Heat vs Steele Pt 11
“Can’t believe I’m doing this, it’s so shady! Why does Logan trust that guy?!” Roman mutters under his breath and readjusts the mask covering the lower half of his face. At this moment in time, he couldn’t allow his identity to be known, lest he accidentally lead someone to Logan’s location and cause a disastrous outcome. The cloak that Virgil had lent him from his own back flutters in the breeze as Roman ducks into an alley between the bookstore and an alchemist’s home, the Rowdy Rook, with herbs hanging out of the window. He can hear the fluttering of missing and wanted posters hanging up on the billboards on the street with his name written in black ink next to the royal sigils. A short description of his ‘crimes’ included kidnapping of the crown prince and assault of a royal guard along with misuse of magic and property damage of the prince’s bedchambers.
He grips the brooch borrowed from Logan’s spare clothes, holding the cloak closed as he passes the specialty sign and edges down the darkened hall of stone, hand on the hidden dagger at his hip. As he walks further down the alley, the noises of the bustling marketplace are drowned out by the silence and occasional caw of the raven watching him from its nest on the Rowdy Rook’s rooftop. The hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as those eyes pierce into what he feels is his soul, never leaving his form until he gets to the second door three paces down and knocks in the pattern Virgil had given him, 4-6-3. Nothing happens and after a moment of standing there like a fool, he tries again. The raven caws and seems to laugh at him as Roman turns to glare at it,” What do you know, you’re a bird?! Stop laughing at me!”
It caws again and flies down to a window a little higher than the door, tapping the glass in a 3-6-4 pattern. Then hops in through the opening. Not one to be shown up by a bird of all things, seriously what is with the arrogance in this kingdom if even its birds think they’re better than him, Roman taps the same pattern on the wood and slips through the crack provided when the door silently opens to him. Inside is a bar, albeit void of any patrons and for a brief moment, Roman wonders how Virgil knows about it, seeing as the knight does his work best in the shadows by Logan’s side. The raven was nowhere to be seen and Roman notes that the window it had gone through wasn’t on the wall where it should have been.
No matter, he was here for someone’s help and Logan needed it badly with the injuries he had caused. Roman approaches the bar and takes the stool in the corner like the cool morally grey characters he had read about in his stories. It's almost too quiet and it isn’t until he looks over the bar does he see the bartender staring up at him. Is that a child staring back at him?!
“Must be a rough day if you’re day-drinking already. What can I get you?”
Ok, that was definitely a child’s voice.
“I’m the owner’s son so don’t worry about any breaches of child labor policy.”
Roman nods a bit and sighs,” can I get a pint of Angel’s Fall?”
The little girl is quiet for a moment before she nods and ducks down under the counter. After a minute, she pops back up with a key and waves for Roman to come behind the bar. He awkwardly walks around as the girl removes a bottle of the darkest wine roman’s ever seen and fits the key into a keyhole that had been hidden behind it, opening the secret door the girl had climbed up to open. She hops down and pushes Roman in, looking behind her despite there being no one else in the bar. She giggles and closes the door behind him, leaving Roman alone at the base of a staircase leading up to the second floor. He contemplates turning around, but the click of the lock scraps that idea instantly.
With nowhere else to go, he sighs and starts the short climb up as a soft voice grows louder with each step until he’s in front of a simple wooden door. Well, if you count a golden handle and trimming as simple. He reaches out and grits his teeth before knocking on the door. The voice goes silent before the door creaks open to a lavish room with a mahogany desk and plush chairs, two behind and one in front. But the occupant wasn’t there. Roman pauses, starting to turn and search, but freezes as cold metal presses against his throat and a voice hums next to his ear,” well, this is interesting. Kadevar didn’t mention that the visitor was of warm blood.”
Roman shivers and leans away before the blade tilts to press into the skin of his jugular and stops him.
“Easy on him, Caduceus, it's clearly his first time dealing in the shadows.” A voice purrs too close for comfort as Roman can feel fingers play with his cloak before settling on the brooch and pause,” release him, he has Wraith’s symbol.”
The blade drags against his throat menacingly as it pulls away and Roman stumbles away to see the face of… nothing?
A chuckle rises close to the desk,” look in the brooch, warm blood.”
He fumbles with the apparently very important accessory and pulls it up to his eye, gaping at the two men that he can now see somehow? The taller one with pitch black eyes was lounging on the back of one of the chairs behind the desk where the second man was playing with the dagger that had previously been at Roman’s throat. He points the tip of the blade towards one of the chairs in front of the desk and leans his head back to look up at the black eyes of his partner. Roman keeps the brooch up to watch them as he takes the seat and the first man twines his fingers on the desk to look at him,” you have Wraith’s sign so it must be an emergency if he sent someone else. Where is he?”
“...Wraith?”
Those four eyes stare at him before the one behind the chair taps his own brooch and Roman ‘oh’s in realization,” yes, um, Wraith. He’s in the forest at the moment, but he’s injured and-.”
“Easy, Caduceus, let him speak before you run off.” The one Roman assumes is Caduceus taps his finger on the desk as the other sets a hand on his shoulder. He’s adorned in a white poet’s tunic with black pants and knee high, heeled boots. A belt corset hugs his waist while a golden chain hangs from his neck. A golden serpent is entwined up his left forearm while his right hand has a bracelet chained to rings on his ring and pointer finger. His eyes are slitted like a reptile’s and Roman can see the edge of scales peeking out over his collar that dipped just a little too low to be modest.
His partner, as Roman will dub him for now, was much more simply dressed. He was dressed in a similar fashion with the basic poet shirt and black pants, but Roman could see dim, silver stars embroidered on the hip and thighs when he turned earlier. A silver chain hangs from his neck to match Caduceus’ but he also had silver cufflinks on his wrists and his eyes were as black as the night sky, with pupils hidden from Roman’s sight. He also had on gloves that dipped to reveal the back of his hands where Roman could see the hint of a tattoo.
He motions for Roman to continue and the prince continues,” there was an incident at the castle that left Wraith unable to perform his duty, however despite his injuries, he tracked Prince Logan down and now is rendered completely out of commission for the time being. He sent me here with instructions to ask for your assistance with the situation.”
His words are met with silence for a moment before Caduceus stands and strides to the coat rack that Roman had just noticed is by the door. His partner sighs and literally flickers in and out of sight over to the rack to grab the cloak hanging next to Caduceus’ long coat. Roman attributes it to the strain of staring at them through a brooch for so long. He hurries to catch up and lowers the brooch to replace it on the cloak and lift his hood up.
“Lead us, warm blood” he hears from his left.
Roman pauses as a voice chuckles from his other side and he shivers before heading down the staircase that he had entered through. He sees the little girl giggle as she opens the door before Roman can knock the code and scrunch her shoulders up as if someone was ruffling her hair. There was only a single patron in the bar and he was sleeping in the corner of the dining area so Roman and his invisible companions were able to sneak out rather easily. Right before he stepped into the sunny street, he’s pulled back by a pair of hands and a guard walks past as if Roman didn’t exist.
“Stay still, there’s another patrol coming.” Roman mentally questioned how it was Caduceus knew that but a hand slipping around his brooch stopped that thought before his partner mumbles,” there. That should make this a bit easier. You’ll be invisible, just like us, until we get out of the gates. Hurry, the spell won’t last long.”
Roman does indeed hurry, hoping his strange companions were close by as he weaves through the crowd. He spots a patrol out of the corner of his eye and steps to the side before making his way towards the secret tunnel Virgil had told him about before he left.
However, a single green eye catches the movement of the vines swishing around a solid form and the white raven it belongs to caws before flying towards the castle. In all his infinite intelligence, Roman never noticed the increase of birds around nor the patrols knocking on all doors with a scroll that made the mothers and wives burst into tears.
Down the street, our raven flies, weaving between people and carts, before it takes an upward turn and glides over the castle wall, through one of the many windows in the most famous of all the rooms in the Lightheart palace, in the center of the connecting walls, with four paths crossing the grass, sits a giant dome with birds of all colors flying within and plants from the native lands of olde. It’s here that Logan’s father, King Lightheart, sits with his arm outstretched for the arrival of the white raven. As the talons grip tough skin, both bird and human eyes flash green.
“Thank you, Snowflake, for your impertinent information.” He writes out a note, nothing long, and ties it to the raven’s foot,” take it to the head of the Guard, go!” He tosses his arm up and launches the raven up towards the window it had come through.
“My son… my heir… my boy… I swear by the blade I wield, these demons in human forms shall pay for each touch of your skin with a thousand cuts, each tear’s cost drops of their blood.” Gnarled hands grip tight to the hilt of a worn sword pulsing with renewed energy at the prospect of an end to the years of peace. Weary feet take each step of the upturned stone pathway with practiced ease until he was looking off the balcony at the fields of soldiers training for survival on the battlefield.
“Logan Lightheart will come home.”
