Both Sides Of The Coin [Aurin]

[Erratum]

The old Sunsinger frowned at the bound spirit, looking very troubled by the whole situation.

"Not without a Demon Gem." the old man said, slowly, "But I wouldn't use that, even if I had one. Such techniques are cruel to the spirits, crueler than you could know."

Ansel tramped around the floating mirror, examining it carefully, then turned to give Darus himself the same look. He seemed mostly recovered now; Summoning was, thankfully, an art which was relatively kind to the aging mage. Though the actual art required life energy from the summoner, it could be extracted at leisure and then paid off later, or the reverse. He did not need to force his power into it, as he did with his spear. And speaking of that spear...

"With your aid, I might slay it. The nova-fire can destroy a spirit, and you can hold open a gateway into Slipspace. It is a harsh fate, to be sure, but you must know that ruthless action may save you from regret down the road. Or... then again..."

The witch frowned, considering, then walked over to the door, carefully removing the horseshoe trinket. As far as Aurin could see, that had no effect on the spirit being held in the mirror's reflection, so perhaps the need for the trinket was over. Then again, he had no idea what--if anything--it had been doing in the first place.

Either way, Ansel walked out of the room and beckoned Darus to join him. When he did, he closed the door again, and spoke in a low voice:

"A thought occurs to me- the spirit will escape me eventually, but we can certainly determine when it should do so. If we time it correctly, then you may determine what it sees of you before it can flee back to its master. After all, the one thing better than having no spy in your midst is having one who is known to you and reports what you say, mmm? Give them whatever story you would find most convenient to act upon?"

Yes, it seemed that Ansel was very much not a stranger to duplicity. Whatever allegiance the Sunsingers might have to Raxen, they seemed content to play at deception when it benefited them.

[Aurin]

Darus frowned.

"I'd rather not destroy the creature because it was employed to spy upon me," he said, and that was the unvarnished truth. Of course, he had killed for less, but everyone had some sort of ethical code; if his was byzantine, it still existed. He didn't know why using a demon gem would be cruel to it. Most people he knew would be only too happy to be let out of a magically binding contract. The only one he was in was to serve the better interests of the covens, and that was how he had been given access to so many of them. He was a member of the Railrunners and the Myshalarai, and sort of a member emeritus of the Whispers. The Grymalka respected him, even though their means gave him the squicks. The Kindred had offered him membership, but he wasn't keen to let anyone so deep into his mind and his soul that he forgot the boundaries that existed around them to keep him alive.

The Sunsingers, well, they knew he was useful and could be mock heroic when the situation called for it.

Outside, he assumed they were beyond the creature's ability to hear, otherwise why would they have gone out of the room?

His voice dropped, dark and clipped. Expedient. It was still Darus' voice, but the cadences were pure Aurin Kavafis.

"Running a Robin-of-the-Hood scheme on some Gelerian ne'er-do-wells with the help of an agent of the tax office. I told them I was going to invest this money in the Pfenning Theater so it would be safe from the reaches of said tax office. My plan was to take my cut and leave the rest to the covens, cutting them out via... well... anyway. I don't know what this creature's capable of. I could..." He plotted quickly. "If you could separate it from the gold, I could make it disappear from the same room as you. Maybe hide it in Imogen's boudoir? Then let it break free, and I can go back to the room, lose my shit, and make a big scene of having lost it and... I don't know, take an airship to Haqs—Darus is from Haqs—and lose it somewhere. Can it track me if I lose it, drop my glamours, and skedaddle? Like, does it have a bead on me?"

Aurin liked money, though probably less than most people assumed. He liked the power it represented, but he didn't need much in the way of liquid assets. The goodwill it would buy him just giving it to the Sunsingers was worth more than the money itself to him. If he made it disappear and never saw it again himself in order to keep it from Gerhard and Hodgekins and whomever else they were working with, well, Darus could make himself scarce for a long while if necessary.

[Erratum]

The old man snorted at Aurin's suggestion.

"Trapping a spirit in Imogen's boudoir is a fairly sure way to execute it, I would say. Or... it would be, were it another sort of spirit. She's quite used to seeing these, as I am the only summoner of the sort in the southern forests, to the best of my knowledge." Ansel sighed, scratching at his weathered cheek with one finger, "The art was more common when I was a boy. Oma Gisela used them to fleece clients, before the Order got her. I tried to teach it, once or twice, but none of the 'martyrs cared for it, and my son..."

The witch quieted, lost in his own memories, but he said no more about it. Ansel had never spoken about children--it always seemed like Imogen, his last student, was closest to him--and it seemed like he wasn't going to start now. It wasn't really unusual for him to fall silent like this, but Imogen had assured Aurin that this was nothing new. Even ten years ago, the old knight had sometimes been consumed by his own reminiscing.

After a moment, he shook himself out of it. "No, the spirits are uncanny trackers, but they must do so through the usual means. They can observe you through any reflective surface, but if they lose sight they must spend time tracking you down again. If you leave the spirit's vision and shuck your identity, it will lose you- but it will know where it lost you. And it will know, I suppose, that you brought in a summoner to trap it. This much its master will learn. Nothing else."

The old man shrugged. Realistically, that wasn't so bad for Aurin. A Gelerian summoner was unlikely to be able to track down Ansel from his description alone, and certainly the Imperium lacked the manpower to chase him to the Sunsingers' hidden castle, without the help of the Order. And nothing about the men Aurin had met with indicated that they were likely to be able to wheedle Eitian into taking action on their behalf. They seemed more likely to be arrested themselves.

No, the risk was more that Louis and co would hire their own agents to try to track the money down. Or perhaps the woman who had been playacting as Frau Allstead, she had a Zaichaeri accent- could she have connections in the city?

Perhaps it did not matter. Darus would be gone, the gold would be gone, and only Aurin and Valentin Valentin would ever know the full extent of what had happened- that they had come across a group of thieves robbing a train company and stolen the money themselves.

[Aurin]

Darus rolled his eyes in a manner that was clearly Aurin and no persona he wore like a second skin.

"I meant stashing the gold in her boudoir, not the spirit, idiot," he said, but anyone with an ounce of emotional intelligence overhearing would hear that even his harsh words were an act. Aurin cared about this particular idiot, ever since they had nearly died together escaping the monsters that had come pouring out of the rift.

The rolling eyes were blue rather than hazel, but it didn't matter. A part of him wanted Ansel to teach him to summon spirits and to summon weapons of light that banished shadows and monsters under the bed and in the closet. The asshole ginger would never admit craving the father figure he had never had, but there were likely gods somewhere laughing at his folly in particular.

"All right. Can you bind it—comfortably if possible—away from the gold long enough for me to remove it from where it is? Then 'lose control' of it," he continued, making air quotes, "when Darus is in the room. I'll hightail it to a departing airship with the glamour of a hoard of gold, and Darus can accompany it to Haqs, thence to Kathiid, and thence to Shemashk—don't ask—and there stash it before Darus disappears, and Aurin returns to invest the gold in the covens? I had thought the theater because it would be easy oversight from Kalzasi, but I could just as easily drop it into the Grymalka hospital or... I don't know... does your old ass need a golden toilet to shit in?"

Likely, he would help the Whispers more as they were a younger—literally and figuratively—coven and under Aurin's protection even though Jacq was in full control of them. But there was enough gold to spread the wealth around, which would be good for the covens, and he supposed for Zaichaer itself as that gold then circulated through the local economy.

Aurin joked about wanting to place the crown of the witch-king upon his brow, but it wasn't a joke. The covens had no underground monarch, but he was attempting to make things better for them, individually and collectively.

"Don't tax yourself overmuch, Grandpa. Can I help with what I'm asking you to do?"

[Erratum]

Ansel glared at Aurin, though there was no real fire in it.

"Old man, old man." Gerhard groused, as though Aurin had not heard him bemoan the advance of old age a thousand times, "Count yourself lucky that this old man is not ten years younger. Ich reiß dir den Arsch auf!"

The old witch removed a set of brass-rimmed spectacles from his coat and set them carefully upon his nose, then cracked open the door and peered into the room again. The light glinting off the lenses revealed almost imperceptible glyphics- perhaps some species of aura glass? They were popular items for those without the wherewithal to learn to Semble for themselves.

Ansel studied the mirror through the glasses, eyes narrowing as he observed the dancing rainbow of light and interpreted it. After a moment, he nodded firmly and closed the door once again.

"Summoning is not nearly so strenuous as Reaving, these days. Much of the costs the spirits impose can be offset, or bartered for across time. But you cannot bargain with the novaflame. It takes what it requires, whether or not you can easily give." That wasn't really a criticism of the spell, of course. Most Runes worked the same way as Reaving. "By which I mean that I can see this done, yes. Don't worry about me. I've been doing this a long time, after all."

"Invest the gold wherever you will- I've no need of it."

~~~

The Sunsinger was as good as his word, and set up the trap just as Darus had directed him. Before long, the gold and the spirit were separated, and Darus was on his way to make a tour of the city-states of central Karnor, his pursuer none the wiser.

!	Message from: Erratum
	Let me know where Aurin takes the spirit and where he stashes the gold, and we'll be done with this particular heist!

[Aurin]

"Klar, Opa. Lass uns dich ins Bett bringen."

The Aurinesque smirk on Darus' face would have made a saint want to smack the shit out of him. Sadly, he remained more agile than the aged Sunsinger.

"Just teach me to make the god-fire and I'll make it for you."

When the door closed on the spirit again, he said, "All right. You distract and I'll..." He opened the door and walked through, back to performing Artur Darus. "...figure something out, you incompetent twat. Used to be the Zaichaeri covens could be relied upon."

His voice dripped desperate venom.

It was fun to berate Ansel Gerhard, even if it was a dog-and-pony show. In the end, he had the gold moved to the belly of an airship headed for Haqs. Ansel came in and distracted it at just the right point, at which point, he moved the gold into his junction of the slipspace, and continued on with a fortune that was mere glamour from Haqs to Kathiid, and there he left it in a rented warehouse, and there he left it all behind.

Out of the spirit's sight, he vaulted, dropping the glamour and persona of Darus, and moved through Shemashk, back to Kalzasi, and eventually returned to Zaichaer, where he pulled the gold from the slipspace to invest in the covens. He didn't keep any of it for himself. It was more fun to play villain to the villains of Dardouen and hero to the covens.

Eventually, he would return to Gel'Grandal and ensure that Valentin Valentin of the Gel'Grandal Valentins was content with how everything had played out.

In the meantime, there were other shenanigans to be had elsewhere, and Aurin lived for the shenanigans.

[Erratum]

There was, of course, no way for either Darus of Haqs or Aurin Kavafis to know exactly how well his scheme had worked. He trusted in Ansel, and the old witch had shown himself to be reliable in the past- but even with Aurin's keen senses, it was damnably hard to spot the spirit in question. Was it following him? Had he lost it? Only time would tell for sure.

He received no follow-up from the strange crew in Gelerand whose stolen lucre he had taken in turn. If they knew where he was now, they made no effort to capture him, to reclaim the avens. That was probably pretty good evidence that they did not know, for Louis didn't seem like the sort of accountant who was willing to just let money go if he could help it. Still, it all felt rather like unfinished business, like Aurin had stumbled across some more complex matter and taken leave of it without ever learning the truth.

(But wasn't that everything, really? People go through life getting little glimpses of the greater whole, making their own choices and being misinterpreted by other people in turn. Doubtless Hodgekins and Louis very much regretted the fact that they did not understand the whole of the story behind Darus of Haqs' appearance in their city.)

When Aurin next met Valentin, the man was eager to share as little as possible with him. This, too, was understandable. Valentin Valentin might be a criminal now, but he was the sort of criminal trying to continue to pretend to legitimacy, like all of the other wealthy folk of Gel'Grandal. Now that he had the ill-gotten goods, his continued association with Aurin could only threaten his reputation, and the fact that Aurin had been involved at all would be an ongoing weakness, a risk.

Still, men like Valentin told themselves that once was enough; it never was. Having made money from one scheme, he would eventually find himself in need of money again. The success would tantalize him, or else the threat of Aurin's leverage over him would terrify him. In that case, he would surely either seek out Aurin's help again (and find himself even more in the smuggler's power) or he would try to kill Aurin.

And Valentin Valentin was just a bit too smart to think he could kill Aurin Kavafis.

As they said their goodbyes, though, Valentin did note that Louis and Hodgekins seemed to have disappeared after the audit, and the auditors had never discovered any woman at all in the estate. Just more ghosts in the story, left to haunt the archives as vestiges, perhaps. And who could say if they'd ever turn up again?

~~~

REVIEW TIME

Aurin Kavafis

Points: 15 xp, may not be used for magic

Injuries/Ailments: Not a thing!

Loot: Nothing for Aurin, but feel free to link to this post to demonstrate that he has donated a substantial amount of stolen gold to the Covens of Zaichaer- well over ten thousand.

Notes: Thanks for playing! Tune in next time to see if we ever meet any of those NPCs again, or if all that ominous foreshadowing above is idle prattle!