#iskaar

Ór pulls her hood over her face before walking in, all knives in place, Ghost hidden and gun loaded. Two Eliksni in spiky armour guard the door but let her through without a word. They seem more of a warning than actual threat. When she passes them, the airlock behind her shuts with a thud.

The room is all chaos and noise – dozens of voices in at least four languages, chairs shuffling against the metal floor, suspicious fluids being poured to and drank from dirty glasses. Runi chitters uncomfortably in the comms.

“Don’t drink anything here. I don’t want to reconstruct your blown-up stomach,” he warns. Ór only rolls her eyes.

She scans the swirling crowd: Eliksni and Awoken, and even some Cabal deserters, all squashed together in a brightly lit space, drinking, gambling and shouting over one another. She catches a sentence or two in Terran, and a pair of Dregs behind her speak Eliksni so fast she cannot make out the words. Suddenly, a tall Awoken woman in the corner spills her drink over a Legionary sharing the table with her and pulls out a knife.

The guards in spiky armour are beside her in split second. One punches her in the stomach and the other whips the knife from her hand. When they drag her out through the airlock, she is still throwing curses in a posh Reef dialect.

The Palace is a venue with no rules but one: absolutely no violence.

Ór makes her way through the room, eyes sweeping over every passing face. When she spots a table under one of the lamps, just by the bar, with only one seat taken, one corner of her lips moves slightly upwards. The Spider knows his clients remarkably well. A Vandal sitting there looks haggard even for an Eliksni, shreds of grey and violet cloth hanging from his lanky frame and a helmet that has certainly seen better days. She notices no House symbols on him, though the violet rags seem to be a remainder of Dusk attire.

She checks the knives again, then throws a bag of glimmer on the table in front of the Vandal and slips onto the other stool. He looks up and his eyes flicker aggressively yet curiously.

“Heard you liked Human card games,” she says.

The Vandal’s gaze flicks between her and the glimmer before he hisses in Terran with a distinct growly accent, “Yess… for what?”

“Twelve thousand,” Ór gestures to the bag. “In turn… I want information.”

His eyes narrow under the mask, “Information valuable.”

In response, she pulls out a sidearm from the holster and places it on the top of the glimmer pile. A nice piece, custom-made. Black market. Runi hisses in her ear.

“Tell me this isn’t your only gun. Ór. Ór, is this your only gun?!”

She ignores him and leans over the table. The Vandal ponders the offer for a moment, then nods. As he takes out a card deck and shuffles it, she hears Runi’s distressed whines over the comms.

“You know what? I take it back, all of it back. If you win this, I’m never gonna complain about you playing with Drifter again. Ever. But if you lose your only gun and get killed in this hellhole, I’m. Not. Rezzing. You.”

She gives him a reassuring mental nudge, at the same time doing maths in her head on how many knifes she could spare to get out of here alive.

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 When she places her last card on the table, the Vandal’s eyes shine with disgruntlement but he says nothing. Runi, on the other hand, lets out a long, digital sigh of relief.

“Never pull something like this out again.” He sounds as if he was planning on buying Drifter flowers.

The Vandal gently pushes the bag of glimmer in her direction with his lower hand and folds the upper ones. Ór reaches for her sidearm and puts it back in the holster.

“Let’s talk,” she says, trying to look him straight in the eyes but lacking a pair to properly do so, “but not here.”

They slip through the back door she remembered from the first time she was here, into a trash alley full of empty crates and drained ether tanks. Her eyes sweep the area and when she is sure they are alone, she presses her luck.

“Velask,” she says, praying it’s the correct pronunciation, and pulls back her hood.

The Vandal, leaning his back against the wall with both pairs of arms crosses, flinches.

“I hear about you,” she continues in broken Eliksni, “Have no House. Once Dusk, but not like their doings. Want something different.”

She observes his figure as he is considering her words, left lower hand fidgeting with a knife by his belt.

“Who did you hear from?” He replies, mercifully using simple structures, “What do you want?”

“Just talk,” she shrugs. “Dusk hate humans. But you work for Reef people, no?”

“You are not of the Reef,” he narrows his eyes. “Terran. Light-child?”

Ór nods.

“Dusk fight Light-children. But not all Eliksni want to, yes?... And not all Light-children want to.” She pulls out one of her knives, takes it by the blade and reaches it out, the hilt pointing towards him. “They want peace.”

The Vandal stares at the knife, stunned, then glances at her, then back at the knife. After a long moment of silence, so deep Ór can almost hear her own heart thudding, he raises his upper arm and takes it.

“Why?” His voice is softer now. He is leaning against the wall again, seeming a lot more relaxed, and eyeing her curiously.

“Must know about Io. What happening there. What make your Whirlwind.”

He winces, but nods.

“We must fight. Together,” she presses on. “Alone we lose. Alone, there is Whirlwind again. Collapse again.”

The knife spins in his fingers. “Why’ve you come to me? I’m a bannerless mercenary. No fighter, no kell.”

“Your father fight for the Queen. After Cybele.”

“Long ago. Reef is chaos now,” he barks a laugh and gestures towards the door they have left through. “The Spider now rules it as much as the Queen.”

Ór observes him intently. She has to look up, he is towering over her even when slouched against the wall.

“No Queen,” she says slowly, “No kell. But you hear about House Light, no?”

“Misraaks,” he mutters, almost making it a question.

“Yes,” she smiles with relief. “Hear you look for him. As I do. Want peace like him.”

The Vandal holds her gaze. She cannot tell what his eyes express, but it is certainly not hostility.

“Meet me tomorrow.” He makes a slow, careful move with his lower hand, pulling out his own knife and handing it over to Ór. She takes it by the hilt and smiles again.

“Here?”

“Yes. And my friend.” He withdraws his hand just as slowly, then bows his head in a gesture the meaning of which is unknown to her. “My name is Iskaar.”

A silence falls, him waiting for her to reply, but she only nods. They share a long look, six blue eyes glowing dimly in the shadows, until Ór sheaths Iskaar’s knife by her belt and straightens up.

“Tomorrow, then.”

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With her legs stretched out and back against a jagged rock, Ór is observing the evening—or at least what passes for it out here—settle over the Tangled Shore. In the Reef, day and night are a societal construct, and the only way she can distinguish one from the other is by lamps lighting up and turning off around Eliksni burrows. She watches from above as dozens of tiny lights vanish and darkness gradually takes reign over this scattering of junk and stone. Moaning of thick metal lines holding the shards of asteroids and wreckage together and distant gunfire are a constant hum she’s grown used to. It’s just how the Shore is – always torn apart and whimpering.

From her spot on a rock floating above the Cobble Ór spots an Awoken woman driving off on a Fallen Pike and a group of Dregs chasing her. A Cabal Legionary shoots one of them in the back and he plummets to the ground, his vehicle crashing and erupting with flames. The rest of the band dashes by undisturbed and in a moment it’s quiet again.

She loves this place.

It is chaotic, vast, and full of hideouts. Hunter-esque. But what appeals to her the most is the mere idea of a makeshift space built with hooks and cables and ship parts and rocks and Traveler knows what else, and the fact that someone could call it a home. It seems alive – ever growing, ever changing.

Runi materializes beside her.

“What’s the plan for tomorrow?”

“We’re meeting these two Eliksni, remember? From the bar?”

“Ah, yes…” he twitches his shell and Ór suspects he actually wanted to ask about something else. “You’re not telling the Vanguard, are you?”

She raises an eyebrow, “We’ve talked about this, right?”

“Yes, but… uh,” he sighs, “I don’t like doing things off the record.”

“But you said this plan was a good idea.”

“Mhm.”

“And you know what they would say.”

Ór respects the Vanguard. Sha admires how they carry the weight of the City on their own shoulders, steady and unmoveable like pillars of a temple, how they wiggle and bend but never break. They are not a pair of cowardly zealots blinded by the Light, as Drifter would put it. Zavala is scrupulous and protective, Ikora is clever and bold; together, they form a leadership she is willing to trust, a leadership under whose banner she would gladly march into a fight.

Yet there has always been something she couldn’t quite place, ever since she came to the Tower. For all their welcoming nods and words of encouragement, she has been flinching every time she saw Cyle run off, excited and proud, to report back at the courtyard; every time Shinon sat in an alcove reading a book borrowed from the Vanguard’s exclusive library. Always that needle of envious regret pinching her.

She knows what they would say.

Zavala wouldn’t even try to listen, he’d slam his fist and close the case before she could mutter a word. Ikora’s criticism would be gentler; she would draw her to one side and list all the flaws of her plan until Ór barely had the energy and equally little confidence to defend it. She can well recall the barely stifled weariness in Zavala’s eyes, she has seen Ikora’s hands shake, and she knows where that would be coming from. They were protective, they were worried, they needed to defend this City—this world—out of a sense of duty and genuine love for it. She could not act against that. She would not bear their contempt.

It is a weakness, maybe. Drifter would put it this way, she thinks, but again, he calls many things many names and she does not agree with most of them. To her, it’s a splinter stuck under her skin, painful and festering. A need of appreciation? A call for recognition? There are so many lives all around her, Titans building defences and Warlocks understanding things, fellow Hunters getting intel and cracking codes. Rivers of people overflowing her, a nameless pebble thrusted by the current. The Vanguard still refer to her as ‘a Guardian’.

Maybe that is also why she loves the Shore so much.

It is her own thing; because here, she is entirely on her own. No fireteam to save her hide, no voice in the comms telling her the correct path. When Drifter brought her here first, he just showed her around and that was it—now she musts fight her way alone. And it feels freeing, as much as the dread of the unknown is intoxicating.

Sleepiness creeps upon her as she watches lights below disappear one after another into the darkness of space. They must find cover; she wouldn’t like to be surprised by a Scorn patrol alone on an exposed rock, with her Ghost out.

“Come,” she rises to her feet and gestures at Runi, “have any idea of a spot for the night?”

“Couldn’t your new friend rent us a room?” He teases, and her lips quirk.