Day 70, Season of Summer, 513 AV
"Well howdoyado there, missy?" The man was tall, with evermoving fingers, dark eyes and long greasy hair. Kit thought she picked out a few missing teeth when he smiled; proud badges of honor, won in tavern brawls and streetside fisticuffs. "Didja mummy and dada never tell ya' not to walk around alone?" Low, mirthless chuckles from men who laughed because it would be more troublesome later if they didn't.
They stood together in an alley of sorts between two buildings, grown so close that someone had decided to bring a carpenter and wooden planks and make the miniscule canal between them a road for someone to walk along. The whole place was wet from a soft drizzle that morning, water drip, drip, dripping down onto the planks around them from the rooftops, making soft sounds of impact against the wood.
Kit was pinned between a rock and a hard place, wearing the unremarkable illusion of a dark-haired little girl to mask her face and identity with Old Toothless up front, flanked by two small, greasy men whose fingers kept playing with their belts in a way that told Kit they had daggers and were eager to make use of them, while behind her a huge, muscly thug of a man nearly blocked the whole of the alley with his body. She might have been able to leap up and grab the ledge of the roof by jumping off the walls, but with the recent drizzle it was likely she would slip, and even without it they would likely grab her foot and pull her down regardless.
"Now you're gonna make this reaaal easy for us," Toothless said, flashing his broken smile. "You're gonna get down on your knees, and we're gonna frisk over ya. Don'tcha talk," he warning, shaking his finger back and forth. "You'll just lie. Now sit still and shut up, and maybe you won't have'ta die." The breeze ran past him, tinkling his hair along his back.
Kit weighed her options in her head. If she mentioned the Nitrozian name she'd either win instant release or instant scorn. And . . . There were times they gave her a deliver to make with haste, and there were times they gave her a deliver to make without anyone realizing. Though she hadn't gotten any suggestions, the fact that the asker wanted this particular missive delivered to an unmarked building through the back in the Plaza of Dark Delight's with a codeword . . . Kit figured discretion was probably what they'd been aiming for at the start.
"Alright, alright." Kit said, and though she told herself calm, her body trembled like a leaf in the wind. Death. "I get it, okay?" She fell down on one knee and raised her hands in the air. Not that it would have helped. What madness had fallen over her, to keep her from purchasing a proper dagger when she had the chance? Was this how she would die, in an alley far away from home at the hands of smiling strangers?
No. She told herself as the man approached, biting down hard on her lip. With the Trickster on her side, Kit would find her out of this. She always did.
