Smoke

"So how did you meet my father?" Argilla asked, as they drank their tea... and port, it had to be admitted. It was balmy at her estate, and her guest (though simple in manners and somewhat crude in his use of language) seemed to be enjoying it. Her eyes went over his mien more than once, appreciating the muscle tone and contemplating just how a man like that could live with so many scars.

And the wings. That was the oddest bit. He had just fallen through the glass ceiling of her solar, drunk and bloodied. The blood, of course, had been from the boar he had been carrying, but the fall was purely out of drunkenness. Yet... Argilla, dark of hair and green of eyes, had merely set down her book, walked over to the topknotted brick of muscle and looked at him. The initial shock turned into further shock when the man opened his eyes and stared back into hers and asked: "Fox? Where the... where the hell am I?"

Not one of slow thought, Argilla had the solar turned into a guest room.

And now, half a day later in the chill coming through the broken windows, they sat and drank and ate and chatted.

And Serpentine was sober. For now. The question did seem to put him ill at ease. "Can't remember, Mrs Auregarde." He had, for some odd reason, developed quite a respect for her cool head and politeness. It seemed ill-suited for his rank smell, furred vest and general habit of speaking whilst eating.

"Surely you must remember something?" she ventured.

He chewed on raw boar for a moment (Argilla had ordered it left there and he had torn out the eyes first whilst on his way back to a somewhat sober state) and finally gave in, leaning forward on the sofa that he'd already left a few plumes on. "Him and me, we don't always see eye to eye," he began nervously, but continued when Argilla smiled and sipped her tea. "But he's helped me, I've helped him, and I've made a bit of coin with him and found new ways to, uh... dispatch people."

"Do carry on," she said encouragingly.

"Well, there was... this one time, some damned so many years back and..."

--

Sebastian didn't even know how it always happened like this. He'd had a peaceful couple of days. He'd even slept well. Nobody'd tried to accost him, curse at him, and he'd even pulled that caper off without anyone noticing.

He didn't know why it happened like this, but he was expecting something really bad to happen to him as he walked the streets of Usuilla at night, dressed comfortably, mildly tipsy and pondering what the point of it all was.

And then the bad thing happened, just as he turned a corner and glanced over his shoulder to see if he was being followed. Walking casually and still being aware of your environs was not always so easy, especially in this crammed, tight place where the echoes fooled your ears and the scents were all strange.

Next; he tripped over something, landed on his face next to a dead cat that was... still... steaming? And there was something even more rank than the smell of its intestines, right in front of his eyes and...

"...you?" It was mostly the smell. Old booze, wine sweat, the feathers, that strange tangy scent that followed the winged thing that looked like a statue of a ridiculously brawny war hero. With wings. And weighing just as much as the granite, most like.

And that was all he managed to say before finding a burn-scarred hand around his throat, raising him upward as Serpentine, something black leaking from his mouth (blood or wine?) was getting up --

At that point Sebastian kicked him in the nuts and elbowed the winged man in the face...

...and fell back to the ground just as soon as Serpentine, who (Sebastian knew) wasn't going to stay down for very long. A lummox though he was, he wasn't all that slow. The half-elf rolled away until he was several yards away, breathing hard. "Lords and Ladies, Serpentine!"

"...huh?" asked the man who had just gotten up, wincing and in the throes of rage.

"...put down the sofa, so as to not squash a fox."

Recognition happened. Serpentine put down the sofa and sat down on it. It creaked and complained under his weight.

Sebastian sighed in relief and turned to lean against the wall, his hand over his chest.

--

Argilla stared at the winged man... elf? She was not certain, but she was trying not to show her confusion.

"What happened next?"

Serpentine looked at the bottle of port and poured himself some more. "Well, then I sort of explained to him my problem."

It was a bit of a story even by Sebastian's standards, but as always, the path to what was really rankling and annoying Serpentine was just like his name -- meandering. It began with the more immediate explanation, one coming from the block of muscle sitting on a ruined couch, right next to a still fresh cat corpse and a bunch of junk.

"My problem?" Serpentine slurred. "Thought you was going to steal my midnight snack."

Cringing inwardly, Sebastian decided not to point out it was well past midnight and that snack was... yes, well, he wanted to know something. "Why a cat, winges?"

"Thought I was a bird and tried to eat me."

Surprisingly logical, actually. "Well," Sebastian said as he clambered back to his feet, "that ought to be poetic justice in a way." After a moment's hesitation, he asked, having spied the bottle next to the sofa: "May I join you? You seem to still have something left in that bottle of yours, Eagle."

Serpentine glared at him in the moonlight. "Don't call me that."

"Truce, then. As to...?"

"Fine."

And so they sat down and drank. Serpentine from his own bottle; Sebastian wasn't so certain if he wanted to drink both alcohol and cat blood, and there was no telling what else lurked inside the other's system. Sebastian did have his own, and after a while of trying to figure out when and where they'd last met, Serpentine up-ended his bottle and drank it empty.

And then he started cussing and cursing and swearing about these people who had wronged him, and that he couldn't do anything about it.

It turned out someone had stolen something from him.

Sebastian, being in the business and knowing fully well that usually Serpentine would take care of that sort of thing on his own, became curious. "What did they steal?"

For a moment the half-elf was afraid he'd get punched, judging by the glare he was given. A frightening though, because although he was quicker, there was no guarantee he might get out of the way of the wings (he'd seen Serpentine break a man's neck with them once) or even a punch. And knowing that lummox's unnatural strength... the chances were good that he might end up with his face caved in.

But as it turned out, the man had mellowed out a bit.

In addition, the answer Serpentine gave Sebastian was one that made perfect sense to him.

Even though their solidarity was more or less opportunistic, Sebastian was the next one to curse.

--

"May I ask what it was that was stolen from you?"

Serpentine considered and stared at Argilla for a while, then touched a talisman hanging from his chest. "My wife and daughter's feathers. This."

A memento, Argilla realised -- and for once wondered if her father was not more complex than she had thought.

"So then, he gave me some coin and let me drink for a coupla days...

--

Truth be told, Sebastian thought it was the only way to keep Serpentine from messing with his plans. The story about his family was one the half-elf knew already, related during one of the man's drinking binges. It wasn't exactly honour or the fact that he somewhat liked that greedy, morose idiot, but a matter of principle.

One did not mess with mementos. He relied on them, ached with every memory attached to them -- and damned if he'd let some shyster alchemists who thought there was some power in those feathers take it away from even that surly slop of a drunk.

The story, he gathered, was that they had offered to do something about the gold-plating on the medallion for free once they'd heard Serpentine's sob story about the way his loved ones had perished in a fire. Free was a word that appealed to a drunken miser very well.

As could be expected, of course, once Serpentine had woken up the next morning, dizzy from the casks of several different kinds of alcohol, he had tracked down these (as he said) skinny toad-faced scum, but...

Well, Sebastian had a pretty good idea what to expect. Alchemists were generally confined to buildings that would protect the nearby environs from blasts. This meant that their particular building was very much made of thick layers of brick, enforced with concrete and steel. And worst of all, there were no windows big enough for Serpentine to fit through.

Even the two only doors into their laboratory building were too thick for even that pigheaded idiot to break through.

--

"So what did he do?" Argilla asked with quite a lot of interest. She could appreciate brute force, but cunning -- now, that was more along her lines.

Serpentine looked wistfully at the empty bottle of port.

Sighing, Argilla rang a bell and instructed that something stiffer ought to be brought over.

Eyes gleaming with delight, Serpentine grinned. "See, he thinks big and small."

To that she had no comment, until he explained.

--

It was the third morning for Serpentine to wake up in a sort of half-coma of anger and misery, lounging on a very big bed. Somebody -- by the smell of it, nobody too familiar, at first -- handed over a glass of wine that went straight down the chute.

It took him a while to realise it was Sebastian. The smell was horrible; he was so used to the half-elf smelling like talcum, spices or flowers or soap mixed with sweat (usually the latter) that he almost gagged on the wine.

"Drink up. Oh. And rub this under your nose," the half-elf said, glancing out the window as he handed over a jar of something that smelled... fresh.

"What?"

"Oh, I have a way in for you... or rather, a way out for them."

The smile he gave Serpentine chilled the winged man to the tips of his plumes. He knew that expression far too well.

Sebastian let Serpentine drink up and kept him in suspense -- "probably to keep me angry" -- until evening, when he led both them to the alchemists', whistling some irritating tune that Serpentine realised he had taught to Sebastian himself.

Funny how that went.

Once they reached the armoured front door, Serpentine began to wonder -- even more so when Sebastian clapped him on the shoulder. "Best rub that menthol under your nose. It will be rather... stinky for a moment."

Not comprehending this, Serpentine glared at him.

"Oh, just give me a boost and you shall see," Sebastian said, whistled and pointed at the roof.

As it happened, Serpentine's idea of a boost was to grab Sebastian by the neck and the back of his trousers -- and throw him so that he landed on the roof.

For his part, Sebastian was seeing stars for a while, having not quite anticipated that kind of rough treatment. He should have, but after he shook off the shock of the impact and ran his tongue along his teeth, he was back on track. Of course, he did hiss some curses and cusses and oaths under his breath as he climbed toward the chimneys.

Serpentine, for his part, only heard some bits of brick fall down on the street from another side of the building, but eventually -- when he looked up -- he saw a pair of green, shiny eyes at one of the two chimneys.
He waited, wishing dearly for a drink of some sort, brooding and muttering, stamping his feet and flexing his wings in anticipation. Whatever it was that the bastard half-elf had come up with, he was fairly certain it would work.

And work it did.

Scarcely two minutes after Serpentine had seen the green up on the roof, the building sounded to be full of hacking, coughing and cries and moaning and the doors opened after several rattles of one of those huge locks.

...and then the alchemists came out, retching and crying -- and shocked when they saw exactly who was cracking his knuckles with a sharp-toothed grin.

--

Serpentine looked a little wary.

"Well?" asked Argilla.

"I beat the shit out of them. Probably killed one or two, don't know. All I know is, the fucki-- damned stench came through the menthol cream thing he gave me, and the first thing I remember after gettin' through my rage was...

--

...Sebastian, coughing and squinting, smelling like several different bad scents. No amount of mint was enough to clear that smell, and Serpentine -- admittedly -- retched on one of the alchemists.

The half-elf himself didn't look too well as he walked out with a satchel full of things, handkerchief held against his face and eyes bloodshot and teared up. He was holding up a talisman that was missing a couple of feathers and a bit of metal, but all the same...

--

"...all the same?"

"Well, best damn thing he ever did for me," Serpentine said.

"And am I quite like him?" Argilla asked, smiling.

Serpentine had no answer to that.

--

Serpentine had no idea how the thief had managed to get himself inside the building, but looking at the unconscious (or worse) bodies on the street and the talisman, he could scarcely complain. "Nice work," he grudgingly admitted.

"Thank you," Sebastian said, coughed a few times and reached into the satchel. With a shaking hand, he gave a few small ingots of something silvery to Serpentine. "Consider that blood money, yes?"

--

"Blood money?"

"It was platinum. Fuckers h--, er, bastards had been trying to make gold out of it." Serpentine, simple as he was, found that strange.

As did Argilla. "But... platinum is..."

"Yeah. Never said they were smart."

"Apparently, if they chose to anger you."

The comment made Serpentine preen, and from that moment on, he was very certain Argilla was someone he liked. People such as those were rarer than platinum ingots.