Toll Master Who: Svathe and Tayne When: Anesus 4, 8:30 AM Where: Basement base of missing staircase
Despite the stairs going the way of the ancestors, despite the fact that Svathe had found himself trapped in the grim-smelling basement on his only day off of the week, despite that the windows hadn't yet disappeared and he had been sorely tempted to pay clandestine visits to the more interesting members of the compound (though he dared not, not when Cratch was sulking and Tabrika was in thorough need of a careful watching)... despite all of this, the Lykos was feeling all but on top of the world.
Last night's hunt had been a success after all of the trouble; Deer had led his pack on a merry fucking chase and had then paid through the nose with the young, healthy buck that they'd felled. Before the pack had set out carving up the carcass to cart back to the castle for preservation, Svathe had had his share of the delicacies. He'd slept so soundly in the nice, meaty stench of his den and pack that he had only woken when the commotion of the missing stairs reached back into his hall.
Of course, it hadn't taken long to figure out what to do. Svathe had been dealing with these shitty little tricks that he didn't really have to think too hard about how to solve the puzzle of the missing stairs. For now, anyways. At this very moment, a stacked pile of barrels spanned from the base of the rock wall up a good bodies height and a half. Certainly, the stack wasn't the most sturdy construction in the world, but it had served enough to allow its climbers to leap and reach the lip of the main floor, and to hoist themselves up if they had it in them.
And of course they had a spotter for the times that they were unable to get up by themselves, for Svathe was guarding the barrels and demanding a toll. He had done the muscle work mostly by himself, had rolled the barrels out from the cellar, had put them up. It was only fair, right? Until someone was going to oust him from his place, he was going to take advantage of this particular challenge.
It helped that he could sip from the flask strapped over his shoulder whenever he liked. Those barrels weren't just good for stacking. Perhaps that was part of the reason that he was feeling so particularly generous this morning...
After having six or seven people come banging on his door, Tayne had finally given in and gotten up to see what the fuss was about.
A lack of staircases, that's what the fuss had been about. And for the past hour, he had been busy setting up, and helping other people set up, the means to get from the second floor to the ground floor. Someone had kindly set a spell to at least warn people, so no one went plummeting two stories down to their probable deaths, but that didn't help the people who wanted down.
So with the help of a few other upper-dwellers, he'd set up a rope to climb down, thickly knotted at regular intervals to help people who didn't quite have the strength to climb up without them. Finding something to anchor it had been a pain, though, and had actually required the most thought and effort. Some kind mage had, with his offered energy, wound up simply sinking it into the stone floor. It wasn't going anywhere unless someone cut it.
Tayne was the first one down, the helpful mage ready to climb down behind him so they could affix the bottom and investigate the drop to the basement.
And that was when he noticed that someone had come up with an idea for getting up, as well. "Very clever, Svathe," Tayne commented, a little grudgingly, as he peered down at the Lykos. "I'm a little surprised you bothered, but that's very clever." He wasn't aware, yet, that the man was charging a toll.
The Lykos gestured up to Tayne with the sealed wine flask, a feral grin crossing his heavily stubbled face. "Pit-watcher's duty, Master," he drawled, quite aware of Tayne's new position as compound leader, quite willing to tease him for it. Sarcasm wasn't just for teens! "Who else do you expect to get off his ass, Avery? Zalarons wouldn't know an honest day's work if it stuffed its nose up their ass, now, would they?" He set the flask atop one of the barrels, crossing his arms over his bare chest. "You looking for a fight or are you planning on admiring my handiwork? It's not free, you'll find."
The trouble with Svathe was that while he wasn't certain of Tayne's... particular predilections, he had his suspicions. The human was easy enough to rile up that Svathe liked to keep him on edge whenever he got a chance to.
"Svathe," Tayne said, tone halfway between exasperation and weariness, "it's not free?" Did that mean what he thought it meant? Was Svathe charging some kind of fee for using his little stack of wine barrels to get up and down the floors? What in the world was he charging, chores? Food? Center take the beast.... "You can't do that," he sighed. "The stairs weren't yours to claim, and neither is this."
Unfortunately, Tayne did find the Lykos male attractive, to his great chagrin and discomfort. He couldn't stand him, personally, all the sarcasm and the brutality and the dominance that turned into arrogance long ago, but at least he was a fine-looking bastard. He generally tried to keep his interactions with Svathe limited.
The Lykos quirked a brow, unimpressed with Tayne's reaction. "And why not? If I didn't do this, people'd be scratching their heads and bawling about being trapped. I'm simply taking payment for services rendered." He knew that, as compound administrator, Tayne held a different kind of power than what he wielded in the years past. Svathe wasn't entirely sure where he stood with the human now, though he was confident that if it came to a physical fight, he could hold his own. Tayne might have Gochin's backup (how the Lykos submitted to a human, Svathe couldn't understand) but there were no guardsmages within the compound this year, and nobody was going to exile the dark-furred Lykos from the castle. He'd never submit to that sort of treatment again.
Svathe didn't expect grievances to escalate to that level, though it was always a worry at the back of his mind. Humans responded better to reason than to hierarchy, so he would play that hand as far as Tayne would let him.
"Actually, if you hadn't done that, someone else would have figured out something else," Tayne pointed out. "Such as, for example, what we just finished for the second floor." He dangled the climbing rope over the pit that used to be the stairs down, and smiled. "If you don't want your hard work being ex-- going unrewarded--" He gave up on "exploited" almost before he started it. "--you are certainly free to go put the barrels back where they came from, and let someone more generous handle the problem of people going from floor to floor."
Tayne was going for the reasoning arguments, as well, but he was already half-expecting he'd have to actually challenge the Lykos to get him to back down. Svathe didn't like being crossed, that much he knew, but Tayne couldn't back down. What he was doing wasn't fair-- and who knew what the brute would be charging, anyway? And if he didn't discriminate against different people? Vrykolas, for example? Or even humans. Or just plain people he didn't like. No, Tayne couldn't let Svathe keep it up.
"Very fucking fancy," Svathe admitted, failing to mention that he had taken down something similar (though without the knots) when he first discovered the missing stairs to the basement. It had been early (or late, as species would have it) that not too many people had learned of that more egalitarian system, and he certainly wasn't going to give away his advantage. "And you're planning on supervising the weaklings all day to make sure not a one falls down here, then?" He snorted. "A human accusing one of the People as being miserly... those who trade and barter and lie through their teeth! Not only have I set this temporary facsimile in place, I've taken time out of my day off to ensure that nobody trips and falls."
Svathe's smile was gone, though at least he was maintaining a neutral expression. "I thought Humans were supposed to be the trusting ones. You think I'm trying to wring people out for a fair service, Tayne? Your Mages muzzled me long ago."
"Supervising the compound, and the people in it, is kind of my job," Tayne pointed out. "I would be perfectly happy to do it for free." And he would, as soon as he could get Svathe to leave. This wasn't fair, and he was sure the Lykos had other things to do, anyway, right?
"What are you charging, then?" he asked, folding his arms over his chest and looking down seriously at the Lykos. Behind him, his magelet helper-- a slender but caustic-tongued thing named Toravine-- was shinnying down the rope, herself. She was no Enforcer, but maybe she could at least give him some backup-- since, after all, he'd mentioned the mages.