Blood on the Rocks (M)

[Lion]

Quinlan moved closer and grabbed her wrist in a strong grip and turned her shoulder over so he could properly inspect them.  "These are just the same as talisman in fact.  Where did you get the idea for these?  The design.  If those people know you have these....and there isn't any reason to suspect that they won't find out, they'll skin you alive."

[kleineklementine]

Zahi reacted instantaneously. She twisted around, turning to face him and in one rapid movement that revealed she was quite a bit stronger than she looked (and perhaps stronger than humanly made sense for her size), Zahi shoved Quinlan hard against the room’s wall with her hand around his throat. He still, however, had a grip on her wrist.

Quinlan clearly touched a nerve. Though, strange symbols aside, Zahi didn’t usually let people push her around.

“They’re not exactly the same,” she answered darkly, though she couldn’t be entirely sure. “Anyway, they’re just something I remember from when I was a kid. I see no reason why your buddies should find out. I don’t think they’re very interested in me. Okay?”

Of course, that might have been true before, but was it still, after she’d killed two of them? That was the problem with being the bastard of a foreign prostitute... she didn't really blend in in these northern countries.

[Lion]

Quinlan gasped a little, but his anger only surged. She was indeed strong.  Just about as strong as he was, maybe stronger and he used his rage to shove her off him, releasing his grip on her wrist.  He huffed and rubbed at his throat.

"They saw you with me.  They'll hunt you just the same.  If you go off on your own now, they'll find you for sure.  Even if you do know how to hide.  These types are more dogged even than your kind.  And they don't let a little thing like death stop them."

[kleineklementine]

Zahi caught her footing as he shoved her and, at first, looked tensed to spring back at him, her eyes flashing dangerously. But she stayed still and after a moment her stance relaxed, a little. She held Quinlan's gaze for several moments, then slowly turned around so he could see the tattoos.

Zahi was correct in saying they weren't exactly the same as the talismans. But the motifs were strikingly similar.

"There's a ruined temple a few days outside of Zantaric. No one practices there anymore. Regularly, anyway. These are from there." She paused a moment before saying, "You still haven't said how you know so much about this."

[Lion]

Quinlan sighed through flared nostrils but most of it was an attempt to relieve some of the stress building up inside of him.  A simple breath could carry off years of anxiety, depression, anger, and pain that all welled up and made his blood itch all that much worse. 

He stepped forward and carefully examined her markings, committing them to memory and touched one odd mark on her back.  "Oh, I think that's just a mole.  Never mind," he said, poking her ribs curiously.

He stepped away and fixed his belt back around his waist, remembering it was on the floor.  "I don't know much else, I'm afraid.  My memory is still a little fuzzy.  I need time...or maybe a good stiff drink," he said, shaking his head.  "It comes and goes.  And the memories flicker like flashes of light in a pitch black room.  I know Kravitt said the Talisman was the Key.  If you look at yours carefully there's a small glass embedded at the center, like a spectacle lens.  It reacts to light...but something tells me not just any light will do.  Perhaps sunlight.  Or maybe the moon.  Rituals tend to focus on forces of natural, powerful things beyond our control, things to be communed with.  Maybe if I look through the lens in natural light...maybe the way will be revealed."

[kleineklementine]

Zahi bristled when Quinlan poked her ribs, and it took quite a bit of her self-control not to lash out at him. She did not enjoy being looked over like this and liked being prodded even less. Quinlan may as well be poking a bear.

She turned when he was done and watched him while he tried to remember what Kravitt had said, and while he speculated about what it might mean. She wondered, privately, if all of his knowledge of this came from remembered fragments of a conversation with Kravitt, or from prior knowledge. She'd wait to ask.

Finally, Zahi moved to the other side of the room where she'd left her clothes and got dressed again - shirt first. While she fastened her boots and belt, she asked Quinlan, "Well, which do you want? Time, or rest, or a drink?" She didn't bother saying what they both knew: that she, for the time being, was stuck with him. "We probably shouldn't stick around here for too long, anyway. And afterwards, I'd like to pay a visit to Kravitt's place of business. Someone has to deliver the bad news." And the corpse. And they could take a look around.

[Lion]

He stood quietly for a time, looking around the room and gave a nonchalant shrug.  "Well, maybe it ain't the best idea, but the room is already paid for.  Maybe we can fool around a little.  Might even get your blood flowing a bit and loosen you up.  Get your heart pumping.  You got that real tense look on your face."

[kleineklementine]

"You're hilarious," Zahi answered flatly, her expression unchanged. Or, mostly unchanged. There was the briefest glimmer of hesitation as Zahi wondered what Scavenger pup Bujari would be fucking while she was gone. Not that her sleeping around would spite the stupid Yoreiqui, but sometimes she wished that it would. The moment passed, and she added plainly, "You're not my type, anyway. Too scrawny."

Zahi returned the long dagger to her booth sheath and pocketed the talisman. She would look for the glass he was talking about later.

"And you're right," she continued, stooping down to wrap Kravitt back up - to make it less bloody, she used the new sheets, too, "it isn't a good idea to stay here. I don't think they'd expect to rent it out the whole night. Not that the drunk oaf down there would remember. But it's probably better to move again. Get a bit further away from our friendly run-in back there. I'll even buy you a drink if you want. 'You got that real tense look on your face.'"

[Lion]

He didn't know why it bothered him.  He wasn't 'scrawny' as she put it.  Sure, he was slim.  But he was still Connlaothian and he was even bigger than her.  Ah, perhaps compared to what she was used to.  Quinlan shrugged in immaterial nonchalance and moved to help with the body.

"Nah, you're right, let's get the hell out of here," he said, securing the knots before hoisting the sack over his shoulder.  He paused for a second at the door, considering the window and shaking his head.  He moved down into the hallway, careful that few people would see then and tried to act natural when exiting.  Or as natural as one could when carrying a corpse.

"I think I have an idea.  An old shipping warehouse down on the waterfront.  Kravitt said I could make use of one of the boats there.  As good a place as any to stash a body, and see what else he was up to," he suggested.

[kleineklementine]

Zahi hefted the weight of Kravitt over to Quinlan. After all, call girls didn't lug around big heavy sacks! Not that Zahi passed for the most convincing call girl...

She was just about to suggest they go to a similar neighborhood and find another seedy hotel room when Quinlan suggested the shipping warehouse.

"Are you sure you want to go somewhere Kravitt suggested just now?" she asked. It would be good to check out, but she wasn't sure if it was better or worse to do it sooner or later... Maybe he had a point. Zahi shrugged. "Your call; it's your mystery. Seems like I'm just here as your bodyguard."

Of course, as soon as Zahi had a stronger opinion, she probably wouldn't be quite so likely to defer to him!

[Lion]

"Because nothing looks more out of place than two people lugging around a bloody bag," Quinlan said sharply.  "The sheets can only last so long and I'd planned on dumping it there anyway.  Before you so rudely interrupted me." 

They were downstairs and out the back before people got too much of an eyeful of them.  He peered down both sides of the alleyway, making sure the coast was clear before bolting west toward the waterfront.  Maybe he didn't know Ketra that well.  But there were few things that differed it from other cities.

You had your metropolitan areas, a your seedy red lamp districts, your market and your ramshackle huts.  Quinlan stuck to the shadows, wary of anyone passing a glance his way and soon the warehouse came into view.

There were a few guards poking around but no one saw them when he broke in through one of the upper windows, slipped down into what looked like an office.

[kleineklementine]

It wasn't the route Zahi would have taken, but she followed Quinlan through the shadows. She was tense, though, and her eyes kept scanning the roof lines for any signs of their 'friends.' When they reached the building at the waterfront, Zahi waited with the body while Quinlan slipped in, then shoved poor Kravitt through, and followed the boys into the dim room.

Looking around, it became immediately clear that they were not the first ones here since Kravitt had left. There was still some evidence that this had once been a tidy, organized office -surprising, really, for a scumbag - but it had been completely ransacked. Scrolls and papers littered the floor. Every cupboard and drawer and closet was open, its contents half-emptied. It was a mess.

Spotting one thing that wasn't looted, Zahi took a step over to a large globe whose top hemisphere was now on the ground. Its contents, however - a bottle of aged brandy and a small collections of heavy glass tumblers - were intact. As though nothing were particularly amiss, Zahi opened the bottle (smelled it) and poured out two drinks and handed one of the tumblers to Quinlan.

"Looks like we missed the party."

[Lion]

Quinlan sniffed the room.  It was odious of smoke, but not of fire, more like incense.  Oh yes they'd been here and he treaded lightly.  His footing avoided an crooked floorboard, knowing it would creak as he observed their surroundings.  Despite the mess, he noticed one thing along the boards, a muddy half-footprint stepping over a what looked like a schematic.

He turned to Zahi and glanced between the drink and her.  What was this?  A sudden change in demeanor.  At least it was free and the booze smelled fairly good.  He waited for her to down hers first before taking his and knocking it back.  It settled warmly in his belly and he nodded to her.

"Good stuff.  Kravitt, whatever his other shortcomings, at least had decent taste," he said and took the bottle to pour another.

"Beats lugging that fucker around for any more city blocks."  Quinlan moved to set the body down by the desk and gently propped it up onto the chair.  He observed the ransacked drawers and pushed through blank papers and quills and bottles of ink.  There was nothing of significant interest and he knelt down to get a better look  at the bottom.  "Well, will ya lookie here," he said softly and emerged from underneath the desk with a small folded paper, thin and easy to destroy if need be.  He pulled it out and gently unfolded it, revealing a charcoal tracing of a map, or what looked like one never the less.

[kleineklementine]

Zahi wasn't shocked to see Quinlan wait for her to take the first sip. Very gentlemanly, since she obviously wouldn't know any better than him if the drinks were poisoned. But unlike Quinlan, who emptied the tumbler in one go, Zahi took a few sips, held onto it, and put it down on the desk as she started to look around the room. Where she promptly forgot about it.

She was flipping through a piles of papers - mostly outlining what looked like a staggering amount of debt, interesting - when Quinlan found the map. She looked up a bit skeptically when he held it up.

"You think they left behind something as obvious as a map? Seems pretty sloppy. Might be a dummy map or something."

[Lion]

[Lol. He just wanted to see if she would drink it first.  He doesn't like drinking alone if he doesn't have to.]

Quinlan carefully examined the map, taking what she said with a grain of salt.  "It's possible.  But it didn't look like they cared much about being careful given the state of the room," he said and continued to trace his fingers along the sides of the map.  The lines were often too perfect  and he knew it was in fact an etching, traced over what was likely a carving of some sort.  The map seemed more like a scenery, captured in time, with a path hidden between two massive mountains, once cloaked in ice, another in fire.

He folded it up never the less and stuffed it into his pocket.   He also took the bottle of brandy, corking it and stuffing it into his breast pocket.  "Find anything interesting?"

[kleineklementine]

“Maybe,” Zahi answered. “Looks like Kravitt had got himself in some pretty serious debt. To various sources, but most of these are debt to a certain Matthias Tinker. Doesn’t ring a bell for me. So if he’s a crime boss, he can’t be a big one.”

Zahi watched as Quinlan folded up the map, somewhat curious that he stowed it away before she had the chance to really see it. She still wasn’t convinced that the man was being completely forthcoming about his part in all this. Zahi stowed away a few of the accounting sheets with the most common, or unusual, names on them. Zahi’s eyes scanned the room for anything else that stood out: and landed on Kravitt himself, still crumpled on the floor where they’d shoved him in through the window. She was normally one to leave a body where it lay, but for some reason she went over to Kravitt. Rolling him out of the sheets, she hoisted him up with a small sound of effort and walked the corpse awkwardly over to the desk chair. Where she deposited him in a sitting position.

It almost looked funny. Maybe, Zahi thought, it was because she must officially be ‘off the clock’ now. No one would be impressed that she got caught up on this little side-track once she got back to Arca. So she may as well have some fun with it. ‘Fun,’ of course, being a relative measure. But as she propped Kravitt in the chair, she noticed something. It was a piece of paper that had been stuffed inside his shirt and it was so soaked in blood that Zahi had to peel it off of him. When she carefully opened it, though, it was just a short list of names. Not people names, it seemed, but maybe place names, but Zahi didn't recognize them. She folded it back up and pocketed it.

Then, looking around the room, she commented, “We could spend all night going through all of this. But since you already stowed away the booze, I’m guessing that’s not your plan.”

[Lion]

[I thought Quinlan already sat the body up in his desk chair?]

Quinlan peeked back up at her.  "We could.  But something tells me we really shouldn't linger.  The guards will come patroling this way.  Get what's of interest and head out."  He heard the sound of boots on creaking stairs coming up this way and he suddenly turned around. 

He snatched up whatever papers he could and rolled them up, gripping them tightfistedly.  "Come on!" he hissed and went back for the window, only to stop at watchful lantern light walking around just below it.  "Shit!  The other door." 

Quinlan moved toward it, and just when it did, it flew open, a guardsman on the otherside. "What the!?  INTRUDERS!"  He didn't hesitate to go for his blade, but Quinlan was quicker and ran him through with his own dagger, sticking it deep into his throat, leaving him to choke on his own blood.

[kleineklementine]

[D'oh! In my defense, I wrote that at 3 AM KST (Kleine Standard Time)... far past my peak hours!]

Rule number one of criminal activity: Don't kill a guard. Zahi peered down at the body. Well, maybe he wasn't a city guard. But she didn't want to stick around to find out.

She moved quickly after that, shoving a few more papers in her pocket, she sprang back over to the window and pulled herself up to the window sill. Seeing that no one was in the alley, Zahi hoisted herself and climbed back out onto the street. At least without Kravit they'd be able to move around a bit more easily. And less conspicuously!

Straightening herself up, resisted the urge to pull out a dagger. But that could wait until they were actually faced with danger. glancing back into the office, she called in a quiet hiss, "You coming up, Red?"

[Lion]

It was foolish.  It was spur of the moment.  But Quinlan knew better than wait to be detained, beaten, or killed.  The guardsman was obviously some private outfit.  Why would a criminal like Kravitt protect his interests with keepers of the law?  Nevertheless, it was another body on his hands.

Quinlan staggered backwards, gripping his blade and staring at the blood that coated it.  He quickly cleaned it on the guardsman's hair before heading for the window.  The cry had called the patrols in from outside, leaving their exit clear.  He jumped from the window, landing cleanly in a crouch and stood up beside her.

He took her arm and nudged her off, following into an alley.  "Got anymore hotels to hide in?" he said, trying to act as natural as possible. 

[kleineklementine]

"Not really," Zahi answered, not missing a beat in following Quinlan away from the warehouse office. "Ketra's not really my usual stomping grounds."

She looked down at his hand on her arm. Then at her own. Both of them were a bit bloody and Zahi was still a bit scuffed up from her tumble with the man she'd killed in the alley. "Should probably be somewhere we can get a bit cleaned up, though. But at this hour, I think we'll better find a similar place to the last one."

She glanced back down at his hand on her again and decided that this late a couple - or at least a john and a hooker - looked much less conspicuous. So she twisted her arm free from his grip, but instead of reclaiming it, looped it around his hips. Following the sound of drunk voices, she steered him like that back into a different, but rowdy part of the city. Off a round little platz full of taverns and a few stumbling drunks, there was a line of dingy little hotels. Zahi turned towards them, and gave a shrug. Any of them would do.