The Wasting

Chapter 3: Denigan

Cenid was as good a place as any other that Denigan had lived in. The Guild here was decent, though truth be told, he hadn't been keeping up with guild business like he should have been. He owed Gunther a bit of money and was purposefully avoiding the man until he could deliver. Paying him off would free up Denigan to leave the city, and he almost had enough. He just needed one sorry sap with a good purse, and he'd be set.

Currently, he was sitting in a tea house across from a woman with the type of dress that showed she was rich enough to never need to move much. The ruffles certainly wouldn't let her do any sort of work, labor or otherwise. Her face was free from any binding marks, just as Denigan didn't have the etchings of marriage on his own. This meant he wouldn't have to worry about jealous husbands; though, possibly angry parents when a chunk of their fortune was lost by their youngest child.

He'd read that off of her the moment they'd locked eyes. While she held herself as any noble would, a youngest child from a brood of many had an air of 'trying too hard' which she exuded with each too-clearly precise step. Denigan knew how to play to that. Pretend at first not to notice them, a look of passing, and then a look of awe when they put themselves in your path directly. He'd gotten her in moments, and now here they sat, amidst a dance Denigan knew well.

"How long have you been in Cenid?" Denigan asked, pouring more tea in Aliyah's cup.

She fanned herself, batting her eyes over the top of the lace. He may have let on that his pocket was much deeper than it was, and that his esteem rested well outside the bounds of the thieves' guild, the first step in a complicated dance.

"Oh, nearly a month now. I just can't seem to get an audience with Dorne Abernathy." She wasn't likely to. The woman was the stubbornest high-bred in the city. "I'd like to establish a new trade line with her." She fanned herself again, tossing her big eyes at Denigan as though that in itself would get him to give up the secret to accessing the Dorne.

"New trade?" Denigan noted the woman was rather pretty with short, tightly coiled black hair and a deep black skin which shone like ebony in the sunlight that poured through the window next to them. She could have been sculpted from stone. "I happen to be in trading myself. Cattle, nothing so fancy a woman of your esteem would find interest in. But it does seem new curiosities are popping up all over town."

Aliyah grinned and flipped her gloved hand at him dismissively; a dip in the tango. "Cattle bring in a respectable profit, Darne Lourel. But yes, the Feverbind has created new..." She rolled her eyes to the ceiling seeking the right wording. "Opportunities with products."

Denigan took the time to smile and then sip his tea. The whole room smelled oppressively of lavender and roses, making his stomach churn. "We do not snub our noses here over resource acquisition. Cenid is far out from the world, and we couldn't possibly afford to be picky."

"You do live quite close to the wilds. Have you ever been attacked by the wildmen of Anishinabek Forest?" She sat taller, fanned herself faster. "We hear such stories!"

Denigan laughed, a faked noise in his own ears. "No, nothing so awful as that. The people of Anishinabek are a myth. We did have a pack of wolves hunting along the edges of the cattle fields, though."

"Wolves? My goodness, that must have been frightening. We don't have such beasts back at Magus City, not so close to the ocean."

"It must be beautiful there." And one, two, three. One, two, three. Careful with each step. Flattering a home was nearly as good as flattering a self, especially when home was the capital.

"Oh, it is!" She turned her face dramatically towards the window and looked out with fluttering eyes as though she were remembering. "Such blues and greens you've never seen. You should visit there someday. I'm sure my father would welcome you to our estate."