Hide and Seek in Shadow - LOG
Rose has been studying shadow walking so as to better assist with the restoration of the shadowpaths. She has proposed a game of Hide-And-Seek with Malachi in order to help her move from the theoretical realm into the practical.
Rose arrives at the agreed-upon starting point. She stands at the top of a hill, looking out over a shallow valley in the distance. She kneels to inspect the grass and strikes off to the north after several moments of remaining still. She moves at a slow jog in order to keep an eye out for signs of her quarry's passage.
The broken strands of grass here and there show signs of movement, a careless sort of stride that left half a bootprint in one patch of soft earth. Half a bootprint, and then another across muddy ground, leading on towards a small, brisk stream.
Rose considers briefly that this might be a trick. Until she stops at the water's edge. She closes her eyes in an attempt to sense any shadow shifting. Apparently detecting none, she then opens her eyes to look at the other bank. She moves upstream until she spots what might be a footprint. She then strides carefully into the water to investigate it further.
There's a patch of rocks kicked about, in roughly the shape and size of the sole of a man's boot. And another just beyond, as if the path continues right on down the stream. Except that right between the two footprints, in the water, it feels as if someone took a step back and then away in a direction that isn't inside this shadow at all.
Rose looks puzzled for a few moments. It's not as if she doesn't understand what has happened. It's more like she is unsure *how* it happened. She closes her eyes again and then walks downstream several paces. Then she continues upstream in an attempt to bring herself to the place where the footprints continue.
The stream turns into a trickle, then a muddy strip, then a dry riverbed gathering dust on dead branches that hang over where the water used to run. A damp footprint, quickly fading from where it's been laid on a patch of bare rock, points off toward a distant set of city walls.
Rose looks to the city and then casts her gaze around. She glances behind her quickly as if to catch any pursuers in the act. Then she squares her shoulders and moves in the direction of the footprint. She does so quite slowly given the difficulty of the terrain.
The footprint waits there, invitingly, even as it vanishes against the rock. Up ahead, a herd of white-horned cattle with reddish hides come ambling forward, to where they'll soon cross over the presumed trail Rose is following, obliterating any sign on the ground as they pass.
Rose manages to smirk and grimace at the same time as she rushes forward to beat the cattle to the spot. She manages to do so but she is unable to see anything along the way. She is hoping there is a trail to follow on the other side of the herd.
The herd of lowing cattle behind, ahead lies the remains of a stone road leading towards those city walls. No convenient footprints await, but the stone is the least malleable of all the terrain around that might take footprints in the dirt.
Rose kneels and looks very closely at the dusty ground. She takes a couple of steps herself to see what effect they have. Then she kneels again and blows gently upon the ground to see how easily disturbed it is by wind. Then she compares her footprints to the area around her once again.
Wind eddies about the ground, and even her breath is enough to kick up tiny whirlwinds that spin off full of dust. What's left in the dirt after the wind has passed is a scuff here, a faint mark that could have been made by boot or hoof there.
Rose shrugs and takes what she can get. She moves in the direction the scuff indicates and throws a salute in the direction of the cows.
A few cows moo in Rose's direction as she goes. The note of smugness is probably coincidence.
The city ahead looks less and less abandoned the closer the path draws to it. Men who could be human if it weren't for their long, thin fingers stand guard on the walls, and veiled women move through crumbling archways to an enormous well where more of the cattle drink.
Rose slows her pace as she approaches the city. She has a sword at her side but keeps it sheathed. She looks up to the guards as often as she scans the ground for signs of passage, both within and away from this world. She takes a drink from a waterskin as she walks.
The guards look out across the dry plains about their city, giving Rose no close regard. Among the veiled women, there are more sidelong glances and whispers as she approaches.
The dust nearer the city is overtrod a thousand times with the traffic in and out. Boots and sandals of a hundred varieties have covered the ground, even within the last few hours. But there is a lingering scent of cigarettes that twists off towards the city gates, and then around a corner that isn't there.
Rose closes her eyes and focuses on the scent. She steps forward and quickens her pace in order to catch it before it diffuses. Her eyes remain closed until she is able to sense that she is closer to her target and when she finally opens them she finds herself...
...amidst a city of roughly the same shape as the one she saw before, the architecture echoing those crumbling walls, but now it's crowded with stranger creatures: pale cream fur along their faces, overhanging fangs, and those long, thin fingers again. About half of them are on three-wheeled carriages propelled about by vigorous pedaling, filling the streets with the jangling of bells to warn pedestrians out of the way. There's no sign of coherent traffic rules, but no one is being maimed by the wheels in immediate eyesight either.
Up ahead, market stalls of fish and spices are quickly obliterating the last vestiges of that cigarette scent.
Rose is visibly surprised by her surroundings and comes to a dead stop right there in the street. She realizes that her hesitation has cost her precious time so she rushes ahead continuing to follow the distinctive smell of the tobacco. She does not appear to have noticed that her clothes have changed into something more appropriate to the clime.
The tobacco's faint under fish, cloves, and one pungent cage of furless monkeys that look unsettlingly like toddlers until they begin screeching in clearly inhuman voices. It leads through the market and up to an open doorway at the base of a high tower, where the cigarette stub lies ground out on the paving stones.
Rose kneels and attempts to pocket the stub before realizing that her current outfit has no pockets. By the time she steps over the threshhold she is wearing a light jacket with multiple slits cut into the lower fabric. She places the butt into one of those and then looks upward dubiously. "If I were Malachi..." she mutters. She shrugs and looks for stairs.
The stairs that spiral upward have been crafted from iron beat into patterns so intricate as to look delicate, despite being made of metal. Fanciful flowers and birds form the steps, each barely wide enough for a single foot, while iron vines provide the railings. Somewhere far above in the tower, there's a ting of a quick footstep on the metal.
Rose sacrifices stealth for speed and hurries up the stairs. She holds the fingers that carried the cigarette stub under her nose as a point of reference and concentrates on finding the man who dropped it while hoping that man turns out to be Malachi.
Up above, two more tings indicate faster footsteps. The railing beneath her hand turns from iron vines to copper branches to curved bamboo, and the sounds of footsteps above disappear as the steps acquire a fine coat of shag carpet.
Rose quickens her pace and nearly loses herself in the wrong shadow for her trouble. She takes a deep breath to calm herself and soldiers forward.
At the top of the stairs, the doorway--staid, wooden, and rather ordinary in its rectangular manner--opens out onto a vast rooftop, paved in stone. There was once a small city up here: now there are empty tents and shacks, sun-bleached bones, all tangled in a vast and still maze. Overhead, gulls call out. A flap of cloth from one tent swings slowly to stillness from where it was set in motion.
Rose's brow furrows. She moves forward as if this is too easy. She looks from side to side as if expecting to see Malachi in one of the makeshift aisles among the structures. She continues on to the tent with the movement and slowly pulls the flap back.
The inside of the tent is bare of anything but furniture and bones. Overhead, a gull cries out again, and its screech almost covers the faint sound of a door sliding gently shut, back in the direction of the stairs.
Rose nods slowly and pauses long enough to let an expression that combines resignation with disappointment cross her features. Then she is out of the tent and moving towards the door. But not before scanning the area for other exits.
There are a dozen directions where a man might have walked away easily into the maze of the empty city. There is also the door to the staircase, standing quite shut. A rattle of bone off to her right comes from a bird perching on top of a ribcage, watching Rose with bright black eyes.
Rose goes for the 'low-hanging fruit' of the door rather than waste time looking around the roof. She tests the door by nearly opening it once before committing fully in case her devious cousin has left a trap.
The door opens without any tricks or traps. Unless one happens to count the stairs, which are now rotten wood with visible gaps in some of the steps, and no railing to hold on the way down. The only light into the winding staircase comes from the doorway Rose stands in. Somewhere below, footsteps proceed downward without any effort to hide the noise.
Rose ponders this new development and takes a deep breath. She dares not risk strengthening the stairs by manipulating the shadowstuff since that might put her right off the trail. So she ventures downward at a quicker pace than is safe. This fact is driven home by three near misses and one actual fall as she moves through the stairwell. She remains uninjured but has lost a great deal of ground and cannot even hear her quarry's steps anymore.
This time, the stairs at the bottom open out into a tunnel. A canal runs through the center, with little gondolas slipping about between the slower barges pulled up and down the water by boxy-eared mules pacing along the side. Children with impossibly large eyes hawk drinks and candy from trays to the barges, keeping up easily with the mules on foot.
Rose utters an oath in the language of her father and allows her garb to mimic that of the locals. She reaches into a pouch that has appeared on her belt and draws forth a few coins that match what the children are asking for. She lets the languge of the realm shape her mouth as she asks the nearest waif if she has seen anyone matching Malachi's description. There is more than one way to track someone. She makes it clear that there are more coins where the ones in her hand came from.
There's soon a pack of half a dozen children clustered around her, most with heads that don't reach past her waist, offering a very enthusiastic set of directions for where a man with black hair and black cloak went. The gist of it, debated hotly with one thrown punch between a pair of girls, involves a barge just now disappearing around a curve at the far end of the canal.
Rose scatters the coins just out of reach of the pack and hurries on her way. She leaps onto a gondola and attempts to keep an eye on the barge the children indicated. She effectively buys the boat from it's operator and urges him through gestures more than accurate words to follow that barge.
The high-speed gondola chase through the canals would no doubt make for a more thrilling story if the barge being approached weren't moving at such a sedate pace. Nonetheless, the operator plows ahead with a wild-eyed vigor that suggests he's taken some sort of implied dramatic story from her gestures. He speaks quickly while he poles, attempting to communicate through gesture and words both that once she finds the man who has Done Her Wrong, he would be more than happy to take said man's place. In a few minutes, the little gondola is bumping up against the side of the barge, just as it slides out of the tunnel into the bright sunlight and rolling green hills.
Rose kisses the man on the cheek and vaults onto the barge. Her cloak falls into the water as her clothing goes through another involuntary change. It becomes lighter and allows more freedom of movement. It would not do much good as armor, though. She blinks at the sunlight and casts about for Malachi or anyone else on the barge.
The place where she lands is at the midpoint of the barge. To her right is a pen packed with goats, and to her left, a few dozen people sitting on barrels and crates, passing around drinks. There's a flash of a black cloak on the far side of the crowd, stepping off the barge onto the grass. And just as is casting about, one enterprising goat hits the latch on the pen at just the right angle, swinging the gate open such that there will shortly be several dozen escaping goats frisking through that crowd.
Rose reaches for her blade but then thinks better of that plan. Instead she runs for the shore and makes a prodigious leap for the grass. She overshoots and is forced to roll with the momentum of her jump. She remains crouched so as to better survey the grass.
The trail's clear in her quarry's haste, with a clear broken path through the grass off towards a stand of trees lining the top of the hill.
Rose takes off toward the trees or takes the bait. Either way, she is fully committed to the action.
The trees close in around the path, gloomy and dark in a manner fully appropriate for fairytales involving enormous wolves and gingerbread houses. No actual pastry constructions appear, but it's soon clear that this is no longer a stand of trees, but an honest to goodness forest, complete with a maze of twisty trails all alike splitting off from the last bits of grass tracked in from the trail.
"Oh, my," Rose whispers. She moves down the trails casting about for a sign of passage. She now wears a hooded cloak. Not red, appropriate as that might be, but dark grey. Her boots have become sturdier and her blade is longer and heavier. None of this helps her one bit when it comes to finding her cousin. She crouches again and studies the ground. Her expression is intent but her hope is beginning to fade.
The ground is hard-packed earth, tangled with roots and old leaves. There's not so much as a broken twig for yards around. To her back, a wolfpack starts a chorus of howling. And somewhere far up ahead, through overconfidence or otherwise, comes the drifting scent of tobacco again.
Rose is so distracted by the wolves that she nearly fails to notice the scent. She draws her sword and follows the scent trail again, ignoring any visual signs around her save for anything that indicates a lupine visitor.
The scent remains tantalizingly faint, not disappearing yet. The pack chorus draws nearer, spreading out behind Rose and to her sides as the wolves begin closing in. There's no sign of them through the trees except the occasional flash of ridged fur or a tail waving like a banner. From those few glimpses, these wolves are more the size of bears than dogs.
Rose resists shifting shadow simply to get away from the animals but it's a close thing. She forges ahead but loses the scent trail entirely when she has to sidestep around a cluster of dark shapes. She then moves into survival mode instead of hunter mode and gives the animals a wide berth.
The wolves fall back, baying off after some other prey more convenient to them. There's a sharp yowl in the midst of the wolves' cries, as the prey they've chosen out in the forest seems to have bit back.
Rose heads for the noise instead of away from it as any sensible person would do. A heavy, serrated knife appears in her left hand.
The pack's gone silent, lurking away into the dark recesses of the forest again. Not far away, one of them lies dead on the ground, a crossbow bolt protruding from one eye. A splash of blood on the ground indicates more to the combat than that.
Rose inspects the blood to see if it is wolf or human. Not that she has much experience with such things but she takes the time to also seek out scraps of cloth or discarded weapons. She uses all her senses in an attempt to follow any shred of trail that is left from this point.
The blood spilled on the ground is a peculiar shade of red, on close examination, that's likely not human. It's been stepped in by more than one foot, and tracked off in three directions: two with paws, one with a boot. A thin shred of black cloth remains wedged between the teeth of the dead wolf on the ground.
Rose nods and mutters to herself that if this is a ruse she is in way over her head. She keeps both weapons to hand as she follows the new trail.
The blood trail vanishes quickly, thanks to a sudden crackling of thunder overhead accompanied by rain to wash away any remaining marks on the ground or scents in the air. As the heavy raindrops begin to splatter about her, the trail was last pointing towards a small, indistinct clearing up ahead.
Rose's clothes become wet but not soaked as she moves toward the clearing. Mostly because they have shifted into something closer to waterproof. She has not let go of her weapons as she enters the clearing.
Malachi stands on the other side of the clearing, waiting. There's a tear in his cloak, and a cut along his hand that's already knitting itself back together. Unlike Rose, he's looking rather damp, though his cigarette has somehow escaped the rain sufficiently to still be smoking away merrily in his hand. He watches his cousin's approach without the slightest flicker of his eyes towards the ground of the clearing between them. From him, it's very nearly warning in itself.
Rose stops in her tracks and looks downward. Her grip on her sword tightens and she moves into a fighter's stance.
It's only a dirt clearing, lightly sprinkled with leaves... Except that on closer examination there's a certain odd mottled look to that dirt, the leaves don't quite match anything in the trees around the clearing... Whatever is pretending to be the ground, it's probably not terribly safe to step on.
Malachi salutes Rose with his cigarette, and turns on one heel to continue into the forest beyond, stepping sideways through shadow as he goes.
Rose raises her sword to her forehead and lowers it sharply in the direction of the space Malachi once occupied. She executes an about-face in a move very much like the one her cousin just performed and begins to walk quickly towards Amber by a very direct route.
----[ Azure Solar ]------------------[ Royal Palace ]----
Malachi is just finishing a cigarette when Rose arrives. Two glasses already stand on a table beside a bottle, waiting on her before he begins the drinking. He stubs out the butt in a tray and leans over to open the bottle.
Rose looks weary but in the way of someone who has just come from a vigorous bout of exercise. Her weapons are gone and she wears a sturdy black tunic and matching pants. She smiles and sits down before saying, "Congratulations."
Malachi hands Rose a glass. "Good work in the canal," he says. "Expected to lose you there."
Rose takes the glass and raises it to Malachi. "I didn't expect to get as close as I did," she says. "I learned much." She sips.
Malachi takes a swig of his own glass, and admits, "Wolves were an accident. Was aiming for the thing beyond them."
Rose says, "I have them to thank for getting me back on your trail. Yours was a decisive victory, cousin."
Malachi accepts the victory with a tilt of his glass before the next swig. "Few things can substitute for knowing which shadows to run through."
Rose seems truly pleased by the whole experience. "I can see that," she says. "I am in your debt for taking the time to make an object lesson out of that."
"You tracked me further than I expected," Malachi says. "Object lesson there too." He considers the cigarette stub left in an ashtray, and glances over to Rose, drawing some conclusion about one way that she was keeping up.
Rose takes another sip and then says, "I'm not much of a hunter, you know, but I can spot what's out of place." Her eyes go to the ashtray, as well.
Malachi says, with some dark amusement in the back of his eyes, "Should know better than to indulge my vices while playing prey."
Rose says, "Or take new ones with you to throw off your pursuers. I've a few questions about technique but those can wait. Those stairs, however...I was certain I'd lost you there."
Malachi nods. "Calculated risk, on those. Good for throwing pursuit, but only one in or out if it's not thrown. More exits in places like the forest."
Rose says, "There were plenty of exits atop that building. I went with my instincts and they turned out to be correct but I nearly talked myself out of the right path a thousand times just out of my own sense of misdirection."
Malachi says, "More familiar with throwing pursuit than hunting. Instinct may be a solid wager, tracking through shadow."
Rose nods, "I confess to having been chased more often than not but I have rarely found myself on either side, really. The books from the Library served me well but I still could not touch you." Then she gets a far-away look briefly as if a thought has occurred to her.
Malachi gives her time to collect that thought, drinking while he waits with interest for more commentary.
Rose comes back to the conversation. "An academic question has just become a practical one. How much of what I call instinct was shadow pointing me in the right direction? How actively do we make our own luck?"
Malachi mulls it over for a moment. "Some of it. Pattern lets us find what we seek. Might include another Patternwalker. Moving target's still a target."
Rose's brow furrows. "It's another one of those damned things that doesn't work if I think too much about it, isn't it?"
Malachi says, not unkindly, "Might be," and has another swig.
Rose takes a sip and says, "Then I shan't." Her eyes have a sparkle to them that is a rare thing these days. "That was amazing, Malachi. If I hadn't learned so much from it I would feel guilty for having as much fun as I did."
"Utility," Malachi says. "Good excuse for games." The way he lifts his glass again communicates that he's pleased she's pleased, and that he'd count that its own brand of utility too.
The smile that comes to Rose's face sparkles as much as her eyes do. "How was Minos?" she asks.
Malachi says, "Not bad. Had an evening out with a friend, between runs."
Rose replies, "That's nice." She looks as if she has guessed who that friend might be and so does not press for details. "I was paid a visit from one of my countrymen. He was once a brilliant painter but has become a chocolatier of all things. I'm going to introduce him to some of the 'right' people soon."
"Chocolate," Malachi says, in very faint disbelief, and then promptly files that away into the general quirkiness of artists. "Anyone I'd know?"
Rose says, "Around these parts he goes by the name Galen."
Malachi searches for connections to the name, comes up blank, and has another swig. "Interesting sort?"
Rose finishes her drink and then says, "It's hard to say. I have to admit that he's a wizard with confections. I've comissioned a couple from him. One will go to your sister." She affects a slightly wicked smile, "If you're nice, she may even share."
Malachi expresses, in another swig and a brief glance, the likelihood of him being anything deemed "nice", with the subsequent caveat that given his sister's personality and habits, he might manage to qualify after all.
Rose smirks as if that was the reaction she had been hoping for. She sets her glass down and stands. "Thank you again," she says sincerely. "I hope we can do this again some time. Or something very like it."
Malachi raises his glass to Rose, in perfect agreement on this point.
Rose brushes a palm affectionately across Malachi's shoulder as she makes her way towards Flora's domain.
Rose arrives at the agreed-upon starting point. She stands at the top of a hill, looking out over a shallow valley in the distance. She kneels to inspect the grass and strikes off to the north after several moments of remaining still. She moves at a slow jog in order to keep an eye out for signs of her quarry's passage.
The broken strands of grass here and there show signs of movement, a careless sort of stride that left half a bootprint in one patch of soft earth. Half a bootprint, and then another across muddy ground, leading on towards a small, brisk stream.
Rose considers briefly that this might be a trick. Until she stops at the water's edge. She closes her eyes in an attempt to sense any shadow shifting. Apparently detecting none, she then opens her eyes to look at the other bank. She moves upstream until she spots what might be a footprint. She then strides carefully into the water to investigate it further.
There's a patch of rocks kicked about, in roughly the shape and size of the sole of a man's boot. And another just beyond, as if the path continues right on down the stream. Except that right between the two footprints, in the water, it feels as if someone took a step back and then away in a direction that isn't inside this shadow at all.
Rose looks puzzled for a few moments. It's not as if she doesn't understand what has happened. It's more like she is unsure *how* it happened. She closes her eyes again and then walks downstream several paces. Then she continues upstream in an attempt to bring herself to the place where the footprints continue.
The stream turns into a trickle, then a muddy strip, then a dry riverbed gathering dust on dead branches that hang over where the water used to run. A damp footprint, quickly fading from where it's been laid on a patch of bare rock, points off toward a distant set of city walls.
Rose looks to the city and then casts her gaze around. She glances behind her quickly as if to catch any pursuers in the act. Then she squares her shoulders and moves in the direction of the footprint. She does so quite slowly given the difficulty of the terrain.
The footprint waits there, invitingly, even as it vanishes against the rock. Up ahead, a herd of white-horned cattle with reddish hides come ambling forward, to where they'll soon cross over the presumed trail Rose is following, obliterating any sign on the ground as they pass.
Rose manages to smirk and grimace at the same time as she rushes forward to beat the cattle to the spot. She manages to do so but she is unable to see anything along the way. She is hoping there is a trail to follow on the other side of the herd.
The herd of lowing cattle behind, ahead lies the remains of a stone road leading towards those city walls. No convenient footprints await, but the stone is the least malleable of all the terrain around that might take footprints in the dirt.
Rose kneels and looks very closely at the dusty ground. She takes a couple of steps herself to see what effect they have. Then she kneels again and blows gently upon the ground to see how easily disturbed it is by wind. Then she compares her footprints to the area around her once again.
Wind eddies about the ground, and even her breath is enough to kick up tiny whirlwinds that spin off full of dust. What's left in the dirt after the wind has passed is a scuff here, a faint mark that could have been made by boot or hoof there.
Rose shrugs and takes what she can get. She moves in the direction the scuff indicates and throws a salute in the direction of the cows.
A few cows moo in Rose's direction as she goes. The note of smugness is probably coincidence.
The city ahead looks less and less abandoned the closer the path draws to it. Men who could be human if it weren't for their long, thin fingers stand guard on the walls, and veiled women move through crumbling archways to an enormous well where more of the cattle drink.
Rose slows her pace as she approaches the city. She has a sword at her side but keeps it sheathed. She looks up to the guards as often as she scans the ground for signs of passage, both within and away from this world. She takes a drink from a waterskin as she walks.
The guards look out across the dry plains about their city, giving Rose no close regard. Among the veiled women, there are more sidelong glances and whispers as she approaches.
The dust nearer the city is overtrod a thousand times with the traffic in and out. Boots and sandals of a hundred varieties have covered the ground, even within the last few hours. But there is a lingering scent of cigarettes that twists off towards the city gates, and then around a corner that isn't there.
Rose closes her eyes and focuses on the scent. She steps forward and quickens her pace in order to catch it before it diffuses. Her eyes remain closed until she is able to sense that she is closer to her target and when she finally opens them she finds herself...
...amidst a city of roughly the same shape as the one she saw before, the architecture echoing those crumbling walls, but now it's crowded with stranger creatures: pale cream fur along their faces, overhanging fangs, and those long, thin fingers again. About half of them are on three-wheeled carriages propelled about by vigorous pedaling, filling the streets with the jangling of bells to warn pedestrians out of the way. There's no sign of coherent traffic rules, but no one is being maimed by the wheels in immediate eyesight either.
Up ahead, market stalls of fish and spices are quickly obliterating the last vestiges of that cigarette scent.
Rose is visibly surprised by her surroundings and comes to a dead stop right there in the street. She realizes that her hesitation has cost her precious time so she rushes ahead continuing to follow the distinctive smell of the tobacco. She does not appear to have noticed that her clothes have changed into something more appropriate to the clime.
The tobacco's faint under fish, cloves, and one pungent cage of furless monkeys that look unsettlingly like toddlers until they begin screeching in clearly inhuman voices. It leads through the market and up to an open doorway at the base of a high tower, where the cigarette stub lies ground out on the paving stones.
Rose kneels and attempts to pocket the stub before realizing that her current outfit has no pockets. By the time she steps over the threshhold she is wearing a light jacket with multiple slits cut into the lower fabric. She places the butt into one of those and then looks upward dubiously. "If I were Malachi..." she mutters. She shrugs and looks for stairs.
The stairs that spiral upward have been crafted from iron beat into patterns so intricate as to look delicate, despite being made of metal. Fanciful flowers and birds form the steps, each barely wide enough for a single foot, while iron vines provide the railings. Somewhere far above in the tower, there's a ting of a quick footstep on the metal.
Rose sacrifices stealth for speed and hurries up the stairs. She holds the fingers that carried the cigarette stub under her nose as a point of reference and concentrates on finding the man who dropped it while hoping that man turns out to be Malachi.
Up above, two more tings indicate faster footsteps. The railing beneath her hand turns from iron vines to copper branches to curved bamboo, and the sounds of footsteps above disappear as the steps acquire a fine coat of shag carpet.
Rose quickens her pace and nearly loses herself in the wrong shadow for her trouble. She takes a deep breath to calm herself and soldiers forward.
At the top of the stairs, the doorway--staid, wooden, and rather ordinary in its rectangular manner--opens out onto a vast rooftop, paved in stone. There was once a small city up here: now there are empty tents and shacks, sun-bleached bones, all tangled in a vast and still maze. Overhead, gulls call out. A flap of cloth from one tent swings slowly to stillness from where it was set in motion.
Rose's brow furrows. She moves forward as if this is too easy. She looks from side to side as if expecting to see Malachi in one of the makeshift aisles among the structures. She continues on to the tent with the movement and slowly pulls the flap back.
The inside of the tent is bare of anything but furniture and bones. Overhead, a gull cries out again, and its screech almost covers the faint sound of a door sliding gently shut, back in the direction of the stairs.
Rose nods slowly and pauses long enough to let an expression that combines resignation with disappointment cross her features. Then she is out of the tent and moving towards the door. But not before scanning the area for other exits.
There are a dozen directions where a man might have walked away easily into the maze of the empty city. There is also the door to the staircase, standing quite shut. A rattle of bone off to her right comes from a bird perching on top of a ribcage, watching Rose with bright black eyes.
Rose goes for the 'low-hanging fruit' of the door rather than waste time looking around the roof. She tests the door by nearly opening it once before committing fully in case her devious cousin has left a trap.
The door opens without any tricks or traps. Unless one happens to count the stairs, which are now rotten wood with visible gaps in some of the steps, and no railing to hold on the way down. The only light into the winding staircase comes from the doorway Rose stands in. Somewhere below, footsteps proceed downward without any effort to hide the noise.
Rose ponders this new development and takes a deep breath. She dares not risk strengthening the stairs by manipulating the shadowstuff since that might put her right off the trail. So she ventures downward at a quicker pace than is safe. This fact is driven home by three near misses and one actual fall as she moves through the stairwell. She remains uninjured but has lost a great deal of ground and cannot even hear her quarry's steps anymore.
This time, the stairs at the bottom open out into a tunnel. A canal runs through the center, with little gondolas slipping about between the slower barges pulled up and down the water by boxy-eared mules pacing along the side. Children with impossibly large eyes hawk drinks and candy from trays to the barges, keeping up easily with the mules on foot.
Rose utters an oath in the language of her father and allows her garb to mimic that of the locals. She reaches into a pouch that has appeared on her belt and draws forth a few coins that match what the children are asking for. She lets the languge of the realm shape her mouth as she asks the nearest waif if she has seen anyone matching Malachi's description. There is more than one way to track someone. She makes it clear that there are more coins where the ones in her hand came from.
There's soon a pack of half a dozen children clustered around her, most with heads that don't reach past her waist, offering a very enthusiastic set of directions for where a man with black hair and black cloak went. The gist of it, debated hotly with one thrown punch between a pair of girls, involves a barge just now disappearing around a curve at the far end of the canal.
Rose scatters the coins just out of reach of the pack and hurries on her way. She leaps onto a gondola and attempts to keep an eye on the barge the children indicated. She effectively buys the boat from it's operator and urges him through gestures more than accurate words to follow that barge.
The high-speed gondola chase through the canals would no doubt make for a more thrilling story if the barge being approached weren't moving at such a sedate pace. Nonetheless, the operator plows ahead with a wild-eyed vigor that suggests he's taken some sort of implied dramatic story from her gestures. He speaks quickly while he poles, attempting to communicate through gesture and words both that once she finds the man who has Done Her Wrong, he would be more than happy to take said man's place. In a few minutes, the little gondola is bumping up against the side of the barge, just as it slides out of the tunnel into the bright sunlight and rolling green hills.
Rose kisses the man on the cheek and vaults onto the barge. Her cloak falls into the water as her clothing goes through another involuntary change. It becomes lighter and allows more freedom of movement. It would not do much good as armor, though. She blinks at the sunlight and casts about for Malachi or anyone else on the barge.
The place where she lands is at the midpoint of the barge. To her right is a pen packed with goats, and to her left, a few dozen people sitting on barrels and crates, passing around drinks. There's a flash of a black cloak on the far side of the crowd, stepping off the barge onto the grass. And just as is casting about, one enterprising goat hits the latch on the pen at just the right angle, swinging the gate open such that there will shortly be several dozen escaping goats frisking through that crowd.
Rose reaches for her blade but then thinks better of that plan. Instead she runs for the shore and makes a prodigious leap for the grass. She overshoots and is forced to roll with the momentum of her jump. She remains crouched so as to better survey the grass.
The trail's clear in her quarry's haste, with a clear broken path through the grass off towards a stand of trees lining the top of the hill.
Rose takes off toward the trees or takes the bait. Either way, she is fully committed to the action.
The trees close in around the path, gloomy and dark in a manner fully appropriate for fairytales involving enormous wolves and gingerbread houses. No actual pastry constructions appear, but it's soon clear that this is no longer a stand of trees, but an honest to goodness forest, complete with a maze of twisty trails all alike splitting off from the last bits of grass tracked in from the trail.
"Oh, my," Rose whispers. She moves down the trails casting about for a sign of passage. She now wears a hooded cloak. Not red, appropriate as that might be, but dark grey. Her boots have become sturdier and her blade is longer and heavier. None of this helps her one bit when it comes to finding her cousin. She crouches again and studies the ground. Her expression is intent but her hope is beginning to fade.
The ground is hard-packed earth, tangled with roots and old leaves. There's not so much as a broken twig for yards around. To her back, a wolfpack starts a chorus of howling. And somewhere far up ahead, through overconfidence or otherwise, comes the drifting scent of tobacco again.
Rose is so distracted by the wolves that she nearly fails to notice the scent. She draws her sword and follows the scent trail again, ignoring any visual signs around her save for anything that indicates a lupine visitor.
The scent remains tantalizingly faint, not disappearing yet. The pack chorus draws nearer, spreading out behind Rose and to her sides as the wolves begin closing in. There's no sign of them through the trees except the occasional flash of ridged fur or a tail waving like a banner. From those few glimpses, these wolves are more the size of bears than dogs.
Rose resists shifting shadow simply to get away from the animals but it's a close thing. She forges ahead but loses the scent trail entirely when she has to sidestep around a cluster of dark shapes. She then moves into survival mode instead of hunter mode and gives the animals a wide berth.
The wolves fall back, baying off after some other prey more convenient to them. There's a sharp yowl in the midst of the wolves' cries, as the prey they've chosen out in the forest seems to have bit back.
Rose heads for the noise instead of away from it as any sensible person would do. A heavy, serrated knife appears in her left hand.
The pack's gone silent, lurking away into the dark recesses of the forest again. Not far away, one of them lies dead on the ground, a crossbow bolt protruding from one eye. A splash of blood on the ground indicates more to the combat than that.
Rose inspects the blood to see if it is wolf or human. Not that she has much experience with such things but she takes the time to also seek out scraps of cloth or discarded weapons. She uses all her senses in an attempt to follow any shred of trail that is left from this point.
The blood spilled on the ground is a peculiar shade of red, on close examination, that's likely not human. It's been stepped in by more than one foot, and tracked off in three directions: two with paws, one with a boot. A thin shred of black cloth remains wedged between the teeth of the dead wolf on the ground.
Rose nods and mutters to herself that if this is a ruse she is in way over her head. She keeps both weapons to hand as she follows the new trail.
The blood trail vanishes quickly, thanks to a sudden crackling of thunder overhead accompanied by rain to wash away any remaining marks on the ground or scents in the air. As the heavy raindrops begin to splatter about her, the trail was last pointing towards a small, indistinct clearing up ahead.
Rose's clothes become wet but not soaked as she moves toward the clearing. Mostly because they have shifted into something closer to waterproof. She has not let go of her weapons as she enters the clearing.
Malachi stands on the other side of the clearing, waiting. There's a tear in his cloak, and a cut along his hand that's already knitting itself back together. Unlike Rose, he's looking rather damp, though his cigarette has somehow escaped the rain sufficiently to still be smoking away merrily in his hand. He watches his cousin's approach without the slightest flicker of his eyes towards the ground of the clearing between them. From him, it's very nearly warning in itself.
Rose stops in her tracks and looks downward. Her grip on her sword tightens and she moves into a fighter's stance.
It's only a dirt clearing, lightly sprinkled with leaves... Except that on closer examination there's a certain odd mottled look to that dirt, the leaves don't quite match anything in the trees around the clearing... Whatever is pretending to be the ground, it's probably not terribly safe to step on.
Malachi salutes Rose with his cigarette, and turns on one heel to continue into the forest beyond, stepping sideways through shadow as he goes.
Rose raises her sword to her forehead and lowers it sharply in the direction of the space Malachi once occupied. She executes an about-face in a move very much like the one her cousin just performed and begins to walk quickly towards Amber by a very direct route.
----[ Azure Solar ]------------------[ Royal Palace ]----
Malachi is just finishing a cigarette when Rose arrives. Two glasses already stand on a table beside a bottle, waiting on her before he begins the drinking. He stubs out the butt in a tray and leans over to open the bottle.
Rose looks weary but in the way of someone who has just come from a vigorous bout of exercise. Her weapons are gone and she wears a sturdy black tunic and matching pants. She smiles and sits down before saying, "Congratulations."
Malachi hands Rose a glass. "Good work in the canal," he says. "Expected to lose you there."
Rose takes the glass and raises it to Malachi. "I didn't expect to get as close as I did," she says. "I learned much." She sips.
Malachi takes a swig of his own glass, and admits, "Wolves were an accident. Was aiming for the thing beyond them."
Rose says, "I have them to thank for getting me back on your trail. Yours was a decisive victory, cousin."
Malachi accepts the victory with a tilt of his glass before the next swig. "Few things can substitute for knowing which shadows to run through."
Rose seems truly pleased by the whole experience. "I can see that," she says. "I am in your debt for taking the time to make an object lesson out of that."
"You tracked me further than I expected," Malachi says. "Object lesson there too." He considers the cigarette stub left in an ashtray, and glances over to Rose, drawing some conclusion about one way that she was keeping up.
Rose takes another sip and then says, "I'm not much of a hunter, you know, but I can spot what's out of place." Her eyes go to the ashtray, as well.
Malachi says, with some dark amusement in the back of his eyes, "Should know better than to indulge my vices while playing prey."
Rose says, "Or take new ones with you to throw off your pursuers. I've a few questions about technique but those can wait. Those stairs, however...I was certain I'd lost you there."
Malachi nods. "Calculated risk, on those. Good for throwing pursuit, but only one in or out if it's not thrown. More exits in places like the forest."
Rose says, "There were plenty of exits atop that building. I went with my instincts and they turned out to be correct but I nearly talked myself out of the right path a thousand times just out of my own sense of misdirection."
Malachi says, "More familiar with throwing pursuit than hunting. Instinct may be a solid wager, tracking through shadow."
Rose nods, "I confess to having been chased more often than not but I have rarely found myself on either side, really. The books from the Library served me well but I still could not touch you." Then she gets a far-away look briefly as if a thought has occurred to her.
Malachi gives her time to collect that thought, drinking while he waits with interest for more commentary.
Rose comes back to the conversation. "An academic question has just become a practical one. How much of what I call instinct was shadow pointing me in the right direction? How actively do we make our own luck?"
Malachi mulls it over for a moment. "Some of it. Pattern lets us find what we seek. Might include another Patternwalker. Moving target's still a target."
Rose's brow furrows. "It's another one of those damned things that doesn't work if I think too much about it, isn't it?"
Malachi says, not unkindly, "Might be," and has another swig.
Rose takes a sip and says, "Then I shan't." Her eyes have a sparkle to them that is a rare thing these days. "That was amazing, Malachi. If I hadn't learned so much from it I would feel guilty for having as much fun as I did."
"Utility," Malachi says. "Good excuse for games." The way he lifts his glass again communicates that he's pleased she's pleased, and that he'd count that its own brand of utility too.
The smile that comes to Rose's face sparkles as much as her eyes do. "How was Minos?" she asks.
Malachi says, "Not bad. Had an evening out with a friend, between runs."
Rose replies, "That's nice." She looks as if she has guessed who that friend might be and so does not press for details. "I was paid a visit from one of my countrymen. He was once a brilliant painter but has become a chocolatier of all things. I'm going to introduce him to some of the 'right' people soon."
"Chocolate," Malachi says, in very faint disbelief, and then promptly files that away into the general quirkiness of artists. "Anyone I'd know?"
Rose says, "Around these parts he goes by the name Galen."
Malachi searches for connections to the name, comes up blank, and has another swig. "Interesting sort?"
Rose finishes her drink and then says, "It's hard to say. I have to admit that he's a wizard with confections. I've comissioned a couple from him. One will go to your sister." She affects a slightly wicked smile, "If you're nice, she may even share."
Malachi expresses, in another swig and a brief glance, the likelihood of him being anything deemed "nice", with the subsequent caveat that given his sister's personality and habits, he might manage to qualify after all.
Rose smirks as if that was the reaction she had been hoping for. She sets her glass down and stands. "Thank you again," she says sincerely. "I hope we can do this again some time. Or something very like it."
Malachi raises his glass to Rose, in perfect agreement on this point.
Rose brushes a palm affectionately across Malachi's shoulder as she makes her way towards Flora's domain.