Solo Child's Play

[Caspian]

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13 Spring 522

“Anything decent’s been picked clean,” Taalviel sighs, turning over a rock with her foot, toeing at something dull and bronze that turns out to just be the crimped edges of an ale bottle cap, embedded in the mud.

“I’ve seen you lose your marbles over – well, marbles. And not even the good-looking kind. Are we developing discernment in your old age?” Caspian’s got his hands in his pockets, sauntering at an easy pace along what passes for a paved street here. Pricking forward with crane-like precision through the mud is Taalviel, who pauses every now and then to inspect something glittery in the muck. The water’s been receding for the past couple days, for reasons beyond him. It’s not something he considers worth reflecting on much, questioning the weather, that sort of reflection filed under the broad umbrella of things outside of his control. Does Laviku have dominion here? All rivers run to and from the sea – right? Is there another god he’s forgetting, one who operates on the smaller scale, from rivers down to streams and all the way to, perhaps, what he pours from his kettle? Where’s that dividing line, anyway, between sea and bay, and lake and pond; and rapids to torrents and drizzle?

He frowns slightly as he thinks it over – whether all rivers find themselves, inevitably, in oceans – tries to recall every map of the continent he’s seen. Eh. All of it’s foggy. Taaldros sent him to school, sort of, for odd seasons, and it was more to get him out of the house than to instill in him a proper education. Geography is yet another one of those things that while arguably shaping his day to day, is really, in his eyes, only the backdrop; it’s not like he can or has ever wanted to move mountains, or needed a way to cross from one piece of land to the next. He’s very fine within his radius of civilized wood and stone, thanks very much, and in this sphere it seems to him that the work of gods upon nature only goes so far as his ambling afterthoughts.

“This is dull. It’s dull, right? A dull old time,” he says, when Taalviel stoops to pick up and frowns at a crinkly bit of cellophane. “Let’s leave this to the brats.” Further down the Mudway, two children break out into a scuffle; though whether what they’ve found is worth maiming each other, it’s hard from this distance to tell. “What about our old game?”

Taalviel blinks. “Biggest score by dinner wins?”

“You got it, sis,” he says chummily, offering his arm and hauling her up onto the road.

She returns the favor by leaning into his momentum, swinging him down into the muck so they’ve swapped places. When he staggers to his feet, scowling at the mud streaked up half his right side, she’s already disappeared.

Well. To work, then. It’ll be good to bring in something of value; so far they’ve just been burning cash. As he takes off down the block, he wonders if his usual haunts are still the best spots for an easy plunder.

Word count: 523

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[Caspian]

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By high noon plenty of the city’s denizens are already stumbling around with their faculties impaired. Funny. How often he had been one of them. It happens easier than one thinks; one second it’s half past vespers and you’re telling yourself you’re going to be good tonight, whatever good even means (is it a hard line, or is it simply relative?) and you blink and all of a sudden it’s two in the morning, and you’re convinced this means nothing. You’ve done this before and made it out the other side, and most of all, you deserve this. And in another blink the sun is rising again, on Daggerhand, preacher, and the undecided alike. And instead of going home, which one doesn’t have to be a doctor to prescribe, one finds another bump, a little tear, a bit of this or that to keep one chemically upright. And under the glare of proper high noon one goes on.

Those folk, the roach-people, the rat lords of the continent – at this hour they can barely tell one foot from the other. So that much has stayed the same, Caspian notes, casually lighting his pipe across the street and one block away from The Drunken Fish. He’s already scanned the area twice over, three times because he just can’t help it. The usual healthy parade of sailors – and by healthy he means of the usual population – being this close to Baroque Bay, tramping up and down the street. Two children wrestling over a broken wooden toy in an alley; a third, larger and more feckless, stepping in when they’re both worse for wear and scooping up the toy for himself. A woman with her skirts hitched up past her knees lies in a slump against the tavern, head lolling back in the bright light.

Does he want to go after a full-grown man, though? He knows firsthand the surprising amount of strength the old codgers possess, even when heavily inebriated. But why wouldn’t he? It’s a matter of pride, he knows; but who he robs isn’t going to make a difference in his and Taalviel’s game. What matters is what he brings her, and if it’s more impressive than whatever she’ll scrounge up.

It might be a bit low, even for him, to go after the children. What would he want with a few bits of wood? And at most they’ve probably only got a few coppers in their pockets.

His eyes light again on the woman. Turn away from her, glancing over the other buildings on the street, as if he hadn’t meant to target her, she only happened to be in his line of sight. He’s not important; he’s not worth noticing. He’s just another man loitering with a mouthful of smoke. One could throw a rock and odds are they’d hit someone doing very much the same.

But it’s a woman – he thinks briefly, as if he can draw a definitive line somewhere about what honor is and whether, given the act he’s about to commit, it’s even at play.

She’s just as forgotten as he is. This is what he thinks as he strolls towards her, not too swift as to draw attention, but with purpose, as if he only means to enter The Drunken Fish. As he approaches her, only one of the children seems to have noticed, but the larger one smacks him upside the head, and they’re screeching and squabbling and not paying him any more mind.

At the woman’s side now, and the stench radiating off her is undeniable. Had she fallen asleep in a latrine before dragging herself here? Before she’d put her dress through its paces, it had been a lively floral pattern, he sees – a cornflower blue, the leaves and stems of each bouquet a hearty, oh so springtime green. Perhaps she and this dress had seen better days; maybe some souvenir from those days still lies in one of her pockets. He lowers himself on the balls of his feet, internally grimacing as he feels the hem of his jacket brushing along the ground. Peers at her closely. She’s wearing a patchy corduroy jacket over her dress, a man’s and much too big; but he can imagine it’s saved her life time and again during the winter months. There’s something in the right pocket, a telltale bulk, rounded and bulging and hopefully a coin purse. He reaches for it.

“Hey. What’er yer messin’ with ‘er for?”

He glances up at the man who’s just exited The Drunken Fish and is now glowering down at him.

Word count: 765

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[Caspian]

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“What’s that yer doin’, messin’ with ‘er?” The man slurs again when Caspian remains kneeling by the unconscious woman.

This can go one of –

No, it’s never just two ways in Sunberth.

It’s a smelly kaleidoscope of infinite possibilities, most of which he probably won’t enjoy.

The first instinct is to cut and run. If one had to tally up all of his reactions to this particular scenario, that, perhaps, is the reaction far outnumbering the rest. But he had been much younger then, and smaller, and less able to take a punch.

(The margin of his physical integrity between then and now isn’t technically much, but. Again, he’s in his late 20s now, and he’s been beaten within an inch of his life and survived, so. Let’s call it progress.)

He doesn’t know where this comes from, exactly – it’s like internally he spins a wheel and watches a ball go tick-tick-tick into this particular slot and –

Affronted, he rises to his feet. Glares in full force back. “Messing with her? With my wife, you mean? What’s between us is for us, so petch off if you know what’s good for you.”

It’s –

A stretch.

There’s too much grime on the woman’s face to really tell how old she is, or even – pardon the coldness of the sentiment – how attractive she is. Those things could matter, to a stranger, one who’s doubtful about the veracity of Caspian’s matrimonial claim. It’s the first thing people will notice, won’t they, when scrutinizing a relationship. Whether the partners match up in that regard, and if they don’t, whether one can deduce a reason why.

He really should have planned this out before crossing the street. Glancing down briefly at the woman – no. He still can’t tell what she looks like. She’s no old biddy, but her potential age range is still too wide, somewhere between early 20s through her 40s. And even if she’d been upright and groomed, Sunberth living has a way of accelerating the body’s wear and tear.

But luckily for him, the man who’s accosting him is far too drunk to make any calculations of his own.

“Yer wife? What’s she doin’ on the floor?”

“That’s what I’d like to know,” Caspian replies. “Ran off with half my coin purse last night, been tracking her down for hours. Probably spent most of it on ale, by the look of her.”

The man frowns. Teeters unsteadily and throws his arm out, catching the tavern doorframe. “I don’t know…”

“Look. I’m just going to take what’s owed to me and be off. Doesn’t seem she’s much interested in being my wife any longer. Not the first time the bird’s flown the coop.” Even as he runs his mouth – and he feels the syllables, the punctuation, the flow – he’s starting to sweat. He hadn’t banked on this, would have thought the man would have lost interest by now. To some degree, though, he feels as if he’s got nothing to lose. And so he kneels again, swift and business-like, tugs down his alleged wife’s skirts back over her knees, as if he knows them, as if he genuinely cares about his modesty. Rummages through the oversized jacket as if, perhaps, it had once been his, and he’d simply let her wear it. He finds a coin purse, as he’d hoped, and as he’s straightening up to chastise the man for sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong – the sanctified air of matrimonial splendor! – another young woman exits the tavern, broom in hand.

“Jenny?” the woman says, frowning down at the unconscious woman, expression turning to fury when she sees Caspian standing over her, the coin purse still in hand. “What have you done to Jenny?”

The first instinct, perhaps, is the right one. Caspian turns and sprints down the street, ducking into the first alley he finds.

Word count: 644

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[Caspian]

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The underage urchins know a commotion when they see one. They don’t know where it originated from or where it’s headed, but with nothing better to do than throw dirt clods or stick gum to the walls, a fully grown man running with a look of panicked desperation on his face is the most interesting thing they’re going to see all day.

“Petch off,” Caspian snaps when he notices a barefoot, gap-toothed child jogging alongside him down the alley. The kid spits, wipes his nose. Alarmingly keeps pace. And grins.

“What’s that you got there, mister?” the kid pipes up.

“None of your petching – “ And there’s another kid pulling up on his other side, and it’s a narrow alley and Caspian is thin but it’s not meant for three, especially when two out of said three have nefarious plans in mind. Caspian speeds up. It’s hard on the lungs, on the knees, harder than it should be, and certainly harder than he remembers; how long does it take for muscles to go soft, down to vestigial? Perhaps, coincidentally, the same amount of time it takes to sail from Zeltiva to Sunberth.

But they’re still just kids, no matter how wiry they are, and about half his size. They also have half the attention span, and peel off just as he’s made up his mind to do something inappropriate for someone his age, like shove them.

At the end of a winding maze of alleys, spitting him out somewhere towards the north side of Baroque Bay, he allows himself to slow. The purse he’d stolen from the unconscious woman had been balled up in his fist the whole time, and is damp and wrinkled with his sweat. With his fist clenched hard as he’d run, it had been impossible to tell how much was in it, and he’d speculated compulsively even as he’d been distracted by the little rascals. With shaking fingers he pulls the drawstring free, tips the purse over.

One shiny silver miza and three coppers tumble into his hand.

It’s not great, but it’s more than nothing. It’s not impressive, though, which is the point of the game. He realizes he’s going after this the wrong way. If he plucks a purse, the only thing – as one might predict – that he’ll find in it is mizas. And mizas are great, but not entirely interesting.

Pensively he promenades up the street, still vaguely pointed northward. A four-piece band is playing outside a tavern. One of the nicer establishments, significantly cleaner than The Drunken Fish; though by Zeltivan standards this would be somewhere the well-to-do would avoid. They’re playing a lively jig that draws a moderate amount of attention; more than one scum-eyed kid watches raptly, one finger absentmindedly up their nose. It’s the pennywhistle that catches Caspian’s eye. It’s all tin, but shiny, brighter than the miza he’d just nicked from that woman. And it has a curling filigree pattern up the body, like winding vines.

He doesn’t play the pennywhistle.

But he can learn.

He crosses his arms and plans his next move.


Word count: 516

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[Caspian]

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This is what you get for standing out.

That’s what Caspian wants to tell the kid with the pennywhistle; wants to scold the pennywhistle itself, if engaging with the inanimate were a thing he could do. It’s an interesting thing to be smug about now, given how often the sentiment had been lobbed at him growing up. So maybe he’s doing a good thing here, all this premeditation to larceny. It’s a mutually beneficial situation, in a way. The kid will learn a valuable life lesson, and Caspian will come away with something of some value that will hopefully be ten times more interesting than anything Taalviel scrounges up.

How to do this, though? Wildly he imagines just gunning for it, rushing at the troupe and kicking over the hide drums and punching the horn player right in the eye, and in the chaos snatching the pennywhistle right out of the kid’s hands. Will he have to slap him? It couldn’t hurt. He won’t really hurt; it’s not his style and it’ll be just enough to shock. But there are a lot of witnesses, and even if no one particularly cares about the act of theft itself, the commotion it would cause would escalate simply for the sake of no one’s having anything better to do. He’d probably get chased down, and someone else would take the spoils for themselves.

Judging by how high the sun’s in the sky – he’s heating up a bit beneath his plain clothes of black, but it’s nothing a little loitering in the shade won’t fix. It’s not the worst day; he’s had less pleasant surroundings for his schemes. After two more songs he senses the troupe coming to a conclusion. Casually he strolls into the tavern behind them.

And waits.

He was a bit off; it’s one dirge and then one more jig before the troupe takes their applause. And just as he’d hoped, they all traipse in, the wooden doors swinging open merrily with the sound of their chatter.

Caspian’s parked at one end of the bar, slowly sipping at a tankard of ale. Something light; he wants to stay sharp. The four musicians take their seats and place their orders with the barkeep, and – yes. Good fortune strikes again, enough to make his maneuvering a bit easier – the pennywhistle player takes the leftmost seat of his friends. It’ll just be easier if the kid isn’t flanked by people on both sides.

He leans over, nudges the kid, pulls him away from the lively conversation he’s in with his drummer. “Hey there. Nice going with that.”

The kid – he keeps calling him that, but he must be in his early 20s – grins sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Aw. Thanks.”

Before the kid can turn away, Caspian sinks in – “How long have you been playing?”

“Oh, not very long at all. Three years? Maybe four? I started off on the lyre a long while ago, but – there’s just something about winds. Wish I’d had the whistle all along.”

“I know what you mean! Something about – hmm. Not to put you off, since we’ve just met. But it’s something about putting your mouth on it, isn’t it? I mean – you take the air, all that gust from your lungs. The instrument becomes part of your system, a lot closer than strumming on strings might do.”

The kid blinks, and for a second Caspian thinks he’s said too much. Some strangers don’t go in for anything more than idle chit chat. But then he beams again, rubbing at the back of his neck with an awkward anxiousness. But still, not the bad kind, as far as Caspian can tell. “Yes! Exactly! I’ve been trying to explain that to Damian here” – he nods at the drummer – “but look at him, he’s all hands all day. He can’t understand.”

Caspian reels him in further, and with quiet satisfaction notes that the kid’s fully facing him now, his back to his friends. And the pennywhistle rests in its leather case, lying between them on the bar.


Word count: 679

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[Caspian]

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“Let me get you a drink,” Caspian says. “Actually, whole round’s on me. Who’s up for a shot?”

The other three musicians, Caspian’s pleased to note, are just as young as his pennywhistler. Too eager to snatch up anything offered for free. And it helps that Caspian’s on his best and most genial behavior. He’s already slipped enough into their good graces by talking about his violin, and camaraderie was an easy reach.

He asks the bartender to pour them shots from a bottle on the middle shelf. As he brings his ounce-glass to his nose, he knows he’s chosen right. He remembers this drink; it’s vaguely herbal, oddly sort of allium, and there had been one muggy night in his teens where he’d found a third of a liter of it in the cupboards, and had learned the hard way that certain foods look a lot different coming up than they did going down.

“To Rhaus,” Caspian says grandly, raising his glass, and the four musicians do the same. “And may he keep you sweet and swift and fleet.”

The musicians gratefully knock back their shots. Caspian tips his head back, his hand back – and it’s good it’s a small glass, for he can cover it with the width of his fingers, hiding the fact that he didn’t drink a drop. As the kids grimace and groan at the taste, clapping each other on the back, beneath the bar top he passes the glass from one hand to the other, to the side they can’t see.

Merrily the kids order another round of their own ales, even buy one for him, they’ve grown so chummy. He only has to wait twenty minutes for the totality of everything they’d drunk to kick in. They’re cheerful; they’re a bit of a mess, but not in a destructive way. It’s a shame he has to do this – under other circumstances, he might have liked to have made friends, though they’re a bit on the young side.

And, as he predicts –

“Ah, gotta hit the head,” the pennywhistle player says, swiveling off his barstool and teetering a bit when he lands.

“I’ll have another drink here for you when you get back,” Caspian calls.

By this point, Caspian and the pennywhistle player had fallen into their own conversation – about who really sells the best fried cod along Baroque Bay, rising prices on lantern oil, and the women, plural, the young musician swears he had fallen into bed with on New Year’s. And the other three musicians had taken to their own, in a heated debate about the circumstances in which a mutual acquaintance recently lost her thumb.

The opening is as good as it’s going to get.

Easily, as if he owns it, he takes the leather-cased pennywhistle from the bar. Swivels off his own bar stool and lands nimbly on his feet, all in one motion.

Strolls right out the door, the musicians’ rowdy chatter heard even above the rest of the tavern’s noise.



Word count: 502

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[Caspian]

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“What is that?” Taalviel looks down at the pennywhistle on the table between them, caring very little for the flourish with which Caspian had unwrapped and produced it.

“You know what it is,” Caspian says, crossing his arms and refusing to be ridiculed in his own home.

She frowns.

“Okay, look – “ He wipes the mouthpiece with one of his handkerchiefs, places his fingers over some of the holes at random. Blows.

It sounds like a strangled cat.

And one not even being properly strangled. Just sort of inconvenienced in the windpipe area.

“Well, anyway, it’s of use to someone, and it played properly enough by someone who knew what they were doing. What did you find that’s so great?”

At the corner of her lips is a smile.

Which is enormously irritating, because it’s something she does only rarely, and if it ever appears it’s not for a reason that spells good for anyone.

On the table she tosses something slinky, shiny, light – and when it hits the wood, he knows the sound, exactly what’s shaped in that particular way and weighs just enough to make that impact.

The golden ring he’d offered to Rohka, still on its silver chain.

Which, normally, he wears around his neck.

His hand flies to his chest, where the ring would normally rest – flits up to his collarbone where he’d usually feel the chain, then to the back of his neck just to make absolutely certain that –

Yes.

His sister had stolen the ring right off him.

“When?” he demands, but even as he says it, he already knows. She’d made that great whirl of throwing him down into the Mudway, and he’d been too fussed about the scum on his shoes to notice the moment she’d robbed him.

“So. Do I win?”

Scowling, Caspian puts the necklace back on, tucks the ring down beneath the folds of his collar. As if its being out of sight would stop her. “That’s low, even for you. This was supposed to be a game, not a loaded dig at my psyche. Games are supposed to be fun.”

Kicking off her shoes, she settles into the better of their two armchairs.

At least one of them evidently had a good time.

“You going to pawn it?” she says, yawning.

Still flushing from embarrassment – how had he walked around all day and not noticed something so allegedly meaningful to him had just vanished into thin air? – he turns away from her. Scrutinizes the pennywhistle, turning it over in his hands and running his thumb along the engraved filigrees. “I’m not terribly interested in learning how to play another noisemaker, so. Sure. I’ll lay low for a week, I think. This thing’s too pretty not to be noticed, and that kid’ll be looking all up and down town for it, I assume.”

He’s not sure how much he’ll be able to get for it; he’s already bracing himself for the inevitable unpleasantness of being bartered down.

“Very sensible of you,” Taalviel says, already nodding off.

Word count: 507

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