Footsteps
By Phoenix Flame
Footsteps. Soft leather. No creaks from metal or rawhide seams. A high one then. All the normal ones wore that second-skin armor. His heart burned through his chest, sucking in his breath and choking on it. The one from that night? No idea.
The wall leeched the warmth from his back and the dew-drenched grass sucked at his bare feet. Two houses made up the other walls of the garden, the little slice of wilderness planted to amuse the rich, or provide cover for adulterous loves too passionate for a bedroom. Three feet from the sewer grate—two seconds to roll to it, another few to wrench it open. Too many seconds. An arrow would not take that long to bury itself in his skull. No, he heard no wood. Still too many seconds. A thrown knife would split his vertebrae before that.
Even then, goblins and vampires roamed the sewers. A vampire or them? Vampires could bargain. No, that was a lie. But they stood farther from the void.
A soft whisper against stone. Cloth rustling against knees. A cat's pounce behind him.Cat. Poor, poor Cat.
"The Roxey Inn, eh? Such a rotten soul gets to go to the Roxey Inn!" She lay on her back, green eyes smirking up at him.
"Aye. Two hundred septims too."
"I might have to take some."
"I could think of a way you could earn it."
"Giving me an easy job? Charity!"
She twisted to her shoulder and hooked her arm around his neck. As he was sitting on his shins, she forced him to lean forward, just as her mouth splattered him in a wet kiss.
"Ack, I'm infected!" He jerked back, splaying his arms behind him.
"Bewitched!"
She had washed recently. Her bracken hair shined a bit, tangled in the torque she always wore. A witch's prized heirloom, she always drawled. No, a few horsehairs worth of stained metal with a bit of yellow added by a bored, practicing mage. The pearled medallion was the inside of an oyster's shell.
Cat the Sorceress. Cat the thief who turned her tricks with limpid charm spells, making any drunkard suddenly see a woman with far more breast and glow than the street-living girl. Cat, whose fingers fumbled and betrayed her at locks, could slip into a purse and lift its contents all without breaking gaze with the fool whose mind swayed with drink.
She had tried her tricks on him once. And he had chased her down into the mud when he was missing four coins.
"Practice, for bettering your magical defenses."
"I just saved you from getting kicked out of the thieves' guild," he said, as he fished out his coins from within her bodice, between her scrawny breasts. Women always hid things there, though she was hardly a woman.
"My thanks then, Arieh," she beguiled. She leaned up to kiss him full on the mouth.
Never had he flown from a girl so fast.
The sun slinked down in the skies. They were almost thieves again.
He trembled, a cornered rabbit, teeth sawing into his lip, the cheeks of his mouth already oozing shreds of flesh. Cold at his back, his feet, his legs. Another whisper. The warble of a night bird. A flutter of wings. Or cloak? The cacophony of his heart drowned out the night.
Two weeks of drowning. A promising start that died. Among others.
He heard a sigh. Asigh? The thing requires breath? The stone scraped under leather—away! To the left, in a rustle of steps and stalking.
He made no move, except for quaking all over. He hated it, hated it with everything in him. Himself too, for being such a stupid whelp.
More steps! Louder too, just a trace. With his thief's ears, he could see the assassin slinking through the night, a glint from a blade enfolded in black. Eyes only for the abyss.
He knew such eyes.