A/N: I've decided to give Brevity a chance. I want to personally thank everyone who followed, favorited, and reviewed. You guys are really too kind. Please enjoy, and give me feedback. Until next time.
Disclaimer: The following characters belong to Ubisoft entertainment. I do not own, nor claim ownership of any of the following.
The invasive stench of burning bread wafted through the pine addled air. The sun's obstinate light warmed my flesh and permeated my eyes, although they laid sealed in slumber. As I drew nearer and nearer to wakefulness, I heard the menial buzz of domesticity – the polyphonic chaos of conversation, instruction, the clattering of dishes, and the listless underscore of the house band playing a lazy tune of their own invention. I wrinkled my brow in displeasure, but refrained from willing my eyes alive as I clung hopelessly to the fading inertia of sleep. A hoarse groan seeped disdainfully from my chest as I inhaled the scent of linen from the pillow confined betwixt my arms.
I immersed myself into the fray shortly thereafter, having clad and groomed myself accordingly in the inn's substandard second-floor lavatory. I narrowly evaded being swindled into parlay with the innkeeper's coquettish wife and navigated the Green Dragon's unusually crowded foyer with practiced cunning, shoving aside ilk of ill purpose and significance. Scoffing at the extraordinarily poor conduct of a fellow nearest the bar, my attention was entreated by the affably robust voice of a man I recognized to be Charles Lee. I expelled a grateful sigh as I traversed the last of the current of famished men and women alike and took a seat amongst my colleagues.
"Haytham, old boy, it's good to see you. Did you sleep well?" Charles mused with a rap of my shoulder.
"Did you sleep at all?" Hickey slurred beneath the guise of a maleficent smirk. I cinched a cautionary brow at the young scoundrel across the table, but he persisted with a guffaw. "I 'member well enough that you took off for the day while the lot of us was only sleepin', and nobody saw you come back 'til the tavern was closin' for the night. Who's the broad?"
My fingers retracted instinctively into fists atop the surface of the table, nails scraping against the varnish and my teeth grinding undetectably behind a thoroughly manufactured expression. I watched him for a moment, leering oafishly from the shadow cast by the protruding lip of his cap, and pondered whether it'd be worth the trouble to strike him across the face. I glanced curtly, with a nonchalant sniff, to my ulster sleeve and elected against it. I had very little interest in soiling my clothes with impudent blood so early in the day.
"There isn't one," I spoke eventually, steering my gaze warily across the piecemeal bounty placed before me by a woman in employ at the tavern. "I traveled to the native camp just north of Lexington yesterday. I had planned to spend the daylight hours there, hence my leaving so early and returning so late. That's not to mention the god awful snowstormI had to fight through."
"Perfectly fair, I'd say. Traversing those woods even in comely weather is somethin' of a gamble." A nearly jollily complacent William Johnson added from the cavernous innards of his mug, the remnants of a grin lousing about his face. Pitcairn, at the head of the table and already enthralled and knuckle deep in his gruel, nodded with a gamey snort of what I had interpreted to be corroboration.
The rather spacious lobby was burdened with reputation and therefore infested with people at all hours of the day, save for the obligatory afternoon drought. Unending was the sound of the compendium, cohabitating as they were. The whole building now reeked of evidence of a negligent cook, and a roomful of people spoiled themselves with the same scalded bread and salted cod that stared daringly up at me from a fissured porcelain plate. I pressed my lips against one another in contempt of the slipshod meal and opted instead for tea.
The Green Dragon was far from the ideal quartering facility, but it suited me well enough, so long as I slept heavy and enjoyed my sunrises accompanied by the cacophonous shrieks of the drunken swills perpetually haunting the main floor. I wasn't much for drink, nor tobacco – taboos of the hands and lips. My aptitude in taking life and preserving my anonymity relied exclusively upon the alertness of my mind, and the lackadaisical disorient of inebriation mired and repulsed me. The same, as I had observed, could not have been said of my allies, but I did not judge them harshly for their erring.
Hickey's voice overshadowed the horrid buzz of the public and I referred my attention thus. "You say 'Perfectly fair,' like there ain't a woman. Just because he popped in on the reds doesn't mean he didn't have his way. You find a squaw you fancy?"
I bit back a scurrilous string of words with a disdainful chuckle. "When I said 'There isn't a woman', Hickey, I meant there isn't a woman."
"Ziio's a player in our lobby against Braddock. Don't be vulgar, Thomas." Charles' contribution to the unfortunate exchange was volleyed between sputters of incredulous laughter.
"Oh, she has a name!" Hickey exclaimed after a swig of the ale primed in his left hand. "'Tio', the buxom barbarian a' the forest. Haytham, I almost didn't take you for the kind."
"'Ziio'." I corrected through the miniscule bridge between my teeth.
The man's overbearing brow furrowed in humored bafflement, his filthy face falling, but the vile smirk lingering on his alcohol soured lips. "What's it matter what 'er name is? Do you want to bed the thing?"
I did not distract from my imposing glare, but I felt Charles glance in uncertainty between me and the others. I steepled my fingers mildly upon the table, silently and undiscernibly imagining how simplistic a conquest it would be to reach across the table and behead the nuisance in the midst of his ill-conceived rabble rousing. Johnson had cried out in protest the moment we were to be blanketed by silence whilst Hickey cackled on. Charles pitched in meagerly, as moderate men are liable to do, if given some incentive. Fearful of confrontation, Pitcairn rasped a query regarding the whereabouts of our local contact, Benjamin Church, and received no response. Being him a fairly intelligent man, I'm certain he had foreseen it.
"What in God's name did I do? It's a fuckin' savage we're talking about!" Hickey shouted, condescension etched across his lopsided simper.
"She!" Johnson roared in retort, his baritone thrusting our region of the pub into a state of unease. Perhaps he was too engrossed in his argument – a compassionate man with a great deal of sympathy for those deserving, and still many unfit for the charity that was his boundless empathy – to notice the feeble and gradual retreat of the bar occupants about us, else I am confident he'd have kept his peace and encouraged his civil opponent to do the same. "She is a person, just like all the rest! Yer welcome to your opinions, no matter how shite they are for true, but I won't have you treatin' people like things in my company."
"What're you goin' on about? Y'don't even know the broad!"
Charles stood from his seat and lobbed himself onto the other end of the table. He shunted between the two men with one arm bent at the elbow, the other extended to repel one of them by the chest. "Thomas, William, please! Lower your voices, take your seats and kindly let these fine people enjoy their food, eh?"
A few objections were hoisted about in the whirlwind writhing between Hickey and Johnson, but it dispersed within a few moments and we all abided by Charles' scandalous proposition of neutrality for the remainder of the morning. The lad attempted conversation once or twice, but only Pitcairn was ubiquitous enough in sangfroid to carry it to fruition. I shook my head and excused myself from the proceedings after pouring tea for Johnson, his hands having been unsteadied by the untarnished wrath pulsating through his veins and reinvigorated by every half-note thump of his heart. I nodded to my colleagues with a rigid frown before absconding to the stairwell with no intention of coming back.
Contrary to Hickey's brazen and largely satirical allegations, I did not rob Ziio of her virtue the day before. I recalled vividly the touch of her skin against mine and the resplendent ambiance of the humbly flickering fire, the tranquil cadence of the tribal drums and the deviations of the low, gentle mewls fleeing her lips. Every movement she made was thoughtful, bleeding with sincerity, but not hesitant. Her fingertips roamed across my jaw and neck and she had caught my gaze with the widest and most inquisitive brown eyes as she parted from me, head downcast and scrutiny tilted to the heavens. I could do nothing but stare at her in those few fragile moments before we struck one another again.
Our lips melded and her hands caressed either sides of my face. I splayed my fingers across her waist and marveled inwardly at the size of my hands in comparison to her frame. I tugged her close and rejoiced in the flavor of her lips, the approach and regression of her heaving chest against mine, the sensation of her feverish flesh beneath my unclad hands. The sun had dipped just below the tree line and the sky was engulfed by pallid streaks of orange and scarlet when she advised I take leave. I agreed, and made no effort to uproot myself from the ground, nor her from atop me. She delved in close but did not kiss me again, touching her forehead to my brow and her nose to mine. Her eyes fell closed but still I observed, enamored beyond reason. She curled her fingers idly against my chin in farewell and I forced myself to leave her.
The gentle, intimate memories incited the growth of an interminable smile across my face. I ran the battle trodden underside of my palm across my forehead in the shadow of a vacantly congenial sigh and placed the quill on its side on the desktop. I dug my heels into the floor and left the wooden chair beside the davenport, padding slowly toward the bed. My fingers closed carefully around the reflective brass radius of the first of the buttons binding my coat to my form and succeeded in relieving me of a few before my fixations meandered to the window adjacent me.
My adept vision was hampered only by the ebony geometric silhouettes of the rooftops miring the skyline, but beyond the buildings, canopies, and scaffolds, I sought solace in the muted wane of the tide. Smearing the tempered waves were the tall and imposing molds of ships, sea faring vassals of the genteel, bobbing to and from Great Britain on the malleable back of the ocean. Gradually, my fingers halted in their efforts and drew along my front until falling slack at my sides. I took a step toward the window and watched as a massive cargo vessel disengaged the Boston harbor and lazily began to turn about on its axis, the hull piercing the thin veil of fog engulfing the very surface of the water. Preceding the ship were a modest fleet of schooners and sloops, spearheaded by a single, outwardly identical cargo ship to that of the last one to emigrate from port. Minutes passed and eventually all of the crafts began to shrink into the sliver of incandescence lapping at the horizon like the swell upon the briny shore. I watched the convoy surrender to the oblivion of the Atlantic and, as my thoughts withdrew back to Ziio and the velveteen consistency of her voice against my ear and her flesh upon my flesh, I had no desire to be among them.