Placeholder Wick and Wheel

[Caspian]

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88 Fall 522

“Wait, why can’t you just do it yourself?” Eyes narrowed, arms crossed – physical gestures that clearly telegraph unhappiness, and are usually enough to prompt the other party to adjust their behavior, and ideally leave him alone – Caspian faces his sister, who’s idly perusing a market stall selling glass beads.

Picking up an oblong green one swirled with blue, Taalviel offhandedly replies, “Because Arvin’s mother has already seen me, and she doesn’t like me, and if she spots me skulking around she’ll know something’s going on.”

“Weird, someone doesn’t like you?” His arms are locked, as is his terrible mood.

Setting the bead back down, she floats towards the next stall. It’s mostly leather goods, bags and bracelets and greaves, and the warm aroma surrounding it isn’t an unpleasant one. “Most people do,” she says quite seriously, “so I find her behavior quite odd. But I suppose some things can’t be helped.”

Sometimes it isn’t entirely evident whether Taalviel, being a Kelvic, registers when he’s being sarcastic. It’s just as likely she’s aware of it, always, but simply doesn’t care.

“It’s just a feather, Caspian, in a bedroom. This is hardly the deadliest job one could take.”

“I kind of feel like you’re proving my point? There’s no amount of trouble worth something as silly as a feather. How did it even fall off you? Are you molting?”

The weather beaten woman overseeing the leather stall stares them down. There’s a pipe sticking from the corner of her mouth, though it’s long since gone out. Undeterred by the lack of friendly atmosphere, Taalviel toys with one of the leather bracelets. The beads on the ends of the ties are bronze, and with her being a Raven, Caspian knows she’s interested in it not for the leather, but the way those beads glint in the light.

“If I buy you that thing, will you leave me alone?” he offers when she stays silent, though he knows it’s in vain.

The bracelet goes back on its hook, and they move away from the stall.

“Caspian.”

“Shyke. Fine! So, tell me again, just so I’ve got all the pieces – why does Arvin’s mother want you plucked and baked and served with end-of-week supper?”

“Because Arvin is already engaged, and the girl’s family are well-off, and if they found out Arvin and I have been carrying on, it’ll cause all kinds of trouble. And, honestly – I don’t like the idea of… evidence. Of me. Just lying around.”

“But why doesn’t Arvin just give you the feather himself? Did you ask?”

“I did ask, and obviously I was denied, or else I wouldn’t have brought it up. Arvin is an overly sentimental, saccharine fool, and I suspect he has a penchant for keeping trophies from his… conquests. I found a box under his bed full of what were clearly other women’s bits and bobs and… unmentionables.”

At this, as is generally his response to the image of his sister tangling in any romantic affair, he scowls. “Gross. Seriously. I think I’m going lose my lunch. And you slept with him? How many times, even after you went snooping through his things?”

“I get bored, just the same as you, and people and places and things pass the time. I thought you’d know that better than anyone.”

Sighing, Caspian uncrosses his arms. “Alright. I’ll get your damn feather. Petching hell. It better not have been from your tail.”

Word count: 571

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[Caspian]

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The funny thing is that Arvin and his family live in the Sunset Quarters.

Caspian and Taalviel also live in the Sunset Quarters.

Which means they’re practically neighbors, and the idea of his sister gallivanting in various states of vulgarity just streets away makes him queasy all over again.

Though he’d asked her to give him directions to where Arvin lives, when she leads him through the city, at first he thinks she’s just heading home – and then she stops, and points, and Caspian realizes he knows this corner very well, with its two gambling parlors, a shuttered apothecary where an old one-eyed crone has been squatting since last week, and a public bench where he once witnessed someone rip out their own golden tooth just to trade it for a bottle of rum.

The building itself is in a surprisingly decent state. Perhaps Arvin’s family, taking note of the immediate external scenery, were the sort to pour their efforts into distancing themselves from it by keeping their domicile, and potentially themselves, visibly well-maintained.

“Haven’t you ever heard the phrase, don’t shyke where you sleep?” Caspian says, aghast, knowing full well their own apartment is barely over a ten-minute walk away. But he’s thinking, already, the practical and dare he say it professional parts of brain pulling ahead of his personal feelings on the matter. There are three windows that face the street, so with the front door that’s four entrances – or exits, on the other side of that same coin. From where they’re standing he can already tell there’s at least two more windows on the western side of the house – indicating two rooms, possibly? Or one very long parlor? There are three short steps leading to the front door, and clear space, though weedy, where one might crawl beneath the house. How far does that space go, though? It’s a bit tough to judge given all the dry brush.

They’re standing a full block away from the house, but Taalviel speaks in an undertone anyway, concealing most of herself within an alley to their left. “Western side. The window with the green sill. That’s his bedroom. Other window there is the bathroom.”

All of the windows – at least the ones he can see from here – have bars on them, bent in what’s meant to be a charming filigree. So that whoever lives there doesn’t perceive themselves to be sequestered in a prison, he supposes. It’s a necessary architectural precaution, he reasons, given that this home is only one floor, and so very close to the street.

“No, they don’t swing open or unlatch in any way,” Taalviel says, correctly picking up on his train of thought.

“And all of them are bolted on? Every single window, on all sides?”

“Mhm.”

“Then how the hell am I meant to get inside? How did you?”

She shrugs. “He just snuck me in through the front door whenever his family wasn’t around.”

“I hope you know I don’t like that the immediate solution to this problem is that I sleep with Arvin myself.”

She doesn’t find this particularly amusing.

“Alright, let me think it over,” he says with a sigh. “Let’s go home. You can tell me, to the best of your knowledge, everyone’s schedules and when the place is most likely to be empty.”

Word count: 554

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[Caspian]

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“So next week, his sister Eisa is starting her new job as a laundress down at – “

“No, not Eisa,” Taalviel interrupts him. “It’s Miesha with the new job. Eisa is pretending to be employed, so every day she – “

“- puts on an apron and trots down to the shoreline, where she skips rocks alone until early afternoon. Right,” Caspian recalls. “And the dad – “

“There isn’t one,” Taalviel supplies for the second time that day, though Caspian had already known this was the case. Show him a Sunberth family with both parents intact; now there’s something that would surprise him.

“The mother, though.” Caspian idly pokes at the strands of tobacco he’d just poured into the bowl of his wooden pipe. “That’s going to be a problem, isn’t it. You said she’s always around.”

“Yes, and constantly poking her nose around her children’s rooms like a stray dog with a rubbish bin.” Taalviel glowers openly.

When his sister’s visibly annoyed, Caspian just can’t help himself: “You call her paranoid, and yet you’re precisely the reason she feels cause to poke around in the first place.”

“She thought the milkman was making eyes at Eisa when he came to do his rounds. Eyes. Who has the energy to make eyes before six o’ clock in the morning? And at Eisa?”

Caspian recalls that Taalviel had said the girls were twins, and takes a long moment to ponder this.

“Well you know what they say,” he replies. “Beauty is in the eyes of the behol- okay! Sorry, I’m just messing with you. But about the mother, is there a reason we could give her that would compel her to leave the house?”

Taalviel frowns, picking at the splintering post of their bed.

“Which daughter did you say she likes most? What would happen, say, if she suddenly caught wind that Eisa or Miesha had, I dunno, broken a foot and needed her to come get them right away?”

A bemused smile crosses Taalviel’s face. It doesn’t happen often, and its appearance is an unnerving event. “She’d run twice as fast if Miesha was involved. Eisa had a rotten tooth a few weeks ago, and I’m certain the only reason the mother gave her coin for the butcher was because she was sick of hearing all that crying.”

“The fact the mother gave her coin at all towards the problem has me inclined to see her as a better parent than our own.”

But Taalviel has always been their father’s favorite, and she coolly ignores his comment.

“Would you break some girl’s foot for me, Taalviel?” Caspian says suddenly, and rather sweetly.

“Breaking feels a bit much.”

Caspian’s eyebrows shoot up. “Why, I thought you’d appreciate my handling the problem in a thorough manner.”

“We could do a sprain.”

“Well, sure, a light sprain never hurt anybody,” Caspian says airily, sending a cheerful spark from his strike to light his pipe. “It’ll have to be more than bruises, though. The point is she won’t be able to walk very far on her own.”


Word count: 512

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[Caspian]

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How long does it take to sprain a teenage girl’s ankle?

Taalviel had insisted on clarifying it was going to be the ankle, and not the foot itself. Whether, medically speaking, that was actually more merciful and better for the girl’s overall well-being, he had no clue. They only needed to damage her so much; any more, anything unnecessarily violent, and that would make them no better than –

Every person presently in his life, primarily his family, come to mind.

Leaning against the soot-streaked wall of a building just down the block from Arvin’s house, with Arvin’s house very much in view, he ponders yet again the look of surprise and perhaps concern that had crossed Taalviel’s face yesterday. Her facial expression, at any time of day or night, and in most nearly every situation, is reliably nonexistent. As such, their conversation yesterday stands out to him. And so he wonders.

Is his sister worried about him? Historically he’s very openly opposed to violence; it just turns his stomach, anything to do with blood and gore and screaming, and he’s never had much of a hand for it. He supposes his sudden readiness would pique anyone’s interest.

But if she isn’t worried –

Is she afraid?

Sighing, he glances skyward. The sun’s about to reach noon, and that’s when Taalviel is supposed to strike. From there, it could be anywhere fifteen minutes to a full hour before Miesha somehow wrangles someone into sending a message to her mother that she’s come to harm.

What the petch is he supposed to do for an hour?

The entire job’s not something he wanted in the first place, and he’s eager to get it over with.

The porch, that elevated space beneath the short set of stairs leading to the front door.

He’s got a feeling about it.

There aren’t too many people frequenting this street; it’s broad daylight but this isn’t one of the main thoroughfares of the Sunset Quarters. In fact, it’s quite off to the easternmost side, and sort of in the corner – if he’s got his mental map right – and there aren’t any shops, vendors, or taverns on this street that would encourage more foot traffic.

A hunched woman with her bonnet pulled over her eyes and a tattered shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders hurries by. From the other direction strolls a man, middle-aged and not terribly dressed, and the ink-blue of his jacket has Caspian staring for a second before he wisely turns his gaze the other direction. When a third person turns down this street, Caspian grits his teeth in impatience, and begins rethinking his initial assessment, that he might make any movement here without being seen. But they pass him too, without incident, and he holds his breath for five excruciatingly long seconds, double-takes one more time at both sides of the street, and skulks quickly towards the house.

A yard away from the front steps, he pauses again, reaches into his pocket for his pipe and takes on a moseying pace. As if he’s someone who’s just casually come here to bask in the patch of sunlight that strike here, for it’s shadowed and colder on the other side of the street. Still no one.

He glances towards the curtained windows of Arvin’s house.

No movement.

Taking a deep breath, he ducks towards the front porch and slips past the wall of grasses, sliding underneath the house.


Word count: 572

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[Caspian]

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The space beneath the house is a lot cooler than it is on the street. Somehow the air also comes off as being healthier – something about that tall sheet of grasses blocking it from the burning coal and rabble of foot traffic keeps it feeling purer. Caspian crawls forward, stomach cushioned by the grasses. It’s not terribly uncomfortable, surprisingly enough; oddly more sanitary and sufficient as a mattress than some of the straw sacks – or plain scattered hay – that he knows plenty of the denizens here kip on each night.

They even seem to have more nutritional value than the weeds sometimes added as a makeshift slaw to usual fried fish.

He gazes upward. Small spaces have never worried him, but it occurs to him now, an image of foundation somehow slipping, the entire house slamming down upon him. Would anyone find his corpse? The rats would sniff him out, then the cats. Then the mongrel dogs that sometimes roam in packs down the roads. Then once he’d been dug out by the city’s fauna, the children would come to pick at the lint in his pockets.

And Taalviel? At what point would she come in? How much time would need to pass until she genuinely began to worry? In the past he would go long stretches of time without her – but thinking back, it was only ever three days at maximum. One almost-week, half of it blazingly high, the other half hungover in someone’s attic. But that had been a solitary occurrence, and not one he had found entirely positive, and subsequently had not sought to repeat.

But all of that – being murdered by collapsed house, namely – is unlikely and borderline illogical, and certainly not benefiting him in his present situation. Sighing, he shoves the thought and their successors away and refocuses.

Four panes of light shine down ahead of him. So his hunch had been right, and hopefully one if not all of these will be operable entries into the house. Pulling himself forward on his elbows, he eases himself towards the closest one. Once under it, he holds his breath. Listens carefully. Someone is walking back and forth above him, and there’s the clanking of steel and – ceramic bowls?

Is he beneath the kitchen?

Who would be in the kitchen? Do they have an in-house cook, or a maid? Hopefully it’s Arvin’s mother, which would mean she’s distracted by some task, could possibly stay occupied long enough for Caspian to find Arvin’s room and his sister’s feather.

Whoever it is, they’re walking a distance of three paces, from left to right. Perhaps they have two fires going, and are checking between the two. Perhaps it’s a counter on one side, and a single stove on the other.

He cranes upward, presses as much of his ear as he can against the ceiling. The floor. Whatever.

Nope. Still no other usable information.

Well, it’s not Arvin’s room, anyway. He flips back onto his stomach and crawls towards another pane of light near the back of the house.

Word count: 509

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