2017-04-13: What's The Worst That Can Happen?

From Dream Chasers
Jump to navigation Jump to search
  • Cutscene: What's The Worst That Can Happen?
  • Cast:Noah Hawthorne
  • Where: Badlands - June City; University at Linga
  • Date: 13 April 2017
  • Summary: Noah Hawthorne finally gets his hands on something he's been looking for, but he isn't the only one who wants it. He comes up with a plan to smuggle it past people searching for it so that he can pick up the trail in eastern Ignas, but of course nothing is ever simple...



THE BADLANDS, APRIL 12TH, 499 PC

JUNE CITY -- HOTEL EMBARGO


--still exists, lost beneath the sand somewhere in eastern Ignas. There are several deviations in the text from proper syntax. Easily overlooked but probably not accidental -- will check ref.s for idioms next time I'm back in Dazil.

Don't think C. will grasp subtleties.


The sweltering air causes the ink on the journal page to dry almost as soon as it's laid, glistening trails curled into blocky, masculine penmanship swiftly dulling to matte. Sitting at a tiny, creaking desk in a chair inadequate to his stature, Noah Hawthorne pauses, fountain pen poised above the page. Hazel eyes flit from this latest of entries to the scuffed metal cylinder laid to the left of the journal, beside his left hand. They play across its grit-worn surface, trace the seam to one end where three hours ago he had ever-so-carefully breached a seal that had been, as far as he knows, intact for over a millennia. The sight breaks him open all over again, releasing an echo of the potent things he'd felt when his fingers had found and closed over the firm reality of the scroll case in the darkness of the pre-dawn -- paradoxical, contradictory things. The weightless, breathless, silver-singing giddiness of euphoria and the star-dense, heavy gravity of hard-won triumph, like an iron fist in his gut. Even as a mere echo it slips its fingers into the gaps between his ribs and tugs hard enough to catch his breath in his chest with a vise-tight tremble.

In spite of the miserable heat, the sweat, the grime, the bone-deep aches of hard travel...he allows himself to float a smile on those updrafts of elated victory. It's harder and whiter and more fiercely brilliant even than the late-afternoon Badlands sun, sharper than the words he slashes into the page, an irrepressible celebration that consumes what blank space remains beside a delicately rendered line sketch of a half-buried ruin, far more elegant in execution than the handwriting that surrounds it:


NO CONTEST.


He closes the journal, binds it with leather ties, and is just deciding to wait out the death throes of the sun by sprawling half-clad with his good mood on the lumpy excuse for a cot with a glass of something strong for company...when there's a knock on the door.

He knows it's bad news before he opens it. Has to be: narrative logic dictates that it must.

Journal and scroll case are slid silently into the rucksack to one side of the desk. As he rises from the rickety chair his fingers slide over the worn grip of one of the peculiar ARMs slung on a pair of belts low at either hip. He turns one shoulder toward the place the door meets the frame, one hand on the handle, lips close to the seam. In spite of the faint tension braided along the span of a broad upper back in silhouette, his tone is light, wry: "I'm pretty sure I asked to be left alone, so if this isn't complimentary food or complementary company -- which had also better be complimentary -- then I'm not biting either way."

He doesn't like the silence that follows. Eventually, though, a response: a rustling whisper at his feet. He drops his gaze, finds a folded piece of paper. One of his boots drags it away from the door.

Five minutes later he's pulling shirts and kit on, rucksack in the desk chair, packed and ready to go. Three days sooner than he'd paid for.

The unfolded note on the desk reads: cavanaugh knows


-*-


ONE HOUR LATER:


Greta Kentwiller's workshop smells like turpentine, paint, unfired glazes, varnish, ink, stone- and sawdust -- all of the leavings of any valuable creative process. Restorer by trade, forger by inclination -- the latter talent known only to a privileged few, of which Noah Hawthorne happens to be one for reasons beyond the scope of this retelling -- she keeps a low professional profile for a woman distinctly ungifted in the department of low profiles, generally speaking. Busty, smart-mouthed, unrepentantly lecherous, eccentric, fearless, and aging into her dotage in the most aggressively reluctant fashion possible, time has yet to entirely blanch the fiery red hair she used to have, though there are bold streaks of white and grey from either of her temples that give her the long-distance appearance of being some sort of pale bandit when her goggles are off, untanned skin blending seamlessly in parallel.

She's squinting at him, expression sour. "A shoddy one," she says.

"Not too shoddy. Just...shoddy enough."

"Still shoddy though."

"Well..." Noah lifts, splays his hands, frustrated. "Yeah. If it's too good, somebody'll buy it. Sort of defeats the purpose, Gee."

"I don't think you get what you're askin' me to do."

He exchanges frustration for solicitous understanding. "I do, and I wouldn't if I had any choice. But it's going to be a hell of a long way from here. Even if they catch on that it's a fake, there's no way they can trace it back to you." When she continues to look unconvinced, he leans forward, bracing his hands on the table, atop which rests the metal cylinder amidst countless jars of brushes, pencils, chisels, charcoal. "Think about it, Gee: there are a lot of people who can fake a relic well enough to get somebody to buy the thing, but how many could fake something well enough to get it into an exhibition...but stop just shy of whatever a real connoisseur would need to see to pull the trigger on a big buy? That's a pretty narrow margin of error, innit?" One of his brows creeps slowly upward. The corner of his mouth follows in tandem. "But, I mean...if you're not up to the challenge, you could always recommend someo-- OW!"

The pencil tin she whipped at his head bounces off along the stone floor behind him, rattling noisily. "I don't need you to raspberry my knickers, Hawthorne, I'm not an idiot. At least be less obvious about it," she grouses, and Noah gives her his best look of apology, but he doesn't feel an ounce of it. The seed planted, he can see it take root. It doesn't matter that they both know he was just baiting her pride -- all that matters is that he knew it would work whether she realized it or not. Knowing this, her lips twist in irritation. "Get out of my shop," she mutters, and spins around in her chair to get back to what he'd interrupted her doing when he came in.

And then, more quietly: "Come back and get it tomorrow."

"You're the best, Gee. And, have I ever told you how very fetching you look in that particular shade of--"

The sound of another rattling pencil case sends him scooting through the door in a hurry, but he laughs as he goes.


-*-


EASTERN IGNAS, APRIL 13, 499 PC

UNIVERSITY OF LINGA


"It's in a what?" Beneath the luxurious moustache and short-trimmed silver beard, Ambrose Montagu gawps like a fish out of water.

"You heard me," says Noah.

The professor pulls a linen pocket square out of his breast pocket and dabs at his crown. "Oh for pity's sake, my boy." Primly offended.

"Look, it wasn't my idea. It -- the person who did the work said it was the easiest shape for the job, alright? And it took some convincing to get them on board with doing it at all, so I wasn't about to argue, Brose."

Montagu sinks down into his stuffed leather wingback chair with a sigh, resting his cane between his knees. They're in his cool, shadowy office, Noah with his backside half-propped on the professor's desk, for which he'd gotten a stern look but no reprimand, and thus deigned not to remove himself. He watches Montagu struggle to accept these small details. "And they...they accepted it?"

"I had my go-between sell the jury for the show some story about it being the property of a legendary courtesan over a thousand years ago. I don't even know if they believed it. Maybe they just wanted to put something salacious on the bid list." A phantom smile haunts his mouth. "Or maybe the guy who owns the boat isn't into history and just wants a piece of the Exhibition runoff gella."

"Mm. Yes. Likely. It is a casino, after all."

"What do you know about him?"

"Carillo?" Montagu arched one bushy brow. "Nothing."

"Well, it doesn't matter. All that mattered was making the juried list."

Montagu adjusts the placement of his bifocals on his nose and studies the younger man in his office with bright blue eyes. "And your pursuers?" He pitches his voice down to a rough whisper: "Cavanaugh's people?"

"Oh, they were there. Without the tip-off we'd have lost it. They went through everybody's bags. Everything -- the whole train." Noah's frown is subtle. "He's throwing a lot of gella at this."

Silence reigns for some moments.

"Noah," Ambrose says eventually, a word clothed in rare tenderness. It's enough to snap Noah's eyes up from the way he's walking a fossil over his fingers, flipping the smooth, flat, dark stone with its skeletal contents through his knuckles. He folds it into his hand and arches a brow.

"Are you quite sure..." Ambrose hesitates, then forges onward. "Are you quite sure you want to continue pushing forward with all of it? First Lahan, then Port Timmery, now...now this? With these--" He stops speaking abruptly, provoked by something in the young man's face. Resignation replaces concern, though there's no surprise there. He folds his hands over his cane and sighs, nodding. "Very well. We'll set out tomorrow. I'll have Mitnick secure us passage and we'll..." His face folds around comical distaste. "We'll go and get your objet d'art."

Noah's expression shifts, lays claim to a dazzler of a smile. "Ah, don't look so down in the dumps about it, Brose. A nice boat full of lovely ladies, a lot of booze, a poker tournament to make some gella on the side, and an artifact to pick up that nobody in their right minds aside from us could possibly want. What's the worst that can happen?"