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A giftfic for Jack of None.
NOTE: For those who may not know, Asric (a blood elf) and Jadaar (a draenei) are minor NPCs first introduced in the Burning Crusade expansion. In BC they were in Shattrath, investigating Griftah's shady business in Lower City for their respective factions (Scryer and Aldor). ~ In Wrath, having bungled the Griftah case, they moved to Northrend, to the Cantrips and Crows saloon in the Underbelly of Dalaran, where they sat and drank, each bitterly blaming the other for their failure. ~ Call of the Crusade moved them to the Argent Tournament grounds, where they stand next to a drink stall continuing to exchange banter and mild insults.
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Not Half Bad
by Silverr, for Jack of None
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[Part I]
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It all started with a mug of mulled caraway burnwine.
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Asric missed Dalaran, where it was warm and the smells of straw and damp animals were confined to Krasus' Landing and Breanni's shop. Where the patrons in the Cantrips & Crows sat and drank and talked indiscreetly for hours, and where Kylene was known to tolerate a certain amount of pickpocketing as long as she got a cut. Everything had been perfectly pleasant until the pettiness of an overly-sensitive and well-connected archmage had necessitated Asric's speedy departure.
He'd been able to slip into a group of workers being taken to a tournament. It had sounded promising: such events were usually crowded with careless festival-goers and harried food vendors. As it turned out, the Argent Tournament was not festive at all, but a combat training ground situated in a remote corner of Northrend's icy hell. The few marks attending were far too well bundled against the cold to be parted from their valuables, and the half-frozen vendors had nothing better to do than glare suspiciously at any hungry elves that edged near.
Asric's gold had quickly been spent, and after a week he'd resigned himself to dying on the soggy straw under the bleachers of the Ring of Champions, forgotten by everyone. The entire situation had been especially galling because several weeks previously a certain irksome ex-Peacekeeper had quite unexpectedly suggested sharing one of the Legerdemain's sturdier beds, a very satisfying followup to what had happened between them some years before in Shattrath's World's End Tavern. As far as Asric was concerned this had established a trend, and he had been sure Jadaar would have continued to warm to him... if they'd been able to remain in Dalaran.
As it was, he was going to be dying on the soggy straw under the bleachers of the Ring of Champions, forgotten by everyone, etc., etc.
And then, as he began to feel himself fading into frozen delirium, Jadaar had shown up at the Tournament. "This is a list," the draenei had said without preamble as he'd shaken out a long scroll, "of the items you are alleged to have taken from the home of Archmage—"
"Not his home," Asric had wheezed. "From the apartment he rents for assignations. And I only took enough to cover my… fee. And expenses."
Jadaar, overflowing with self-righteous scorn, had glared at him. "Follow me," he had said at last, acting as if Asric was so far beneath him morally as to be utterly contemptible. "I have rented a small office in the Coliseum."
Asric, barely able to stand, had limped after him to discover that in the Coliseum actually meant "the gloomy second sub-basement," office meant "a doorless storage niche at the foot of the stairs," and small meant "barely larger than the desk that took up most of the space."
"Stop making that face," Jadaar had said curtly. "This alcove costs a tenth of the rooms at Kylene's. And it is out of the wind."
"You're here to arrest me?" Asric had asked, and then coughed.
In reply Jadaar had given him a piece of sour cheese and some stale flatbread from a drawer of the desk, then said as he left, "Wait here. Eat that."
Asric had looked through the desk. Aside from the food, there was a bundle of letters written in Draenish script, a stack of blank parchment, a battered prayerbook, and a bag of coins and odd tokens. The large bottom drawer held a bedroll, a thin blanket, and a small pillow.
Jadaar had returned with two blankets, which he'd shoved at Asric.
"Two?" Asric asked. He had suppressed his surprise: one did not buy blankets for prisoners one was intending to transport back to certain evisceration in Dalaran.
"Very good. Clearly the sin'dorei educational system surpasses all others."
"But the bottom drawer has—"
"Those are mine," Jadaar had said curtly. "Do not touch them."
Asric got the message: there would be no sharing, no repeat of those nights in Dalaran and Shattrath. Miffed, he had staked out the warmer, more private space behind the desk, saying, "Sleep in front of the desk, in the doorway. You'll make an excellent windbreak."
Jadaar had bristled most satisfyingly. "Is that so?"
"Yes, that's so." Asric had stripped off his sodden clothes, making sure to turn in a complete circle and stretch as he did so – Look all you want, you pompous, repressed meatbag, and see what you'll be missing—and then settled down behind the desk, confident that before the night was over the draenei would fall to his charms. After all, Jadaar had followed him here, hadn't he?
But it hadn't happened that night, or the next, or the next, and Asric had cycled through impatience and doubt to arrive at a surly apathy. He told himself that he should just leave, strike out on his own. Find a way to finish his mage training… which was impossible. No one in Northrend or Eastern Kingdoms would take him as a student due to his being blacklisted by his former master, and he doubted he could bypass the Darnassian enclave's requirement that a non-kaldorei figuratively shit a mountain of gold coins even to be considered for admission. So he was going to have to choose a new livelihood yet again, but what? He was tired of thieving, was getting too old to be a successful courtesan, and while he wasn't too old to enlist, he definitely wasn't interested in the soldier's life. This train of thought would depress to the point where he'd start to consider that last resort of the destitute, the tattered announcements about well-paying jobs on Quel'Danas—All Expenses Paid! Free Training! Earn an Apprentice Groundskeeper's Certificate in as little as Six Weeks! —and then he'd come to, and decide that putting up with Jadaar was probably preferable to spending eighteen hours a day in the hot sun scraping up dragonhawk scat and dead naga.
And besides, it was a matter of pride. Asric would be damned if he was going to be the one to cave in and walk away. Jadaar thought Asric Redmourn was disposable, did he? Well, the blue oaf would learn otherwise.
And so, the stubborn blood elf and the stubborn draenei dug in their heels, day by day trudging across the same topics: the weather, the tournament, the combatants, the nearby cultists, the Lich King. Occasionally Jadaar pretended to be amiable, and on those days Asric bandied false pleasantries back. When they weren't talking they stayed within earshot of Tingiyok's refreshment stall on the tournament grounds, trying to glean leads about jealous lovers or vindictive teachers from the chaff of gossip that blew by.
Well, that was Jadaar's part of their plan for finding new clients: Asric was the one who followed up on the leads, even if it sometimes put him in the middle of situations that he regretted later, because it got him away from the aromas of warm things he couldn't have, like mulled burnwine, and limited the amount of cheap, icy cold honey mead he drank. The mead only made him want to do two things: piss, or pummel Jadaar.
If only the draenei would stop being so annoying. Take today. Asric had just come back from the latrines—the honey mead was very watery—when Jadaar held out a mug.
"Here," he said.
"What is it?" Asric asked.
"It's that sickly sweet drink you favor."
Asric took the steaming mug and sniffed. Caraway? Wait, was it really burnwine? He wrapped his cold-numbed hands around the mug and forced himself to sip slowly, savoring the way the delicious trickle spread warmth throughout his chest. And then he frowned. "Wait a minute, why?"
"Your face is pale and pinched up in a most disagreeable way, as if you have Rednose Plague. Very off-putting to potential clients." Jadaar folded his arms and looked away.
Asric decided that if a tightwad like Jadaar was suddenly tossing around money like this—the burnwine cost as much as thirty tankards of mead—then he had a lot more than he was tossing. "Did you pick up a client you forgot to tell me about?" Asric had done some work for Valiance Keep earlier in the year, an investigation of several petty thefts that had led to the exposure of a black market in salvaged magical items. Of course Jadaar and the Stormwind Guard had come in and taken all the credit at the last minute, but they'd still been paid by both the Keep and the Guard.
"There's no new client."
Asric knew that the ex-peacekeeper was probably telling the truth. The draenei had this thing where he was compelled to be truthful, which was good, because he was was absolutely the worst liar Asric had ever known. "Did you rob someone?" Asric asked. "Or find a loaded corpse? Are you working a bounty? Did you get an inheritance?"
"No, no, no, and no." Jadaar seemed equal parts amused and annoyed. "You worry too much. Just be quiet and drink your foul drink."
Asric hated being patronized almost as much as he hated secrets. "Tell me where you got the money from."
Jadaar shrugged. "If you must know, I do menial tasks for a group of professionals. It pays well."
"Fine. Don't tell me. I don't care." Asric stalked off.
"Where are you going?" Jadaar called after him.
"To lie down. The wine made me dizzy."
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Asric had had plenty of practice in appearing deathly ill, both with and without magic, and so by the time Jadaar 's huge hooves came scuffling down the stone stairs he was ready.
"Asric?"
"I'm here," Asric whispered from his spot on the floor behind the desk.
The hooves stopped in the hallway outside the office. "Are you contagious?"
"Probably not." Asric threw in a wheeze and a cough for extra effect.
"Is there… anything you need?" Jadaar sounded positively grudging.
"No, I think I'll just sleep," Asric gasped out in his weakest, threadiest voice. "Will you watch over me?"
"I have work to do," Jadaar said, and left.
Asric counted to thirty, then opened the bottom drawer of the desk and felt around carefully until his fingers touched the wooden potions rack.
There was only one invisibility potion left. He took it, tucking the small vial carefully into a pouch hidden under his belt.
He crept up the stairs and through the tunnels, pressing into the niches behind the statues whenever he heard anyone coming, but the tournament grounds seemed relatively empty in the approaching dusk. The torches around the Sunreaver Pavilion were still unlit, the Horde Valiant's Ring was empty, and the only person in the Ring of Champions was a paladin riding an elekk in circles.
After scanning the vendor stalls and seeing no one of Jadaar's size, Asric slipped around the corner and sidled up to Flightmaster Lightwing. "Evening, Helidan. Have you seen that one-eyed draenei around today? Bastard owes me money, and I want to drink my dinner."
"Ah, Asric, you just missed him." It was hard to tell in the twilight, but the high elf might have been biting back laughter. "He took off for Dalaran a few minutes ago."
Asric swore softly in Thalassian. By the time he got to Dalaran it might be impossible to pick up Jadaar's trail, and with the plenitude of mages in the floating city Jadaar could already have portaled anywhere.
Still, he supposed it was worth a try. Jadaar did tend to saunter.
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Asric touched down in Dalaran to find some sort of celebration going on. Krasus' Landing was choked with people running around tossing flower petals on each other. Once he ducked past the festivity he found that the madness continued on the streets.
"Don'cha feel it?" a troll in a tuxedo asked him. "Love be in da air!" The troll blew him a kiss and danced away.
Asric scowled and pondered. If Jadaar was working a case, he'd most likely have gone to the Hold or the Citadel. He hoped it wasn't the latter: Vereesa was probably still mad about the speech Asric'd given about the Silver Covenant having a stick up its collective ass. Which it did, but that was beside the point. If she saw him, she'd probably shoot him or toss him in the Hold, with her hubby Rhonin and the Kirin Tor lapdogs backing her up.
It was so unfair.
Aerith, the flower vendor, tugged at his sleeve. "Hey handsome! Don't forget to buy flowers for your sweetheart."
"I don't—" he scoffed, then caught himself. "Yes, well, I'm… I'm looking for my sweetheart's brother. Draenei. Eyepatch. Two fat braids in front. See him lately?"
"Oh, him. Yeah, he bought a bouquet of wildflowers a few minutes ago."
Flowers? What was Jadaar up to? "Did you notice which way he went?"
"That way, I think." She pointed toward the fountain in front of the bank.
Asric tossed her a coin and then wove through the crowd, for once grateful that Jadaar's height made him so easy to spot. As he got closer to the bank he saw that the steps were packed with picnickers kissing under striped umbrellas. Past them, he could see two or three draenei in the throng inside the bank, but every one of them was facing away from him.
As he looked around for the best out-of-the-way vantage point in case one of them did turn out to be Jadaar, he noticed Applebough, the treant fruit vendor, taking money from a draenei with an eyepatch.
"Too easy," Asric murmured, fading to the right—away from the Silver Covenant Guards by the inn—so that he could watch Jadaar from across the street.
The windbag did indeed have a bouquet. The flowers puzzled Asric, but the most likely explanation was that Jadaar was planning to interview or interrogate a woman. He probably thought that the flowers would gain her trust or throw her off her guard or some such nonsense. Asric supposed that it was possible that Jadaar had snuck away from the tournament for personal reasons, for a clandestine meeting with a secret lover, but if Jadaar was having an affair, he'd certainly kept it well-hidden.
So annoying.
Jadaar finished with Applebough, then entered the Silver Enclave. From his spot across the street Asric watched him go into a portal.
"You can't go in there," a female voice purred in Asric's ear. "You're Horde, and the Silver Covenant guards would spank that delicious bottom of yours."
"I am aware of that," Asric snapped. He glanced at the speaker: An elf mage, wearing an exceptionally clingy gown that highlighted truly spectacular breasts.
"Although," she said, tracing the seams on Asric's gloves with a red-nailed finger, "If the price was right, I could open a portal that you could use, if you need to follow him."
"How much?" Asric asked, as he said it knowing that he sounded too eager.
"Eighty silver," she said.
"That's four times the cost of a rune," Asric said.
"Well," she drawled, "you're also paying for my… magical expertise." She pressed against his arm.
"Forty." Her cleavage had to be magically enhanced. It had to be.
"Tick-tock, Red," she said. "The longer we talk, the further away your… tail gets."
"Fine." Asric slapped the coins into her hand.
She cast the portal, but just as he was about to step though she stopped him. "That's Stormwind, you know. You won't survive long."
Asric frowned. He had the invisibility potion, true, but it was a cheap one. Ten minutes, fifteen max, and not guaranteed in hostile faction cities.
"However … " She leaned in. "As long as you promise not to assassinate anyone while you're there, I can rent you a disguise. Extremely convincing. Orb of Deception, Special Edition."
"How much?"
"How much do you have?"
Asric opened his money bag and showed her. "Two gold, twenty or so silver."
"I'll take two gold."
Asric snorted. "No disguise is that good."
In reply the mage pulled off her necklace, and immediately her breasts went flat, her waist inflated, her hips deflated, and her glorious mane of hair turned into a frizzy moustache and a long beard as she shrank and shrank and shrank. "You sure about that?" the gnome asked Asric's shins in a squeaky tenor.
"Two gold it is." Asric said, bending down to pay the rental fee. "How long can I keep it?"
"As long as you need to, but don't take it off 'til you're done using it: it'll return to me instantly."
Asric barely had time to fasten the Orb around his neck before the mage pushed him through the portal.
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