“I’m coming!”

Angry again, Nyx noted, I should not have told her. He remained motionless – his back to the clapboard wall just beside the doorway, his arms folded across his chest – but his eyes roamed in an endless scan of the wakening wharf, marking the comings and goings of those who’s morning business regularly found them in this part of town, making note of those who seemed out of place, and, of course, keeping a keen eye out for any of Vadim’s shadows who might have been sent to relieve the one slumped unconscious beneath the backstair of this very building.

You think that she did not know before you admitted it,</i> the inner voice that was his own asked, You think that Taellyn’s reading misled you? That the work on Cay’s loom right now is not evidence enough that she already knew before you told her in your own words?

Before he could reply, Cay, dressed in the familiar sack of a burlap dress and blood-red cloak, swept onto the landing accompanied by the tinkling of bells as the canvas door fluttered in her wake. Moon-hued eyes abandoned their surveillance of the surroundings and slid sidelong to meet the amber gems that disappeared all too quickly beneath the brim of Cay’s hat… whatever thoughts or emotions he had hoped to glean from the flames that danced behind  those eyes, he determined, would have to remain only guessed at…

She knew, the voice reaffirmed, not having to try and read anything in her eyes to know it, <i>She knows and, even if she will not say it to you, she…

 Dinalle! Nyx shushed the voice, pushing away from the wall as Cay’s feet stomped past the third and onto the fourth stair tread. The time for thinking such things has passed, he added, trying to convince himself of that as he whispered down the stairway behind her, I cannot afford to be distracted by this now… She apparently is not…

He continued reminding himself of this, stalking silently alongside her as they moved away from the wharf and toward the inland parts of the city. It was too late to say anything more and, despite the thoughts… feelings… that Nyx still wanted to express but had yet to find words, he knew that the opportunity to speak them had passed the moment he had left her alone in her rooms. Now that they had worked their way into the humanoid tide that eddied farther in and about the market, it would have been impossible to speak them even if he had the words to do so and, for a while, the mith’ganni was, himself, grateful for the distraction that keeping a keen ear and a mindful eye on the milling throngs provided…

Nyx was not unaccustomed to being the object of scrutiny when he walked Drasnia’s streets in the light of day. He was an elf, after all – unbranded as far as any could tell and unaccompanied by humans – and, as such, immediately suspect in the eyes and minds of the xenophobic population of any Imperial city. The fact that he was mith’ganni – a free mith’ganni – compounded the wariness in human eyes that chanced to fall on him, as well, and inspired hateful glances and whispers to be uttered at his passing… “Horse-f***ing savage”… “Moon-eyed grass-eater” … “Why don’t those Twilighters just roll over like all of the other point-ears did and accept their lot… or, better yet, just finally die out all together?”… “Give us those plains they still try to keep for themselves and let their corpses rot into the earth if they love it so much”… “Twilighters are too stupid to give up all civil-like… that’s why ya hardly ever see ‘em branded… alive anyway”…</i> In his years of stalking the byways and back-alleys of what the Braudian Empire considered civilization, Nyx had heard it all and, in time, learned to ignore it for the most part. Had found it easier and easier to let the round-ears lull themselves into the safety of their perceived superiority by spitting their hate and fear laced rhetoric at him with little more than a contemptuous glance in reply (until he could no longer stave off his own hatred and found himself killing one of them for sport as opposed to coin or creed). The short-lives typically sneered, spewed their venom, and moved on, forgetting the mith’ganni as quickly as they had passed. This morning, though, those intolerant glances weren’t so quick to tear away and the acid-tinged comments that carried through the cacophony of voices were something more than the generalized racism he had grown used to.

…Nyx’s gratitude for the escape from his other thoughts that crowd-watching had provided morphed slowly into a grating paranoia when he sensed that he was almost being singled out by every condescending glare that swept over them and that the murmurings in the crowd weren’t as hushed or side-turned as was usual when he bothered to walk amongst humans… nor was it only the humans who offered them… The deeper he followed Cay into the bustling market, the more it became obvious that, this morning, there was a special hatred in Drasnia for Twilight Elves and, given the murmurings and mutterings that he had forced his ears to capture and endure, the reason for that focused revilement became clear. Lord Bolstoii’s half-moon stable-boy had been found out… All well and good for one of you paching round-ears to have your way with an elf when you so choose, but turn those tables and it nears justification for lynching, yes?

The assassin’s eyes, having become acutely aware of hands that rested on weapon hilts, narrowed as they continued to wade into the sea of stalls and citizenry and, beneath the drape of his cloak, his own hands moved to find purchase on haft and handle of his own blades…

You see what happens when you work without my guidance, Prien’s voice tittered in the back of his mind, what happens when you abandon my counsel in deference to your feelings for the half-breed who would as soon spit on you as suffer your presence?

 Did you think I would let you go unpunished for your transgressions, mith’ganni?

Nyx’s jaw tightened and his fingers flexed around the hafts of his weapons, his almond shaped eyes panning across the multitude of round ones that leered at him from out of the chaos of the market.

What are you going to do, Nyx, the Executioner’s voice continued to taunt, Loose a blade or two and take off a head or a hand, perhaps? Right here in full view of all of these anxious round-ears and their sub-human pets?

Do it… if you think you’ll escape this like you did your other folly… I should enjoy watching that, I think… Just as I’ll enjoy watching when those others I’ve set upon you peel the flesh from your bones and sever your thread…

Snarling, he tried to shut Prien’s voice out of his head and a low growl rumbled in Nyx’s chest as he realized what his penance was to be for the sin he had committed against the god…and that if he were to act on the murderous thoughts that were quickly being brought to a boiling point by the looks and leers of the crowd that surrounded he and Cay, that she, too, would likely suffer the consequences of the deity’s insidious wrath… A flash of red in the periphery of his vision as Cay changed course… His palms tingling where they rested on his blades, he turned and followed her towards a pie-cart tended by a sturdy dwarf… A dwarf who’s hand was more than eager to fall to the hilt of his own dagger when Nyx met his sight…

No where to go, point-ear, Prien laughed, No where to hide, now. Not amongst all of this… go ahead… start with the stump… they’ll let you take that one before they fall on you, I’m sure… but then…

 The god’s goading… the unbridled bigotry that crashed through him… the lack of clear and certain escapes… the paranoia resultant of it all… It was all too much… Nyx’s fingers slithered around the hilt of his favored blade and started to slide it from its sheath… his narrowed yellow-eyes, gleaming with the lethal conflagration that all of this had lit behind them, did, in fact choose the stout dwarf as the first of what were likely to be his last victims, and bore into the little stump of a boulder-buster as the mith’ganni made ready to spring…

The target was stolen from his vision, though, and replaced with Cay’s face. Nyx very nearly flinched when he felt a hand slide under his cloak and come gently to rest atop his own and forced him to ease the half-bared blade back to rest… He blinked, registered her look and the faint shake of her head, and allowed just some of the humming tension in his muscles to ease back.

“Ithilamin,” she whispered – the softness of her voice, that endearment carried to his ears upon it, and the light touch of her fingers over his sending a long-forgotten tingle of warmth through him – assuaging his angst a bit more, “let me… one moment and we shall leave.”

His answering nod was short and almost too stiff to have even been registered as a nod at all. His eyes stuck to her for only an instant – although, even now, they truly didn’t want to let her go at all – before, again, ticking from face to face in the surging sea of human hatred that the marketplace had become, watching for the attack that he felt certain was to come at any moment. “Hurry,” he whispered through clenched teeth, even though she had already slipped away to haggle with the vendor for their breakfast, “it has become dangerous for me, here, it seems, and dangerous for you to be near me…”