Golden City Prequel: When Aisling met Corbett (Anguissette x Shizuochan)

[Anguissette]

Blink. Blink. Bzzzt.

The electric light flickered in the stained white limestone ceiling, illuminating a small oval of corridor midway up stairwell 13 East. Also caught in the unreliable brilliance is the doorway to the floor's washroom and the suggestion of another portal beyond it, but in order to get there a local would need to navigate almost 800 metres of dark hallway with ambient lighting at best.

Blink. Blink. Bzzzt.

The Aisling Grey who limped into view was a far cry from the perfumed maiden of the May Queen Ball. The lustrous chestnut hair she had dressed in a thousand tiny rivulets cascading down her back had instead been hacked off by some kind of knife just above the scalp at the back. The rest retained most of its former length, but in the three months since her exile from The Sky it looked as though she'd scarcely washed it. What she had spent time on instead by all appearances was her attire. Gone was the travelling gown of Quality, the ballroom slippers and the cloak. Instead she wore a plain grey day-dress that certainly hadn't come from a Skylady's closet, a brown duster coat and a pair of chunky miner's boots surely two or three sizes too large. She also sported an actual burlap sack over one shoulder, the opposite side to her limp.

Blink. Blink. Crack-tssh!

The cough of a firing piece and shattering glass herald the lumen-globe's destruction and pitch the hallway into gloom. Without looking back, Aisling scrambled in her pocket for her keys and then jammed one on her lock. Heavy footsteps on the stair hurried closer, and she managed to swing the door just wide enough to admit her thin body and then shut it with haste. The handle turned a moment later, but too late as it locked automatically. The Skyborn sagged with relief against the inside of the door, then tensed at the male laughter through the thin wood.

"Caught like a Rat inna trap," he mocked. "Open up and give me the bag, and maybe I won't take the time to look around yer pad for anythin' else you mighta forgot to mention. Cause me trouble an' I might have ta find somethin' else to make up fer my time."

His tone was dark and intimidating, but Aisling wasn't one to back down to empty threats. Hah! Hadn't she stepped around her family for close on a year as she advanced her work? She knew she'd been close; They had tried to stop her, had hurt her family but They had missed her and as soon as she could reconstruct her experiments she knew she would be able to make the breakthrough They were so desperately afraid of!

"Stay away!" she said defiantly. "I've got nothing for you here Palmers and I don't have time for your games!"

There was a moment of stunned silence, as though the air itself couldn't believe she'd been so stupid and then a string of curses sounded from the other side of the door and the thin wood began to shudder and crack under a series of kicks and shoulder-slams. The brunette backed away from the door, dumping her sack on the end table as she began to dig within it with a series of metallic clanks. At this rate the door would fail in less than a minute, she guessed.

 

[Anguissette]

(For Shiz)

Dip. Dip. Swirl.

A muddled, almost obscenely browned teabag descended and ascended, and descended again, into and from and into the kettle-boiled cup of Pariah Bay water, staining it a murky green. It came to sit within the pool, surrounded by green-dyed porcelain meant to evoke a considerably-less-than-fine jade. One Corbett Baines took the vessel into his gloved hands of white cloth, adjusting the tightness of his grey cravat before lifting the tea to his lips. The man is weathered; greying hair, exhaustion-frayed skin, and stilted form, carried in a checkered navy suit-jacket that played yet at some pretension.

From behind glass lenses, the man watched.

He watched toiling men and coal-stained faces, subsisting off salt-bread that was more salt than bread, drawing out the pleasures of their meager delicacy through slight nibbles. He watched little men with quick fingers, masterminding their miniscule schemes, eyeing potential marks with criminal vigilance. He watched drunken men with cracked flasks, fallen in more ways than one, their lady poison calling them to intoxicated slumber in the streets.

But most importantly, he watched the ones who entered the building, like a dog of the proverbial crossing - with only one head as opposed to three, but the care and vigil to compensate. For there was another in this building, of the same bind and tether, albeit unwilling and unknowing.

Blink. Blink. Crack.

Somewhere within the hall, glass broke.

And, of course, he had been informed that this 'Other' would perpetually find herself in danger. It was the nature of the place she had resided, the nature of the people that resided within, and perhaps the nature, too, of the woman in question. He had heard the stories, been instructed at-length in their versing, regaled with the details of the explosion. Explicitly informed that he should spring into action at the first sound of shattering glass and shrieks of heat-release. An ordeal of tedium ad nauseam, when it came to watching a tinker.

Still, he rose as if on instinct, allowing left hand to firmly grip his vessel of tea, while his right slid into his pocket, the cold steel of a pistol pressed upon his skin.

He strode outwards into the bleak tenement halls, allowing the sounds of angry and defiant shouting guide him. He read the words, took in the 'art' that adorned the halls, smudged coal-ink against ruined wallpaper, sharp gashes and engravings upon the limestone surface beneath. 'Home of the Thirsty', 'Smugsack was here!', 'pray for me', a drawing of an elephant, some depictions of a lewd something-or-another, 'nonce'.

A man, with a rat-like face of wispy hairs and the heavyset constitution of a golem, pounded upon the door of his assigned, fists threatening to shatter through shoddy wood.

"Can I help you?" Corbett's voice found itself lost amidst the pounding; he tried once more, "A word, please!"

The man regaled him with an incredulous stare for the whole of perhaps a single second, "Buzz off!" He spat indignantly, before continuing with his onslaught.

"Sir."

A crack as the man's fist found further purchase, denting into the wood.

"Sir."

A creak as the hinge began to give.

"SIR!"

A click as the intruder turned, pistol clumsily procured and pointed.

"Whata. Ye. Want?"

Corbett suppressed the urge to roll his eyes, "The thing is, Sir, I walked my way to the water-tanks, parted with my hard-earned coin, and walked my way back in order to prepare this tea I am holding, in the interest of leisure. Now, leisure, sickeningly enough, is seldom leisurely at all; it is an expense of time, and labor, and I can't very well enjoy my second-rate tea with all your ruckus about, now can I?"

The wispy brows and whiskers of the man furrowed, in anger and confusion alike. He stepped forward, as if that would somehow emphasize the threat of the pistol even further.

Unfazed, Corbett continued, "Secondly, and more importantly, is the fact that the poor occupant within that abode just so happens to be a tinker. A tinker in a tenement hall, in Pariah Bay. She must be of some means, of some dastardly artifice - a machinist in a place like this. If you pound your way through this door, you're like to have your head blown off…

Am I right, tinker-lady?"

 

[Anguissette]

Clatter, clank-clatter, clatter, clank-clatter, thunk.

Clink.

As the tiny brass screw spun on the floor, Aisling looked up at a door that, improbably, was not bursting in any longer. It leaned a little towards her to be sure, but nothing in Pariah Bay was all that sturdy either. At night the walls were so thin you could hear - wait. Who was that talking outside? It didn't sound like Palmers, he tended more to threats and grunts of the simian variety.

The woman in the grey dress stepped carefully toward the doorway and pressed her ear to the plaster on its hingeward side as she tried to hear more clearly. It wasn't a Sky voice, that was clear. The words came quick and precise, each clearly enunciated before the next without any cessation of pace. It was a voice in sharp contrast to the Pariah Bay stews, one almost as out of place as she was. It was a dangerous voice.

"That's right," she called out, borrowing the second man's threat for her own. "Stay away, both of you or I'll, I'll blow you off your heads!"

Palmers sneered at her words, sneered at Corbett and jabbed the pistol at his chest as though it were a swordpoint.

"Stay outta this Nosy an enjoy your tea before you make a spectacle of yerself," he sniggered. The navy-clad man in the grey cravat was a very different prospect to the hapless tinker-lady, but he still put his confidence in his greater height. And weight. And, apparently weapons. "This's my block. Soon's I'm through the door things will get awful quiet, awful fast, and you can go back to yer tea in peace."

One more jab with the pistol, "You got a problem with that?"

Without waiting for a reply, he turned back to the door and smashed it with his foot. The creaking woodwork gave way, swinging inward on its handle-side before crashing to the floor - and Palmers followed close behind, waving his pistol and stomping onto the ruined wood as he looked for his prey.

The main room of Aisling's tenement apartment was... sad, that was the only word for it. There was a bed in the middle of the room that looked as though it belonged to a previous owner who might have actually died in it. The sheets were a mottled off-white with use, although they looked freshly washed at least. A low table was tucked up to the other side of the bed which was apparently her dining area, set with wooden knife and fork and an actual silver spoon around an open sack which drooled with stray parts, cogs and stray pieces of metal. There were no chairs.

The lady herself was not immediately apparent, although two doors led inwards.

@Shizuochan

 

[Aero Blue]

Some part of Corbett, perhaps nearabouts the apple of the throat on his otherwise still body, recoiled at the tinker-lady's response. 'Both their heads'. 'Both'? The familiar sensation of resentment took him, like a nervous ache of the stomach lining; he felt that he was perhaps being under-appreciated and unfairly targeted. Here he was, providing an, admittedly verbose, interruption to the crude man's interloping…

He still felt the pulsing vein in his temple, from when the man had shoved the pistol into his chest. The ebb and flow of some unholy blood in his head, of angers repressed and turned into bile. There was a time when such humiliation, such demean-ment, would stir Corbett to action. Even now, he imagined the prospect of enacting his very own stigmata upon the man, dashing and rending hands, wrist and feet. But he was no longer protected in such 'righteous brutality' by the cloak of the Inquisition, nor was he finished his tea.

Corbett allowed the brute to wade through the fallen woodwork, tittering at the man's carelessness in turning his back upon him. He allowed himself a count of five brief moments, before - to his own chagrin - following him into the tinker's den. And what a den it was: cutlery, implements of steel, and apparently very little use. Unfortunate, if not entirely contradictory to Pariah Bay standards.

A sudden thought struck Corbett, rendering his mood from a bridled irritation to a suddenly very alert downcast. He remembered the story, the explosion that was the progenitor of the Gray Goose, in all her fallen fineries of cogs and gears. It occurred to him, then, that the room was a veritable consortium of hazards.

No time to waste then.

"Tinker-girl!" Corbett drew down, in a flash of bleak steel, upon Palmers, who turned with a quaking start - yet, for his part, drew upon Corbett in turn, "I have, I confess, trespassed unto your abode. And I have now, currently, your aggressor at gunpoint. I say this to affirm my current allegiance and motivation, which is simply to the well-being of both yourself, and your various material possessions. I furthermore trust that you will not jeopardize my own well-being through… whatever means you hold at your disposal…

Tinker-girl?"

@Anguissette

 

[Anguissette]

Pressed close to the stained wallpaper on the hingeward side of the door, Aisling was on the point of sneaking outside behind the educated robber's back when he drew down on Palmers. These sorts of mindgames weren't in exceptional character for the common criminality that infested Pariah Bay, so she allowed herself to believe that just maybe they weren't in league with one another after all. She had been reluctant to give up her paltry treasures in the face of the gorilla's intrusion, but owned to herself that even with all the fortune the world owed her two were too many for her to confront with any expectation of success. Now, though...

Aisling pushed herself off the wall, the gentle creak of floorboards doubtless announcing to Corbett the same information that Palmer could now plainly see, her wherabouts.

"I appreciate the sentiment Mr Blue, as well as the idea that you have come to my aid - and not, as Palmers, to plunder my worldly goods unless I pay his tax," she spat the last word out and circled into view.

Since they had each last seen her she had connected some manner of overgrown lumen bulb, what seemed most of the interior of a clock and a length of tightly coiled copper wire. It was ticking quietly, and she kept its snub nose pointed most of the way towards the devil she knew while she circled closer.

"Nevertheless I assure you I have the matter in hand and will now escort our intrepid hooligan out of my dwelling to be about his proper business." She gestured forcefully toward the gaping doorway and stepped closer to the thug's side. "Get out."

Palmers looked from Corbett's firearm to Aisling's jumble of parts, and he wasn't laughing any more. This was a direct challenge to his dominance of the tenement area, and in this cutthroat neighbourhood that was not something he could abide. Despite his size, he moved surprisingly quickly; lashing out with the back of his hand to strike Aisling and send her tumbling across her bed into the end table.

With one opponent out of play, he lunged toward Corbett, batting his weapon to one side with his own gun-hand. A close range gun duel had every chance of getting him shot - but if he could get his powerful hands on this would-be hero he was surely strong enough to punish him for his cheek.

 

[Aero Blue]

Corbett felt a certain kind of 'sorrow' when the tinker lady emerged, some unholy machination of wire and bulbed glass in hand. He felt the sorrow of a drunken man stubbing his toes against the wooden corner, the sorrow of a forgetful worker delving back into the rain to retrieve what he had stupidly lost. A profound manner of annoyance and irritation, that stemmed from the realization that one's trouble would soon become ever the more troublesome.

Damn.

Bedlam, condensed into brief moments, played out. The loud thwap of the brute's backhand upon Corbett's ward. The rustling of sheets and the dull crash of the end-table. The blistering speed of the brute, redirected.

The sensation of his arm being jolted by an external force, the brief, sudden loss of control.

The sound of his pistol clanging against the wall, and then weakly again upon the floor.

All empty, meaningless happenings. This was a brawl, and there was only what happened next; if the man managed to get ahold of him, Corbett was finished. He bounced backwards, with a boxer's poise, from the balls of his feet. He saw the brief flash of Palmers' fist, the man having narrowly missing with his vicious strike. He felt a light twinge of pain, not of Palmer's infliction, nor from any bodily overexertion; but of a hot sliver of tea across the skin of his thumb.

On the one hand, Corbett was relieved that his tea had not yet fallen into the doldrums of lukewarmness. On the other:

Corbett lashed outwards with his left hand, emptying the contents of his somewhat newly-prepared beverage unto his adversary's visage. He turned away from Palmers, without waiting to see if his tactic had found purchase - although a pained yell confirmed that it had.

He leapt towards his pistol, feeling a comfortable relief as he touched upon cold steel.

Behind him, he could feel the shadow of a raging colossus.

From upon the floor, Corbett shifted the weight of his body, pistol pointed upwards, and-.

Bang. Thud.

Corbett could feel the weight of a body upon his own, and the hot, anguished whimpering breath of a man next to his ear - Palmers had fallen atop him. With a start, he gingerly rolled the large man away from himself, catching the streak of red that began to flow from the thug's stomach. Gutshot.

Oh, and also - a shame about the tea.

"Tinker-lady," Corbett said, amidst the punctured man's pained moans, "Are you quite alright?"

 

[Anguissette]

Cutlery scattered across the room as Aisling slammed into the table, which regrettably did not stand up to even her modest weight. With a crunch the surface came free from three legs and fell to the floor, one corner propped up to roll her into the far wall and the right-hand door. Stunned, she found herself staring at her hands and was distantly surprised to realize she'd kept hold of her impromptu device; taking the bruises on her own body, curved around the mechanisms to protect them from harm. Which was a real metaphor when you thought about it, and the short-haired woman did with a half-addled smile until the sound of a shot refocused her with all the gentle suasion of a bucket of snow scraped off the dome of the Sky.

The "tinker-lady" braced one hand on the wall and stood, taking measured paces across the metal-strewn floor while avoiding treading on anything valuable or harmful. Palmer qualified on neither count. Standing over him, the raging colossus looked like nothing so much as another frightened little man, his face glistening with more than tea as he clutched his hands to his belly. Aisling knelt with eerie calm, brushing one hand away to inspect the wound more closely then pressed the snub end of her impromptu construction to the oozing hole.

Palmer's reaction was both immediate and dramatic; he let out an anguished cry still-born in the back of his throat and his body began to jerk and spasm from the energies coursing through them. More saliently the glass bulb lit up with swirling blue electrics, growing brighter and brighter until it shattered and the device whirred to a stop. Her attacker's skin had been seared shut - although he was still breathing shallowly - and he was lost to the world around him, so Aisling turned her attention to her ostensible rescuer with an arched brow that belonged more properly in a ballroom than this broken dwelling.

"I'm well enough Mr Blue, though I'd as lief have less insistent guests to tea. As you can see I only had a place set to dine alone - and without even a table to set I am now condemned to utmost savagery. Or possibly shopping," she sighed. She kept her device - or what remained of it - between them both, but didn't seem overly concerned that he was going to use his gun on her. Aisling was generally a poor student of observation, but she was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. For now.

She regarded him where he lay on the floor of her bedroom for long moments, until finally the pressure of years of conditioning grew too much.

"Might I put on a cup of tea? Yours appears to have spilled."

 

[Aero Blue]

Corbett gathered his breath, labored and pained, as he watched Aisling approach the fallen man. Perhaps Palmers had come down heavy; bruised a rib or two. Possibly three. On the other hand, there was the other undisguisable, bitter possibility: Corbett Baines was not a young man anymore. His… less than honorable discharge had dulled him. Or perhaps his dulling had come even before then, foregoing honest, gruelling Cloak-work in favor of pocketing illicit bribe money.

He watched the tinker-lady approach with her Chimeric creation of glass and wirework, a visage of impassivity giving way to a mask of wary apprehension. There was beauty in tinker-craft, and even beauty in the insatiable blue energy that whirled around within its glass confines. There was decidedly less beauty in the impromptu cauterization - which Corbett assumed was at least slightly intertwined with some form of torturous vindiction. The newly 'minted' smell of singed flesh was not so much an advantage for this humble abode.

And the abode's saving grace? The Tinker Lady. A fish out of water, with some manner of bite, it appeared.

That was troublesome.

Corbett stowed the gun as she addressed him in all her high-born formalities and mannerisms. "If I am to be entirely honest, the tea was… a matter of quenching my boredom more than my thirst. As it happens, I am no longer bored. As to the matter of shopping…"

He gave the abode another scanning search, as if the latest scuffle would do much in the way of a favorable reappraisal, "I would recommend it, if you've the savvy for these parts. Though as I hear it, Pariah Bay peddlers offer a free shiv and shank with each purchase, directly delivered slightly below the kidneys. And those are just the carpenters."

Now, he reasoned, would be as good a time as any to broach the topic of protection, of offering his services, in accord with the desires of those above him. However…

"You are aware that this man will live neither well, nor particularly long, with a bullet fragment sealed inside him…?"

 

[Anguissette]

Aisling looked at the mannerly man with his greying hair, faded clothes and weathered ideals with an expression of blank incomprehension. "What is that to me? The man intended to rob me, broke my door, broke my last table and threatened to leak on my carpet. It is a dreadful rug to be sure and ragged to boot, but it can scarce be improved by the addition of an irregular brown stain."

The aroma of seared flesh was distinct, yet beyond a flaring of her nostrils she did not allow it to distract her from her urgent purpose of making tea. She limped to the half-filled iron kettle on the section of polished wood by the wall and lit a taper, crouching to set it to the little ceramic bowl that sat below the sturdy stand. When the flame made contact the liquid instantly blazed with sizzling heat, and the tinker returned her attention to her uninvited guest.

What was he even doing here? Aisling had stopped believing in heroes when her family had been murdered and her work destroyed and no one seemed to care. The dark turn to her thoughts showed on her face and she kicked the unconscious man for proxy justice.

"If it concerns you that much, you are welcome to dig inside him for the errant lead lozenge." After all, he was the one who put it there. "Outside my apartment please, and I recommend somewhere his friends won't interrupt you before you're finished with him."

Aisling was an extremely focused woman, yet in the months since her move to Pariah Bay she'd developed some sense of her surroundings and Mr Blue irritated that sense like a puzzle piece that didn't quite fit into the hole she had assigned to it. A saltwater fish in a freshwater tank, he simply did not fit.

She was waxing philosophical now.

"The apartment could look better with more furniture," she conceded, "and possibly even a door, but both those things will need to wait until I am paid." The Pariah Bay merchant community was disgracefully unwilling to grant credit, she had found. She looked longingly toward her second doorway (the left-hand one) before the keening whistle of the kettle recalled her to her social duties.

"Please sit," she instructed with a vague motion to her bed. It might be scandalous behavior in the Sky, but chairs had proven to be a luxury she could ill afford given her non-existent guest list. Then again, she was a poor enough manager of funds that there were many things she could scarcely afford, luxuries like food and clothes as well as essentials like parts. She dropped a hood over the bubbling crucible and poured the tea, then took it to her visitor before recollecting his words.

A vague frown passed over her face, then she simply sipped from the cup as she stood before him. "Anyway. You did not come simply to critique my fittings, and neither do I believe your visit devoid of self interest. What do you want, Mr Blue? Other than, apparently, your bullet back?"

 

[Aero Blue]

Corbett wanted little more than to be rid of this place, and perhaps more to the point, rid of his current 'ward'. If only the option had been left to him. There was an aspect of the lady that made him feel mildly uncomfortable, the series of happenings and contrivances that must have created such a persona. The way she spoke of matters of furniture and shopping, mere moments after a shooting. The calculated dispassion upon her visage when she took the contraption to the man's wound, like a surgeon - no, like an artificer, of course. Yet the passions she still betrayed, tinkering in a place like this.

She was a different animal. Unsettling.

He sat upon the bed as was instructed, casting a deaf ear upon the connotations that one might normally construe, and accepted the tea. A man and a woman, in conversation, sipping upon their tea - the quintessential ritual of the noble class. Some nagging part of Corbett enjoyed the pretense.

"My Lady," He began, leaning upon the old titles, "My name is Corbett Baines - Mr Blue, if you prefer. I am neither an appraiser of fittings or furnishings, nor am I an altruist. I am, however, a uniquely skilled man, hired and tasked my employer to present myself to you - a uniquely skilled woman - in a protectionary and service capacity."

He allowed the words to linger, vague and near formless; no need to press upon the point like a shoddy merchant.

 

[Anguissette]

Regrettably Aisling's goods do not extend to a second cup, but a young lady of intelligence and determination is never left at a loss for long. Going through the door into her work room, she returns with a beaker in a metal clamp and mixes her own before sitting beside her guest on the bed to take tea.

Mr Baines confused her. If that was his name. The man knew his manners, which suggested he had worked with persons of quality before. Yet he was working in an area with the poor reputation of Pariah Bay which spoke poorly of his fortunes, his character or both. The short-haired woman smiled briefly as she reflected that the description could just as readily be applied to her. That didn't make him any more trustworthy however, and she eyed him warily over the glass rim of her beaker.

"And why should a woman in my unique position trust that your unique skills and circumstances align in any way with mine, or with those of which I would approve?" She shifted uncomfortably on the bed, the twinge in her leg still paining her. Curse these uneven streets. "If every person who promised me good since I came to the Bay had been honest folk I should have a palace fit for a queen, have tripled my money more than once and still have the better part of my hair." She spared a moment's sorrow to reflect on the hideous relic of what was once her crowning jewel. No more than that, as she focused her life towards the success of her enterprise, no matter the cost.

"Who is your employer, Mr Baines? How is it that you should be uniquely placed to come upon my situation just as Palmer takes it into his head to rob me?" Aisling sips at her tea, still watching him closely. "You can surely understand the circumstances seem a little suggestive."

Should he cast a glance that way, Corbett could likely determine that Aisling's work room was considerably better lit, polished metal shining through the crack in the door.

 

[Aero Blue]

Corbett found her to be inquisitive, which did not necessarily mean wisdom - found her to be probing, which did not necessarily equate to intelligence. It was clear, however, that she was no simpleton; other tinkerers, Corbett had found, had little between their ears save for thoughts of gears and bolts. Still, that did not make her, at least in Corbett's eyes, some kind of genius.

A genius would not end up here, in Pariah Bay.

Then again, Corbett was one to talk, was he not?

He acknowledged the last of Aisling's words, and her deftly leveled accusation with a nod, betraying little in the way of a reaction. "I think, Aisling Grey, that you are a clever girl. You ask the right questions, you ask them the right way. You faced down a roaring beast of a man, and you've yet kept your wits about you."

Corbett allowed for a sip of the tea, his sullen blue trained upon Aisling. Whether the tea was exceptional, abhorable, or merely passable was beyond him, his palate had never developed a knack for distinguishment between beverages of such ilk. "But your premise is off-track."

He rose from the bed, and paced about the few pristine - a relative term - segments of flooring, before stopping in front of the Tinker. "I have already told you, I am not an altruist, nor do I profess myself to be 'honest folk'. Moreover, your approval need not factor into our particular alignment, only your safety. In that regard, I have the certain capacity for low cunning and... violence... required here in Pariah Bay. That is what I offer. I'll not buy you a palace; I suspect I can do little for you in the way of coin; and the state of my own hair should offer you no confidence in any growth formula I manage to concoct."

Corbett was not a man of symbols, but even he stopped to consider the symbolism in the respective states of their hair. Shorn short. Greyed over to a dirty-white. Both the sign of a fall.

"I was strategically placed here, to wait and observe, and present myself in such a manner when the chance arose. The particular happening was not of my control, only my capacity to respond - if it were, I would have chosen a smaller adversary."

Questions answered, all save for one.

 

[Anguissette]

Aisling nodded at his response; she understood what he was saying, and mostly it even made sense. A sufficiently patient man need not know an attack was going to happen to intervene if he was loitering about or following her about her business. At least he claimed to have undertaken the former; with her acknowledged focus, he could easily have tailed her with she none the wiser, but regardless of his intent she wasn't quite ready to cast all her secrets into his lap.

"I accept your statements. It is logically plausible for you to have intervened once you determined I needed assistance and was unlikely to refuse aid, without knowing the attack was coming or being involved in its commission. It would be unusual to shoot a man you'd bought in any wise, or at least wasteful. I can see you are no stranger to armed conflict, for Palmer has broken other men who attempted to deny him something he wanted. Perhaps their widows may even seek you out to thank you." Her green eyes gleamed at him as she took a sip from her own tea before continuing. It was a truly ordinary brew, but then her talents lay elsewhere. Anywise, wasn't the ritual of taking tea the larger point of the whole endeavour? She only regretted she had no teacakes to hand, but alas the variety of her foodstuffs did not stretch so far, and a half-cob of bread simply would come up to scratch.

"I understand that you are offering me your protectionary services and that whoever your unnamed employer may be, they appear to desire me at work and independent rather than chained in the basement of their laboratory. With such skills as you display I would be foolish indeed to pass up such an offer with not a penny of my own spent to draw you to my side." She considered him boldly now, focusing on the details of his appearance as another woman might on the muscled body beneath it. The well worn garb, the spectacles, the hilt of his gun and his ease in using it. How comfortable he seemed with a body in the room; truthfully he seemed more affected by her tea than the scorched smell still seeping from the air.

"Yet, I think I must be such a fool. Even if you are a decent man, can I know your employer will share the same scruples? I do not know him or her, but if you take her coin you must take his orders. How can I know which day they won't suddenly change their mind? No," she began and stood, wincing and rubbing at her thigh. "I'm afraid I cannot accept your kind offer and I will need to ask you to - what?" Her hand came away wet from her thigh, and the chestnut-haired woman stared at her crimson-stained palm in stunned incomprehension before her eyes rolled back and she slumped senseless across her bed.

Enough blood had seeped from the knife wound she had taken some twenty four minutes previously to make her woozy, and the added shock of seeing her own life fluids had taken its toll. She would likely awaken within ten or fifteen minutes at most, assuming her wound didn't open further.

This was turning out to be quite the tea party.

 

[Aero Blue]

Corbett allowed himself to play passenger on Aisling's train of thoughts, listening with perfect, polite stillness as she conducted herself through premise, thesis, and digressions alike. Occasionally, he had even chanced to nod in acknowledgment, offering soft, intermittent hums as she began to arrive upon her conclusion. And when, finally, Corbett sensed that she had reached it - when he sensed that the destination was contrary to his purpose - he resumed his stillness, his dull eyes gleaming with a solemn severity.

She had fallen then, the sleeping damsel dressed in grey.

Some feeling arose in Corbett, that felt distressingly like repulsion - not of the sort one experiences when chancing upon the truly vile, rather the internal recoil of shame. How had he not noticed her wound? He reddened as he entered the first stages of a proper fuming, the veneer of stillness crackling. Heart pounded and quaked, as another feeling contended for ascendancy; fear. There had been an agreement made, some time ago, and as he understood it: whatever ill happenings befell Aisling, would necessarily reflect on him.

"Shit."

He clamored over Aisling, ignoring the apparent indecency of it all, his hands making for the fabrics that concealed where the blood had stemmed. Turning his welling irritation and anger into focus, he tore away linen, fabric and stitch alike - no sense in being gentlemanly here and now.

The wound presented itself, in all its oozing 'glory', a narrow chasm, its ridging speaking to the second-rate, perhaps ad hoc nature of the stabbing implement - a newly fashioned chib, or shank, possibly. Corbett pressed onward, rending fabrics from the area near the opposing leg, and bringing a near-trapezoidal patch of grey unto the leaking wound. He pressed down to quell the tide for the moment, and allowed his eyes to search - from poor Palmers, to Aisling's still visage, to the second vessel of tea he had spilt that day.

Suturing or packing the wound would be detrimental if it was 'dirty' - and, given the location, it most certainly was. He needed- ah: his eyes spotted the alcoholic 'slick', that assisted in easing the path of moving and telescoping artifices.

He bound for it, with a panther's agility.

He stopped in a spiking fit of annoyance, to kick Palmer's body, before returning with the flask-like container of foul, stingingly abrasive alcohol in hand. With the deftness of a magician, he swiped the grey fabric from off Aisling's wound-

-and then he pour.

 

[Anguissette]

The flask of slick that caught Corbett's eye was through the cracked doorway to the other room, and though he didn't take the time then to investigate the work room that was revealed was of an entirely different character to the bedroom without. The distressed wood panelling was spotless, scrubbed clean of every stain. While the room was small it was illuminated by no less than four lumen globes that shone across a glittering array of polished metal parts displayed on five elevated platforms sheathed in heavy close-weave cloth.

There was a stool before the main work bench with folded linens bundled to form an impromptu cushion, while on the bench itself was a starling - or at least most of a starling. Wrought in brass with crystal eyes, each feather on its folded wings was picked out in blue. Currently the bird was frozen in place, its feet clutching at a wooden stand while its chest cavity gaped open to expose a hundred tiny parts and gears encircling a silver bauble shrouded in wax. Her tools were placed to one side, laying parallel on the benchtop with every bit of the care and attention her main room lacked.

Back at the sleeping woman, limp and boneless while he rent her skirts to find her wound and prepare its bandage. The same could not be said for the careful application of half a flask of artificer's lubricant to the oozing lips of her wound, and she snapped partway up before clutching at his arm. Gone for the moment was the calculated disinterest of the obsessive tinker or the enforced maturity of the exile. For those few seconds she was simply a frightened girl in pain with a threatening figure leaning over her, "No, stop!" Aisling held his arm with all her might. The pain in her leg felt like acid was burning its way into her, and one hand came down to slap at the wound as though that might somehow help.

It didn't , although the shock at least served to bring a semblance of reason back into her swimming green eyes. "M-Mr Baines, please..." She turned her bared thigh toward him with a perceptible wince and released him, choosing instead to protect her modesty with the larger portions that remain of her skirt. "I hadn't realized. I thought I pulled a muscle when the conversation turned sour and I turned to run." The pain remains, but some of the shock in her expression was fading while she watched him dress her wound. "I can't believe he stabbed me." Her features were composed but pale, and though the pain became more bearable once it was safely sealed away she felt a great sense of weakness in her bones.

"It's just possible I may have been mistaken." A small smile brushed Aisling's lips, then faded. "Mr Baines, are you sure you won't tell me who your employer is? I don't like not knowing where your loyalties lie."

Actually Aisling despised not knowing things on principle. It made her feel as though the universe were preparing a gigantic joke, and she the butt of it.

 

[Aero Blue]

Few things brought one's vulnerabilities to the fore than an open wound burning.

For brief, flickering moments, Corbett had seen 'the' girl, fearful in a room full of vile strangers; Palmers the thug, and he himself the lowly wraith cast down from cloaked shadow. He had imagined her then, amidst a great fire, a storm of shrapnel, and the ruins of her family - the very same fear written upon her face. And so, for those brief, flickering moments, Corbett saw the girl. For those brief, fading moments, he felt the pull of sympathy - of which he had promptly cast aside, so as to pour.

Only his task was paramount; sympathy was superfluous.

"Yes, I imagine you may have been mistaken." Corbett intoned, thoroughly amused with Aisling's choice of phrase, "The shock of the unfamiliar. The body of the perpetrator is still there for the kicking - although with the state of your leg, perhaps you should allow me to kick in your stead. Another service that I provide."

Good humored words, delivered without a single glimmer of good humor from within those eyes, or laugh-lines unfurling from his brow - he spoke with a glib, cavalier tongue so accustomed to snark that it may as well have moved of its own accord.

His attention wandered, on the beckoning of an idle thought - to replace the alcoholic implement on its rightful perch, perhaps -, towards the room past the doorway. He had wondered before, with some relief, how he had found the necessary disinfectant amidst the mess of the room - only to realize now that it was not a mess at all. At a glance, it was free from the mire and maelstrom of this… current scene, a world protected, separate.

It made sense, from all he had seen of her thus far. A lady capable of affording her focus to certain matters, to the detriment of other factors. The matter of his employer, for example, superseding the matter of a recent knife wound. "I am certain. You're wrong, however, on one account: you perhaps do know where my loyalties lie. I imagine you've known it with every two-bit scum who's extorted you, every confidence man who has preyed on your… foreign nature.

My loyalties lie - employer or otherwise - with myself. You've no faith, clearly, in the goodness of men. Stake your faith, then, in their capacity for self-servitude. Rest assured, your well-being and fortunes intertwine with mine own, Tinker-Lady."

 

[Anguissette]

Still pale, the man's unexpected candour drew a rare smile from the short-haired woman. "Very good then, Mr Baines. I imagine that if I denied you, I would continue to find you watching from the shadows every time I turn around. I have that feeling, I really do." Aisling pressed a hand onto the bed and lifted herself to sit upright, then extended the other hand toward him. It wasn't immediately clear what she expected him to do with it. "So on that basis and subject to immediate review when your purpose no longer aligns with mine, I accept your generous offer of service and protection." She inclined her head toward him, a genteel motion.

"As a professional associate, I invite you to address me as Miss Grey." She almost said another name, but she remembered her assumed identity and the deal she'd agreed to in the nick of time. Though truthfully she didn't object overly to his choice of term if he absolutely must use casual informality. It was a measure better than some of the terms she'd heard since her abrupt Descent. "Do... do you require lodgings?" Here her voice faltered as she looked around the confined space of her main room. "Quarters may be tight mind. Alternatively the apartment across from mine is empty at present; the previous lodgers were evicted with some finality earlier this week."

She clapped twice and rose unsteadily, taking a couple of steps toward Palmer with only minor wobble. Aisling stared down at his body and considered the scientific merits of a kick to the ribs. "I accept your offer of a kick on my behalf." Is she joking? It was hard to tell from her dry tone, and her face revealed no useful clues before she moved across to the sack and began to go through her recent purchases. She did regard them as purchases - after all, she'd paid first money and now blood for them, even if her vendor had turned his coat. "There's also the small matter of our attacker." She glanced up briefly to meet his eyes, then nodded towards his prone body. "If it was just me, I would roll him out into the corridor and leave him there - but that's partly because he's huge and I'm not. Do you have a better idea?"

 

[Aero Blue]

"Very well then, Miss Grey."

In hindsight, it appeared Aisling's unfortunate wound had proven beneficial to Corbett's task - an irony, given the nominal role he was to assume. One may have attributed the circumstances to some serendipity, some benign trick of fate - Corbett Baines was not such a one, not nearly so naive a man. And yet:

"A trick of fate, then, that such an eviction occurred. In an effort to remain mindful of your personal effects and overall decency, I will make arrangements to establish myself in the newly vacated apartment. The nature of our arrangement, however, will necessarily require that concessions be made on your part."

That would be an element of some trickiness. It was in the nature of Floaters to exploit the work of tinkers, not indulge in the grift and graft of it - that such a lady had done as such even before her fall pointed to some intrinsic part of her - passion, a free-spirit, an insatiable quality of sorts - that made his own task an unfortunate, abrasive thorn in the side.

He left the idea of 'concessions' in the air as attentions were turned to the matter of the fallen thug. Strictly speaking, the well-being of the man lay outside his responsibilities, though his fate was likely to have implications towards the tink- Miss Grey. His associates, perhaps - a family of some sort, filled with all manner of sooty villains. Better to deal with it with some manner of discretion and forethought.

"With your permission, I will take the man elsewhere. When he rouses, he will find the barrel of my gun pointed down upon him. He will agree that you should be left alone, and treated with the utmost… distance, if not respect. He will comply, at least with his words, and if I find that his words are sincere, I will offer to extract the fragments lodged within him, and allow him to crawl away with his life. If not, then we will agree that his time was limited in any regard.

Is this agreeable to you, Miss Grey?"

 

[Anguissette]

Aisling brushed past his suggestion of concessions with the same confidence she'd always assumed in pursuing her passions. While she had no doubt Mr Baines' self-insertion into her life would have consequences, surely if his sponsor saw the importance of her work they would have given him instructions not to interfere with it. That same work would doubtless be adversely impacted by the discovery of a body in the middle of her floor - less by the Cloaks than by Palmer's own criminal confederates. If Mr Baines succeeded in persuading him to stay away that would be even better than the thug's demise; that would only leave a vacuum, and the nature of Pariah's Bay abhorred such a thing. A more judicious Palmer kept at bay by the threat of her mysterious benefactor's ire would suit her nicely.

"Very well then, that would be most agreeable," she agreed. Palmer being large and Corbett - while strong - being less so, she limped across to assist him in hauling the man-mountain's dead weight onto his shoulder and ensuring he made it to the hall. The less welcome intrusion evicted from her home, she looked back at the shambles left behind and sighed as she begun to set things to rights. Mr Baines's tea cup was placed neatly on her bed, while her own was drunk to completion before the dregs were flung out the window. Her blanket was shaken out and laid across the bed, while the ruins of her table were summarily dumped out into the hallway.

Then she laid eyes on the stream of cogs and bronze shapings trailing from her sack and all petty concerns slipped away. She knelt beside the sack and began collecting the parts in a timeless reverie. Each piece was lifted to the light to inspect it for damage, then placed either into the sack or onto her plate. The jury-rigged construction was less fortunate; only a few of the emitting elements can be salvaged while a mound of glass was added to the plate, two shards marked with some small drips that betray their mishandling.

With the sack on her shoulder she went into her work room and closed the door firmly behind her before getting to the all important job of polishing the components and placing them on her displays for easy use. Aisling was utterly indifferent to her impromptu bandage now, nor to the wound that lay beneath it. Settling on the seat before her work bench, she settled the tinker's glass over one eye and gave herself up to the throes of creation.

When Corbett returned he would find a firmly closed door to her work room and a lived-in room graced by a bed, a plate of glass and broken metal, a kettle and his tea cup, salvaged from the debris and topped up. Through the thin interior door (and wall) a whirring could be heard, a strange metallic screech - and the open, joyous sound of laughter.

 

[Aero Blue]

Some Time Later…

The bricks were rotting, Corbett Baines noted, in the decrepit prison he had chosen for Palmers and himself. It was a house of spalling brick and gashes of ruined plaster, red and orange mold creeping upon portions of yellowed clay. It was a house forgotten. Some years ago, when he was yet a Cloak, the house had been a beacon of some low prosperity - a gathering place for the beleaguered of Pariah Bay to indulge in stolen air and other such contraband. A place of worship, in some ways, where fortunate escapists pledged themselves to addictive little nothings until the day they choked.

The slow-death's most beloved house, once upon a time.

Until years passed, and what remained was the rot, the gut-shot man that lay upon it, and his apprehender. Carrying the hulking man down the stairs had been some ordeal, although otherwise the man's transportation had been simple enough. Corbett had borrowed upon the tinker's wit, procuring a wheelbarrow with which to leverage the man's considerable weight. A single covering of white cloth, and the men and women of Pariah Bay would utter nary a question as to what lay within.

He gazed upon the hulking mass until it eventually stirred, pained moans sounding the man's return to wakefulness. To the thug's credit, he was possessed of a bull's constitution, and made to rise, even with the bullet fragments incessantly tearing at the man's innards. Corbett strode over, and launched his foot across the man's back, causing Palmers to reel over in some loud discomfort. A service promised, and a service provided.

"If you move," Corbett intoned, reaching for his gun from within the linings of his jacket, "the bullet-fragments inside of you will kill you slowly. The weapon I have trained upon you will kill you quickly."

The man growled, his own struggle against the pain dulling his capacity for words. Just the same.

"Speak only when I ask it of you, and even then, only in so many words as are required. Do you remember the circumstances that lead you here?"

A grunt of acquiescence.

"Whatever relations you hold with Aisling Grey are in the past - they are dust. They are no longer her concern, and they will no longer be yours. The lady is under the protection of an entity beyond your understanding, an entity of an entirely different dimension from yours. Is this understood?"

A low growl, and then another grunt.

"You will live, very poorly, what with steel embedded beneath your flesh, cutting at you with every step you take. I am prepared to, as a token of good faith and understanding, provide immediate medical attention, contingent on your understanding that I am an agent of aforementioned entity. Any feelings of ill-well, any portents of vendettas towards me or my charge - smother them in the crib. Yes?"

The man suppressed the sounds of agony for but a single, venomous moment - vitriol made resolve. He was a dangerous man, it was true enough, and prideful. Corbett wondered if it was prudent to simply pull the trigger then and there, before, again, the man grunted.

"Then I will begin, Mr. Palmers."

---

Corbett would return, the resonance of Palmers' anguished yells still fresh within his ears.

Somehow, the Tinker-Lady's laughter struck him as entirely worse.