"Soddin' magefolk."

Faenori Dirgecarver raised her head and then let it nod forward again. She kept her arms wrapped tight about herself, trying to fight off an empty chill that ate at her from within. For what must have been the fiftieth time that night, she closed her eyes and reached out with a layer of consciousness that the average berk simply didn't possess.

Magic was a strange thing, a sort of energy that flowed along a thousand ethereal threads. There were traces of it in almost everyone that lived and breathed, like static summoned up from the brush of their clothing. It entered and left them as it saw fit, and rarely did it draw any more notice than breathing.

It had a way of lingering around those who dabbled in it, and she could very nearly taste it in the air around some of them. It had hung about her father like a thick cloud, and she would have been only too happy to siphon off a wisp of energy from him had he not been a thousand miles away.

She had come to despise autumn in Steamwick—not because she disliked the season itself, but because that was when the local academy of sorcery closed its doors and kept the students cloistered for their annual tests. The end of summer was an absolute feast by comparison, with stripling magi and hedge wizards out and celebrating their last week of freedom. As often as not, they were roaring drunk and made for perfect targets; often enough, all it took was a coy word and a brush of a fingertip across a hand or cheek.

It had been two weeks since she last crossed paths with a spell-slinger, and it was wearing away her sanity. The air in the alley was dead and still, void of their energy.

She leaned against the building next to her, listening to the faint music that drifted from within. A busy tavern with a great many people inside, to be sure, but not one that knew his arcanistry from his elbow. A bit of movement down the alley caught her eye, but it was nothing more than some drunkard stumbling out the side door to take a piss. He was gone soon enough, and she doubted that he had noticed her at all.

There was a faint creak of leather as she shifted her weight back onto her feet and dusted off her cloak. She froze, cocking her head as if to listen to something far away.

"Oh."

Her dark lips parted and a seemingly disembodied grin appeared in the depths of her hood.

"That'll do."

She disappeared into the shadows and started off down the alley, smiling to herself.

"Aye... that'll do just fine, it will."


*     *     *     *     *


Three blocks away, she found her quarry: a bloke bundled up in a cloak and tam hat, wearing a striped scarf up over his mouth as though it was midwinter. She pulled off her gloves and ghosted across the street after him, her grin widening when he took a shortcut through an alley.

Her eyes took on a maddened quality as she followed him, picking up her pace. He would make for an easy enough mark; thin as a reed and short enough that she could reach up and put a knife to his throat to keep him quiet. The only challenge would be getting at his skin while he was huddled up to ward off the evening chill.

She reached him halfway down the alley. Drawing the dagger that sat on her right hip, she grabbed the hedge wizard and clamped her free hand over his mouth, both to silence him and make contact. A whisper of energy flowed through her fingertips and spread through her veins with the warmth of cloves and burning leaves.

The smile vanished from her lips as he grabbed the hand that held her dagger, jerking it back from his neck and shoving her away before she could make good on the unspoken threat.

Her breath hissed out through clenched teeth as her back hit the wall. Sheathing the dagger, she grabbed for her rapier and drew it, and looked up to find that he had done the exact same thing.

She cursed herself for not taking a close enough look at her mark before attacking. Where she had been expecting a quick strike and retreat, there was an angry sod pointing a sword at her. After a quick and fevered thought, she removed her hood with a toss of her head. Her appearance had a way of frightening folk from the western countries, and at the very least it seemed to startle him.

"Piss off, jaluk!" she snapped, hoping to press whatever advantage she had before he could fully recover. "Get out o' me way before I flay the skin off yeh—I've already got what I was wantin'."

He glanced down at the way she held her sword with an oddly critical eye, but she could see his fear in the tremor of his blade. It made her own easier to suppress.

"Give back what you just took from me," he said quietly.

"Take what I left yeh with an' be thankful!" She levelled her sword at him. "Would yeh rather I carved yeh like a ham, ta boot?"

The blades met without much force as each tried to gauge the other's strength. For a moment, the quiet scrape of steel was the only sound in the alley.

"Give it back," he hissed.

Gritting her teeth, she took a quick lunge and swipe with her sword in the hopes that having a blade flashing in his face would distract him long enough for her to get out of sight. When met with a cry of pain and anger, she readjusted that hope to the slightly more realistic expectation that an open wound would keep him busy.

Faenori took off down the alley without looking back, bracing herself for whatever he might elect to throw at her in parting. A sudden flare of light stung her eyes, and she felt a swell of magic bear down on her. It flowed around her harmlessly at first, but a second volley struck true, tearing the breath from her lungs as it knocked her to the ground. She heard a faint clatter as her sword hit the cobblestones, but she dared not try to reach for it.

There was silence. For a moment, she thought that he was gone, but then she heard him mutter something to himself.

She opened one eye slightly at his approach. Blood was dripping down his cheek, and his eyes had taken on an eerie orange glow.

He knelt down and turned her over onto her back. She held her breath, playing dead while she waited for a better opportunity to escape. Pain lanced through her back with each shallow breath she took, and she was all but certain that a few of her ribs were cracked.

The thick leather gorget she wore made it impossible to find a pulse on her neck, and she tried not to smile when he picked up her hand to seek one on her wrist. The squeak of surprise he let out when she grabbed his arm was well worth it.

With a feral grin, she brought up one foot and dealt him a kick to the gut that knocked him flat on his back. She scrambled to her feet and ran, and this time there was no pursuit.

Faenori slowed to a walk several streets over, the adrenaline rush leaving her cold and winded as it faded. Her lungs burned as though they were full of hot coals, and she could already feel the sting of a scraped cheek prickling to life.

She crept back to the alley a short while later, swearing under her breath and punching the brick wall when she arrived.

The bastard had taken her sword.


*     *     *     *     *


The door to Mebrit's apartment fell shut behind him, and he leaned against it with a groan as he locked it. He took off his tam and cloak, leaving them by the door as he made a beeline for the bathroom sink.

He tucked a strand of auburn hair behind one pointed ear to keep it out of the way. The cut on his face was not as grievous as he had feared, he decided after giving it a quick look in the mirror. It had bled quite a bit, but it was clean and not all that deep.

He glanced down as a quiet feline chirrup drew his attention. "I'm fine, Tira. Don't fret."

Heedless of his dismissal, the winged cat jumped up to the edge of the bathtub and watched intently as he washed off the wound and dabbed at it with a tincture of witch hazel. That done, he carefully bandaged it and then went about cleaning off a few minor scrapes he had picked up in the altercation. Blood had dribbled down over his scarf and seeped into the collar of his outermost shirt, and he filled the sink with cold water and left them there to soak.

Mebrit drummed his nails on the glass of the medicine cabinet for a moment before opening it and removing a bottle of laudanum. He measured a few drops into a cup of water and hurriedly drank it, grimacing at the taste as he tidied up.

With one hand on his aching stomach, he made his way to the living room. The kick that ended the fight had left him retching in the alley like an overindulgent drunkard, and he briefly entertained the notion of a sole-shaped bruise stamped across his belly. He left the dark elf's sword on the coffee table to be dealt with later; his only interest at that point was getting a fire going in the hearth.

Rather than draw his hands back when the flames came to life, he stretched his fingers through the blaze and uttered a contented sigh. No worse for wear, he pressed his palms to his face to warm it before running his fingers through his hair and over the pair of small ivory horns just above his brow.

He sat down on the sofa and drew the dark elf's erstwhile sword, cleaning off the blood and then oiling the blade. The pain faded as he worked until it was no more than a distant memory, and his thoughts had grown clear and relaxed by the time he was done.

It was a beautiful weapon. The blade itself was plain but razor-sharp, the handle bound in fine black leather and silver wire. The pommel was green glass, made to resemble a leaf.

It was a strange thing to find such a sylvan blade in a dark elf's hands. From everything that he had read, they liked their weapons dark and ornamented with wicked barbs, and the only indication that it may have suited such tastes was the black metal that made up the crosspiece and hilt, decorated with a few curved spikes. He ran the pad of his thumb over one and found it to be quite blunt, useful for nothing more than perhaps catching a wayward blade and turning it aside.

"Perhaps she stole it," he murmured. His expression took a turn for the mischievous as his eyes flicked from his own sword to the winged cat. "Remind you of anyone?"

His familiar jumped up and plopped herself down next to him, and he gave her a scratch behind the ears. The little blood-pointed Siamese was the only animal that would willingly come near him, and he was deeply grateful for her company.

The light rumble of her purring was a balm to his nerves. He was fairly certain that the dark elf had no intention of actually killing him; given their reputation, that seemed strange to him, but it was cold comfort all the same.

He had felt strangely weak after her attack, his grasp of the Art shaken, but it was beginning to return. He had read about spell-leeches in the past—sods that could drain the magic from someone and use it for their own ends—but had not been the prey of one until now.

"This is going to take some explaining at work tomorrow," he mused as he smoothed a thumb over the bandage on his cheek. Tiramisu had nothing to say on the matter, and licked his knuckles with a sandpaper tongue before settling in for a nap.

He removed his boots and stretched out on the sofa, his eyes roaming over the bookshelves lining the walls for a long moment before he pulled a tome off one of the piles beneath his coffee table. With the sleeping cat tucked against his side, he settled in as she had. Rather than open the book, he let it rest on his lap for a long while as he stared into space, pondering the fate of stolen spells and what manner of creature might consume them.

His thoughts shifted to things abstract and mystic after a time. He closed his eyes and smiled faintly, but did not sleep; for long hours he rested thus, combing through the tangled threads of magic and weaving them into order one by one.


*     *     *     *     *


As Mebrit expected, his bandaged cheek did warrant an explanation at work the next morning, though he claimed that it was just the result of a spectacular fall on the stairs. Melevie had winced at that, but let it lie.

The day passed quickly enough, spent turning out baked goods in the kitchen of her tea-house. He had visited the place quite often in years past, and when the barrista jokingly asked if he could bake pastries half as well as he could eat them, he ended up taking over for her retiring baker. The one thing he could never quite manage was puff pastry; his skin burned with a warmth that made handling the dough impossible without ruining it.

Melevie was busy thumbing through a sheaf of ledgers when Mebrit left for the day, and the elven barrista waggled her plump fingers in a wave as he walked past. He brushed a bit of flour off of his sleeves and readjusted the bundle under his arm before pushing the door open. He had the leaf-hilted rapier wrapped up in cloth, meaning to sell it off at a pawn shop on the way home.

Upon stepping outside, he stopped in his tracks.

She was there, sitting on the patio as though she had not a care in the world.

He wasn't sure that it was her at first—she was dressed in a long skirt and peasant blouse rather than the leather armour she'd been wearing the night prior—but upon a closer look, he knew it had to be. She had the same mess of short white hair, with a pair of rat-tail braids just behind her ears. She looked younger than he would have thought, though it was always hard to tell with elves, and harder still when their skin was the colour of coal. The dark elf was busy writing in a book on the table, sipping at a glass of juice and seemingly not caring a whit about the occasional nervous stare that came her way.

Mebrit started to turn away, but his eye was caught by the dagger on her belt. It had clearly been made as a companion piece to the sword, as the pommel bore the same glass leaf. Looking at her again, he thought he saw a hint of pain in her mien when she breathed, though it may have merely been his imagination.

Gritting his teeth, he took the bundle in hand and walked over to her table.

"I believe you dropped this last night, miss."

Placing her sword down on the tabletop, he turned and headed home.


*     *     *     *     *


A month went by without incident; the cut on his face healed and left only a modest scar to mark its passing, and he fully recovered from the magical drain in a matter of days.

He visited the library often; apart from Melevie's tea-house, it was his favourite haunt. It was a stately old stone building, the floor paved with white and green marble. There was an echo to the place, even with row upon row of bookshelves everywhere in sight.

After picking up a book of short stories, he made his way to the Mundaneum. It was a curious contraption near the middle of the building, all gears and levers. A console put together from old typewriter keys was mounted on a pedestal off to the side, and he carefully punched in a few choice words before taking a step back.

There was a soft hum as the machine came to life. The gears began to turn and shift, and soon brought a brass hoop up from the machinery that ran deep under the floor. It was laden with a great many reference cards, and he flipped through them until he came across one for a book that sounded interesting. Much to his disappointment, the tome he sought was nowhere to be found on the shelf that it directed him to, and he made his way over to the front desk to speak to the librarian.

Lady Koszephyrus seemed to have but two moods—sombre and irritable—and in a decade's worth of trips to the library, he had seen the pallid elf smile perhaps a handful of times. The black dresses she favoured had a way of making her look like a ghost (or in his less charitable moods, a cadaver), and she had an unfortunate habit of staring off into space when she was not otherwise preoccupied. She was absorbed in her work as he approached.

"Miss Kos? I was looking for Immeliste's Treatise on Invocation, and I couldn't find it on the shelf. Did someone check it out from the library?"

A thoughtful frown came over her face as she looked up. "No, not yet." She nodded toward the other side of the building and brushed a wisp of white hair away from her face. "I recommended it to someone an hour or two ago; I think she's still sitting in the history section."

Mebrit nodded and made his way across the library, looking up as he passed under the vaulted skylight that dominated the far side of the roof. The oranges and pinks of sunset were smearing into the darker blues of oncoming night, and he could just barely make out a star or two.

There was a small cluster of tables and chairs in a nook near the corner, and there he found the book he sought. His mouth went dry when he saw who was holding it.

The dark elf was busy copying something from that book into another. She was dressed in her armour again, a cuirass and gorget of studded black leather with knotwork embossed on the trim. Her shirtsleeves were a cheerful leafy green, as was the lining of her cloak.

He started to back away and leave, but she looked up before he could make good his escape. She seemed more than a bit surprised, but regained her composure easily enough. "Aye?"

Mebrit shifted about uneasily, wondering if she recognised him or not. "Are you going to be long with that book, miss?"

The braids in her hair quivered as she shook her head. "I'll be done soon enough, jaluk, if yeh feel like waitin'." She indicated one of the chairs with a magnanimous wave of her hand.

Sharing a table with someone who had mugged him a month prior proved to be more than slightly awkward. The only other people in the area were a pair of middle-aged gentlemen in robes a few tables over, both of whom were busy marking papers.

"What did you call me?" he asked after a moment.

The dark elf's pen stilled on the page of her notebook. Her lips twitched before she spoke, and she lingered on the word as though it was alien and vaguely distasteful to her. "Male."

The scratching of the pen resumed, and he gave the open book a curious once-over. She had drawn a great many runes and diagrams in it, interspersed with scrawled notations in a language that he did not understand.

He lowered his voice. "You're a spell-eater, aren't you?"

She looked up from her work, her red eyes narrowing a bit. "Aye, an' what about it?"

"Why bother studying magic, then?"

"Ta break it down." She stopped writing for a moment and tapped the pen against her chin. "Try an' think of it like this: I can take a chair apart, an' maybe manage ta hammer it back together into the same shape again, but if I knew somethin' about carpentry, maybe I'd be able to make somethin' else out of it."

Mebrit was silent for a short while, digesting her reply. "And at the risk of asking a stupid question, why the hell did you jump me in an alley?"

The dark elf looked up at him again. "I was starvin'."

He frowned. "What, for magic? Is that even possible?"

"Aye," she replied as she went back to copying a pair of runes. She had been hiding her tension well, but was visibly relaxing. "I go bats if I've not had any in me for a while, and it'd been a few weeks. Like havin' a wee furnace inside o' yeh that needs ta be stocked up now an' then, or yeh get empty and frozen inside. I wager it'd be the death o' me after a while. I donnae steal it fer fun an' games, jaluk; I digest it."

"That doesn't quite explain the bit about nearly killing me."

A light snort escaped her. "So says the jaluk who had me back ta the wall an' a blade in me face. What was I goin' ta do, turn me back on yeh and walk off? I tried ta just spook yeh, but yeh got all bull-headed about it."

"Yes, since all you had to do was give back what you'd stolen."

"Which I canna do." She gave him a hapless shrug. "An' it does come back to yeh, if yeh hadn't noticed by now."

"I had."

She tapped the end of her pen on the open book, looking over his face with a thoughtful expression before her gaze reached the notch cut into his left ear. "Is that where I got yeh, then?"

"No." Brushing his hair back, he indicated the scar that ran from the corner of his jaw to his cheekbone. "That is."

"Ooh," she said with a wince that could have easily been either sympathy or mockery. "Bet that hurt like a bastard. Almost makes up fer the bloody broken ribs yeh gave me."

"Quite." Mebrit let out a long-suffering sigh. "I can't believe I'm sitting here and having a civilised discussion with my own mugger."

"I can." The dark elf looked up with the start of an impish smile on her lips. "I'm a perfectly reasonable sort, I'll have yeh know."

His ears perked as he heard a snippet of conversation from the other table, and he sent a surreptitious glance back at the two men off to his left. They were discussing an old spellbook and a few enchanted rings that one of them had purchased from a colleague the previous week. Mebrit's gaze flicked back to the dark elf, only to find that she had been listening to them with a similarly roguish look on her face. Her mischievous smile returned tenfold when she looked at him again.

"I heard 'em first."