Ofelia/Cian | Red Light District, Midnight | Complete!
“As tough as I am?” Fee arched an eyebrow, though the gesture was barely visible in the murky street. Wryly: “Tough women can relax on Ordalian beaches just as well as anyone, last I checked.”
“Yeah,” he answered, “so they can.” Then, he offered her a grin -- a bit of levity in yet another set of shity circumstances: “Guess I just didn’t figure you for the sort to throw up your hands in surrender. You did win that toss back there. But hey, trot along if you prefer. Faramspeed, say you’ll write and never do, and all that.”
“There’s a difference between surrender and tactical withdrawal.” She tried to smile (still joking, still playful), but there was a slight flicker in the expression—the memory of a girl packing up her belongings in the dead of night and fleeing her debts. Cian was right in that, at least: she wasn’t that sort anymore.
“After a certain point, one considers giving Emillion an evaluation and deciding it’s just not worth the risk anymore. There are casinos and brothels in other cities.” No Wilde syndicate, however: no established houses and intricate decades-old spiderweb of contacts.
No Bureau and king, either. Ofelia was rooted here just as much as he was.
“Then again,” she said, “there are responsibilities.”
“And opportunities,” Cian mused. “They usually come along with risks, hand in hand.” And actually, he didn’t feel nearly as annoyed anymore (though the dwindling stream of mostly-naked people still pouring from the gem houses probably had something to do with it; whatever else was wrong, the chandelier hadn’t fallen on his head, and he still had his pants).
“If I’m to guess,” he said after a moment of consideration, “I’d say odds of anyplace opening to customers until the afternoon are low. You hungry?”
“How precisely, mathematically calculated.” With the sort of casual intimacy Ofelia reserved for friends, she pretended to wipe her hand off on his leather sleeve, but the spilled wine had long-since dried. “I am hungry, though—down the loss of one drink and in need of some food. Time for a scavenger hunt?”
And off they went, a pair of nocturnal night owls roaming the city to find a hole-in-the-wall or street vendor that happened to still be open. Greasy prizes in hand, they gravitated towards the source of the quake out of curiosity, swinging by to take a look (it paid to know things, in both their professions). The tail end of the evening tapered down, eventually concluding the dice game in private over cheap plates of lamb over rice, drenched in Ordalian spices.
So everything was still fucked up in Emillion. Situation normal, then.