[color=gray][center][img]https://i.imgur.com/AS2MEph.png[/img] [color=gold]Time:[/color] Evening, Ignis 2 [color=gold]Location:[/color] Tough Tavern [center][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32_v17J8qKM[/youtube][/center] [sub][@Tae][@CitrusArms][@Potter][@Lava Alckon][@Samreaper][@Tpartywithzombi][@ReusableSword][/sub] [img]https://i.imgur.com/PsKHmMI.png[/img] [color=#997657][h1]₱₳Ɽ₮ 2 - ₲₳ⱤⱤ₳₦[/h1][/color] [img]https://i.imgur.com/5oVICsA.gif[/img] [img]https://i.imgur.com/PsKHmMI.png[/img][/center] Garran had been weighing the room by the way those inside it broke, and the Vikena girl was one of the cleanest fractures in it. Her eyes hadn’t left the corpse by the hearth from the moment the man hit the floor. Plenty of people looked; plenty flinched and snatched their gazes away. She didn’t. Her stare stayed pinned there. He watched the way her fingers dug into her own skirt under the table, knuckles whitening. Her shoulders shook, but she didn’t bolt, didn’t make a sound—not even when the leg finished folding under the dead man at that wrong angle. Tears slid steadily down from those blown pupils, over the back of her hand clamped to her mouth. That was the first thing he marked: not the crying, but the [i]silence[/i]. He’d seen women sob loud and wild at their first real glimpse of blood. This wasn’t that. Even then, as she leaned close to murmur to the Edwards boy, her eyes kept dragging back toward the hearth, to the man left cooling on the stone. A noble heart soft enough to bleed for strangers and stubborn enough to hold its line. A duke’s daughter, thrown miles out of her depth and still trying to make sense of the bodies. Garran filed her away as the kind you didn’t have to touch to use: press her, and the whole table would tighten around her. Threaten her, and you didn’t just own one hostage. You owned everyone who couldn’t stomach watchin’ her break. The Edwards girl, by contrast, didn’t crack so much as [i]leak[/i]. Garran watched her commentary spill out in tipsy dribbles. [i]Rat, coat rack, goats.[/i] It should have irritated him. Duke Edward’s pretty daughter, plastered out of her mind, no sense of when to shut up, and just enough wit to lace an insult. Her raised hands, her squirming, the way the other nobles kept shoving her back down—it all painted a useful picture. She was neither brave nor calm. She was [i]unguarded[/i]. The kind who’d blurt something important without realizing it until the noose was already tied. And somewhere under all that stupid courage, he found himself curious about the exact moment the giggles would die in her throat, and the truth of what was happening would finally force its way in. As the shape of that settled in his mind, her brother’s voice cut in time to give Garran an idea of how to start tightening the screws. Garran listened without looking at him at first, letting the words wash over the general murmur in his head. [color=greenyellow][i]“You speak of us as if we are walking sacks of gold coins…How many burlap sacks have you seen cut up, crushed, and sliced that can still be good at keeping the gold all in one place?”[/i][/color] Smart enough to see the flaw in a blunt man’s cruelty. Smart enough to dress fear up as negotiation. Not smart enough to keep his rank and his leverage out of it. “[color=greenyellow][i]Some powerful connections lie beyond this room…[/i][/color]” The way his gaze fixed on Garran when he said it told him the rest. A key that knew it was a key. Garran stepped in closer to their table, boots making no more sound than the settling of the old floorboards. He let his shadow fall over Drake and Ariella both, resting his hand on the back of an empty chair as if he were about to sit down for a friendly chat. [color=#997657]“Burlap’s a poor metaphor, m’lord,”[/color] he said mildly. [color=#997657]“Gold don’t care what kind o’ sack it sits in, long as it gets where it’s goin’. You’re right on one thing, though.”[/color] He surveyed each of them in turn, slowly, from Drake to Ariella, to Charlotte’s wet cheeks, then back. [color=#997657]“Dead men pay badly,”[/color] he conceded. He leaned in just enough that Drake could feel the weight of his attention. [color=#997657]“An’ you’re clearly clever enough to pick up that we don’t [i]want[/i] you dead, Lord Edwards.”[/color] He tapped his knuckles lightly against the tabletop between Drake’s spread hands. [color=#997657]“But there are fates worse than death,”[/color] Garran murmured. [color=#997657]“A man can live a long time with scars that make every dinner, every ball, every mirror a reminder of one bad evenin’ in a cheap tavern he thought he was too clever to be afraid in.”[/color] He straightened a little, head tilting. [color=#997657]“So when you ‘kindly request’ we settle this amicable?”[/color] he echoed, a ghost of amusement in the words. [color=#997657]“This [i]is[/i] amicable. We’re talkin’. Marius isn’t takin’ fingers off your sister to see how high she screams just yet. You drink when we say, you hand over what shines, you keep your kin’s faces more or less the way they walked in.”[/color] He glanced toward the bar where Kalliope stood, then back to Drake. [color=#997657]“As for your double whiskey,”[/color] Garran finished, tone returning to that bored cadence, [color=#997657]“you’ll drink what’s put in front of you, when it’s put there. Consider every swallow a reminder that we’re lettin’ you keep your tongue to taste it.”[/color] His attention was stolen as Maelen approached him slowly, as if her own bones had gained weight in the last few minutes. From where Garran stood, the witch’s work still clung to her. In the firelight, faint darkened veins slithered along her throat and at the corners of her mouth. She ignored the tremor starting in her fingers, though it made the fabric of her skirt twitch when she smoothed it down. Her breath caught once, but enough that her shoulders tightened as if she had swallowed pain and willed it not to show. She paused beside an empty table and plucked up a stained menu. Then she slid a pair of spectacles from her pocket. The lenses clicked into place on the bridge of her nose. Her eyes swept the table of nobles once more. Then again, slower. A tiny furrow pinched between her brows; the menu dipped, her wrist dipping with it before she forced it steady again. A bead of sweat traced from her temple down to her jaw before she wiped it away under the guise of adjusting her glasses. [color=paleturquoise]“That table,”[/color] she murmured, turning a page she hadn’t really finished.[color=paleturquoise]“Too much noise.”[/color] Her thumb tapped once against the paper. [color=paleturquoise]“Two threads for certain. Maybe three, if one of ’em’s only just findin’ their teeth.”[/color] She never looked his way when she spoke. The words slid out on the same breath as a faint sigh. It was the same table he’d already marked. If the witch’s instinct sung when she glanced that way, that meant his instincts about where the room would [i]break[/i] were already on the mark. His gaze slid off the Vikena girl and the Edwards pair and settled, at last, on the ones who weren’t coming apart at the seams. The first was a beautiful woman in red who had a boar’s pelt over her shoulders; it sat there like an old trophy, not a fashion choice. Her hands lay flat where they were told, but the rest of her was coiled rather than frozen. The tall man was a different sort of itch. Earlier, he’d been nursing his beer like a man who didn’t much like getting drunk. Now, with the fire gone wrong and the rules laid out, something in him had turned inward. His head dropped, shoulders hunching, lips moving in a low mutter Garran couldn’t place. He drained the tankard, then sat there breathing too deeply, like a fever had come on all at once. The strawberry-haired, though—she was the sort Garran kept an eye on. She held herself rigid like the brunette in red, her gaze sweeping the room in deliberate patterns. She obeyed every command without hesitation, yet she had the posture of someone [i]rehearsing obedience[/i]. She spoke to her table in murmurs so small they barely stirred her lips. And the way she kept her eyes low but tuned to the witch’s movements, to the door, to the rafters, told him she understood danger more intimately than her clothes suggested. He’d have to learn more about those three. But not now. The last at the table finally started flapping his lips, proposing they play a drinking game. He tilted his head as he observed the cheeky little grin on the imbecile. Then, Garran huffed out something that might have been a laugh if there’d been any warmth in it. He suddenly gave a sharp whistle. Ox moved first. The big man shoved away from the door and waded through the tables, his bulky body parting the crowd. A meaty hand clamped down on Drake’s shoulder and dragged him up out of his seat like he weighed nothing at all. Garran stepped aside just enough to let Ox haul Lord Edwards forward and shove him up against one of the sturdy posts near the hearth. In the same motion, another of Garran’s men looped a length of rough rope around Drake’s wrists and cinched them tight behind the post, forcing his chest forward. Only then did Garran turn back to Kazumin. [color=#997657]“We’ve barely started, and your little table’s already givin’ me ideas.”[/color] He nodded once toward Drake, trussed in front of the fire like a pig set for turning. [color=#997657]“You want a game?”[/color] he went on. [color=#997657]“Fine. You get one. But we’re playin’ it [i]my[/i] way.”[/color] He jerked his chin toward the bar. [color=#997657]“Redhead.”[/color] He snapped, [color=#997657]“Keep their cups full. That table, there. Big mouths.”[/color] To Ox, without looking:[color=#997657] “Stoke the fire.”[/color] The big man shoved another log into the hearth. Flames leapt higher, heat rolling out in a wave that made sweat bead at temples. One of Garran’s crew took a black iron poker from its hook and drove its tip into the coals until they hissed and glowed dull red. Another man followed in Ox’s wake, going about the room scooping up and demanding whatever he could: pocket watches, brooches, cufflinks —all into a burlap bag. Then Garran returned his full attention to Kazumin. [color=#997657]“Here’s how it goes,”[/color] he said, strolling back to the table casually. [color=#997657]“Your man there—”[/color] he tipped his head toward Drake, [color=#997657]“—is our measure.”[/color] His gaze walked over each of them in turn: Kazumin, Ariella, Charlotte, Olivia, Stratya, Roman—anyone close enough to be counted as sitting in their cluster. [color=#997657]“You drink when I say,”[/color] Garran continued. [color=#997657]“Ox’ll call it. Tankard comes down in front of you, you lift it, and you [i]don’t[/i] put it back down ’til it’s empty.”[/color] His fingers drummed once on the edge of their table. [color=#997657]“No sippin’. No dawdlin’. No spillin’ half of it down your dress.”[/color] His eyes grazed Ariella, then Charlotte, then slid back to Kazu. [color=#997657]“You stop early, you choke, you make me bored… Lord Edwards gets a lesson in how bad hot iron hurts.”[/color] At the hearth, the iron poker was already glowing brighter, the very tip gone to a menacing orange-white color. The man holding it rotated it lazily, waiting. Garran’s smile never reached his eyes. He angled his head, considering the group like pieces on a board. [color=#997657]“First round,”[/color] he decided. [color=#997657]“Three full tankards each. You clear yours clean—fine. Redhead’ll come ’round an’ top you again when I say. You balk? He screams… And if you’re thinkin’ to be clever and throw it back up? You paint the floor, we count that the same as spillin’. He gets burned for that, too.”[/color] The man with the poker pulled it from the coals and gave it a little experimental swing. [color=#997657]“You asked who’s game,”[/color] he said softly. [color=#997657]“Congratulations. You just volunteered your whole table.”[/color] He turned his head toward the hearth. [color=#997657]“Show ’em what brave buys, then.”[/color] The man with the iron didn’t need more than that. A few strides and he was in front of Drake. The tip of the poker glowed, the heat filling the air between them. The poker hissed as he applied it to Drake’s back. The smell of scorched fabric rolled out in a wave that made a few nearby patrons gag and look away. [color=#997657]“That,”[/color] he said, voice flat, [color=#997657]“is me bein’ gentle.”[/color] [/color]