| Blood |
| Summary: | A ship arrives in Oldtown with septas bound for the Starry Sept, intercepted by the shadowcat. |
| Date: | 10/01/2016 |
| Related: | None |
| Players: |
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Docks — Oldtown
The docks are lined with a vast array of wood-and-stone piers, cranes, and winches dedicated to the unloading and loading of cargo and passengers alike. Here, Oldtown's life-blood of food, medicine, and other necessary goods are brought into the city in large quantities, from every kind of ship imaginable.
Day and night, the docks are abuzz with activity, packed with throngs of stevedores, sailors, passengers, rivermen, fishermen, peddlers, and the veritable fleet of ships arriving and departing. There is a distinct smell of salt, rotting timbers, and fish here.
Oldtown's mighty fleet of warships sit at anchor here, some leaving, or arriving, from patrol duties. They announce their presence with the clamor of sailors' voices, and the deep throb of the drum beating time for the oarsmen aboard.
The docks in daytime are a busy place — workers moving about and carrying bales of goods mingle with sailors fresh off some exotic voyage, or at least claiming to be. The sounds and smells of trade fill the space. Factors are standing on barrels, shouting out their goods and rates while merchant captains hunt for their next job.
Out in the harbor, a small fleet of longships lays anchored.
And on the docks, sitting under an awning, there's a man who watches them. He's tall and rangy, his blond hair brushed back off his forehead. He bears a writing-pad and, were one to look, they would find a collection of rather well-done illustrations of the various longships, lovingly detailed, drawn in charcoal. They're not works of art. They're diagrams.
Among the ships recently docked, a few down from the rows of longships, there lies a ship called The Vale's Pride. She's a weather-worn old thing, and too pitifully small to truly live up to live up to her name, but the fact still exists that she must have sailed from one side of the continent to the other the long way 'round to wind up all the way down here.
Several men from the ship mill about, eager to go let off steam now that they've finally reached their port of call; they're dressed shabbily, but nevertheless have the look of guardsmen. A few elderly septas depart from The Vale's Pride, followed by a younger woman — perhaps thirty seasons — with matching robes and head covering. Dull hues, all; the colours of straw, of dirty water, of the overcast sky above, but her face is pale and bright. Regal with cheeks like roses and dark sharp-cut gems for eyes. She cleaves from the others, snaking through the docks' crowd.
Coincidentally, rising to his feet, Cotter steps out from beneath his awning. He secrets the pad of drawing beneath his vest and turns to move away from the area, discreetly glancing around as though he expects to be followed. What he does not expect, however, is to run straight into a young Septa. As he's glancing one way, and Rhaera ducks between two burly fishermen, the man plows right into her. Surprise is evident on his angular face as he recoils. And then he takes the woman in and the surprise fades, replaced by a tinge of interest. "Excuse me, Septa."
The septa is all limp arms and legs when the man collides into her, as if she's just a wisp of a woman underneath the loose garb of the clergy. Pale hands grab onto him lest she's knocked off her feet, wrapping, in fact, all the way around his very waist to hold at the small of his back. Her head lifts, her eyes following only afterward on a queer delay. Cotter's eyes are so dark they could almost be black; hers are such a dark violet they could be mistaken for jet — except in this close proximity. Her gaze is cutting, looking straight inside him without preamble. "Oh," she says softly, a smile ghosting across her lips. She pulls her hand away, stepping back. A thin red rivulet sneaks down her left hand. Looking at it, she remarks distantly, as if it's not connected to her at all, "I'm bleeding."
Blood. Cotter spots the thin trickle immediately and frowns. His features seem to be actually concerned as he peers down at the woman's face, then to her hand again. His smile flickers across his face, reassuring, surprisingly kind-looking. "Here," he says. "Let me see." He holds out his hand, palm-up.
Meanwhile, a few tough-looking men are starting to appear. Ugly faces, ragged finery. No weapons in clear sight. Without taking his gaze off Rhaera, Cotter waves his left hand. The men begin to fade away again.
The septa bows her head in a practiced measure of gratitude, low and modest. It is just that-practiced, a gesture, as empty as a party trick. She smiles all the while, that ghostly thing, her eyes intensely back on Cotter as soon as her head lifts. She holds her bleeding hand out and lays it, knuckles down, atop his. She pushes her voluminous sleeve and the under-layer back with her other hand, up past her wrist, cinching it tight, outrunning the flow of red. The side of her pointer finger has a thin slice curving along the side of it. She doesn't flinch; the woman scarcely blinks.
While the rough-looking men fade out, the other sort, in other shabby finery, off The Vale's Pride, fade in, making their way through the dock crowd and trying to get a line of sight on the wayward septa.
"It's not bad," Cotter informs the Septa. He seems a bit puzzled at the wound, but doesn't make the obvious connection. Absently drawing a fine linen square from within his vest, the lean man carefully wraps the finger. His hands are deft and skilled with knots; he has the tiniest equivalent of a pressure-bandage applied within moments. His gaze drifts upward briefly, scanning the crowds. And then he reaches to touch the Septa's chin with a callused figure, tilting her head up if she allows the touch. "Any reason you would be followed?" It's a gentle question, more curious than concerned.
The septa wiggles her fingers, bandaged pointer included; she flashes her teeth, bright and broad. She drops her hand, the long sleeve falling over her hand like a curtain drop. She tilts her head within the touch, although it seems accepting of the small touch rather than avoidant, looking at Cotter from a new angle. Almost indulgent, or feline, if such a thing can be said of a septa. "My retinue," she says nonchalantly; there's a richness to her voice, unusual. The accompanying smile is, however, somehow bitter. "To take me to the great… Starry… Sept." She reaches for his face — with her right hand — and stops just short of prodding his cheekbone, staring with her unblinking stare. "What are you?"
"A shadowcat. A killer. A terrible man." Cotter's replies are eloquent and succinct, and apparently genuine. He seems spooked by the woman's hand approaching his face, eyeing the fingertips warily. "Why? What ought I to be?" His forefinger remains just beneath the woman's chin and he seems as entranced by her features as she by his. "Do you want to go with these men?"
Her garb so clearly marks her as a woman of the Faith. Godsworn. Certainly, she should take a terrible man into her prayers — but the look she gives him… the vivid, thrilled widening of her eyes… there is nothing merciful about that. "Now, a dragon," she answers, quieter, placing careful study on his silvery hair. "But if you cannot fly me away…" She lowers her covered head and starts to turn. The men from the ship press closer, followed by the elder septas, who look more stern than the men.
"Dragon?.. I cannot fly you away, no.." Cotter doesn't have time to follow through with that chain of thought. Men are closing around him, and they do not appear to be friendly — not to him, and not to his new companion. Far from flinching back in the face of the three Septas, he instead slides around Rhaera until he is between her and them, thrusting his arm back to stop the woman in her turn. "Septas." His voice is oily, and he lets his smile turn into a leer. "Look at you. Three little peaches, fit to be skinned down and sucked dry of your juice." He licks his lips at the old women.
And only then does he deign to acknowledge the rough-looking men closing in. "Lads," he says after a few beats. "You're likely new to town, so I'll tell you what it is." He points to the women before him. "These here, they don't pay you enough, and they don't pray hard enough, to fuck with me." The leer is gone, though the teeth remain, bared. A shadowcat — or a dragon — poised to strike.
All of a sudden, the men from the ship do not look particularly threatening. They're simply doing their job, whatever that may be; a stretch of their job, at that, accounting for their slightly begrudging expressions. As the shadowcat comes between them and the younger septa (by contrast; she would be no maid), they back off. One holds his hands up; another rolls his eyes, figuring this isn't in his job description.
It is the septas who call the shots. Though a fright flashes in her bloodshot eyes, the eldest stands her ground while two others flit back. "Ay, luv," she speaks around Cotter to her sister in faith. "Why don't you come with me, Raya. It's clear this man means you harm. It's not far now to the sept at last."
"Raya" peeks around the man, drawing her arms up to her chest and blinking emptily at the old septa like a mute, lost lamb. She stays put.
"She stays," grits Cotter. He takes another step forward. "Or shall I remind you what it feels like?" A lewd gesture with his hips gives no doubt what the man — perhaps a madman, to be so unafraid of the Gods — means. "That's if your Septon's let you forget." He laughs then, a wild sound, his eyes glittering darkly and leaving further doubt as to his sanity.
"She stays," he repeats to the oldest of the Septa. And now he reaches down to the small of his back. And returns empty-handed. Only a flicker of astonishment in his gaze reveals that he ought to be holding something. He continues on after a faint stumble. "She's going to pray for my soul."
The elder septa blanches, the lines in her face hardening all the more. A quiet chorus of hasty prayers whirl back and forth behind her."That one isn't qualified to pray for your soul," she says with a pitying, if slightly soured, look to the so-called Raya. Least of all your soul, her following glance at Cotter seems to say. "We don't want any trouble. We just want to be on our way, with her."
Helping the elder septa's cause exactly none, one of the accompanying men ambles off entirely; the ship's namesake evidently doesn't extend to its passengers. The subject of this stand-off simply continues to watch, the emptiness in her gaze gradually turning to outright fascination.
"Then you pray for me, Septa. Pray for me on your knees, eh?" Cotter's taunts are vicious and low-voiced. He steps closer to the courageous old woman. "When I was a boy, I went to the Sept once for succor. That's the word they told me. Succor." He leers at the woman. "I learned all about being on my knees, you old bitch." The thug tosses his head, silvery locks spilling down over his forehead. "Yeah. I think I'd like that. Pray." He points down at the ground before him. And then, in a sudden hiss, lurching forward until his face seems destined to smash into the old woman's, "Pray!"
"I will pray," the elder septa croaks gravely. She stands stark still, save for a quivering of her jowls mere hair's breadths from the man's face. "I will pray for Raya." Her dark pupils veer right amid a spider-webbing of capillaries; she can't quite see her robed sisters, but she speaks to them now with the voice of a woman who expects their own doom is imminent. "Go to the sept. Quickly."
Something about the man called the shadowcat spooks the remaining men from acting straight away; by all rights, if they were good men, they should bound in and stop him from speaking to septas in such a manner. By all rights. But eventually, one, short but brutishly broad-shouldered, summons the strength to hesitantly draw a sword.
Cotter turns to look at the man and laughs again, spitting at his feet. "You've got balls, sailor. Come and see me in the Court if you want some real work. But put that away, before I shave your prick with it." He looks back at the Septa, smiling at her and whispering, quite softly — even a little gently, now, "You've more nerve than a dozen men, old woman. Go to your Sept."
He turns his back on the threats before him, facing the woman who has, so far, stayed silent at his shoulder. And like a proper gentleman, he offers her his arm. "Come along with me," he tells Rhaera firmly. "I've no wish to kill old women again today." Again.
The violet-eyed septa lifts her neatly bandaged hand, an ethereal half-wave to her superior — giving her a smile that might just have a hint of deviousness — as she turns and takes Cotter's arm. She holds it like a noblewoman would, practiced and poised. They stroll away from the septas and the men and no one dares to follow. "They say the High Septon has his hands everywhere…" she says, her voice slow and whimsical; she traces shapes in the air to demonstrate. "Fingers in every corner of Oldtown. He might be," she smiles contrarily as though thrilled, eyes alight, "cross with you."
Cotter hawks and spits again to show what he thinks of the High Septon, and his own eyes glitter with a dark, deep-set, malice. "I hope so," he says softly. And then the man turns his attention to his companion, eyeing the violet-eyed woman speculatively. "You didn't speak back there," he says mildly as they walk along the dockside. He is leading her toward a much more disreputable area, and an observant eye might note the men he banished earlier — not too close, but not too far away, either. "And they said you weren't fit to pray. Why is that?"
"That was very rude of her," Rhaera points out; it's in the same whimsical tone, however, and she can't be said to sound terribly put out by the old septa's words, despite the pouting purse of her lips. She drops her gaze from her intrigued watch of the city around them — sights that seem new to her — and a darker cast takes over her expression. "I do not know."
Cotter frowns and peers over at Rhaera, slowing his steps a bit. "You're not simple, are you?" The question seems to alarm him. "You do know that going off with me, that might be a bad idea for you?" He tightens his grip on the young woman's arm. "You know she was doing her best to protect you?" The questions seem pointed, almost as sharp as the words he put to the older Septa moments before.
The first question seems to offend the woman, but she's halted from reacting, beyond a tensing of her sable brows, for the other questions amuse her. A smile spreads across her pale face, growing both slyness and in cleverness that puts simplemindedness to question. "Was she?" she puts forth, looking up at Cotter with a slowly tilting head. "Or was she simply assuring that I get to the sept … so that I may be put on trial and placed in a dungeon? She hates me, you know."
Cotter squints, frowning back over his shoulder, and then to the woman. "..Oh." He says, realization sinking in. And then the implications of what this woman just said sink in as well. He seems at first baffled, and then richly amused. "Did I just rescue you?" The idea delights him. He throws back his head and howls, more like a cat than a wolf, and not at all like a man. One of his thugs in the near distance grins and nudges his companion.
She shares in his rich amusement, curving her lips until the white of her teeth shows. Rather enthralled, she watches him laugh— howl— her dark eyes dancing frenetically. "Maybe you did," she wonders, herself. Then again, they may have made more trouble, but she seems, at the moment, unconcerned. "How wild you are," she remarks before looking out into the city street. "And what wilds are you taking me to?"
Cotter jerks his chin toward the slums ahead, where the buildings have begun to sink a bit, and several — here on the outskirts — seem in danger of falling right over. "My home," he says quietly, with a sudden dignity. "The Underworld of Oldtown. The people Hightower forgets." He flashes his wild smile again, turning to face Rhaera. "But I don't forget them, sweetling. And neither does my queen. No. We rule down here.. and if anyone forgets that, they see just how wild I am."