Avishraa Reloaded

Planning for the theft took some time - or rather, Evrith sitting in one place with her eyes closed browsing through futures had taken some time, since it was hard to escape the idea that Evrith didn't plan in any real sense. “The future eats plans for its dinner,” she'd said, to which Shyriath appeared to have taken offense.

The sun was almost directly overhead, so there would be no cover of night or shadow, and it would cause an enormous delay to wait for some to appear. On top of that, Oraa itself was surrounded by low stone walls - trivial to fly over, of course, but this would almost certainly attract notice. Only foot traffic going through the town gates would fail to draw suspicion.

As they approached the town in the distance, Shyriath sought clarification. “Permit me to understand: you want us, two Chosen and a xtauh, to just walk through a guarded gate into a takma settlement? That's your idea?”

Evrith glanced at him in irritation. “But they only care about Chosen. They don't often see xtauh in these parts, and hardly ever have to fight them. All of us are smaller than other takmar, so someone who can't see our heads might not notice that we're not all the same kind. So we all approach the gate with cloaks on and hoods up, as if keeping the sun off our heads. If the guards ask to see one of us, Anuwi uncovers his head. You, I expect, can alter their curiosity so that they don't ask to see our faces, or get too certain that xtauh aren't green.”

Great. Theft in broad daylight - literally, although that was indeed inescapable, as well as metaphorically. What could possibly go wrong? An-uxhwi was still not emotionally convinced that this was necessary, but it was impossible to argue with an Oracle - more so with an Oracle he deeply trusted not to fabricate lies.

And so An-uxhwi only flinched a little at the suggestion that he should reveal himself to some takmar that might - as was his previous experience with them - take offence in his very existence. Not that he considered himself incapable of defending himself if it were to happen, but the best kind of combat was the combat that didn't happen.

“Assuming this works as intended, how do we proceed?” he asked in a neutral tone of voice, his imagination running a crude simulation of the plan so far, giving him some basic spatial bearings to work with.

Evrith shrugged, as if it were a question of minor importance. “The house we want is near the city wall on the southeast side. The owner seems to be asleep. We go there, enter as if we have business, and then browse around and quietly as we can once we're inside.”

“And then?” Shyriath demanded. “We just walk out like we came in?”

“Hopefully,” she replied. “If not, there's plenty of rock under this land. We may need you to get us down under it and out of sight.”

Shyriath gave her a sour look. “This idea of yours seems to lean rather heavily on my abilities.”

“For two reasons.” Evirth's tone became sharp. “The first is that you volunteered to come along, so it makes sense, as long as you're here, to make use of what you can do. The second is that, if I were doing this alone, I would almost certainly be approaching it in a different way that wouldn't require your abilities. And if you're about to ask why I don't do that anyway, it's because both of you are along; there are ways I could slip in and out by myself that aren't feasible with two companions who can't see the future.

“And while we're on the subject,” she added, “there are things I can do to directly aid in an escape, if it becomes necessary. But they're dangerous, some of them even to me, and it's best not to use them unless it's that or die.”

An-uxhwi, at least, had the benefit of having witnessed the spoils of Evrith's planning.

Unfortunately, he also had the questionable pleasure of having witnessed the flaws, remembering distinctly how they had to hurriedly accommodate for change. The notion of a similar change of plans here did not please him - but any objection lost itself in the awareness that they had had this exact discussion already and he had agreed to come along.

And all this for a book. It wasn't that he couldn't appreciate the value of such a book, but it seemed like better methods of obtaining one should be available, perhaps if one asked the right xtauh…

“Although I would rather we weren't discovered because we're going to have another argument about it,” An-uxhwi mused, his tone far more placid than he felt. “If the details of the future are still lost to her, it may be best to simply let Evrith lead us and be there to protect her if it becomes necessary.”

Shyriath fidgeted unhappily. He pulled up his hood, as the gate would become visible again around the next curve. “Being the sort of person to spend so much time hiding away,” he muttered, “I'm sure you can guess that I'm not emotionally well-suited to this sort of action.”

“Noted,” Evrith replied testily, pulling up her own hood. “If only I were paying you wages, you would have a bonus for your trouble, I'm sure. …Anuwi, if they ask what our business is here, just tell them we're travelers seeking a place to stay and rest. We don't have any goods to convince them we're merchants.”

Throughout all this, some part of An-uxhwi felt eeriely calm. It wasn't his heart, which was happy to thrum its objection through his body. It wasn't his rational thought processes, which knew there were enough variables involved that this could yet easily end in disaster. But some emotional kernel had convinced itself that all would be well.

And so he said: “Then that shall be my answer.” The beauty of it was that it wasn't even a lie. They were travellers and they were seeking a place to stay and rest. They just weren't looking for it here.

He pulled up his hood and positioned himself strategically to be the most likely candidate of harassment, if someone were to, say, choose to take one of their hoods off for them. There was no position that would guarantee it, but at least he could do his best to increase the odds.

Hopefully Evrith would tell him to shift to elsewhere if the risk actually threatened to manifest.

The walls of Oraa were made of stone, thin and low - just about high enough that an adult takma would be unable to climb over without assistance - and were clearly intended more as a form of movement control than a defense against besiegers. The gate was a simple gap spanned by large wooden double doors, which were open, with a shed just inside for the guards to lounge in.

As they approached, one of the guards meandered out, a middle-aged male clad in leather armor and holding a javelin; he gave them the slightly jaundiced look of someone faced with a minor inconvenience. “Stop there, xtauh. What's your business in Oraa?”

Behind An-uxhwi, Shyriath concentrated on dulling the guard's perception.

In a motion betraying neither haste nor reluctance, An-uxhwi drew his hood back from his head, revealing himself and this laying his emotional expression bare to the guard - a signal that he had nothing to hide, certainly. The biggest risk was in being turned away despite their excuses to enter… and the difference in body language. Fortunately, An-uxhwi was acutely aware of it, not least because he had been travelling with friendly takmar lately, and took care to keep the gestures of his antennae somewhat muted.

After a moment of appropriate but not exaggerated deferrence in body language - a skill learnt in the mines, if only grudgingly so - An-uxhwi responded with the agreed-upon excuse to enter: “We have travelled quite far and thus were hoping to find a place to rest.” He glanced past the guard with a mild curiosity, like someone assessing from some tacit markers gained by experience whether they might be temporarily welcome in such a place, and who held the hope the answer was 'yes'.

The guard approached more closely, looming slightly over An-uxhwi. He squinted a bit suspiciously at him. “We don't see xtauh seeking shelter here,” he commented. “You people keep your own camps.”

He glanced up slightly to look at An-uxhwi's companions, tempted to order them to remove their hoods as well, but something stopped him. The sun was harsh at the moment; no doubt the hoods helped. No doubt a good sturdy building would be much cooler than… well, whatever the little goblins generally used.

The guard expelled air through his nostrils. It was hot out and he wanted to get back to the convivial game of chance they'd had going in the shed; running off xtauh wasn't enough of an amusement to be worth the trouble. He pointed through the gate and down the street that continued on from it. “There's inns that way, if you can find one that'll take you. Be out of the city within two vigils.”

Behind An-uxhwi, Shyriath relaxed a little. Prodding the guard's mind in the right direction hadn't been too hard, but it wasn't effortless.

An-uxhwi had not done very much to hide his mild annoyance at the guard's initial observation, although he had wisely kept a sarcastic remark along the lines of 'I'm sure you know our people's habits better than we do' to himself. It helped that it was certainly true in most scenarios; exceptions proved the rule.

“Thank you kindly,” An-uxhwi dipped his muzzle, then wandered into the gestured direction with an air of casual interest.

If he was particularly tense now, even his fellow collaborators were oblivious to it. Either his faith in Evrith was indeed carrying him past any nervous tics, or he had been suitably battered by the experience in the mines that he was hard to unsettle by the prospect of angry guards that would almost surely prefer to simply drive them away.

After they had continued some way down the street, Evrith murmured tensely, “He's stopped watching us - he's going back inside the shed. Turn right up ahead.”

They were all more comfortable once they did. Although most people in Oraa seemed to try to stay indoors during the worst of the day, there were still quite a few out and about, and the three of them had been on the receiving end of intense looks - many merely curious, some suspicious or even affronted. The turn took them onto a side street with far fewer observers.

It was the first time An-uxhwi had ever openly walked through any settlement much larger than a village - those of the Pa'irket had been the next closest things. Oraa was nothing like them. Aside from the size - not only the number of buildings, but the takma-appropriate scale of each one - the people of Oraa seemed to prefer to build out of dressed and tightly fitted stone, rather neater and far more sophisticated than the rough fieldstone walls of the trading post back at the oasis.

Their penchant for stone didn't stop at the buildings, either. The streets were paved with wide, flat stones. He had never seen such a thing, though it made sense in light of the carts some people were pulling; it was only rarely that his own tribe, either that of his birth or that he'd been accepted into, had needed to pull that much that far along a regular route.

The route they followed, occasioned by terse directions from Evrith, took many twists and turns, before depositing them near a row of homes backed against the city wall.

An-uxhwi quietly pondered the patterns the stones had been laid in and what the most efficient way to do so likely was to prevent the gaps between them widening over time. He had little experience in the way of building things for such a scale, so his imaginings were quite rudimentary, but they helped occupy his mind.

And so by the time they reached their next milestone on the route toward the books, his agitation had barely grown at all. No doubt that would change soon, when their little heist went from pure theory to practice.

The house Evrith approached had a crude sign affixed to the wall, depicting a book in the midst of several very different landscapes. She stood before the door, gazing at it briefly. “Barred,” she murmured. “Shyriath, can you shift it from this side of the door?”

As the Shyriath screwed up his face at the door, attempting to telekinetically lift the bar on the other side, a takma turned a corner onto the street some distance away and approached. When he spotted the trio clustered in front of the door, still far out of conversational range, he stopped dead and watched them intently for several seconds before abruptly turning around and returning the way he came.

Evrith paid no attention to him. Indeed, there was no sign she'd been aware of his presence, much less his scrutiny.

There were two possible interpretations of what had happened: Either the takma that had watched them had no interest in reporting their behaviour (assuming that they had interpreted it as nefarious - from afar it possibly just looked like they were waiting for someone to open the door for them), or Evrith had made a mistake.

As deeply trusting as An-uxhwi was of Evrith, he did not consider her without flaw. She was, at the end of the day, still takma - one of magical abilities, but still as mortal and fallible as any of her kind or An-uxhwi's.

Softly, without panic, he conveyed what he'd seen to Evrith: “A takma just looked our way rather intently. Are they a threat?”

Evrith, who had been watching Shyriath's work intently, blinked. “What?”

She hadn't foreseen any witnesses, not yet. Had she been watching futures inside the house too closely? Her mind roamed backward - yes, there he was, a dark, almost burnt red, a nervous-looking fellow.She cast her mind forward-

…nothing.

In the place in the future where he should have been, there was no one. It was as if he had never been. Where was he?

“I.. I can't see him,” she murmured, looking more puzzled than An-uxhwi had yet seen her. “He came here, he saw us, and then turned around… and he's hurrying down a street right now, but I can't see him in the future.” Though Shyriath had just opened the door, she started to feel worried. “The books are here on the ground floor. I'll take a quick look at them, we'll take some, and we'll get out of here.”

There were futures Evrith could not see.

Even as that occurred to An-uxhwi, it made intuitive sense to him that this would be true. His own vision was also limited. Sometimes, the things he tried to see were occluded by an obstacle, and he had to change position for an unobstructed view. Perhaps something like that was true for Oracles as well.

The disconcerting thing was that it bothered Evrith, suggesting this was a first for her. It didn't have to be unusual - he imagined her having always doing the equivalent of flying and looking down, whereas now a man had slipped in under an overhang and she'd been robbed of her line of sight unexpectedly.

Regardless whether the underlying cause was benign or inherently dangerous, they were blind to their future. They were in danger, right now.

An-uxhwi kept his gaze trained in the direction the takma had been. It was the best he could do right now. Arguing with Evrith would only slow them down - given that speed seemed of the essence, he chose to skip it. “I will keep watch,” he said, simply.

Evrith looked like she might argue with him, but thought better of it. Having someone watch was, under the circumstances, prudent, and although she would have preferred to have Shyriath do it, she wanted someone to look at the writing in the books, and neither she nor An-uxhwi could read. “All right,” she conceded. “Be careful.” She motioned Shyriath inside, and followed him in.

They slipped into a workshop just off the passage leading from the door, with scores of books piled up untidily; these were either blank or, it appeared, in the process of being written. The complete ones were arranged rather more neatly on a shelf, about a dozen of them, and Evrith began looking at each of them, trying to see which ones they were most likely to return from should they use it. She pointed to one, and Shyriath opened at and read it, pausing briefly to marvel at the shapes coiling on the first page: the waves of a sea rushing against a coast of trees and rocky outcroppings.

Outside, traffic on the street - what little there was - passed by largely unheeding. The takmar seemed mostly wrapped up in their own concerns, or were eager to get out of the Burning Eye's gaze. But a pair of them, pulling a cart loaded with odds and ends, slowed down to look at him - they were males of his own kind, and it appeared that they had recognized him as a xtauh from his size.

They stopped, and one, looking pleased to see him, called out to him in an inquisitive tone but using a language he was unfamiliar with.

The greeting warmed An-uxhwi's heart to same degree as it worried him. There was little point in engaging with them if he could not speak their language, much as he would have liked to try and yearned for some contact that was not takmar. Further, if he left his post, his friends were in danger.

He did wander a little toward them, gesturing to best of his ability that he could not speak their particular tongue - swirling his fingers before his muzzle, erring on the side of perhaps giving the impression of being mute altogether - but appreciated the sight of other xtauh - fingers cast forward from one eye, other hand on his chest.

Hopefully that would let them to pass on with minimal fuss, before it bundled more attention to him and, by proxy, potentially his companions.