Loose Tongues
Morning dawned, bright and full of sunshine. Ysmine awoke far later than she had intended, a curse sprouting from her tongue as she sat straight up in bed. Her eyes, bleary from sleep and too much wine, refused to focus, lending a mystical haze to the filtered sunlight in her room.
As the full events of the night before came rushing to her mind, she groaned and buried her face in her hands.
She was fairly certain it was the wine. She didn’t drink anymore, hadn’t for years actually, finding that it interfered with her ability to keep her hands steady at work. But on the eve of her supposed departure, she found herself at the bar, drinking a glass of wine, and then another, and then...
Shit.
All it took was a sympathetic ear. The bartender, the drink, and a few questions, and she had told all. The theft of her precious memories...the only real things of value she had left from her family. The deal she had struck to retrieve them, and the ever-shifting demands of those behind the deal to keep her leash tight.
“You talk in your sleep, you know.”
Ysmine shrieked and pulled the sheets up to her neck, scooting back against the headboard of her bed.
A chuckle drifted across the shafts of light that streamed through her windows. “You seem to have a lot of problems with talking.” A shadow detached itself from the wall by her bedroom door, turning into a slim Sin’dorei male. Blonde hair was tied severely at the nape of his neck, and his eyes, burning a cold green light burned accusations into her. He was cleaning....is that blood?...off a dagger. “Some of which I have solved for you. I’m sorry, they got to your bartender friend first. I had to make a choice.”
Ysmine’s eyes followed his gaze, ending at a pile of something at the foot of her bed. Her hand clapped over her mouth as he nudged the pile, turning it over to reveal a dead goblin. That goblin. She forced the vomit that threatened to rise to stay down. She only half registered that her saviour? was still talking.
“...can’t stay here, you know. They’ll send more. Plus it will be hard to explain why there’s a dead bod--”
“Why?”
“Hmm? Oh, well, I imagine your employers weren’t too happy about their dealings being revealed and--”
“I mean, why did you help? Who are you?”
“I am no one you need to fear. For now, consider me the enemy of your enemy. And now, you need to leave.”
“Wh--”
He closed the distance between them, resting a fist on the bed next to her, his face a breath away from her own. “Shut. Up. And. Listen. They will not stop coming for you. They are powerful and have connections, yes. So you need to disappear. I will see you to a ship on the harbor and give you a destination and a name. After that, you are on your own. You can curl up somewhere and wait for death to come to you, or you can go make much more powerful allies.”
He paused as he drew back, fetching her already packed satchel from the floor and tossing it on the foot of her bed.
“Get dressed.” A beat. “You are a jewelcrafter, yes?”
“Apprentice jewelcrafter.”
He grunted. “It’ll do. Use it. If you play your cards right, they won’t kill you as soon as you set foot on the dock.”