[Exalted 3e] Till the Score is Paid

[Guancyto]

"Not for the whole treasure of your fathers,
all you enjoy, lands, flocks, or any gold
put up by others, would I hold my hand.
There will be killing till the score is paid.
You forced yourselves upon this house. Fight your way out,
or run for it, if you think you’ll escape death.
I doubt one man of you skins by."

...

It was not to be an easy task, but her old life had not been easy; why should this one be different? A new lease on life had been granted to one girl of An-Teng, a new life that had chafed at her skin and haunted her dreams. The sun was too bright, the moon too intrusive, the wind's whispers too keen and too close to understandable. She was stronger, faster, leaner than she had ever been, but she was never welcome.

The raven had found her near a shrine of the Pale Mistress, and spoke with words as a man's, a raw, creaking speech. She had been chosen in a dangerous place for one of her kind, this city of the shore-lands, and she would have to rely on her wits and cunning to survive to reach sanctuary. But she would not lack for ways to advantage herself; in a library belonging to one of the Dragons, there was a book whose value was unknown to its master. A book that remembered what had been wrought upon it, a shaped memory that her lord possessed, and more importantly, a memory that could make itself known upon the real in turn. If she could obtain it, she could communicate with the knight he was sending on wings of night to safeguard her true.

If not, or if she decided that the guards and servants and chance of having to deal with a Dragon was more than she wished to deal with, her passage would become more complicated, but such was the way of things, was it not?

...

It was not particularly unusual for the Father Hung Upon the Tree to meet with his knights in one of his libraries, whether it was to consult over maps and sea-charts or to detail an instructive point of ancient lore that was to be relevant to their endeavors. He had several in his fortress jutting out of the dark and stormy island on which he made his abode; Remembrance of Uncounted Sorrows had been called to one of the smaller and dustier ones, which also meant that access to it was more exclusive.

Of course, on her way, Remembrance of Uncounted Sorrows had to pass through the grand feast-hall, at which the Father's warriors were at their mix of feasting and fighting; shades from a hundred years' past and a thousand, the finest of soldiers plucked from a hundred battlefields, laughing and clashing and trying to one-up each other in braggadocio and courage. The acoustics in the hundred-foot-high hall turned cacophony into clarity; if she cared to listen she could pick out a dozen conversations, and the green pyreflame hearth blazed and would never go out.

Only one of the Father's deathknights was in attendance, a small girl with amber eyes and light hair with a large tome propped up by what should have been her meal. Will-o'-the-Wisp didn't look much older than ten - the story (if Rem had taken the time to learn it) was that she had been a refugee from a much more distant lord, a 'Dowager' of some sort, and that she might not stay. She was quiet, not well-spoken and prickly when pressed, but her old Lord had trained her to be a genius at the forge. Her ghostly minder whispered in her ear, encouraging her to eat, but amid the revels and feasting she was an island of stillness, her only motion to turn another page.

[Ifni]

Remembrance grins as she strides through the feast-hall, enjoying the clangor and the rowdy celebration; it reminds her of nights in Southern ports when they came in at the end of a season of campaigning, with coin to spend and victories to celebrate and fallen friends to remember. She waves friendly greeting across the hall to some of her own guard - although the purpose in her step tells them not to expect her at their end of the table tonight.

She pauses as she approaches Will-o'-the-Wisp, eyeing the tome with interest. The Lap peasant girl had not been taught much more of reading and writing than her own name, and the legionnaire had learned only a little more, but Remembrance's time in the Father's libraries has made her a fairly fluent (if slow) reader.

(It has also taught her that some books are best approached with caution.)

"Evening, Will-o'-the-Wisp," she offers quietly, smiling at the child. The other deathknight may bristle at her, but Remembrance isn't particularly worried by that. If Wisp is here of her own will, not by assignment, it suggests whatever she's reading doesn't particularly require silence and solitude. "I'm going to the windward library in the third spiral; want me to pick up anything for you?" She eyes the girl's plate. "Also, if you're not going to eat that, I bet one of the soldiers will take it off your hands."

[Guancyto]

Rem's own guards are engaged in an arm-wrestling contest with an eight-foot-tall giant of a man; three of them are trying at once and he's still winning. Waving hello to Rem breaks their concentration, and they all go flying in a heap. The giant only chuckles good-naturedly at them. "Try again any time!" They discuss among themselves how they're going to manage four.

Quietly and politely seems to be the best way to approach, since Will-o'-the-Wisp only gives a brief flash of annoyance. Practically ceremonial, even.

"I'm not allowed to leave until I've eaten," she says by way of response. A stray knife of black iron from a competition a table over buries itself in her roast; she calmly plucks it out and sets to shaping the iron with one hand while they talk, bending and stretching the metal as though it were taffy.

"Mistress," her ghostly minder, the shade of a woman with broad shoulders and a stout constitution, says insistently, "you are of course free to do as you like, I only made the suggestion that you should keep your strength up, it would be terrible if you were to neglect your-"

"I'm not allowed to leave until I've eaten," Will repeats with a knowing little nod at Rem, as though she's cracked the code adults use. "windward in the third spiral... get me the iron-bound one that makes you start to bleed out your ears if you look too long." She turns her head and actually looks at Rem as though seeing her for the first time, "wait no, you're like me, aren't you? It wouldn't do that, so you couldn't tell. Um, about this big," she puts down the now-thoroughly-misshapen knife and gestures with her hands to indicate about the size of her head, "funny symbols on the front that look sort of like a lizard's having a fight with a moth."

[The_Snark]

There was much about this new life that was strange to a servant-caste woman of the Shore Lands -

No, not servant-caste, she reminds herself. She is orphan and outcast now, one of the misbegotten. Not that anyone save herself knows, and she has decided she doesn't care.

But we were speaking of the strangeness. Voices in the darkness. Black birds that speak like men. The uneasy sense that the world itself stirs beneath her feet, restless; that the sun and the moon are watching her. It's like she's stepped into an old fable, and not one of the nice ones. She was no priest; like anyone sensible, she stays away from such things. Stayed away, past tense. And now a magic book, which will - by some means the bird could not or would not make clear to her - allow her to speak with the spirit lord to whom she is now pledged.

Very well. She knows little of books and magics, but slipping into a household unseen, that she knows like the back of her hand. First step: circle the estate and see how it is protected. Find some excuse to linger nearby: a street-sweeper's broom or barrow, a young man amiable to a little dallying, a pair of water buckets. Be someone the great and powerful will not see, someone that their servants see every day. And watch. Are there guards? Where? How many? Do they look bored? How many doors, and where? Are there walls or windows which might permit passage?

Spoiler

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I'm not sure what sort of roll casing the joint calls for, if any, but some combination of Wits/Perception and Investigation/Larceny seems about right, and luckily the numbers come out the same no matter what Attribute/Ability combination we use! Spending the full 7m on an Excellency, we're in no rush here.

(14d10)[2][9][1][5][1][6][8][3][6][9][3][7][8][4](72)
Stunt: (2d10)[5][6](11)

[Ifni]

Rem nods agreeably. "All right, I'll take a look." She waves at the misshapen knife. "Could you make that into a device to turn pages for you, or something? That way you could eat without having to stop reading. Or do you just dislike the food?"

She nods courteously at the ghostly minder. "I mean, your attendant isn't wrong - I understand not wanting to stop doing what you're doing just in order to eat, but speaking from experience, it tends to backfire eventually." She grins, a little wistfully. "Although... hmm, maybe that's not true after you die the first time? Do you know?"

[Guancyto]

"That's a good question!" Will-o'-the-Wisp looks intrigued by the idea, turning away from her book, "I don't know. She said... let me see if I know the whole thing. 'In Heaven it is written the names of all who live and all who will die.'" She nods, like that's right, "and then she threw that name, the name of the person that she killed, into a well, and said endings and time and sorrows couldn't hurt me any more, that I'd never die or get old or... there's a third thing but it's spirit-speak and I don't really know what it meant. Kind of like soul-sick, or something?"

The girl's stomach growls as if on cue, and she scowls a little, "I guess it doesn't mean hungry. I'll, um, I'll think about it."

...

Some time as a street-sweeper and later a water-carrier and the orphan had a thorough survey of the place. The mansion had narrow ledges along the second story; not nearly wide enough for a full-grown man to keep his footing on, but perhaps one as light as her would have better luck, but even so jutting metal spikes would make movement along them perilous. Windows were several but looked sturdy, and none looked into a library. One did look into a study on the top floor, but it was quite an exposed position.

Two sets of guards. Local men, about a dozen all told, then four or five (depending on whether the one was a guard or just an ex-military retainer) that looked like they were from the Isle. Neither looked like they were going hungry; the foreigners looked more alert than the locals.

Four doors; front, large and ostentatious; back, quiet, for deliveries; a second-floor terrace overlooking the grounds; a fourth with no discernable purpose.

A further complication; another persistent street-sweeper throughout the day, not quite so unobtrusive as the orphan but lingering in the same way. A Tengese girl with dark hair and purple eyes. Another person casing the mansion, or a lookout?

[Ifni]

"Do that," Remembrance grins. "The food here's actually not bad once you get used to it. Try the sea-serpent steak. I should be going, but I'll look for that book."

She nods pleasantly to the girl and her ghostly guardian, and continues on through the feast-hall and out the arch on the far side, quickly leaving the firelight and festivities behind.

The corridors in this part of the Deathlord's fortress are dim and quiet, rarely frequented by his soldiers, although no dust gathers on the stone, and there is a faint whispering in the air, like wind over raitons' wings. The pyreflame sconces that burn on the walls shed a pale green light; closer to the libraries, where no open flame can be permitted, they are shielded by nets of metal, or blown bubbles of glass, or stranger cages still.

Remembrance's boots clatter on the stone floor, a sharp intrusion of sound and life into the stillness. She walks briskly toward the library, taking what she deems the most direct route. She has spent long enough in these halls to know their most common traps for the unwary, and the needed passwords and rituals to enter the secured areas. She remains alert for surprises, though - and secretly, half-hopes for them; the flickering sense of ever-present danger adds a certain pleasant spice to her second life, a welcome thrill along her nerves.

[The_Snark]

She can't place exactly what the other girl is doing there, but she doesn't need to. Whether she proves obstacle or competition, the other watcher is a complication. Not good. The enemy of your enemy can prove, on rare occasions, to be your friend; but in this line of work, the risks of failure are simply too great to take a chance like that. Best to treat the other as a disguised guard until she knows different.

The ledges look promising. Dangerous, to be sure - exposed, no place to run - but approached under cover of night, with careful attention given to which guards looked inwards as well as out, it might offer a better look at the inside. Even an entrance, if she can reach that open-air terrace without being spotted. If the guards prove too attentive to risk… well, she can arrange for a hole in the night watch, though that carries its own dangers. She'd have to hurry; it isn't safe to assume a body (or a missing guard) will escape notice long. And she still hasn't worked out where in the estate this library was, much less the specific book she was searching for. No, this isn't a job to rush.

Subterfuge is an option; if the lord keeps some of his servants quartered outside the manor, if they are numerous enough that a face could go unrecognized… But that, too, is better carried out at night. The answer is clear: wait. Watch for opportunity. Patience is precious beyond measure when a few hours’ delay can make the difference between life and death.

It is the work of a moment to find a begging bowl and a ragged cloak, settling herself on the street a ways down from the estate. One eye on the manor, searching for signs of danger or vulnerability. One eye on the streets, in case some passing princeling decides to take insult at the sight of a ragged beggar in this part of town. (Or in case the local beggars object to competition. It's happened to her before, and if anything is more dangerous.)

Spoiler: OOC

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Mmf. Not especially happy with this, as it's not really moving anything along, but it's been long enough that I figured I'd better post what I have.