RP Between Sand and Stars

"I've been here about two days. It's been very boring," Liatra answered, as if she was taking the boredom slightly personally. Then again, after two days, maybe there was a reason for that. "He's been here... probably a few hours. It's a bit hard to tell. He hasn't been awake very long. Why are you asking me?"

It wasn't that Liatra actually minded being asked - having someone to talk to was certainly better than the alternative - it just seemed like it would make more sense for Klaire to be asking someone she trusted rather than someone she'd just met. At least, Liatra assumed Klaire trusted Ishaan. He seemed to trust her, after all. She'd figured that went both ways, but maybe it didn't and there was drama.

At least that would make the trip more interesting.
 
2 days. Was it before or after they sank the Dragonfly? Klaire couldn’t ask that without confirming Arobynn's suspicions about their involvement with the military, and even though Ishaan said she’d help them escape, Klaire wouldn’t be so quick to trust a pirate.

“Ishaan.” She turned, holding the bars again. “They found the pin that I gave you, I-” The memories of that feverish night were still a blur in her brain, mixed with all that had happened to since then. “I told them the truth, that it belonged to my father. I told them we have nothing to do with the ship they sank in a sandstorm."
 
There were so many coincidences working against them, pointing towards the truth. One slip and their story would crumble.

Ishaan glanced towards Liatra's hanging figure, gaging her reaction. He hadn't told her about the emptiness in his pocket, about the military pin that they'd taken from him. If only he'd had a chance to show his wings, to cement his story.

"I'm just glad you're okay," he found himself saying, looking back at Klaire. "I thought... I thought you were gone. Surviving our crash, wandering the desert for a week, and then that snake bite." Ishaan shook his head. "They might be taking us to Armadilla."
 
The reunion was kind of cute, in a way. Liatra had probably played out a million scenarios like that in her head of what things would be like when she found her brother. Snakebites had never been a plot point before, but maybe she'd start incorporating them sometimes from now on.

Actually that was kind of depressing. Maybe she'd stick to the fantasies where everything was fine and he was happy to see her and no one was dying or in a cage. Liatra folded her hands behind her head, still upside-down, wondering if she was supposed to be a part of this conversation or if she was supposed to be an audience, or if she was just supposed to pretend she wasn't there at all.

None of the options were particularly good, especially given the limited space they all had to work with.

"Have you been to Armadilla before?"
 
"Why would we...-" ... have been to Armadilla, the pirate capital? He wanted to ask, though quickly settled on, "No, we don't have a death wish." Even though his story had involved them skirting around the desert edge for the sake of adventure. "I'm assuming you have? Been to Armadilla, I mean."

 
“I wouldn’t be if you hadn’t taken care of me.” Klaire whispered, hoping by some miracle that Ishaan would be the only one to hear and that no one would see the pink in her cheeks. "Thank you."

Armadilla. Klaire hid her underlying excitement over the possibility of getting to the notorious city, even under those circumstances. It was obvious Ishaan didn’t feel the same, and she understood why. Her grip tightened around the bars, while her expression remained intentionaly aloof.
 
"Yeah," Liatra answered Ishaan's question. Deciding there needed to be more to it than that, she gave him an upside-down shrug and a wink. "For a while there, I had a death wish." Not entirely true, but not entirely false, either. She'd wanted to find her brother, no matter what it took. She still did, it was just that she'd managed to get it through her head at some point that getting herself killed wasn't actually going to accomplish that, no matter how much it felt like forward momentum.

Klaire was whispering at him on an entirely different topic, and Liatra might have rolled her eyes and contemplated whether gagging could be passed off as just the natural ambiance of the cells. She decided against it, though, and instead just added, pertly: "When we get there, you two are getting a room. One that I'm not in."
 
Was that what she was feeling, a death wish? Klaire wanted to get to Armadilla more than she wanted to escape that ship, but wanted Ishaan to be far away and safe almost as much. As if she was reading her mind, Liatra made a crude and absurd suggestion.

“We can get three rooms." Klaire answered, as if that would convince the fairy that scenario had never crossed her mind. “One for each of us. Assuming we'll even get rooms." She should've stayed quiet. Klaire closed her eyes, pulling her legs closer and burying her head in between her knees.

“I’m very tired.”
 
Darkness became his ally once again, concealing the heat that rushed into his face. He supposed from an outside perspective, his desire to see Klaire alive and well might've suggested more than what it was. She was his superior though; one who'd kissed him in her delirious, half-dead state, but a superior nonetheless. And he planned to honour that relationship.

Klaire responded first, shutting down the proposition, announcing the obvious. They were both tired, though she'd nearly died. If what Liatra said was true, the Captain wouldn't let them starve. They could do nothing but wait, try to get some rest, and of course, plot.

"Do you have any advice?" Ishaan whispered to Liatra, in case Klaire planned to make an attempt at rest, then cleared his throat. "About navigating the city." He added, clarifying exactly what he was seeking advice about. "What's it like?"
 
Oh, it was one of those sorts of relationships. Well, at least Liatra would have something to entertain her on the trip while the two of them figured it out. She decided, prudently, not to needle Klaire about it any more though - at least, not at this very moment. After all, she'd just been with the Captain and... well, she could probably use a rest.

"Sleep if you can," she advised, not unkindly. "I'll wake you if anything happens."

Ishaan seemed of the same mind, asking his next question in a whisper, and Liatra moved forward again, coming back to the part of the cage that was closest to him so that she could speak softly as well.

"Armadilla? It's... hm. It's a city full of people who are used to being in charge of something, or people who used to be in charge of something, and no one wants to forget it. There's crews there, even if they're not on ships - crews and Captains, and you've got to watch yourself a little, make sure you're not in the wrong person's territory. Some of them are friendlier than others to... different kinds of people." Liatra leaned back against the cage, tucking her wings back against the bars.

"You probably want to avoid the low side of Catchfire district." People there tended to be a little more anti-fae than most. Liatra wasn't going to spell it out, exactly, but the warning was there if he chose to listen. "And anyone should avoid the fish stew at the taverns. It's in a desert. Do you think they have actual fish? Don't eat the fish. Not unless you really have a death wish. Blech."
 
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The bit about the Catchfire district was probably the last thing she heard before dozing off into deep sleep, in that cold cell floor.

The next couple of days had been easier on Klaire than that first night, with new sorts of challenges. With time, she expelled what was left of the venom in her body, the redness on her wrists fading away and the stitched injury on her shoulder itching as it healed, miraculously without an infection. Twice a day a group of pirates would come down the stairs to feed them. Twig was never among them, and those new strangers didn't give any of the prisoners the time of day, except for the rare occasions where Liatra successfully ruffled someone's feathers.

Klaire got bread in the morning and two bowls of stew at night that she had to share with her cellmate - enough to keep her from starving but not to make her satisfied. Unlike that night when she first met Liatra, the other prisoners weren't quietly minding their business like before. Without knowing who to trust, Klaire ended up always having to choose her words carefully, making her rare conversations with Ishaan quite superficial or enigmatic, and even when it was late at night and they'd all fallen asleep, Liatra was always there. She was a better roommate than many of the girls Klaire had shared bunkers with during her training, but she knew better than to trust a pirate, even a charismatic one.

Three days and two nights had passed when the ship stopped moving. Klaire felt a mix of fear and excitement, as up to that point nothing substantial had been decided regarding to their escape plans.

“HANDS!” Twig’s voice rang loudly from the door, accompanied by many footsteps and the sound of a barrel banging against the back of a pan. Klaire did what everyone else was doing: sticking their hands out the bars and waiting for one of the pirates to cuff them before getting them out of the cages and cuffing their necks to a huge chain that connected all the prisoners in a line.
 
Three hellish days spent in near darkness yet Ishaan felt nothing but dread as his hands were chained together. The feeling seemed to heighten when icy cold enveloped his neck. Animals; they were being chained like animals, and led straight to the slaughter.

He'd been separated from the girls; the pair yanked from their cages one at a time, then placed into the first half of the chain. He, along with the three other men, formed the rear. Slowly they were moved up the stairs, one heavy step after the other. Ishaan tried to keep up with the pace, to ensure that he wasn't yanked forward by the neck. His efforts didn't matter though, not when the thin man behind him lagged behind, causing the iron to dig into the front of his neck in a strained pull.

Emerging onto the deck, his vision filled with an overwhelming light. Ishaan blinked, his face turning and spotting a tiny gleam of yellow. The eyes assessed him for a half a second and then continued to move down the line, cold and unbothered. The Captain turned towards the elf beside him, one who held a record book. They spoke in quiet tones, the rattling of chains and commands and the city that lay beyond drowning out their voices.

The city. Turning his head, Ishaan looked down upon Armadilla, the city of pirates.
 
Klaire was, Liatra had decided, just a baby.

Maybe it was the effect of the poison, sure, but she was so sleepy and pathetic, and Liatra kind of wanted to tuck her in and pat her on the head or something. She did neither of these things, because she wouldn't have had anything to tuck her in with and because it would have been weird.

Ishaan probably would have done it, but he was way over there. Funny how there could be so little actual distance between them, yet it felt like a lot, with the cages in the way. The ship went, the ship stopped, Twig came back and got grumpy about hands, which meant they were on their way out. That was good - Liatra was ready for a new beginning. She put her hands out obligingly, testing the bindings on them and wondering how small she'd have to be to get out of them.

They'd gotten all lined up. Liatra could see Klaire, at least, and keep an eye on her. Hopefully they didn't eat her alive. Figuratively, or literally. The light seemed very bright, after the gloom of the cages. It made her sleepy. Liatra raised her bound hands for a moment, obliging a yawn, then stretched as well as she could and gave the Captain a wink and a smirk.

Next time- She mouthed the words at him, but didn't complete the sentence. Let him wonder. Or not. It wasn't as if she was actually going to give any of them a second thought the moment she got off the boat, after all.
 
Klaire struggled deciding whether she should be looking back to try and catch a glimpse of Ishaan or Liatra or forward, so she wouldn't trip over her own feet. The questioning stopped when they got to the deck and after a second of blindness she saw... Ships. Too many to count. And among them, tall towers connected by bridges. She wanted to lean over the banisters to try and figure out how far away from the ground they were, but the chains prevented her from doing so.

Twig put down the plank connecting the left side of the ship to one of those bridges, and pulled the largest chain that tied all of the prisoners together by their necks. While waiting for her turn to cross through, Klaire tried once again to catch a glimpse of Ishaan, who looked as mesmerized by the looks of the city as she was.
 
Slack-jawed and wide-eyed, Ishaan marvelled at the sight before him. It was incredible - a city hidden so far beyond civilization. He couldn't begin to understand how it was governed.

One step at a time, he moved towards the bridge. Moving towards the Captain, who'd already made his impassive observations of each of his bounty - including Liatra. Despite her teasing, like everyone else, had earned nothing more than a half a second glance from him. Now, he continued to speak with the elf beside him.

The girls, at the front, were far more likely to overhear the conversation, though with each step forward, it got easier to hear. "After the massacre in Goswick, the Isles will be retaliating - and soon. I want to be airborne by tomorrow morning. Get it done fast and make sure we get our money's worth for our three little birds."
 
Oh, so this was actually happening. Liatra had been thinking for the past several days that it wasn't going to - that Arobynn would get over it and things would go back to the way they usually were. it would suck for the others, of course, but that was the way things went.

This was unfortunate. She didn't want to have to go through it all again - finding a place, figuring out what to do next. Liatra just wanted things to be consistent, for someone else to tell her what they were supposed to be doing. It had always been her brother, when they were children, and then after that it had been - well, it was supposed to have been the navy.

That was when things had started going wrong.

There was talk ahead about something happening in Goswick, and Liatra didn't even know what that was about, which she also didn't like. If there was gossip out there, why hadn't anyone told her?

Besides the fact that she'd been belowdecks in a cage, that was. Liatra didn't think that should count.
 
Massacre in Goswick?! Klaire’s ears perked up while her neck kept being pulled forward.

“What happened in Goswick?” She asked no one in particular, getting a shrug from the woman in front of her and complete silence from everyone else.

Accepting no one would answer this or any other question Klaire crossed the bridge, looking out to find they were at least 100 feet above ground and there were many more bridges like that one below, some looking more structurally sound than others. There weren't many people on the streets, but those who looked up didn't display any reaction at the sight of a group of people chained together, as if it was a normal occursnce. Klaire found the entire thing truly despicable, and disturbingly fascinating.

The final destination looked like a makeshift shed on the outside, but it was surprisingly neat and put together on the inside. There were somewhere between 10 and 20 people drinking and talking, some of them being the weirdest Klaire had ever seen. The most notable one was the big hairy man with a ring made of pure gold hanging from his snout, that heavily resembled a lion. He drank beer with a woman with silvery white skin and giant ears that could poke someone’s eye if they weren’t careful. A waitress refilled their cups, smiling cordially at the captain of the Sandstorm as he walked in.

“What is this place?” Klaire muttered to
herself.
 
Well.

Armadilla was still a cesspit.

Liatra wasn't surprised. She hadn't really expected it to get any better. Klaire and some of the other prisoners seemed fairly stunned, and Liatra remembered that she'd had much the same reaction the first time she'd arrived here. Also in chains, incidentally - but that was years ago, and she'd moved on from it. She would move on from this, too, when she had the opportunity. It was just a matter of waiting until the time was right. The hardest part was patience. It was like lining up the perfect shot - it didn't matter how good your eye was if you didn't pull the trigger at the right time.

The "tavern" they ended up in at the end was one of those places that looked better on the inside, which set it apart from quite a lot of the other buildings in Armadilla. Not all of them, but they did tend to come in two flavors - the ones that looked good on the outside and were awful inside, and the ones that looked awful on the outside but had a much neater presentation inside. That usually meant that whatever happened on the inside was even less savory. The nice-looking environment wasn't for their benefit, after all.

The people who frequented the place expected a certain level of catering. True, there were different types of people who bought other people, but in order to do it at all you had to have money, and that usually meant that whoever held the purse expected to be treated well.

Klaire was muttering, probably confused. Liatra maneuvered a little bit so that she could stand a little closer to the other woman - sure, there were other people chained up, but in a room they had to be somewhat bunched, and Liatra was good at glaring at people until they moved. It was possible that someone would line them up later, but maybe she could get away with it for a few minutes.

"It's an auction house," she said softly, a quiet whisper. "Keep an eye on the sorts of people who are out there. Some of them will be worse than others. It's good to figure out what they're here for early. Makes things easier, later on, if you know what you're getting into."
 
"Welcome, esteemed guests and valued patrons. We are ready to begin with today's auction. As always, we have obtained quite the variety of goods - though today, we offer rarities. They will go quickly." Arobynn paused, smiling slightly. "I'm sure we have all heard of the news from the east. Given the unfolding situation beyond our control, I cannot guarantee when our next shipment will arrive. So please, if someone catches your eye, put forth a bid."

Glancing over his shoulder, towards the line of goods and his crew, the Captain nodded before taking a seat at one of the tables in the front. He lifted a glass of beer, yellow eyes landing on his prize towards the front of the line, who'd likely make him an absurd amount of gold. The firey purple-eyed insect.

Meanwhile, an older elf with tanned skin and spectacles lining his brown eyes stepped forward to the wooden podium. The papers within his grasp were placed on top and with a curt wave, he waited for the first slave. A tall human woman. She was pulled forward by her chains and forced to step up onto the taller, square platform for presentation. "008935..." The elf identified in a loud, clear voice.

Descriptions were provided for each, and one after the other, they were sold.

The chain around Klaire's neck was yanked, pulling her forward onto the platform. Ishaan could only watch, dark eyes horrified.

"008938. 5'4. 64kg. Muscular build. Fairy with dark blue wings, brown hair, purple eyes." The elf paused momentarily, building the anticipation. "Military background. Belonged to the crew most recently sent by the fae empire to locate the city. Trained for combat. Bidding will start with 20 gold marks."
 
It was not a fine establishment, this hall for flesh. Stale beer, stale sweat, and sawdust on the floor to catch both when they spilled. She would have thought that those with the means to buy another would like to do it in a space that was less sour but perhaps that was just part of the ambiance, she wouldn’t know, it wasn’t really that much different than the rest of Amradilla so perhaps it was just how they liked the city. She didn’t understand it, but she also had no plans on staying here any longer than was necessary.

Someone had gone and bloodied the Empire’s nose, and they would certainly extract blood from the stone here. Still, there were opportunities that opened themselves up in moments like these, while those with means pulled up their roots, at least until the violence passed. Plenty of gold on the move if you had an ear open, and Winter always had an ear open.

She hovered near the back of the crowd, where she had found a bench with some form of worn padding to sit. Every so often the tip of her cane made three swift taps on the floor beneath her feet, and the swordswoman would turn her head as she listened. Pointless, vapid conversations, the shifting of bodies in her mind’s eye, and the calling of the first slave on auction. Plenty to listen to.

Which was the fool soon to be parted with his money?
 
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