Outsiders 22.1

The Orc from the Poster, Part 1

No matter what else Arden ever did or said, List would always be grateful to him for helping exploring her powers. Without it, she might never have figured out the trick to disguising herself. And she didn't know how she would do without the freedom that ability gave her.

The others had to limit their movements in public, or risk being spotted by someone willing to sell them out to the Chosen. But List could come and go as she pleased, one more face seamlessly blending into the crowd. She was free to walk, shop, drink, dance, whatever she wanted, as whoever she wanted. In the months since they'd been back in Shadefall, she'd been an heiress from Lochmire Keep passing through town on business for her family, an off-duty soldier killing time between tours, a seamstress's apprentice with little talent and less money. A dozen names, a dozen stories, a dozen nights without consequences.

For that alone, she owed Arden her thanks, even if he could still be insufferably stiff. He'd gotten worse since José had been pulled out on fears of discovery, sharing as he did in Samira's paranoia. List understood what they were worried about in theory, but in practice, they hadn't seen so much as a single patrol's worth of the Chosen's forces anywhere near Shadefall in weeks.

At least, they hadn't, until List rounded a corner, and saw two elites backed by a dozen urks in the town square.

A spike of panic shot through List, and on pure reflex, she altered the magic of her disguise. She went from looking like someone else to looking like she wasn't there at all in a blink, without thinking. It had been instinct, same as the ones that always guided her in a fight. She'd wanted to not be seen, and her magic obeyed. Or rather, it was like she obeyed it, subconsciously following instructions buried in the power itself. 

That was just as unsettling as always, but at the moment, it was hard to not be grateful.

Next to her, a scraggly man blinked, staring at where he'd seen her a moment before, and then at the bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag in his hands. He shook his head, corked his bottle, and toddled off to find somewhere to sober up.

Maybe turning invisible in the middle of the street wasn't the most subtle move she could have made. But at least neither of the elites had seen it.

They had their backs to her, concentrated as they were with tearing down several older pieces of paper from a bulletin board, and nailing on a new one. The townsfolk were giving them a wide berth, but not quite leaving. List found herself in the same position.

The smart move was to leave. The elites hadn't seen her, and someone needed to warn the others if they didn't already know. But curiosity rooted her in place. What were they doing here, after so long away? If they knew their least favorite outsiders were here, List would have expected a lot more soldiers, and probably someone like Agnizzar.

Hesitantly, she crept forward, feeling her heart leap for a moment when she left the safety of the crowds and stepped into the open. She felt exposed, but the invisibility did its job. No one looked her way, and when a few urks swept their gazes absently over the crowd, they glanced right past her. She was going to have fun with this later, she decided.

Finally, she got close enough to see the elites just finishing hanging up a wanted poster. List had seen—and torn down—plenty of the things, so she recognized them. Usually they were of her, or the others. But she didn't recognize the face on this one.

From the look of the drawing, it was an orcish man, maybe even full-blooded, though the Chosen's wanted posters always did exaggerate any inhuman features in the subject—List's made her look like a full-blown demon. The reward for him was impressive, and once she saw it, List had to know what this lone orc had done to piss off Zaman nearly as much as the rest of them had.

When she read a description of it, she had to suppress the urge to whistle. He was wanted for killing urks. That wasn't impressive by itself, but the number was.

He had killed a lot of urks.

In the hideout, Valerie stared at Kaleb over a hand of cards, reading him and the table both. Six rounds into a game of succession, and this was the closest to a winning position Kaleb had managed to find himself in. With three masons in play, and Valerie down to only an assassin, he was a round, maybe two, from a wall victory.

He'd ended his last turn by placing a facedown card, which in theory posed a problem for Valerie. She'd made her assassin her win condition, which meant all she had to do now was kill Kaleb's exposed regent. If the facedown card was a guard, her assassin was nullified, and Valerie lost. She could spend a turn removing the facedown, but that might give Kaleb all the time he needed to win. And it might not be a guard at all.

Valerie met her friend's eyes. Off in the corner, Xigbar shook his head. Kaleb stared back at her, trying not to blink. Very obviously trying not to blink.

"Assassin takes regent," she said, pushing her assassin forward.

"Are you sure about that?" Kaleb asked.

She hadn't taken her hand off the card. She could still change her mind, play safe, disarm the trap. Give Kaleb another turn.

List barged into the room, slamming down a piece of paper on top of their game and scattering the cards. "Look at this!"

"List," Valerie said, deadpan. "How was your day? Ours was fine, thank you for asking. We were just playing cards."

"Eh, was a boring game anyway," Xigbar said.

"That's great, whatever, look." List tapped the paper she'd thrown down more emphatically.

"A wanted poster?" Kaleb asked.

"There were a couple of elites putting these up all over town. He's called Grognak Urk-Slayer. Urk. Slayer. He's just been roaming the province, hitting the Chosen's army anywhere he finds them. He's killed hundreds of the fuckers. By himself."

List was beaming, but Valerie found it hard to summon enthusiasm about what sounded like senseless slaughter. "That's…impressive, I guess. But why are you so excited about it?" 

List was momentarily baffled. "Because he's a badass who clearly hates the Chosen. We should find this orc and recruit him."

"What's this about recruitment?"

Arden strode into the room in what counted for him as relaxed dress; he'd discarded his cane, coat, and hat, but still wore a neat white shirt, ascot tie, and vest. Valerie wasn't sure she'd ever seen him actually dressed casually.

"Dr. Siren." Valerie forced a smile onto her face in greeting. Outside of training, he'd been largely absent of late. With them all more or less rendered inactive by José's benching, he'd all but vanished from daily interactions with them, spending most of his time discussing strategy with Samira or spending late evenings with Egon. In fact, Valerie would have expected him to be with one of them now.

For once, his lack of attention suited Valerie, since she was going behind his back to experiment with Absence. But a part of her had still missed him. Even felt slightly hurt that he wasn't paying closer attention to her.

"Valerie." Arden returned her greeting with a nod before glancing down at the wanted poster on the table. "Found another stray, have we?"

Everyone looked to List, whose tail sagged behind her.

"Well, I haven't found him exactly, but—well, just look at him! Look at what he's done, on his own. Imagine having someone like this backing us up against Zaman. He'd be like our own Agnizzar."

"We don't know anything about him other than that he's killed a lot of urks," Valerie said. "He could be a murderer, or devil-worshipper, or . . . child . . . murderer."

"You said murderer twice," Kaleb pointed out.

"I know. I didn't want to say what actually came to my head."

Arden remained silent as he examined the wanted poster, stroking his chin. "The enemy of my enemy," he said with the air of someone quoting. "Shen and I are in agreement that we need every advantage we can get against Zaman. We've had our own thoughts on possibilities, but this is an intriguing possibility. Rather than focus our efforts on exploiting the enemy, we could seek out allies."

The Waymire sisters both blinked, taking a moment to process that Arden was on List's side. 

"Y—yeah," List agreed when she finally caught up. "Exactly that. That was my plan. Allies."

Arden rolled the paper up. "I'm going to present this to Shen. If she agrees, we should start our search soon if we're to find this gentleman before Zaman."

And with that, he was off. Valerie stared in the direction he'd gone, slightly dumbstruck. The last time Arden had agreed with a plan of List's, they'd burned down a building. This building, in point of fact.

She had to hope this time, things would end less destructively.