slowly down the street from the restaurant and whorehouse he'd been at most of the night. It made Forthwind's job a lot easier that he was so predictable, even if that meant this night wasn't going to end well for Janshai.
Forthwind took a deep pull on his sigaretto, then rubbed the flame out and tucked what remained of it back into his case. Once Janshai had gone into the shop, and low, soft lights came on from the cheap oil lanterns Janshai favored, Forthwind dropped neatly from the tree and slipped closer to the shop.
It was a moment's work to quietly pick the lock on the kitchen door and when Janshai was distracted fussing with the tables and restlessly pulling the key out of his pocket, putting it back, pulling it out again, to slip inside and find some shadows to settle in.
Homeless and desperate, Forthwind had learned quickly that if you were quiet and still, eyes slid right over you with alarming ease.
Janshai prowled restlessly, at least as restlessly as a weak old man could. Life had not been kind to him, or he hadn't been kind to himself. A bit of both, perhaps.
Forthwind called up his magia, brought the wind through the slips and cracks of the ramshackle building. It carried voices to him, the barest hint of Dante's scent, blood and iron, like a blacksmith's anvil that required a blood sacrifice. Always there, no matter what other scents might rest on top of it.
Other scents, most of them unpleasant: sweat, old blood, the stench of people who hadn't bathed properly in more days than Forthwind wanted to know.
He let his magia slip away, and a couple of minutes later the voices grew increasingly audible without its assistance. Forthwind remained where he was. So deep into the kitchen, immersed in shadows, he wouldn't be noticed unless he moved, and he wanted to see this play out for himself, as much as he could, though Dante had only bidden him ensure that Janshai arrived at the shop and notify him otherwise.
The normally open front of the shop had been closed up, the wall pulling down from where it went up and slid back during the day, with a door in it that slid open with a jarring bang. Forthwind startled slightly, even though he'd braced for it, but thankfully the group that spilled in was too preoccupied with themselves to pay attention to the jumpy shadow in the kitchen.
Jinhai led the group, handsome, stern, and flamboyantly dressed, a trend amongst pirates. He had the long, long hair swept up high at the back of his head that was so common to the wealthier men of Hajari, where the women usually kept their hair short. Soldiers and the like had shaved heads. Interesting he wore the hair of a nobleman rather than a soldier.
His boots were the very same from the night before, with heels that made far more sense for a thieving bandit on a horse than a marauding pirate. The men who'd come with him, five in total, were of various ethnicities and mixed ethnicities, though Forthwind couldn't really tell more than that. Not that it really mattered, but his father had taught him to note details, and being with Dante just reinforced the habit.
Every last one was armed enough they could outfit a small army. It was definitely going to be a bloody night.
"Old man!" Jinhai called out. "Get my fellows some of that wine you Veronans love, and get me my key."
"Of course, of course," Janshai said, and hurried into the kitchen, going to the cabinets where he'd clearly tucked aside some bottles of sak茅 for precisely this reason. Bustling back with it, he dispensed the bottles and then, reaching Jinhai, handed over the last bottle and a key.
It was clear pretty quickly why Janshai hadn't bothered with cups for any of them. Forthwind grimaced inwardly at how awful the sak茅 must taste when being guzzled like that. Some things were not meant to be drunk quickly. But it wasn't as though the pirates cared about anything except the end result.
If they knew the end result of the evening would be bloodshed, would they be imbibing now? How sloppy a captain to not just let them drink while working, but join them. He'd thought these pirates were smarter than that.
Then again, they were illegally buying imperial steel from one of the very few families in the empire who received regular private shipments of it. That was