What's Yours is Mine

[Laszlo]

Winter 13th, 511 Roughly seventeenth bell. If one didn't look up, Alvadas seemed perfectly normal tonight. Every burning streetlamp was a halo in the dark, permeating the shadows and illuminating patches of road and rows of crowded buildings. The cobblestone led on innocuously into the guts of the city, looking nearly as sane as Syliras, if Syliras were carved out of sandstone. The odd soul shuffled along with his business, passing by the slender, cloak-draped form of Laszlo without so much as a second glance. Somewhere nearby, probably in the next block, he could hear Tower's Idol Slanderer throwing insults at unflappable Alvads. The air was crisp and biting, carrying the scent of horse manure and cooked food. This must be what a sensible Alvadas is like, Laszlo thought, just as long as I don't look up. One hardly had to look up, though, to notice that something was amiss. The Alvadan streets didn't stretch ever onward, eventually disappearing over a hill or finding interruption by a distant building. They curved, upward and inward upon themselves, bringing the city into the sky and all around in every direction. It was as if the city were painted on the inside of a globe, the entire world: just Alvadas. With sharp enough vision, one could see the entire city just standing in one spot. Laszlo's was sharp, piercing the darkness with ease, but the city above him must have been miles away. The details were lost in a fog. He wondered if anyone could get out, if they wanted. Probably. The Gaping Maw was forgiving. And there it was, actually, up and to the west. He could almost see several tiny individuals walking into his gaping mouth. But… were they leaving? Or entering? City of Illusions, Laszlo reminded himself, reaching inside his cloak and feeling reassuring at the hilt of his ill-gotten dagger. City of Lies. It was early evening, but unlike most nights, Laszlo wasn't tending bar. He had told Seven a lie to take his leave for tonight, something about Victor having forgotten to pay the full portion for the locally brewed ale. Laszlo had taken a satchel of coin and, under his thick woolen cloak, the dagger he acquired from Victor several days earlier. Seven knew it could take hours (or seconds) to get anywhere in this city, so Laszlo had time to spare for his real purpose. It had occurred to him belatedly, however, that even to get to where he had intended to go, it could still take hours (or seconds). It took one and a half to reach the Wager, a dark and unnerving building that seemed to make the Winter air grow colder. There was no one at the door, yet the Ethaefal could feel eyes on him, watching in anticipation. He hesitated, cursing both himself and the city, then proceeded forward and knocked upon the door. A grainy voice drifted through the solid oak. "At night they come without being fetched. At day they are lost without being stolen." Laszlo narrowed his eyes. Was that Victor? It didn't sound like him. He could come up with a better riddle, anyhow. "The stars." The door unlatched and Laszlo pushed it the rest of the way open. The gaunt Symenestra glided inside, nudging back his hood. He turned, placing his amethyst eyes upon a long-haired stranger with a piercing in his eyebrow. He was even more eerie than the Wager itself. "I'm looking for Victor Lark." The silent sweep of a hand indicated the olive-skinned Ravokian seated at a far table. Laszlo drew his eyebrows together in unease, then nodded gratefully and proceeded forward.

[Victor Lark]

The knife caressed fragile, inflamed skin like the light of dawn on a city of darkness. It left a trail of hot red where it crossed, blooming with the familiar tingle of pain and the afterglow of warm shock; all at once, a single penetration poured like panic into his brain, his fingertips, his groin. It was terrible, but it was sensational. It was almost like fear, but then his makeshift weapon was forced to retreat, and he was wrenched away from the brink, forced to subside into the dull ache of liberated life’s blood.

He dropped the knife on the table with a loud clatter, as if he had struggled to make the wound. Beside a pile of ten gold rims, it dripped red into the tiny puddle beneath it. There his blood mingled with that of his customer and opponent: Evan, an Alvad born and raised, mirrored the House’s man on the other side of the table. Their sleeves were rolled to their elbows, which were planted firmly to the table; atop each pinking forearm was carved a short row of fresh lacerations. Evan had five to Victor’s four, and there was a pair of dice between them.

“Your roll,” Victor coughed.

The gambler’s dice tumbled up as nine. The dealer was scooping them from the table as the door opened, but he did not bother to see who had entered. He shook them twice and dropped them into seven, a promising roll that elicited a laughing groan from the throat across the table.

The third round determined who earned another badge of blood, whose number was closer to the last. Each took one of the pair. Evan rolled an agonizing one, but then Victor saw a familiar flash of purple out of the corner of his eye. He closed his fist around the die and refused to oblige his client’s pained anticipation.

“Laszlo,” he greeted. However happy he was to see his colleague from another life, it was surprise and distaste that dripped sour from his honeyed tongue. Evan needed to be placated for his patience, after all, and Victor relished in how the night’s Laszlo was so easily riled. With a wink, he told the symenestra, “Afraid you’ll have to wait for the next round, if you want to play. Don’t worry, I’ve got another arm.”

[Laszlo]

After paying a puzzled look to the fresh, red gash on Victor's arm, ultimately deciding that it didn't seem outside his character, Laszlo sank into a vacant chair at their table. The air had shifted, and whatever boldness the Ethaefal had had before walking into the wager seemed to be draining away. This place wasn't the Sun and Stars, or the playful streets of Alvadas. Here, Victor seemed to be more in his element, comfortable in Ionu's shadow. The others paid cold attention to Victor, in a way Laszlo had only seen Seven do. The Ethaefal regarded him uneasily, but tried to mask it with annoyance. He felt like a lamb in a den of wolves; the scent of fear might draw unwanted attention. "I can wait," Laszlu assured him. Reaching into his cloak, he wrestled briefly with something he'd earlier awkwardly placed in his belt pouch. He revealed an oblong item wrapped in linen, held by his injured hand which had been fixed with a splint to align his broken finger. Laszlo set the parcel on the table, producing a dull, metallic thud. "I was hoping for a private game."

[Victor Lark]

Victor glanced up at the intruder with that sickeningly blank look of his, trying in vain to decipher his purpose, the rules of his game. He narrowed his eyes for an instant, as if it would help him see, and in the next he was sighing to Evan and the pile of money between them. “Well, looks like I’m winning.”

“Game’s not over,” the Alvad said, nodding to the die in Victor’s hand.

Victor’s jaw tensed visibly, but his smug customer seemed not to take the hint, so he turned his eyes to Laszlo again. “You can join for five rims, or you could pay the poor bloke ten so he can get what he’d win. Otherwise, get comfortable.”

The bluff was more painful than the marks of the gamble on his arm. There was no mistaking the contents Laszlo’s package, just as there was no hiding how he wanted it. Even without the weakness of expression, Victor’s hand was a little too quick to drop the die, and too hasty to take it back again. Evan barely had the chance to glimpse the total before the pair escaped again into Victor’s fist.

“Ope, looks like I lose,” he admitted, tossing the dice at Evan and leaving the true value of the round a mystery. But instead of reaching for their blooded knife again, he chose the gift on his other side. His forearm did not move from where it was pinned by the game to the table’s edge, but still he managed to find a loose end on the object’s linen veneer, a piece to pull and unravel. If he was going to cut himself, he decided, it would be with his own blade, this precious friend which he had forgotten he missed.

“Thanks,” he mentioned flatly to Laszlo. “I’d been looking for this.”

[Laszlo]

Evan left the table, and Laszlo watched him darkly in a mixture of frustration and relief. Movement stirred in the corner of his eye, and he turned to see the Ravokian inspecting his parcel. Allowing Victor to keep the linen, Laszlo pulled the dagger away from his tentative reach. The metal ground and skidded against the wooden table, then stopped as the Ethaefal sheltered it by leaning on his arms. The weapon was sufficiently encased in shadow and sleeved flesh. "Oh this?" he inquired coyly, keeping a straight face as he met Victor's silvered eyes. He might have smiled at the excitement, but he reminded himself what Victor had said about Abalia. Even if this was all a game to the human, it was serious for Laszlo. "You're probably mistaken. It's mine, actually. Someone dropped it at the tavern carelessly, so I picked it up. He shorted me on his tab, anyway." Laszlo lifted one hand so he could rest his cheek on the backs of his fingers. His sleek, black fingernails hung eerily off each fingertip, almost matching the twin pair of Symenestra fangs that showed themselves as he spoke. "Although if you've lost yours, I suppose we could play it in a game. This is Ionu's Wager, isn't it? I could gamble this, in lieu of coin. And you could gamble, say, a promise. Do you honor promises, Victor? Would you leave Abalia alone if I won a game with you?" A graphite eyebrow lifted. Laszlo's dark hair was too gray for his age, by human standards, but it was a perfectly normal shade for a Symenestra. "Or would you lie and default back on it? You seem to hold nothing sacred. I'd rather know this now before I bother crossing swords with you."

[Victor Lark]

It was almost his, and then it wasn’t.

Emptiness churned from Victor’s throat to his gut, but then he moved his thoroughly injured arm and the pained filled him, if only for a moment. His jaw tensed like a wince as he leaned on his elbows and wove consideration between his lacing fingers. He forced himself to look at Laszlo, at his eyes and not his hands. The linen wrappings fell despairingly from the table to his lap to the floor, and Victor smiled.

“Seven has told me what you do,” he mentioned, a little too pleasant. “Don’t pretend I don’t know what you did that day, and that you hid from me what’s mine.”

But he could not resist a good gamble. It occurred to him that his eagerness might be a figment of the hypnotist’s strategy, and yet... He was a gambler, had been made one by this place. This was his world, his territory, and Laszlo was gloriously ignorant of his disadvantage. With an obliging inhale, his free hand snaked to his side and pulled a deck of cards from his pocket. He slapped it on the table, an option among many in the list of games to play. Laszlo was the customer, so he would be the one to name it.

“I always honor a bet,” Victor admitted. He sat back in his chair, hands lingering gingerly on the edge of the table, eyes sizing up his friend as if he were a stranger. He sighed, shrugged. “But that requires you to trust me, friend. Can you do that?”

[Laszlo]

Seven has told me what you do. The hypnotist stared down at the table and smiled, but said nothing. It had been assumed that Seven would tell Victor about Laszlo's magic. It made no difference; it just provided Laszlo with more of a challenge. That was fine. Manipulating those two through subtle nuances had grown too easy, anyway. Laszlo's desire for magic wanted more of a hurdle, now. The fear of exposure, however, still prickled his skin. Laszlo had told Seven that a hypnotist's magic didn't work if the affected was aware of it, but that had been a partial truth. If the wizard was gentle, and clever, he could still manipulate a target. Ideally, the uncertainty of whether or not someone was in control of his own mind could ultimately be used against him. Keen violet eyes inspected the cards laid on the table, glittering warily, as if expecting a tiny goblin to come crawling out of them. "I'm not sure that I can." His splinted hand adjusted to protectively cover more of Victor's dagger from view, which betrayed Laszlo's true opinion on the prospect of trusting him. The metal support bandaged to his finger clinked gently against the bottom of the hilt. "I can try my best. You're under scrutiny, after all." A glance was sent toward the man at the door. "If Roxanne can be held to a bet, I'm sure you can be held to yours."

[Victor Lark]

“Roxanne...” he laughed, busying himself by wiping away the last of the blood on his healing arm. Victor’s finger traced every long scab, smearing a thin pink sheen of sticky moisture over them, pulling a line of tiny red puddles onto the table. “Still on her, are you? She bet her hair that night, you know. Chopped it all off with the dagger that would kill her. We still have the braid here, somewhere, for alchemists or perverts or, I don’t know, hobbyists. Maybe you could win it, and bring it back to your Abalia, as a token of your guilt.”

Sardonicism hung from his smirking lips, tangled in that word which held so much weight on Laszlo’s. He took his time to finish cleaning his arm with that same crude method, pressing down the raw parts until they refused to bleed and rubbing the blood down until it was too dry to move. When his eyes finally rose again, they went only as far as the dagger.

As if he had just thought of it, he mentioned, “I met her. Abalia. We had a nice stroll yesterday, and we talked about a lot of things. You. Roxanne.” Only then did he look up at him, into the eyes that could make him move against his will, the beautiful amethyst rings that had been afraid for a stranger, for her blood, or perhaps her agony. Victor wondered if he could have seen Roxanne’s face, right then, if he tried hard enough. But this was no moment to make that effort. There was only this one, this glance, like a dare. Djed rose from his neck and shoulders like threads in a still breeze, invisible, intangible, and unheeded. “So tell me what, exactly, you would like to trust me with. What game would you like to play?”

[Laszlo]

Their eyes met. Laszlo's sparkling amethysts had gone wide. Cold, unforgiving fingers of dread clenched around his heart, squeezing so tightly that for several painful seconds, the Ethaefal couldn't breathe. He sat still at the table, forgetting the cool metal kiss of Victor's dagger under his hand. The world continued around them, in dark lighting and hushed voices, but for Laszlo there was only the blue steel of Victor's lightless eyes. Mouth gaping in subdued shock, he stared unbelievingly at the human, waiting for him to laugh, or wink, or show some sign that he was only kidding. He didn't. There was only his maddening, unyielding smirk. "You didn't." Goddess, he hadn't been prepared for this. Abalia. It had been several days since he'd seen her—this was why. Where was she now? Was she even still alive? No, Victor wouldn't go that far. Would he? Laszlo's astonishment sharpened angrily. His body angled forward, claws curling inward atop the table. His pale face appeared to take on a touch of color. He'd lied to protect his compatriots, and now Victor had used that against him. Unbelievable! "Bastard," he hissed, his fangs long and visible as he spoke. "Why—?" What would he have to lose? Roxanne's murder was legal. Victor had been wholly free to enjoy the look on Abalia's face. The way he was enjoying Laszlo's now. A pale, uninjured fist balled and struck the table, though no one turned any heads. People got angry here all the time. "You did it specifically to annoy me. Gods, that's sadistic. You're playing a dead woman's life, and mine and Abalia's, this isn't a game!" So spoken inside Ionu's Wager. Idiot.

[Victor Lark]

Bastard. “My father has nothing to do with it,” Victor pouted, eyeing the dagger, obviously contemplating how to get ahold of it. He was dancing around the subject like a vulture in a cast of them, pecking at the center of Laszlo’s rage, unsure how to catch a decent morsel. He fidgeted closer and his wounded arm screamed.

“If she doesn’t have a life, how can I play with it?” He complained. “Abalia is a sweet girl. She’ll get over it, and you’ll help her. Unless...” The word trailed off, and Victor failed to summon up the smile that might have made it a threat. He shook his head to dismiss the idea. His eyes turned up, away, as if in thought, and his blindness to the face before him was an urgent pain.

But he was forced to let it fade. The anger was not his to take, he had realized; not yet. His sigh was a cool interruption between the stagnant heat of the moment, his drumming fingers a patient crescendo.

“Life is a game.”

Freed djed flattened upon him, stifled but enduring. “And you haven’t named tonight’s! Guess it falls on me, then.” A quick hand swept over the dice and pocketed them behind a deck of cards which were not played. The table was empty—at least, Victor’s side of it was. “I wager you can’t hypnotize me,” he offered, and Seven’s perturbed assurances itched within his ears. “Something simple, straightforward. Make me touch my eye, and I’ll give you two silvers.”