they got drinks in their hands and the room's a bust—
GOOD MUSIC -- REFRESHMENTS SERVED
The invitation in the shape of a playing card is rendered so artistically, a touch of old glamour here, a stroke of bold new money there—that for a moment Caine merely admires the feel of the card in his grasp, the grains of the paper, the artificially aged edges (or perhaps it was real—it didn't smell like tea, for one), the family crest heat-pressed into its back.
He does not often come across such fine artistry in the sand dunes of Solterra.
It reminds him, first achingly and then sharply painful, a viper sinking its fangs into him for his treachery, of Vectaeryn, and his room in the Selwyn manor, and the rolls of paper he had kept stacked beneath a glass paperweight to fold, two for every sleepless night, into cranes and bears and wolves and then an entire city, captured at a precise, thimble-sized scale.
He had kept his little city on his desk, and when it had outgrown that, had it spill across the black carpet until it climbed like ivy into his bed (that he so rarely slept in) and across his windowsill.
He wonders if it is still there.
The invitation had been left on the counter of Caine's favourite haunt, dropped, probably, from the pockets of a minor noble none of them had recognised. He'd paid the find no mind, sipping distractedly at his cup until it had been slid under his nose by Rudolph, one of the few spies he'd kept contact with after—everything.
They rubbed shoulders in the same leaky taverns, and for Caine that was enough to count as camaraderie.
Sometimes, when the mood struck him, Ru would toss a coin towards a particularly rowdy group of men (with women at their sides like feathered backdrops) and saunter towards them with a toast on his lips and malice seeded deep in his smile.
Caine joined Ru at his games because it amused him greatly, and because, as a former spy, there was no greater indulgence than a secret plied like spun sugar from drunken lips.
"This seems like the sort of thing you'd be good at," came Ru's chirpy voice at his ear. Pocketing a sigh, Caine held the card up to catch the filmy light.
"And why is that?" His cup, half emptied, clinked down on the grainy table. Various stains of various origins peppered across it like dapples; he'd given thought, once, to how quickly this whole place would burn down if one only put a match to alchohol-soaked wood, and his conclusion had been nearly sobering.
Slowly he arched a brow towards the spy to say and why not you?, though without the effort, and in return Rudolph swiped his glass over and emptied its contents down his throat.
"You're the only one of us pretty enough for it." The table exploded in a chorus of laughter. Caine moved a giggling girl's head from his shoulder and apologised with a smile that cut. "Bet you clean up well."
"You don't say," Caine drawled, pushing back the long, sleek lengths of his hair and frowning when he caught the smell of liquor tangled up in it. "I take it you won't be going." His gaze swept callously over the painted women—and men—with their heads tilted adoringly towards the spy draped in silks of red.
"Well, I'll think about it." Something to do, at least. He was losing his damned mind doing the same thing over and over again like his life ran on some sort of clockwork. Being drunk all the time, he thought, was rusting away its appeal.
He'd tossed his cloak over his shoulders without a goodbye and stepped back into shadow, and cold, and blessed emptiness.
Caine is not yet inside when he thinks he sees a flash of carmine red between the hedgerows, and stops to wonder why it is affecting him so.
A disgruntled noblemen jostles his shoulder and Caine wonders, this time sourly, why he is the one apologising. It seems like the sort of thing you'd be good at. Sometimes, Caine wants to sock Ru in the throat for the things he says. Mostly because, in some mutated way, they are always right.
He shakes his head before subjecting himself back to the pull of the crowd. He shows his invite at the door but the guard, dressed all in black, seems barely to care, grunting before waving him inside. Caine pockets the card, happy they hadn't taken it, and swivels left at the first bend he sees.
Isn't it some sort of irony, he thinks, as he cuts through the crowd nimbly—with the confidence of a sleepwalker in an endless dream—that it's taken me this long to attend a Solterran party? When he had been sent here in Isorath's wake. When attending parties was as much apart of his job description as keeping his blade edges sharp and gleaming on a diet of arterial blood.
There is red again at the edge of his vision, and this time Caine snaps his head around to follow after it.
He cannot shake the feeling that it is someone he knows, but they are but a dark head now bobbing in a blur of faces, swept along with as much ease as he cuts.
Caine swipes a wineglass off a passing tray—mostly for appearances—and scans the room again for red.
