Story 10

"At the least, I'll consider it a pleasant change. At best... well, there's an artistry to everything, not just cloth-related activities." His nose crinkled this time as he returned the smile.

Not that Weft's brethren went so far as to award points for style, but it was generally agreed that if a job was worth doing, it was worth doing it gracefully and reminding the hoi polloi why we were better than they were.

He had nothing but contempt for the organisation the bandits' apparent leader had belatedly tried to impose. (He hadn't heard either, but they were moving purposefully now.) But you waited and watched. That was what you did. It stopped you being sloppy, because then you would be them, and if you were them you'd no longer be us.

And that was a terrifying thought.

Besides, his accomplice on this stakeout was all right. Confusing, yes, and quite obviously insane, but amazingly enough, not utterly unpleasant.

Which is as close to liking somebody as Weft will let himself get.

Later Xan stalked through the camp shadowed by her remaining guard, looking for two particular people. After lunch and conversation she was feeling much better. She had done most of the talking, but even just talking to someone knowing they understood her thoughts without her having to explain things again and again helped tremendously with getting rid of confusion.

Not only the idiots she was in charge of had slacked off (now they were at least giving a show off being keen), it had gotten to her, too, and she could only hope this problem wasn't too big for them. She had wasted too much time already getting angry because she was, she had to admit to herself, scared. Fighting something you didn't know was hard, if not impossible - so they'd need to find out not "soon" who, or what, was opposing them, but now. Checking where the attacks had happened and watching the village seemed like the best idea. People capable of dispatching of about thirty fighters should stand out from those chickens. Now, let's hope they weren't -- "May!"

Long strides carried her to the man who looked at her, startled. Xan's half-smile could mean he was in trouble, or that she had work for him, which sometimes was the same.

"As you may have noticed, there was a raiding party, and most who joined it did not return. We need to find out what happened. You and Vin up for it?"

May nodded, slightly troubled, but also proud because he knew he was the best man available for the job. He had been a hunter before taking to robbery, and since coming to this island tended to stick to his older skills, since there was less scuffling with his companions involved. Vin was his, for lack of a better word, apprentice - followed him around and picked up what skills he could without usually getting any help or explanations.

"Get ready as soon as you can and come to my shack." She needed to change shoes, at the least.

Having something to do was great; it helped you push the worries away.

"...so you see, it's not as if bees like flowers for the sake of the flower itself, and I do know most bees are of the female persuasion. It's a flawed analogy to begin with," Sebastian concluded in hushed tones, uncertain about exactly what they had been talking about.

He had taken a black bandanna from his utility belt and gathered most of his hair under it, ditched his coat and painted his now-revealed arms and face with some manner of face green and black paint also retrieved from his utility belt. The coat and had he had stashed. With what little had remained of the paint, he had used on his pants.

Right now, he looked quite different from the foppish, flamboyant rogue. The green eyes still sparkled, of course, and though Sebastian smiled easily enough, it was no longer only pleasant but also... feral. He looked far more like a dangerous creature of nature now, but the change seemed to have been mainly on the surface level.

He still talked in his vexing, charming, aggravating, captivating way.

Weft wondered how he would get the stains out. He'd some time ago ceased to wonder at Sebastian's irrepressible volubility. It was like being run over by a charismatic steamroller. A green one, currently.

Without any 'flage crayons or fancy tricks of his own, Weft was relying, as he often did, on stealth and an abrupt pounce. These were usually plenty.

"Oh, I quite agree. As a homology it really doesn't fly at all... although bees are useful for setting novices to meditate on societal ideals."

He seemed calm. Weft, of course, could happily sit around for hours talking about the Divine Virtues or what twist of silk to use, and then in a twinkling, in response to some preprogrammed cue, the calm killing countenance would come upon him and for the next few seconds he would be visible only as a sharpened blur. It was partly this that made him so unnerving... or attractive, if you were nuts.

"Oh, yes, the common good, sacrifice, such and so forth," Sebastian said, not unkindly toward any of these ideals. They were essentially very good ideals. Just not his ideals. His ideals were more in the lines of philosophy for the sake of life. It wasn't a thing he liked to talk about in any case.

The Fox reclined on the branch he was sitting on. "I don't think I've asked. Exactly which monastic order are you from?"

"Oh, no - blind obedience, anti-individualism and loyalty to authority," Weft said - a hundred per cent seriously, concerned that Sebastian had misunderstood.

"Well, officially we're named the Expressions of Warm Mercies, but people usually call us 'the monks'," (along with less savoury epithets that they pretended not to know about, that is) "because we're the only monastic administration in the Whitish City."

Weft said Whitish City as if it meant in the whole world, or certainly the civilised bits of it.

"Yes, the very same," Sebastian said and flexed his arms a little drowsily, regarding the cat-eyed monk. It occurred to him he wasn't at all surprised by Weft's way of going about and considering strange things normal, and so he wondered about that for a moment before something again occurred to him.

It was somewhat outlandish that someone who refused to play with society's rules would understand someone who seemed to be rather instinctive about that manner of thing. And naive to boot.

Hardly a bad thing, he mused. "How does it feel to be a part of some greater entity, so to speak?" the Fox inquired, rising from his sitting position restlessly, wandering up and down the branch's length, displaying no signs of having to concentrate on keeping his balance. It seemed his steps were drumming a subtle rhythm.

We are not privileged to know how Weft would have reacted to the thought of being understood - and by one like the Fox, of all people. Possibly he'd have liked it. Perhaps he'd have freaked out.

He wondered how on earth to answer the question. Oh Mr. Goldfishy, what is water like? But since it hadn't been rhetorical, he considered as well as he could and then gamely made a stab at it. (So to speak.)

"Life's a brief warm moment and death is a long cold thrall, like the bard said. I suppose you have to belong to something greater if you want to make a difference." No, that wasn't what he'd wanted to get across. A wrinkle rippled across Weft's forehead. He sighed.

"What do you want me to say? That it brings peace of mind and a sense of purpose and removes the burden of independent thought? Because, honestly, it does. You know... I don't have any illusions about what I am. If a worker drone is all I'm good for, I'm going to be as distinguishedly indistinguishable as I can possibly be until my sting's all used up."

Well, hopefully he'd convinced one of them. He avoided Sebastian's eyes.

"I didn't expect you to have any illusions concerning that," Sebastian said surprisingly soberly, standing arms akimbo on the branch. "It's why I asked, after all. We're from two different trees, you and I. That's why I don't understand why we seem to be standing on the same branch. Figuratively speaking, of course."

He smiled briefly. It was strangely stale an expression. Sebastian didn't mention anything at all about the vibes of... enjoyment he sometimes thought he picked up from the monk, when was doing something. It was almost a pity the island was so mad - at least Weft seemed to be doing all right for himself, mentally, but then, he didn't know the man's normal behaviour.

He considered the thought of having to belong in something greater in order to make a difference. No, Sebastian thought darkly and discarded memories of extreme poverty. You had to work to make a difference, unless you were a rich noble or merchant. Having others contribute to the same work helped, but it wasn't that compulsory.

After all, he made quite a difference. He'd sworn to.

Of course it meant murdering people sometimes, but... Sebastian stole another look at Weft. But... but it wasn't as if that wasn't one of the ways society worked. It still puzzled him how some pretended civilisation to be somehow more... civilised.

"Well!" Sebastian said chipperly all of a sudden. "I don't suppose you'd know a game in which one can't cheat?"

Nope, Weft had no illusions at all, if we discount the big one he'd just spouted. Though, if we're kind, it was more an ideal he knew he failed to live up to than a proper, interesting self-delusion.

Whatever, the halfie's calm response had managed to pull his sting again (obviously Jextus in his various incarnations must have to be good at this), so Weft remained peacefully in the seated position he'd held throughout; cross-legged with inner wrists resting on knees, he contrasted nicely with Sebastian's restless movements.

"Oh... well, maybe it is true that all trees grow towards the same sun." Study several different religious texts as a young man and for the rest of your life you'll never go hungry for proverbs. (The Dlexs had been a lovely, nonviolent little ecumenical group, so naturally they'd been wiped out a decade ago.)

"I don't think I know a game you couldn't cheat in," he added with more than a little archness... "then again, maybe I'd let you."

"Oh, surely. I would know a game. Maybe two. But you do not drink. Drinking games are quite entertaining. It's just not the same without alcohol," Sebastian sighed, slipping back to his flamboyant mode of speech as he tapped a rhythm against the branch. He turned around suddenly, barely swaying as he readjusted his balance, and smirked. "But yes, I can settle for learning a new game."

He wondered yet again what he was doing associating with a booze-swilling, law-breaking adventurer sort. Oh yes, that was right, he'd had no choice. That helped. It allayed guilt.

"Let me think of one, then," he said, casting about for something that could be played - quietly - without proper equipment or a perfectly level table. After a while, he began moving around, examining twigs and picking some of them up, then took out one of his knives.

An adult normally wouldn't be seen dead playing cotengody sticks without beautiful, professionally carved and painted bone pieces. Street children, lacking such a conception of aesthetics, made do with collecting twigs and roughly carving the various numbers of rings into them with a knife. The game seemed to work just as well, but spiritually the players missed out on the refined nuances of enjoyment that are the mark of the truly civilised.

By the truly civilised we mean, of course, those who can't boil an egg without assistance.

Sweeping a patch of ground clear of debris, Weft assembled the variously-ringed sticks into a pile, motioned Sebastian over and taught him the game. It involved a lot of hand-eye coordination, reflex, steady precision and ruthless swiping, necessarily resulting in whapping each other's hands with a fair frequency.

Xan, now in a darker shirt and soft-soled boots and carrying a few provisions, filled in May and Vin on what she knew on the way out of the camp. Considering it boiled down to "someone or something killed about thirty of us; probably they or it had silver hair", it didn't take long, so they soon followed the path in silence.

Silent enough, in fact, for Vin, a lanky young man with unspent sense of hearing, to notice odd sounds, like clapping. A half-finished thought coming back to haunt her, Xan decided they should investigate.

They got close enough unnoticed to get a look at two people apparently playing some kind of game. Strangers. One of them was very strange, namely green. But certainly did not meet Bobs' and Dram's description - until Xan noticed a strand of hair that had fallen out of his bandana. Her suspicion exploded into a mixture of horror and rage; she kept silent only by ceasing any movement. Silver was so rare a haircolour that there was no doubt left they had their problem right here.

When she had calmed down enough, gave the hunters sings to retreat slighlty. Mostly in gestures they agreed on a plan. Xan would get into the back of the green whatever-he-was, May and Vin behind the other. If the two strangers were absorbed into their game deeply and long enough, this would be solved way more quickly than expected.

Sebastian hesitated for a moment, leading to a short victory for the monk. "This isn't too bad, really. Quite fun. I don't see how one could cheat in this, unless I were to use excess or a magnet, provided of course that the pieces were made of some kind of metal or contained some," the rogueish one said, narrowing his eyes as he stared past the monk's shoulder. He seemed slightly confused. "But then, when there's a will... there's a way. I daresay I have too much of will, and the ways just seem to find themselves."

Then he smiled and craned his neck slightly. "My, I think we might be in for a little rain."

Weft had been saying "Oh, distraction is a huge element of the game. With a little imagination you'd soon be instructing the servants to bring tea and put your opponent's cup just there by his elbow, or... then..."

...when he finally began to listen to what his ears had been telling him for a minute or more, which involved several sets of footfalls, a couple of them at least semi-adept at sneaking.

Distraction! Curses! What had he been thinking? Before his brain snapped into a much simpler mode of thought, he had time to hear and be confused at the "rain" remark.

Damn! At least the grey-haired one had noticed something. Xan made a split-second decision and broke cover, drawing her shortsword as she rushed at the silverhair's back.

"Whether or not it's a rain of blood," Sebastian said with a raised voice and a sharp grin, scooping something from the ground just a heartbeat before he rose to his feet as if to stretch.

It wasn't quite that. He turned to face the rushing person. "That's... up to you," the half-elf hissed between his teeth and threw dirt into her face.

One,

two.

He danced past her as a twirl of black and green and brown, bright eyes dreamily half-closed. It seemed as if Sebastian's true calm only displayed itself during times of great tension, such as one of these. He didn't seem entirely aware of himself. Whatever the case, the calm was gone and replaced by a cheerful smile and a look of askance directed at Weft as he bowed shortly, as if to say 'I leave this to your expert care'.

Xan had understandably recoiled and started waving her sword around. This sort of thing is far less predictable than facing someone who knows all the civilised feints and ripostes.

It didn't put Weft off, though, because he had plenty of opportunity to materialise behind her before she could clear her vision. The pressure against Xan's neck was cold and to the point.

The two trackers who had been sneaking up behind Weft now faced his formidable foppish friend. They already seemed unhappy with how this venture was going.

"Oh fickle fortune! Why this cruel sportin'?" snarled Sebastian, clearly upset - or at least annoyed. There was an unhealthy bloodthirsty look to him, right from body language to the way he spoke. "Stay your ground!" he barked at the approaching two and chose his place between the incoming trackers and Xan, the hand axe loosely in his right hand ready to cleave into flesh.

He was dimly aware that something inside his head had... snapped. Sebastian summoned a dreadful, cheerful grin on his face as he found himself much too close to the first of the trackers.

The half-elf wavered past a hasty cut made in a state of confusion and nonchalantly planted his fist in the poor man's groin as he moved. He showed absolutely no remorse in treating another man so badly, with such utter disregard for fair play.

The Fox shot a withering glare at May as he distanced himself from Vin. A quick glance over his shoulder, and then a slightly more pleased Sebastian returned a warning look at the tracker. "Move, shout, or breathe. Do any, and the good lady might receive a very close haircut."

Vin was rather miserably occupied curling up and moaning, but May did hold still - albeit more worrying about his own skin than Xan's. Gods, are they quick.

Xan had nearly frozen, but finished, very slowly, wiping her face. She was fighting a mad urge to lash out, no matter the consequences. "Who are you?" she asked through clenched teeth.