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Gift Fic - Of a Hand’s Span

It’s officially over two months past due, so idk if I can call this a birthday gift, but I bludgeoned my way through a serious case of writer’s block for the very lovely @thereluctantinquisitor anyway! I realized too late that this might read as a bit of a rehash of the birthday fic you wrote me Kay, and I don’t consider myself an expert enough on your delightful OCs to think it’s at all in character, but I hope you enjoy the effort all the same! Thank you for always being a voice of encouragement and an incredible friend!! <3

~ 2500 words, of the Stonebreaker variety

------

When your year included a day spent swinging from the gallows, it seemed poor luck not to celebrate surviving it.

The realization found Sylda quietly, one scorching afternoon in the height of summer as she idled around the dingy inn room that she and Delver had spent too much of their dwindling coin on. They hadn’t had much choice in the matter; the little inn was about the only place a reasonable person could wait out the arrival of the caravans that ferried travelers through the heart of the wilds beyond the bustling little trade stop. So they had spent the last two days waiting, until the waiting turned to bickering, and the bickering to silence, and the silence to sudden, glaring memory.

Staring up at the pock-marked ceiling, Sylda checked the date against the calendar in her head, checked it a second time for good measure, then sighed and heaved herself up off of the groaning springs of the bed beneath her. Its complaints drew Delver’s attention from his third reread of the book that he was definitely not falling asleep to.

“Where are you going?” he asked hazily, on reflex. There was resistance in his voice already. Sylda shrugged.

“Out,” she said, just to annoy him. “Maybe down to the market. Maybe to a tavern with some better wine. Hey, if I’m bored enough, maybe I’ll find my way over to the Gilded Keys. That could be fun.”

“We need to be here when the caravan arrives,” Delver reminded her, blinking the mirage of the book’s pages from his eyes as she crossed to the door.

“Mhm.”

“And I’m not going to climb around the whole city looking for you.”

“Of course not. I’ll be back.”

“Sure.” Delver sighed, scrubbing half-heartedly at what Sylda assumed was the beginning of his latest headache. Then he straightened.

“Isn’t the Gilded Keys a brothel?”

Her answer was the door falling shut behind her.

------

It was a productive afternoon, all things considered.

She spent nearly all of it loitering around the fringes of the market square, indulging in the long-neglected impulses of a thief gone nearly legitimate. A bakery lost some small, pocket-sized rolls fresh from the oven. A grocer misplaced a lump of cheap butter and a wide-mouthed jar of jam. A vintner got a very fine payout for a bottle of strawberry wine from the purse of a nervous gentleman up the road who had used braided cord for his purse strings instead of tarred rope. All in all, child's work, but clean work nonetheless. As the sun began to fall behind the edge of the horizon, Sylda wound her way as far from the center of town as she dared, and scaled the first roof that looked stable enough to hold her. It was nothing more than a low, flat plane of straw mats several blocks from the market, packed down and then gone over several times with pitch and bits of clay until it was as solid and sharp as unhewn granite. The family of three that lived beneath it wouldn't hear her footfalls on something that thick, even without all of the arguing they were doing.

She settled herself down on the corner that jutted out over a deserted alleyway, dangling her feet over the edge as she spread her spoils out beside her. The bread was still warm from its stay in the satchel she had tucked against her chest, just enough to melt the harder edge of the butter that she slathered on top. Cheap though it was, it was still deliciously salty, accenting the sweetness of the jam and the tart pop of wine. She indulged in three of the rolls, and half of the bottle of wine, before she let the tension roll slowly out of her shoulders.

Another year, then.

By every metric, that was something worthy of a toast. It meant that she hadn’t been too slow or too stupid, or at least that she had been good at cutting an escape when she was. It meant that she had cultivated enough luck and favor to be more of an asset than a menace. It meant that she had kept herself fed and safe and alive, and that she had done so, consistently, season after season, for the better part of two decades.

Almost, whispered the traitorous voice in her mind, quiet as a shadow. Almost, and almost not. A shame, to have nearly lost so much to the rope, and to have it mean so little…

She silenced the thought with another angry gulp of wine. She had survived. That was plenty. She didn't owe the world anything past that; she didn't owe anything to anyone.

And to yourself?

Sylda lowered her bottle as the flash of anger fizzled. Well, that was the question, wasn’t it? She had survived, and in surviving had been dragged away from everything that she had ever known. Every blessing and curse of street life, every familiar face that she had loved and never thought that she would miss; all of it had been swept away from her like so much road dust under her heels, carried off in one whirlwind of an afternoon. Now, instead, she had a messy inn room to look forward to one night, a frigid road camp the next. She had the company of a man who irritated her nine days out of ten, whose need for her mostly involved being a particularly interesting puzzle. Oh, Delver was fine as far as traveling companions went, but he had been clear about the purpose she served him, and vice versa. An even trade. That hardly made him something to be relied on.

When she thought about it, truly thought about it, her blessings fit almost entirely in the span of her hands - these clothes, this butter, a handful of rolls, a bottle of wine -

“There you are!”

And she nearly lost the bottle of wine over the edge of the roof. Heart in her throat, Sylda spun in her seat as Delver's head suddenly appeared over the edge of the wall beside her, his face twisted into a grimace of effort as he struggled up over the side. Habit alone roused her to her feet quickly enough to reach him at the edge of the roof, and haul him up by the crook of his elbow.

"What in the world are you doing here?" she asked, bewildered, as he staggered to his feet. Delver just snorted and knocked the topmost layer of grime from his cloak.

"I’m doing what I explicitly said I wasn't going to do,” he said dryly. “I'm climbing all over this dusty speck of a supply town looking for you. It's been hours, Sylda."

Defiance edged up through the cracks in her surprise. "I told you I was going out.”

"Sure. And then you went and stayed out until nearly sundown, when we were supposed to be back at the inn, waiting on the caravan -"

"Oh, the caravan isn't here yet." When Delver arched an eyebrow, Sylda shrugged. "What? I’m right, aren't I? If it had shown up already, I’d have seen it, or at least heard the ruckus from the market. You can spot them coming a full league away, and I’ve spent years running rooftops. I know what to keep an eye for.”

“Do you?” Irritation touched the edges of Delver’s tone. “Well, that’s a relief. Because you didn’t seem to ‘keep an eye’ on the shopkeepers that you spent all afternoon stealing from. If you had, maybe they wouldn’t have known exactly who I was talking about when I asked after you.”

He made a flourishing gesture to his purse, which jingled pitifully against his waist. Newly emptied, Sylda realized with a wince. She could just about picture the shape of the conversation that Delver had been subject to when the shopkeepers that she had swindled recognized her description. Maybe she hadn’t shaken nearly as much rust off as she had thought. She chanced a sheepish grin.

“In my defense, I wasn’t exactly intending to go back to them.”

Delver huffed. “No, I bet you weren’t.”

The brush of an insult there was almost enough to raise Sylda to an argument, but Delver’s attention had already shifted down to her meager pile of plunder, still lain out on the roof’s edge. He eyed the simple fare over for a moment, frowning, then turned to steal a glance up at her through the dirty fringe of his hair.

“Why?”

She could have lied. Could have pretended that she didn’t know what he was asking, could have pretended she was just sharpening her skills again, could have chalked it up to boredom, plain and simple. But a ghost possessed her instead, and she said, “It’s my birthday.”

It was almost worth the admittance to see Delver straighten so quickly. “What?”

“My birthday,” she said again, a little stronger. The words were out; no use fighting them now. “Rolls around about every year or so, you know? I figured it was worth doing...something, after making it through another one.” She made a pointed gesture near her neck and then shrugged like it didn’t wake the rotten seed of that particular memory. Delver just nodded, suddenly as stiff-necked as a new actor. He looked down at the spread of her spoils at their feet again, then out over the dusty rise of buildings spiraling out around them, frowning.

"Kind of a shit place for a celebration, isn't it?" he asked after a moment. Sylda shrugged.

"I’ve had them in worse places," she said, with a twist of a smile. "And to be fair, it's still better than sitting in a tiny inn room listening to you snore your way through a book you hate."

Delver scowled. "I don't snore."

"No," said Sylda, full grinning now, "you thunder like a bear in heat, and that’s on your better nights. Really, I’m not surprised you don’t travel in the wilds much, since you’d be in very real danger of one of them trying to petition you for the night -”

She broke off just in time to duck out of the way of one of the bread rolls as it sailed past her head.

"I’m starting to regret coming to find you,” Delver snapped as she heaved herself upright, snickering.

“You didn’t have to,” she pointed out helpfully. "Actually, I’m surprised you found me at all. We're not exactly near the market, and your bad luck is legendary -”

Delver raised another roll.

“- which makes the fact that you did find me that much more impressive." She held up a hand in a half-hearted gesture for peace, and begrudgingly, Delver lowered his weapon.

“It wasn’t exactly hard,” he admitted after a moment, dropping the little hunk of bread back onto her spread cloth. “You said that you used to work on rooftops, back in Yelen. After the mess in the market, I figured the only place that you'd go is up.”

He looked away, back out over the rise and fall of the town’s silhouette around them, and a strange tightness suddenly coiled itself inside Sylda’s chest. Delver was right; it wasn’t a difficult assumption to make, that she would go scurrying back to the rooftops for her safety. But it still took knowing her. It took remembering. A Cipher’s long, long memory was a testament to the things they found important enough to keep. The notion that anything about her even approached that bar, even temporarily…

She suddenly found herself settling back onto the edge of the roof, gesturing Delver down beside her and holding the bottle of wine out towards him.

“You still had to find me,” she pointed out. “It’s not a big town, sure, but finding one rooftop in a thousand, well…”

She shrugged, leaning back on one hand. Some starved, wretched part of her knew exactly what she was doing. It was the child in her, reaching out with both hands, little fists grasping for another word, another reassurance, another little brush of that companionship. Anything to have more than just this bottle of wine. The shame of it burned like a wildfire in her chest, but if Delver noticed, he mercifully didn’t say so.

“I tried just taking the roofs myself,” he said instead, accepting the seat and her offered wine with a grunt. “Managed to get on top of one without falling flat on my ass in front of everyone. Almost celebrated. Then I had a knife at my back.” He sighed, and took a long pull of wine as Sylda stifled a startled laugh. “I don’t know why I expected most thieves to stay on the street after knowing you. The gentleman holding my spine hostage seemed to think I was part of another gang and had come to muscle in on his territory. Then he tried to rob me. Then I guess he realized I wasn’t even worth dulling his blade to cut my purse, so he told me to get back on the ground where I belonged. I've spent the last hour peeking up onto roofs at random and hoping no one tries to cut my fingers off.”

"We usually check for rings on them first," Sylda assured him with a grin, even as her child-soul latched its stubby fingers around the thought and reeled it close. For me, it crooned delightedly. For me, for me; all of it, done just for me! A fresh tongue of shame licked up her ribs, spitting like a new log on a fire, but she couldn’t seem to bring herself to push it away. She was so warm, suddenly, shame and all. Maybe it was just curiosity, or frustration, or the ill-used dregs of duty, but Delver had still come looking for her. She hadn't needed him to; they both knew how easily she could work a town, even a small one, when she was being careful. But he had come anyway.

Even a very useful tool didn't warrant that sort of attention.

Swallowing the knot building in her throat, Sylda forced a shrug that she hoped looked nonchalant.

"Well, all the same, I’m glad you didn’t get your fingers cut off. Or fall off a roof. Or get robbed a second time." Delver leveled a glare at her over the bottle of wine, which she returned with a thin smile. “What? I’m serious! It’s a dangerous task, running rooftops like this. I just mean that I’m glad you made it up in one piece, that's all. It would be a pretty terrible birthday present for you to go and die on me."

Delver snorted. "Yeah, happy birthday," he muttered. "Now you’re sitting on a rooftop in the middle of nowhere while I drink away all of the wine that you stole. I’m sure you’re thrilled.”

Sylda just laughed. She couldn’t quite bring herself to correct him.

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