"So ye only want me ta talk ta this kid?" a gruff voiced red elf asked McNab, as the two men sat hunched over a small round table in a dimly lit tavern known as the Thorned Duchess, which lay on a particularly disreputable street in Susselfen.
Though McNab had visited this particular establishment several times in the past, he neither relished the stale, sticky ale nor the company of the shadowy criminals and run down degenerates who spent the bulk of their conscious hours under its sagging roof. The older spy only came to the Thorned Duchess when he needed to find one particular elf – the inimitable, inscrutable Kennack. McNab didn't know how old Kennack was, but, based on his graying hair and the pronounced lines creeping across his face, he was certainly older than Starling.
"Aye, jus' talk to him, like I said," McNab said flatly, looking his companion straight in the eye.
"Well, I'll ha' ta charge ye ta full price in any case," Kennack said, his sharp, smart green eyes examining McNab, as he took a sip from his ale. "Ye know, I'd jus' as soon not get ou' o' bed fer jus' talk. But, seein' as ye've given me good business in ta past, I'm willin' ta do this one favor fer ye. No discoun' though."
McNab sighed and looked down at the table before nodding. "Make sure ye tell him that members of the local Guild of Elothninian Musicians is a hotbed of rebel sympathizers, and imply that they'd be the welcomin' committee for any visitin' rebels," he said sternly, but in a low voice just in case any of the seemingly unconscious patrons of the Duchess were eavesdropping. It was unlikely, given that most of them seemed to have already drunken themselves into a state of half-consciousness, but McNab was a thorough spy and felt he couldn’t be too careful.
"Aye, aye, I heard ye ta firs' time," Kennack said dismissively waving his hand at the haggard looking spy. "If ye don' mind me askin', why don' ye wan' me ta jus' take care o' him, permanen' like?"
McNab took a sip of his lukewarm ale and had to suppress a wince as its bitter flavor stung his tongue, but he gave the malevolent looking elf as hard a face, one that was made more haunted and menancing by his long string of sleepless, worried nights. "Me business, is me own. I just want to hold his attention there fer a few days."
"Alrigh', alrigh', wha's his name again?" the elf asked. His voice was apologetic now, but his eyes remained defiant.
"Bertronius," McNab replied, his eyes downcast for a moment.
"How do I find him?"
"I'll send him to ye," the spy replied as he stood to leave -- he looked, if it possible, even more tired now, like his shoulders labored under the weight of an unseen, but heavy burden.
*****
Sellior sighed and glanced again at Helkint’s sleeping form in the shadows of his tent. Since his hair had been shorn, Helkint had remained as reticent as before, but Sellior had taken to hovering over him like a mother hen. At the moment, he was worried that the boy might get too cold in the chilly morning air and was strongly considering draping another blanket over him. “Moshel, ye don’ happen ta have a blanket ye can spare, do ye?” Sellior asked somewhat absentmindedly, his eyes never leaving the frail boy.
Moshel looked up from the long-distance mechanical birds he was working on. He had run into no problems quickly making a few short-distance ones for the rebels to use, but the longer-distance models were proving trickier than he expected. The tinker elf seemed to welcome Sellior as a distraction from his frustrating work. “I gave you my spare blanket yesterday morning,” he said.
Sellior turned and looked at Moshel in surprise. “Did ye?” Moshel nodded indulgently. “Oh, well, ne’ermind, then,” he said, somewhat embarrassed.
“I think he’s warm enough, Sellior,” Moshel said.
Sellior nodded thoughtfully. “Aye. Aye, yer probably righ’. I jus’ wish I could do more fer ta lad,” he said heavily.
Moshel turned his strange violet eyes on Sellior, and Sellior could tell that the tinker elf’s unnerving singularity of focus was now directed towards him. “Still, you worry about that?” Moshel asked with a note of disbelief creeping into his voice.
“O’ course I worry abou’ ‘tit! Ta lad’s in pain, Moshel – not tha’ I’d expect ye ta notice, as distracted as ye’ve been o’ late wit’ yer clockworks,” Sellior said in an uncharacteristically defensive tone.
Moshel just smiled, which Sellior found absolutely maddening, and replied, “You needn’t worry about it.”
Sellior waited for Moshel to lash back at him, or for him to explain himself and why he seemed so certain while Sellior himself was fretting day and night, but nothing happened except the blinking of those deep, endless violet eyes. Sellior sighed and gave Moshel what he hoped was a withering look. He opened his mouth, wanting to say something cutting to the gray elf next to him, but could think of nothing that would ruffle Moshel’s composure and closed it again.
Moshel, with a bemused smile, reclined in the grass, ruffling his short white hair with one slate-colored hand. Sellior watched him lying there, silent and still, and, even though he still felt affronted by Moshel’s minimization of his concern, he also couldn’t help feeling that his presence was somehow an intrusion on the tinker’s solitude. After some time, Moshel sighed and looked at Sellior again. “I was always told you red elves would rather talk than breathe and yet there you sit like a statue,” he said dryly.
Sellior blushed slightly and felt flustered, as he often did when spoken to directly by the gray elf. He swept his long, straight strawberry-blonde hair over his left shoulder and furrowed his brow. “Well, Moshel, ta tell ye true, I would sooner gab on than breathe – but when I’m wit’ ye, I feel….quieted somehow,” he said slowly.
Moshel nodded. “I do seem to have that effect on people. Most of us do, but I seem especially bad about it, even for a Semadran. My apologies.”
“Oh, none needed!” Sellior exclaimed, his own annoyance melting away, as his eyes went wide with fear that he had hurt the gray elf. “’Tis not a bad t’ing, yer silence, jus’ somet’in’ tha’ takes some gettin’ used ta.”
Moshel just closed his eyes and nodded with a serene look on his face. Sellior, for his part, considered lying in the grass next to him, but thought that perhaps it was too forward and stayed put. “I really shouldn’ worry about ta lad too much?” Moshel shook his head in response. “But how do ye ken tha’? Ye’ve not spent time wit’ him yerself, ha’e ye?” Sellior asked, confused but intrigued.
Moshel opened one eye and peered at him, coming to a slow realization. “Wha’ is it?” asked Sellior, afraid he’d somehow misspoken.
Moshel propped himself up on his elbows and furrowed his brow slightly. “Nyabel and Safir never told you why they recruited me?”
“Well, we jus’ figured ye were good at clockworks…which are, I don’ know, importan’ fer caravans…or somet’in’…” Sellior trailed off realizing how unlikely this sounded out loud.
Moshel sat up smiling. “Well, I am good at those, and as Mosol1 knows well enough, handiness with clockworks can get you out of some dire scrapes. But that’s not my true talent. I’m a shaper, Selli.”
Sellior reddened when the gray elf used his nickname – it felt so strangely intimate. He also cursed his fair skin for betraying his emotions so easily. “Ta be honest wit’ ye, I ha’e no idea wha’ yer talkin’ about,” he said.
Moshel nodded knowingly. “I sometimes forget that my kind tends to know more about yours than the other way around. The heart of tinkering, in any form, is being able to see all levels of the thing in question at once, and while you hold them there, see the precise configuration that all those disparate elements need to be in. This can be used to create new things, like with the clockworks, or to uncover things already in existence but as yet unseen. Shapers, like myself, can use these magicks to look at the patterns between living beings, and when needed, change them.”
Sellior’s jaw dropped. It came as a great shock to him for two reasons: first because the desert elf had always seemed so totally uninterested in everyone around him (although, on reflection, Sellior admitted that knowing at a glance someone else’s feelings and desires and motivations may leave you with little to talk to them about), and second that Sellior himself had been developing some rather deep feelings of attraction towards Moshel, which he had assumed Moshel was unaware of. And now, it seemed, that his secret affection for the tinker had likely never even been a secret in the first place. “So…ye can read us? Wit’out even talkin’ wit’ us?”
Moshel nodded, as unflappable as ever. “Now, as for you and Helkint, it’s clear to me that whatever transpired between you two the other day has made him feel accepted – in spite of the heavy burden he carries – and he holds you in the highest regard for it.”
Sellior sighed heavily. “I do wish I could talk some sense inta him. He has no reason ta be feelin’ as guilty as he does.”
“You won’t. Those of us who feel guilty about what happened have to slay those demons on our own. If we can,” replied Moshel, looking away as a flicker of dark emotion shook his usually immovable features. Sellior gave him a sharp look, and opened his mouth to speak. Moshel cut him off with a wave of his hand as if he knew exactly what the red elf was going to say before he said it. “I’m a shaper. I should have noticed the nybbas long before we reached the fork and been able to warn everyone, but I was…distracted by other things.”
Sellior placed a hand on his shoulder, and was very surprised when Moshel angrily shrugged it off again, saying in a tense voice, “I do not need your blind empathy, Sellior.”
Sellior was not used to being rebuffed so, and took a moment to keep from being offended. A slow smile crept across his face when he remembered what he always felt was the best way to take his own mind off heavy, troubling subjects: gossip. “Shaper, eh?” Sellior asked nonchalantly. “So then….ye know wha’s up wit’ ta two felintarks, then?”
Moshel chuckled and looked at the red elf out of the corner of his eye. “Not really your business, is it?”
“No, but ‘tis me curiosity,” Sellior retorted, grinning broadly.
Moshel sighed and shook his head and the traces of brooding sadness left his face. “There’s nothing between them.”
Sellior’s eyebrows shot up – he and most of the other rebels had assumed they were more than friends. “Not’in’ at all?”
“Never has been.” Moshel leaned in conspiratorially, and the nearness of him made Sellior’s heart skip a beat. “Nyabel’s got a fiancé in Tarquintia - very nice fellow. Safir, though, is looking for someone new.”
“Someone new, eh?” Sellior asked, far more interested than reason alone would allow him to be.
Moshel nodded. “It took him a long time to get over the Inalan girl, but he’s on the prowl again.”
Sellior gasped, savoring the delightful shared conspiracy of revealing personal details of an acquaintence’s life. “Inalan girl? He had an Inalan lady friend?”
“More than a lady friend: they were married! This was before my time, but from what I hear, the fallout was devastating. He dropped out of school, became estranged from his family, and took up our trade to be near her. They didn’t last, but she still lingers with him a bit,” Moshel replied.
Sellior mulled over this for a moment. “Does Elcrona ha’e anyt’in’ ta worry about? I’d say no, but clearly yer better at this than me.” Moshel laughed and replied that she was not his type, and Sellior felt somewhat vindicated that he was right.
Sellior was feeling a bit braver now, and decided to press the gray elf about topics he did not generally discuss. “So, wha’ about ye? Wha’s yer story?”
Moshel shrugged. “Nothing interesting. I’m pretty run of the mill as far as tinkers go – oh, except for the shaper thing. Shapers are usually women. That one gets me odd looks sometimes.”
Sellior sighed, exasperated. “Alrigh’, alrigh’. Ye are so secretive, an’ fer no good reason I bet. I’ll leave ye ta yer secrets an’ yer silences then, ye daft desert elf.” Moshel chuckled softly as Sellior walked away.
*****
Bertronius was pleasantly surprised when he returned to the lodging house to find McNab awake and waiting for him. "Hullo Bert! I've been wantin' to talk to ye," McNab said cheerfully in a hoarse voice. He smiled widely, offsetting the deep bags under his eyes, and Bertonius hoped it meant his mentor was finally starting to get decent rest again.
"What about?" Bertronius asked, returning McNab's smile. He was happy to see that his mentor was in better spirits than he had seen him in sometime, but there was also something about his demeanor that communicated to the astute lad that McNab was ill at ease.
"Well, to be honest, Bert, I feel a little bad for neglectin' yer trainin' lately," he responded giving his young protege a serious, fatherly look. "Yer a green spy still -- albeit a very talented one to be sure -- and I've been too busy with me own work, that I haven' given ye any tasks or even terribly much advice. I can' help feelin' that if I had taken a firmer hand with yeh, yeh wouldn' have upstaged me so much at our last meetin'!" he added, jokingly.
Bertronius flushed. He still felt badly about what he had done at the meeting, and beleived reporting on his suspicions from his meetings with Eralus without checking with McNab first was a breach of professional etiquette. "No, I’m sorry about that, I really am. And as for my training, sir, I know you've had a lot on your mind since we've been here."
"I'm glad yer so understandin', lad. This in mind, I do have summat I'd like yeh to look into, if yer not too busy?"
"No, of course not. What is it?" Bertronius asked, feeling a rising sense of excitement at finally being included in McNab's work.
"There's a contact of mine," he began a little uncertainly, giving Bertronius an abstracted look before pausing to search for the right words.
"Is everything alright?" Bertronius asked, concerned that his mentor's exhaustion was taking an increasingly heavy toll.
"Aye, just a momentary lapse," he responded, rubbing his the bridge of his nose, "not enough sleep lately. As I was sayin', I have a contact that I havena been able to get round to lately, and I want yeh to go have a chat with him. Just to see what he knows."
"What's his name? Is there anything I should try to find out in particular? Will I need to charm the information out of him, or will he give it to me outright?" Bertronius inquired enthusiastically, his anxiety over his master's health succumbing to the inherent excitement of a new mission.
"His name is Kennack, and ye shouldna have to work hard to get any information he has, especially if ye give him this," McNab said sliding a small pouch of gold coins. "He's usually skulkin' ‘round the Thorned Duchess -- it's a pub near the stone workers’ district." Bert thanked McNab and assured him that he would not fail him, and made his way to leave. As he was about to open the door, McNab spoke again, in a quiet, serious voice. "Bert, lad…be careful.”
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