It is highly recommended that you read Part 1 before continuing here.

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Startled, she turned, but the speaker hadn’t waited for a response. All she saw was her back, retreating around the corner of the doorway. It had been the same servant who had escorted her to the room : a tall blood elf, with long blond hair and a haughty look on her face.

For a moment, she toyed with the idea of ignoring the woman and just going home. Roshii trilled questioningly at her. She sighed and gave him a quick pat on the back, then half-ran to catch up with the servant. She had no doubt that the woman had not paused to see if she followed.

Sure enough, saw the servant was already halfway up the stairs. Speeding her steps, Tayt managed to catch up to her. Damned if she was going to run, though.

The woman gave no indication of noticing the trouble her pace had caused Tayt. She simply kept walking, long icy blonde hair swaying gently with each step.

Tayt wanted to strangle her with it.

The woman finally came to a stop at a doorway, lifting aside the draped curtains and immediately walking through. That was particularly rude. What servant did not hold the drapes aside for the person they were escorting?

Clenching her teeth, Tayt entered the room. She’d give Lady Tyrsdae a piece of her mind, and then leave, just see if she didn’t!

But the room turned out to be unoccupied - empty, save for herself, Roshii, and the servant. A single desk and chair stood at the far wall, with no chair for visitors. The other woman moved forward purposefully and sat behind the desk in a smooth, practiced motion. She snapped her fingers, sending a small spark of light sailing from her fingertips. From behind the desk, Tayt heard a small sound of complaining wood as a drawer of some kind opened. The other blood elf removed something - a folder - and the door shut again in response to another crisp snap.

That was no servant.

Was that…could that possibly be the Lady Tyrsdae Sunseeker?

Without looking up from the folder, the other blood elf spoke. “Come closer.”

Now, who could say no to such a politely phrased request? Tayt rolled her eyes, but obligingly stepped forward.

The other elf continued to scan her folder, completely ignoring Tayt.

She stood in silence before the desk, refusing to let her posture or expression indicate how awkward it was to just…stand in front of a desk. Roshii, less worried about propriety, simply lay on the floor and sighed heavily. Why would anyone have a meeting in a room and then not give the guest somewhere to sit?

After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Tyrsdae (for there was now no doubt in Tayt’s mind) spoke again. “You know who I am?”

Tayt nodded.

“Good. You are Taytania, youngest daughter of the whore Naeresa and and any one of her many callers. You have no family name, no family prospects, and you have spent the last ten years seeing just how far into debt you can get yourself playing stardice on credit with men who do not take kindly to tardy repayment. You are now three months behind on your debt. You make money where you can, doing odd jobs and selling meat, fish, and herbs that you gather while you travel, heavily augmented by clever confidence scams and forgeries.”

“Now just see here! What the hell is this? I don’t have to stand here and take this sort of–” A sharp look from Tyrsdae cut her off. The woman’s eyes were eerie - still and cold and heartless as an emerald.

“Actually, you do have to stand there. You have no way of repaying the money you owe and you have a deadline of midnight tonight to hand over your late payments in full before your debtors take a contract out on your head. Unluckily for you, your debtors have agents in every major city, both Alliance and Horde. Despite your skill with hiding in plain sight, you would almost certainly be found and killed.”

“You waited for three hours and twelve minutes in that room with no contact, refreshment, or indication that you were even remembered before deciding you would leave. And despite that, you still followed me here, and are still standing here now.”

Tyrsdae’s gaze never wavered. “So yes. Yes, ‘Tayt’. You do have to stand there. I am your best chance of still breathing tomorrow. It is now too late to perform any crime which might have payoff enough to settle your debts - I’m sure you’ve already thought of and rejected a dozen options. If you had any other choice, you would not be here. And yet you are. So if you have any other objections to what I am saying, I do not wish to hear them. Either you stand in front of me and listen, or you leave. There is no third option. Do we have an understanding?”

Tightly, Tayt nodded. Tyrsdae didn’t even see the gesture, so certain was she of the answer. She was already looking at that damned folder again.

How could she possibly have attained all of that information? It had been less than a week since Tayt had even heard about the job opportunity.

“Your past job contacts have described you as swift and reliable. You have a quick mind and are not opposed to hard work. In your illegal dealings, you only steal from those that fit your personal requirements for ‘deserving’ to be stolen from, a moral rule that seems to be quite flexible, depending on the situation and amount of debt you find yourself in. You are pretty but not exceptionally so - those who remember you are rarely able to describe you with any sort of detail. They remember your hair or your smile, but never your face. You have a dozen aliases, and a knack for making people trust you. Despite your gambling habit, you have never developed a taste for alcohol, nor have you been known to engage in idle gossip or the desire to brag about your accomplishments.”

“You followed the directions in today’s letter without faltering, without giving in to idle curiosity, and without objection. You sat in that waiting room for longer than I had expected, showing a remarkable amount of patience.”

“In short, you are exactly the sort of person I am looking for.”

Tayt scowled, crossing her arms over her chest. “You forgot to mention my favorite color.”

“Red.”

“How could you possibly…!”

“This is not a game, Taytania.” Tyrsdae favored her with a frown before continuing as though nothing had happened. “You have the letter.”

It wasn’t a question, but Tayt nodded anyway pulling the missive from her pack and leaning forward to offer it.

Tyrsdae accepted it without giving it a glance.

Irritated that all the trouble she’d gone through to get it was apparently unnoticed, Tayt spoke. “Don’t you even want to make sure I didn’t open it, or something?”

Tayt reached to her side and dropped the letter into a flickering brazier to her left. The letter smoldered once, then burst into a puff of sour-smelling green flames. Ignoring the smoke, Tyrsdae smiled - the sort of smile that a cat might give to a wounded and cornered mouse. “I do not have to ask. If you had opened it, you would be dead.”

Tayt’s eyes widened. What in the name of the twisting nether had she gotten herself into?

“The ‘job’ I offer is not one that you are allowed to speak of in public. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, you came here for a job today and I refused you because of your gambling habit, are we perfectly clear on this point?”

Tayt scowled. “You don’t even know that I’m going to accept the job!”

Her objection earned her a sardonic glance.

Tayt sighed, giving in to the inevitable. At this point, she was fairly certain she wouldn’t be allowed to refuse the position, even if she had another option for paying off her debt. “Yes.”

Tyrsdae stared at her, obviously waiting for more response.

“Oh for the love of…yes. It’s clear. Crystal clear. Like a pool that has never known the slimy touch of a murloc, it’s so clear you can see the other side of the world through it! It’s clear! We’re clear! Can we move on, please?”

Ignoring her outburst, Tyrsdae steepled her fingers. “Good. You and I will have no further face-to-face contact unless I initiate it, which will be exceptionally rare. Should you find yourself in trouble and invoke my name, I shall deny all knowledge of your existence, and shortly thereafter you will find yourself dead. This is non-negotiable.”

Tayt felt the urge to object again, but bit her tongue. She was out of her league here, and she knew it. Nether-damned Garvis and his thrice-twisted stardice. His games were rigged, she was certain of it. If it hadn’t been for him, she wouldn’t be in this mess.

“You will not contact me, ever. I will contact you via letters, as I did this morning. They will be unsigned, and you will read and memorize them, then burn them. Regardless of what you had been doing before getting the letter, you will follow the instructions immediately.”

“The final instruction in all of my letters will lead to your payment. I do not think I need to explain what will happen should you fail to follow the instructions in order. I expect perfection, and I pay generously for it.” The hint at what happened to those who failed to provide said perfection was less than subtle.

Tayt nodded again. Never had she met such an uptight, self-satisfied and infuriating woman in all her life. This entire situation bordered on the insane, and she wasn’t certain that the woman on the other side of that desk hadn’t already ventured into that territory once too often.

Tyrsdae reached into her bodice and removed a gold coin, sliding it across the desk and leaving it on the far side, a bright disk of color against the red wood. The hunter reached down and accepted it, examining it surreptitiously. Was it another trick? Hollow, perhaps, but with some kind of poison inside? Wild imagination aside, it was…just a gold coin. Old and a little worn, with a deep scar across the face, but there was nothing special about it.

As informed as Tyrsdae seemed to be about her affairs, if she thought a single gold coin was going to pay off Garvis, she was sadly mistaken.

“If asked, that was a token to cover the trouble of your visit today. You will leave here and immediately take it to the Salty Banana pub in Orgrimmar and begin a game of stardice using this coin. You will continue to play until you have earned exactly seven hundred and fifty-five gold, and then you will immediately go to Garvis and pay him seven hundred of it, covering not just your late payments but the following month’s dues as well. You may do as you like with the remaining fifty-five gold, and I will contact you again when I am in need of your services.”

Tyrsdae closed the folder with a smooth gesture and replaced it in the drawer, pulling out another folder - a much thicker one - to read in its place.

After a silent moment, during which Tayt simply stood, not sure if she should wait for further instruction or just leave, Tyrsdae looked up, an expression of mild surprise on her face. “We are done here, Taytania”

Tayt swallowed a retort before it could hit the back of her teeth (Light, she hated that name), then turned to leave, tossing a beckoning gesture at Roshii to follow.

Haughty, pretentious daughter of a motherless boar. She seethed as she made her way out of the building. Running her fingers along the scarred face of the gold coin, her frown shifted from anger to thoughtfulness.

Could she really work for this…woman?

After a moment’s thought, she had to admit that she could. And if the woman paid almost eight hundred gold to move a rock from a fish’s mouth to the bank, just imagine what she might pay for something that took actual skill.

Some small part of her was excited at the thought. Whatever flaws this woman had, thinking small was certainly not one of them. She was an elf with a plan. A goal. And whatever it was, she was willing to pay dearly to achieve it. Ambition led to opportunity, and it was no bad thing to be following the skirts of someone on their way to the top. And if one was clever, one might even manage to set up a situation in which the collapse of that rising star worked to one’s advantage. A small smile curved her lips at the thought, and her eyes glowed brighter with anticipation. She would be a difficult mark, and the scam would have to be truly devious. But wouldn’t it be something, to pull one over on the illustrious and celebrated Lady Tyrsdae Sunseeker?

As she made her way to the wind-rider master, she again thought about the rumors of Tyrsdae’s shift from powerful and respected warlock to half-mocked holy priestess. She certainly didn’t act like a woman overcome with the power and goodness of the Light. No. A flash, a memory of those cold, still green eyes. No, it was definitely not holy zeal which burned those eyes in her memory.

But the suggestion which had seemed so absurd before - that she’d brutally murdered her demon minions - that particular rumor seemed a bit more believable now.

She put the gold coin in her pocket, and wondered just what the Lady Tyrsdae Sunseeker would ask of her next, an almost cheerful bounce to her walk.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 and is filed under Storytime, ~ Vonya. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.