Salt lick air on those shanty liquor docks, the night was dry even with the finest mist of wave crested ship hulls tugging at their leads, snorting their barnacled saliva in spits and spatters on that dry rot they called wood. The sea sighed. The pier moaned.
And all Set wanted was to close his eyes and listen to her howl.
The air was bitter since his life changed. It was deep and antagonized him, reminding him every breath of before. He had tried to drown his thoughts. He had contemplated drinking the water.
He had a dove waiting for him. He had a ship mocking him in her rocked ease.
And it was all bitter.
Dalit gave a soft sigh, mingling self with the calming waves that spoke things to him. He had no desire for cards that evening, no desire for trickery. It was one of those nights. He wanted HER. But she was just in memory.
So he sat. Silent, staring off past the ever familiar table to the ever familiar docks watching the not-so-familiar faces wander by. Perhaps he would go for a walk. Walking always did one wonders.
Smoke plumed, Set rose. Those shoulders drawn like arrow lines, he rose.
The aroma was heady, bitter, cognizant, bearing a consciousness all its own as it rippled through the spit addled air. It was almost conversant, forming syllables in circles that coiled around his throat like snake charmer lips before they disappeared into the sphere of the night.
It was time to go.
Casse was a child of the sea and a creature of the snow but none would bear him comfort tonight.
Slowly, he rose and slow steps bade the sea farewell.
Solace was not coming to greet him that evening. Salt stung as he blinked back memory and he swept up the cards cherished so dearly, laying them out in self-important piles. A distraction, enough from thought but not from form.
He did not seem one to swindle but perhaps to converse with. Wouldn't be much. A few moment's of time. Something just there to keep the docks steady for him.
"You look too far away to be here, friend. Is something, perhaps, too cloudy to be recognized?"
Those whetstone eyes split the vellum of night and rested on the fortune teller's features. Something on his skin smelled of Koleva-- a sadness that the sun couldn't bleach away.
Stille's abandoned mongrel, tail still lodged between his legs.
Jaw gritted and steeled to keep that butcher's tongue in check, he inclined his head. Curt, but courteous.
Eyes like carnivore teeth. Warning.
Dalit fell silent, catching the glance and frowned, fingers wringing over and around themselves. Disheartened. Antagonized.
He would have pulled the moon down for her if she had asked.
"You look lost." Oh, and there he went again, speaking to others as though idly chatting to himself in the waves.
He was aching. He was miserable. He was being stupid.
"Am I."
The assassin's silent step failed to slow.
"You're water stained."
This was very unlike him, troubling. Fortune teller frowns and whispers about him and always spoken with lion eyes.
"How do you figure?" He had risen by then, cards shuffled protectively into pockets as he continued with conversation.
Oh no. He was getting up. He was going to follow him. To talk. He was going to talk to him.
What a tragedy indeed. How Set detested such loathsome activities such as chatting. Small talk. Petty social interaction. Especially with jilted lovers of his familial relations.
Set quickened his pace, diverted those meat cleaver eyes to cut a path into the ground for his feet to follow.
"Just a guess."
Dalit managed a frown at that, dogging his steps with a coldness not familiar to his path. Tension ran along his spine, tracing paths left by her fingers and he suddenly found himself angry.
"Liar."
Set drew in a breath of smoke from Lazarus' cigarette, dangled from his fingertips. He ignored the accusation with the petulance of his gait, all rolled eyes and cutting sneers and haughty postures. Head tilted back to blow his sometimes-lover's smoke to the night air, Set made a grand show of ignoring the fortune teller.
It was better this way.
Dalit would only embarrass himself if he knew whose blood ran in the killer's veins.
Confrontation was not the fortune teller's strong point. He avoided it when possible, ran, coward. And yet, he found himself with quickly steps and darkened gaze.
"What a rotten thing you are to ignore a question."
"You didn't ask a question."
Suddenly, the assassin stopped and the din of the crowd seemed to fade. The seconds doubled, tripled as he turned on this tattered man, this sandy scarecrow,
prey.
"Why are you following me."
Scowls crossed, lips drew thin, desperate to snap suddenly. He thought of her laugh and he hurt him. Calmed him.
"I did just a few moments ago, of which you lied to me. You ignored--" And he silenced himself, steady as he was looked upon. "Why are you lost?"
Why are you so batshit crazy.
"She doesn't want you."
With the words spoken so clearly, the intensity of his gaze narrowed, obsidian sharp in their focus.
Of everything Dalit could imagine being said, 'she doesn't want you' want not one of them.
And so, quite foolishly, he blinked and stared, ocean eyes calmed with the sudden confusion that drifted around him. "Excuse me?"
"I am lost because she doesn't want you."
Dalit wasn't the only one who could sling incoherent nonsequiturs. The killer rolled his eyes and turned back to the path he'd laid for himself.
Steps followed in return, somehow begging fate to turn on him. The shipfitter kept in time, head down and eyes up, watchful of expression and figure.
"And how do you know?" He was angry now, restless and pacing with fingers and thought.
"I do not."
Those shoulders betrayed nothing, eyes easy and hawk posture loose to snap.
"I'm simply putting words together-- you're the one who's believing them."
Dalit was taken back by that and scowled, silent for the moment. He felt the foolishness curl around his throat.
He swallowed.
"I know the truth when I hear it and you are speaking it. How do you know?" He was calmer now, suppressed excitement tucked behind sad eyes.
Those footsteps slowed to a fever's thrum, boiling point humming heavy in the air. When he rounded he cut the crowd like a shark hunting for that drop of blood in the water. One hand to jaw and the other to corded neck he climbed the shipfitter's rope throat.
Scaled his gates. Burned his castle.
His voice was oil, his candor pitch.
He set his words to sail from killer mouth to jilted lip.
"I don't know anything. I'm simply putting words together. You're the one who's believing them."
Dalit followed, cutting ways behind and close to the other, hounding in presence and silent reverberation for answers. Tight lipped, lion eyes ahead and up and dark.
"Then who are you to speak so personally, Liar?"
Voice curt, heavy as the salt that clung forlornly to his being.
He was close enough to lick the salt stains from the fortune teller's cheek.
"A drunk and a harlot."
His voice didn't stink of alcohol and his skin wasn't matted with sex, but he was a liar-- so what value was proof?
The brush of a cheek clouded by lies.
"You would know a liar wouldn't you-- with your cards that see nothing and your fingers that are always so sticky."
He made a noise, indignant; annoyed in suspicion.
"Ever a deluder with those words of yours." Dalit kept himself from speaking too harshly but couldn't stop the disparaging undertone.
This one reminded Dalit of an eel. Fierce. Angry even in death, wide-eyed in accusation.
"Not my fault people read so desperately what I tell them and are so eager to part ways with their coin." He managed a soft chuckle, a rumble of slighted amusement.
"What is your name?"
"You already named me Liar," the killer said with a laugh as he widened the gap between them. He smiled even as he pedaled backwards down his intended path, waving a hopeful farewell to the fortune teller. "So that's the only name you need."
He managed a frown at the wave. No.
It wasn't going to be that easy.
"I gave you a title." He stepped forward, wary in posture.
"You gave me a name," Set corrected, dark and chiding.
Annoyance now. Shoulders stiff, back tense. "What do you call yourself?"
"What you call me is what I call myself. Liar." The words were a smooth tease. Now that the nerve was struck it was much easier to prick it.
There were few times anymore he let himself get riled by someone. Unfortunately, this one time he just couldn't bring himself to care enough to keep that emotion in check.
So he glared, vicious and harassed and she laughed in his memory. "Namesake."
"I didn't ask you to follow me." The turn was sharp, from playful to dark. "But I will ask you to stop."
Dalit did not stop, choosing to ignore the sudden danger he was playing with; though he did calm his posture.
"Namesake."
"Acina."
It happened too quickly. The mouth of the alley, the dark and dread, wet from runoff and garbage. The brick and mortar resounded with a wet, sticky thwack as the shipfitter's back crushed the alcohol soiled moss that crept up the masonry, begging for another drop.
The killer fell against him, chest to chest, mouth so close that the hiss of his tongue almost rang inside the blonde's eardrum.
"Like hers, Acina. You can't follow where she goes. So just forget."
The name threw him off, culled his response before he could react.
Breath was pulled from lips as his back scraped roughly against sharp stone. Hands scrambled, grabbed and pulled and he glared. "Where is she? I need her back."
"You can't follow where she goes."
The words rang and rang. The moment was thick in its distended silence. Slow as honey, heavy like rain, Set bashed a concussion into the fortune teller's skull without warning. He eased the body down the brick and peered out of the alley. No eyes penetrated the darkness.