Zira

“Fuck.”

From a stillness akin to death to full flight in a blink. The gilded tiling of the rooftops blurring beneath his feet, the exhilaration of flight as he leapt from building to building, the pounding of his pulse in his eardrums, his breath a measured but frenetic cadence born of his discipline and experience. The blazing sun above baked his patched and frayed hooded cloak as the streets of Huzuz thrummed with life below him. Through years of practice, he kept a fraction of his attention focused on his fleeing quarry below. The man was far too fast for Agner to keep up on the ground, but the rules of the street meant little to the rooftops. Agner’s attempt at forceful persuasion had clearly gone amiss, and now they were forced into plan B: pursuit.

Noa saw his moment approach. A narrow alley loomed ahead, just a few feet between the roof profiles of two long, narrow structures, and as he saw the merchant duck into the far side of the alley, Noa’s eyes narrowed. Barely breaking stride, Noa dropped from the roof's edge into the gap between the structures, planting a boot on a wall of each building as he slid to the cobbled street below. Pebbles peppered his face, dislodged from the wall thanks to the pressure he was exerting, and he felt searing heat on the soles of his ragged old boots as he descended.

Time to stop making excuses and get some new ones.

As his feet hit the surface of the grimy, shadowed alley below, he tumbled gracefully into a forward somersault to redirect his momentum and rose in a flurry of steel. His dagger flew true, sinking into the soft fleshy midsection of the terrified merchant. The man staggered sideways into the wall with a gasp before falling to his backside, propped against the building for support as he gasped and wheezed. The dagger in his gut unraveled like strands of a fraying rope before re-materializing in reverse fashion on the Belt of Suumresh festooning Noa’s hips - the one genuinely nice thing Noa owned. He ignored it and knelt in front of the wounded man.

“I have tinctures of my own devising to aid your healing,” he murmured in a sotto baritone. “All we want is your entrance token.”

He sensed, rather than heard or saw, that Agner had finally joined them in the alleyway. This was confirmed when he saw the merchant’s eyes flick to the right in a panic. The man knew he was in real trouble. In his mind’s eye, Noa could see Agner casually leaning against the wall. Not short of breath, hair immaculate and not a stitch of clothing dirtied. Noa pursed his lips.

“The token. We know you have it on you. Give it to us and we’ll be on our way. Give it to us, that you might live.”

The merchant, whom Noa knew to be a corrupt and greedy member of a particular shadow sect of merchants brokering power and access to the Caliph of Zakhara, seemed to be struggling to form words as he stammered and gibbered.

“P…pp…p-please,” he stammered, “I…I have kids, I - ”

“Yes,” Agner sneered from behind Noa. “So we hear, Rahid. Why, three of them you even had with your wife, I am given to understand.”

Noa clenched his teeth but stayed his tongue. He didn’t enjoy cruelty or violence, skilled as he was in their dispensation, and this particular deviation between himself and Agner never sat well with his conscience.

The merchant, Rahid bin Dizsa, raised an arm and scrabbled for purchase on his robe sleeve. Finally, he ripped the sleeve back to reveal a livid tattoo of a skull with a snake coiling from the darkened eye socket. Under the skull, the tattoo continued with the words “From Opportunity, Victory” emblazoned in Midani.

“It’s not a token, please, see? It’s a powerful magical tattoo on one’s zira, and only members can access the game. I…I…I can ask around, try and get you entrance, if you…if you just…please…”

The man coughed and expelled blood, a trickle of which ran down his chin into his lustrous beard. 

Noa stood up, distaste etched in every line of his face, and he extended his hand, which crackled with purple energy. Clutched in his fist, he conjured what looked like a shimmering shard of large purple glass. It hissed and threw purple sparks and very nearly resembled a dagger the more Noa focused on it. When he spoke, his tones were glacial.

“You and your ilk have worked tirelessly to keep people like me living in the mud as your ruling class used our corpses as paving stones. I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me that slovenly, gauche villains would defile your own skin with a needle and ink as a status symbol and access token. I am going to need you to - ”

Fwump-fwump.

There was a sizzling crackle of energy and Rahid bin Dizsa’s head exploded as two magical bursts of energy impacted it. Everything in the alley hung suspended in perfect stillness for the briefest moment. Then a gout of blood arced upward from the neck stump of the corpse, splashing across Noa’s face and torso before the body thudded over on its side on the dirty cobblestones. The merchant’s feet twitched briefly and then the body was still.

“Well, that was fun. Would you like to cut, or would you prefer I do it?” The relish in Agner’s voice left no doubt about which answer he hoped for. Noa rounded on him in fury.

“Fool! Alive, he could provide access and leverage. Dead, he is naught but rat food. Why do you refuse to use your damned brain?”

Agner laughed in Noa’s face, the rank aroma of old meat and ale permeating his fetid breath. 

“All brains and no action with you. Do you want out of this shithole or not? Messy work requires messy hands, old friend. I know a guy who can do the work seamlessly if we can provide him with an example of the tattoo, and here we have a ready example. See? Simple. You and all your rules and decorum. Endlessly talking, rarely achieving. That’s what you have me for. Now, step aside, I have more work to do.”

Noa whirled and strode several paces away, keeping watch at the busier end of the alley to ensure no passersby observed them. It was a pretty remote area - for a city with a million inhabitants, at least - so the risks weren’t high to begin with. Truthfully, Noa simply needed a reason to ignore the grunts and the sound of sawing and the sickening squelching noises coming from behind him.

After moments which seemed to stretch into hours, Agner’s voice snaked its way into the silence of the alley once more.

“And we are now plus one zira.”

Noa turned in time to see Agner wrapping the bloody stump of a forearm in the dead man’s cloak before stowing it inside his own. Noa felt his mouth tighten into a hard line and pointedly avoided looking at the corpse of the merchant. It didn’t escape his notice that Agner, who did not speak Midani and in fact treated Noa’s native language with disdain most times, was sticking with the Midani word for arm after Rahid had used it. Agner had a strange, cruel habit of continuing to taunt and humiliate victims even after death.

“You know, your psychic daggers are really coming along. It almost looked like a butter knife this time.”

Noa grimaced at the backhanded compliment.

“Patience eludes me still. It’s frustrating to be able to envision them as clearly as day in my mind and not see that translate despite all my years of effort and practice.”

Agner waved his bloody hand dismissively before wiping it on the dead man’s trousers. “You’re doing great with it. Come, let’s go get us some tattoos.”

He wrapped his arm conspiratorially around Noa’s shoulders and began leading them from the alley. Noa, for his part, was spluttering in indignation.

“No, I uh…I don’t do tattoos, see, I don’t believe in…”

“You don’t believe in remaining a citizen of the Caliph’s oppressive rule. Right?”

Noa swallowed hard as they stepped out into the sunlit street.

“Well, correct, but….”

“And we have one - exactly one - avenue available to us to facilitate a new life elsewhere. Right?”

Noa said nothing, hating the direction his day was taking.

“Right,” Agner answered for him. “And that avenue requires a magical tattoo to afford us entrance. So, logic dictates that your silly rule about tattoos will be the rule you must let die this day. See? Simple.”

As they walked, Noa wracked his brains for a counter argument, some other plan of infiltration that would preclude his getting a disgusting tattoo. He found none. They’d carefully cased this establishment and its regular patrons for weeks, they knew every way in and out of the building and had a legend built for almost every familiar face they saw, and still the best way they’d come up with to infiltrate had been to secure whatever token - a tattoo, it transpired - was used to gain official entrance. The sect gathering was simply airtight; impenetrable. 

“Who knew a damned poker game would be so much trouble?” Noa grumbled.

Agner laughed riotously as they turned into a dank, darkened, seedy-looking street full of dodgy shops proffering dodgy wares. 

“Worth it, my friend. With your ability to read their thoughts and see their cards, it will be as simple as hunting rats in a casket. Once we’ve taken these butchers and knaves for all they have, we’ll deal a critical blow to their ability to oppress our people while making enough gold for ourselves to escape this wretched hive.”

“A minor, temporary setback for the plutocracy, surely,” Noa muttered.

Agner’s mood simply would not be assailed. “Perhaps, but it’s more than anyone else has done. Plus, we get right in the process. It’s win-win! Ah, here we are.”

Noa looked up balefully at the miserable little storefront. It was remarkably nondescript, with vague signage that revealed little, if anything, about what the establishment offered its customers. The storefront window and the front door were each boarded over, and no light escaped from the interior of the ramshackle building. He sighed and followed Agner around the side of the building.

“I’ve heard tell that old man Salaim is getting quite loose in his old age. Word is that at last month’s high stakes table, he bet his own daughter’s hand at the table. Before that, his summer home in Halwa. My sources tell me he plans to offer up individual ships in his private fleet this night as collateral at the table. Imagine if we might relieve him of one in addition to gold and riches? We could sail the high seas, pillaging and plundering to our heart’s content. You’d be captain, of course, what with your great big brain. I’d be your lowly first mate, charming the crew and the local wenches alike. Tell me we wouldn’t be nigh unstoppable!”

Noa swallowed hard. “You’re right, of course. Anything to get away from this gods-forsaken city.”

Agner clapped him on the shoulder.

“That’s the spirit! Now, let’s get this over with.”

With that, Agner opened the squeaky door to the side of the building, touching either doorframe with his right and left hand, as was their custom, and stepped across the threshold into the darkness beyond. Noa copied him, reaching his right arm across his body to touch the left doorframe before repeating the reverse with his left arm. Then, he took a bracing breath and stepped into the darkness with a final, feeble utterance.

“Fuck.”