boot, his noises quieting to muted tears as they loom over him. Lazar pinning him in place while she makes quick work of the knots around his wrists. Not as well as someone used to the sea and tying things in place on a ship, but good enough, considering the supplies and camping equipment she was taught to rope together in the high mountains.
She runs an absentminded thumb over her bruised lip, considering her words. She waits until Lazar’s started to hoist the man over the edge.
“Look, we’ll let you go,” he gives a rising wail, oh, she didn’t mean like that, “safely, back on the ground, if you just tell us where the rest of your stash is. We’ve got some very worried merchants to answer to. You’ll even get to keep your other eye, which is more than we could say if we just drop you here, which would be quicker and easier and honestly just a better end to our day, all things considered—”