nonvenomous | Inbox

Visible or no, there’s a clear diversion to the dip of his eyeline after the flip of her cloak. It’s a very nice cloak. He’d said so earlier.

“Research.”

The rest it’s simpler not to engage with, just a hitch of a pause to mark it conscious in a glance rather than a missed connection, one or two feathers ruffled in the night. How many times can one increasingly identifiable fox slip the Venatori’s snare?

He sighs, tight and foggy in the cold, bony knuckles flexed and knotted at his sides to reset. Why are they talking about work? There are other jewels for him to count out of his pockets for her and he sets to that -- the pearls and the earrings and so on.

“It might be less suspicious if you’re wearing some of it.”

The earring he sizes out against her ear mid-sort is particularly obnoxious, pearl in a heavy floral setting. Hard to look at.

Research. Pass, says the tilt of her brow, as if she has any real say over where she goes and what papers she rifles through. Otherwise that too floats beyond the margins of their little cabal without remark.

"Not those. And I don't think any of the rings are likely to fit my— Well." One of the chunkier bands with a flat dark stone, a sigil-less signet ring for the pressing of seals on unimportant correspondence is plucked from his possession and tried on a series of fingers while Fitcher tallies the rest of what is extracted from his pockets. The pearls with the heavy pendant, maybe. And there's a pin that must be a sapphire or some other darkish stone that might do well on his collar.

"A shame you haven't a pierced ear. You should consider it." The one that hasn't been mangled. "Highly dashing."

Research. That she humors him with the jewelry is enough to coax a warmer crook out of him, the gaudy earring pocketed away blind. He’ll find it again a month or two from now if he’s still alive, turning out his laundry in search of loose coin.

“Laceration will have to suffice.”

They’ve surely used Thot to cheat tables before, precluding the need to establish a new code in a dark alley. For all that her current form is conspicuous, it’s also innocuous -- inelegant, knobbled, shivering in the cold or with excitement.

“We’ll follow you’re lead.”

For his part he’s kept his own cloak folded over his arm, more hapless without it.

"Then let's hope that I don't steer us wrong."

But this will be fun—a game of losing the right things and sorting how to reap a little coin in return. By the time they tuck in for the evening, they might be a little richer. And if that fails, they'll at least have had an entertaining evening of disseminating their ill-gotten gains across a dozen different Kirkwall gambling tables. It's the enjoyably laissez-faire sort of wagering—the kind where the stakes are all more or less pretend, and there's no real method by which to come out worse than they are.

Thank you very much to their host for providing such a fine evening.

"Here. Hold still."

With the ring briefly at home on her slightly too small forefinger, Fitcher works the pin's catch free and then turns to him. She runs her hand matter-of-factly under the edge of his vest so as to stitch the pin high on his breast without jabbing Silas through the shirt.

Nothing for the inkblot summon shaped like a bundle of sticks arranged in the form of a dog, but presumably Thot's kept anything she cares to elsewhere.

The static hiss to warm silk is echoed by a shiver he can’t quite stifle behind his breastbone -- another glanced apology for the insubordination of his nervous system, snared into a longer pause while Fitcher works. They could forego the gambling and proceed directly to an inn. There’s the slip of a concealed knife in there somewhere, familiar placement, sharp edges barely there beneath the brocade of his vest.

And now this pin.

He reaches his free hand up to assist with the smoothing of his own lapel and nods. Head in the game.

Gambling was his suggestion.

Some distance aft and aside, Thot waits alert, poised rigid as a caltrop apart from tremor of her tail. Later she’ll dance between feet and around table legs to score glances at carefully guarded hands. Surely not all creatures of the Fade are terrible.

Inbox - Fade Rift

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