Chapter Text
It was busy in the Quicksand that night.
There was a tourney in the Coliseum in the afternoon. Elai didn’t know who was fighting but, whoever they were, they had fetched in folks from malms around the city. At tea-time it was nigh impossible to get a table; by supper-time the bodies were packed as tight as fish in a barrel. The girls who waited on table had opened all the doors, and people spilled out onto the steps, clutching tankards and talking loudly. Momodi had men patrolling the crowds; on a night like this - a night after a prize fight, when fortunes might have been made and then just as quickly lost - tempers easily grew frayed.
No one was going to pick a fight with Elai Khatahdin though. Small and dainty as she was, she was also an Auri warrior, and the scowl she gave folk who so much as looked at her was fierce enough to keep anyone at bay. She wore an array of weapons - daggers sheathed on her thighs, a longbow on her back, a mage’s wand in her belt along with a hand axe - and scuffed leather armour that had seen better days. Her long piebald hair was scooped up in a ramshackle bun and looked like it needed washing; there was dirt on her face and hands, possibly some blood too since she’d come straight to the tavern; and she was fairly sure she smelled rank and sweaty. She went and stood by a table of Ul’dahn matrons and - sure enough - after glaring at her for ten minutes or so and sniffing crossly, they got up and left. Elai sat down, grinning, and spread herself out comfortably on the couch.
“Nicely done,” Momodi said with a sniff. “You best be ordering plenty of my best ale to make up for scaring off my customers.”
Elai shrugged. “Since when was plenty of ale unlikely? Don’t the brutes who guard your doors generally have to lug me upstairs at night?”
“You drink too much,” Momodi told her. “And you need a bath. Someone might mistake you for a wastrel if they didn’t know better.”
“Not a problem.”
“The Brass Blades’ll run you out of town, then where will you be?”
Elai grinned. “On my way to Gridania?”
“Bah, you know what I mean.” Momodi shook her head. “You’re a good girl, Elai, even if you like to pretend you’re not. Plenty of folks here think so, you’ve helped more than a few of them since you arrived.”
Elai scrunched herself up a little smaller on the couch. “I do it for the coin, Momodi. Nothing else.”
“The coin you drink several times over on a night?”
“Aye. That coin.”
“And did Papashan pay you not a few bells ago when you rescued Lady Lilira?”
Elai scowled. “You shouldn’t listen to gossip.”
“Master Thancred wasn’t gossiping. He came here looking for you, wanted to make sure you’d been properly rewarded. Said the two of you took down a voidsent, but then you skipped off before either him or the lady could give you their thanks.”
Elai curled herself up even smaller. If Thancred Waters was looking for her, she needed to disappear. Not that he’d recognise her. No one would. Momodi made that very plain when she told Elai about the heroes lost at Carteneau. Elladie Byrne was dead and gone, and Elai Khatahdin had taken her place. It was a better name anyways; she’d never liked ‘Elladie’. Too Hyuran. She’d chosen something that sounded more Auri when she got to rename herself.
“I hope you didn’t tell him anything,” she said to Momodi. “You know I don’t like being pestered.”
“Well I gave him your name …”
“Nophica’s tits, Momodi, why in the Seven Hells did you do that?”
“I wasn’t aware it was a secret. Don’t get uppity with me, missy.”
“Ah, fuck it.”
“Why are you so hot under the collar anyway?” Momodi narrowed her eyes. “You’ve met Thancred before?”
“If I did - and I’m not saying it’s true - he won’t remember me.”
Momodi peered over the table. “Well, you’re not really his type, I suppose.”
“Oh, thanks.”
“He likes them cute and girly. You’d be pretty enough if you took a bath and had someone sort out your hair, but not even your own mother would call you girly.”
“I never met my mother,” Elai said.
She said it to deflect Momodi, but it was true just the same. Not that it had ever bothered her; she was raised and educated by the Onishushu in Onkoro after they found a starving Auri brat on the road from the steppe. They taught her ninjitsu and geomancy and how to poison a man without leaving a trace, and she expected to spend her life in their service. But that was before her Echo showed itself, and she was exiled to Eorzea.
She gritted her teeth and felt bad for taking her anger and hurt out on the Lalafell. “My apologies. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Momodi looked crestfallen. “No. I spoke out of turn first. I didn’t know about your Ma, love.”
“Why would you?” Elai said. “It’s fine. Like I said, I never met her. I’ve got enough to cry about without crying over things I never had in the first place.”
Momodi patted one of her dirty, blood-stained hands. “I’ll get you a flagon of ale, love. On the house. And food too, I don’t reckon you had breakfast or lunch. What do you fancy? There’s some fine marmot steak tonight. Or braised pipira?”
Elai managed a smile. “Whatever you recommend.”
Truth be told, Momodi nagged her as much as any real mother. But she was fond of the lalafell innkeeper. If not for Momodi, only the Twelve knew what would have become of Elai after Carteneau. Louisoix’s spell threw her violently into her own future and wiped her from the memory of everyone who survived. It had been difficult - no, it had been almost impossible - to pick herself up and carry on. But Momodi had nagged her and bullied her and hugged her when she sobbed drunkenly into her supper. Momodi loaned her gil because Elai had none when she staggered back into Ul’dah; added her name to the roster of adventurers who worked for the guild; made sure men like Papashan knew who Elai was and that she could be relied on. And Elai had no more notion now than three moons ago as to why the lalafell helped her. She asked, and Momodi just shrugged and muttered something about trusting her instincts.
“Any chance I can eat upstairs?” Elai said, deciding to push her luck.
Momodi folded her arms. “No food or drink in the rooms.”
“Oh, come on. You know no one takes any notice of that rule.”
“Aye,” the lalafell said, tapping her foot. “Why else are there rats the size of dragons scuttling round my inn? Lord Lolorito owns the Quicksand and the Hourglass, you know. If he hears about the rats, I’ll be out on my ear, and where will you all be then, I’d like to know? And why d’you want to eat upstairs anyway? Drinking by yourself is never fun.”
“I don’t drink for fun,” Elai said. She tried - and failed - to muster a smile.
Momodi snorted. “You think I don’t know that? You drink so you don’t remember your nightmares.”
“You've been spying on me again?”
“Not hardly. Did you forget how many nights your shouts woke the whole place when you first got here?”
Elai bit her lip. It was mortifying that others knew how weak and useless she was. But truly the dreams that plagued her were horrible. At least when she had a drink, she didn’t wake alone in the dark, weeping with grief and fear. A mouth that tasted like a colibri’s arse and a headache that made her puke were much more tolerable than grief and fear. And it was easier to push away memories of her nightmares when she had to contend with not vomiting all over herself.
There was fire in the dark abyss of the dreams, and voices screaming. Great beasts - monstrous and deformed, like the crazy imaginings of a fevered necromance - dragged the screamers away and devoured them. Mechanical constructs belched ash and smoke; the air made Elai cough and retch, and tears ran down her face. She didn’t know if she wept from fear, or grief, or merely the physical effects of the smoke. She didn’t know what was happening. In the dreams she never understood. It felt like the end of the world. She was looking for something, but she didn’t know what; just that it was terrifying not to be able to find it.
Sometimes she would wake - or think she woke - only to find herself falling endlessly through the darkness. If she struggled, the sensation of falling grew worse, until her arms and legs flailed. If she didn’t fight but surrendered, the fall lessened until it became a floating descent onto a surface she couldn’t see. Her feet touched down onto the invisible platform with a light grace that belied how far she’d tumbled. No matter how many times she dreamed it, she’d still look around confused, and then she’d spy a mote of light in the distant shadows and start to walk towards it. There was a voice, low and sonorous, but it never said anything helpful.
“Hear.”
Yeah, she was listening. Waiting for someone to say something useful.
“Feel.”
Well, she’d felt too much already. She was tired of feeling.
“Hear, feel.”
Oh, by the Twelve, get a new script to read, Lady.
Sometimes Elai would wake up at that point and feel glad - or gladder than otherwise, at any rate - that she missed what invariably came next. Because if she didn’t wake up, a hooded figure stepped out of the shadows, wearing a mask. And she’d stand and look at it, and it looked back, and then …and then …she fucking attacked it … As if she hadn’t listened to a single lesson Master Ayahe taught her. Choose your battles carefully, child. And don’t pick ones you can’t win.
She saw the rush of magic the hooded creature summoned; no way was she countering that. She’d studied a bit of geomancy - conjury, they called it, here in Eorzea - but she was a rank beginner compared to the masked one. So what the fuck was she thinking? It was bloody lucky she always woke up before the storm of shadow slammed into her. Dream or not, she didn’t want to hang around to find out how that felt.
Elai sat up with a start, just as she always did, heart hammering, gasping for breath. At the same time the little man inside her skull started work with his pickaxe, trying to escape, and she leaned over to puke into the chamber pot by the bed, left there for exactly that purpose. She groaned and flopped back onto the mattress, covering her eyes with the crook of her arm.
It was barely light. But - hey - she’d made it to another day. That was always a bonus, given her current indifference to survival. Her bodily functions were mostly still working, and she reckoned she still had some cognitive function. Enough to know that Momodi really was right when she scolded Elai for drinking too much. And that - if she didn’t want to run into Thancred Waters again - she really ought to skip town today. It was a miracle she hadn’t run into him before the incident with the Sultana and the voidsent; Ul’dah was his patch, and she’d known he was still around. She’d even seen him - once or twice - although she made herself scarce as soon as she recognised that silver-gilt hair.
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Elai met Thancred for the first time in Limsa Lominsa. At the Rogues’ guild, unsurprisingly. He’d been visiting old friends, or so he said; she had been the guild’s newest member. He’d flirted with her. She’d flirted back, intrigued by the way the others talked him up, wondering if he could possibly be as good as they reckoned. They sparred a little, and he was good. Just not as good as she was, although he disagreed with that assessment. He upped the flirting, she wasn’t sure why; maybe she’d gone from idle entertainment to possible conquest by beating him in best of three. Or maybe he was just being Thancred. It didn’t take long to hear about his reputation with the ladies. And though Elai fancied him from the start, she wasn’t interested in becoming yet another of his conquests.
But then one night - after weeks of sneakery and spying and a heartstopping infiltration of the fort at Castrum Novum – Elai decided to call his bluff. They’d been drinking - a kind of celebration, she supposed, since they'd finally managed to identify the new Garlean legatus, one Nael van Darnus - and there was a wild edge to both of them. Thancred drained the last of his Lominsan brandy and set the glass back down on the table with an unnecessary carefulness that betrayed how drunk he was.
“So,” he said. “How about we buy another bottle, beautiful Elladie, and adjourn to my room?”
Elai looked at him – she hadn’t drunk anywhere near as much, one glass to his two, but she was still drunk enough to think the challenge worth accepting – and shrugged. “Sure.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Sure?”
She laughed. “Did the brandy affect your hearing? Strange. Usually the speech goes first, then the eyesight, followed by …”
“Hush. If I wanted a lecture on the physical effects of alcohol, I’d be dining with a chirurgeon. Let’s back up a little. To the part where you said ‘sure’. Did I hear you aright?”
He looked so confused that Elai laughed again. “You did. Shall I buy the brandy since you bought the first one?”
“Wait, wait. Brandy, yes, absolutely. My room, no?"
“We can go to your room if you want.”
“We can?"
Elai grinned. “It’s actually a really good idea. I doubt either of us will be able to walk after another bottle.”
He stood up quickly, and he was more steady on his feet than she expected. “I’ll walk with you to the bar.”
“Scared I’ll change my mind?”
“Just making sure you don’t have an accident. Slip on the stairs, drop the bottle.”
“Ah, so you’re more concerned about the brandy?”
He looked at her. “I wouldn’t say that at all, milady.”
She arched her eyebrows, although the tone of his voice and the need in his gaze made heat start to coil low in her body. He was very pretty, and she was very curious. She wondered if his skill in the bedroom matched his skill as a sneak thief. He certainly was adept with his fingers.
“Well,” she said, watching him as she spoke. “We could always forego the brandy.”
“We could?”
“You don’t think so?”
“I do think so. Absolutely. I …” He gave her a wry smile. “I just want to make sure that I’m not misunderstanding the situation.”
She moved closer to him and stood on her tiptoes so that her breath ghosted warm against the curve of his neck when she spoke. “You’re not misunderstanding the situation, Thancred.”
He took her hand in his and led her towards the stairs. His fingers around hers were warm, and he squeezed her hand and turned back to smile at her as she followed him. At that moment, she would have followed him anywhere. Desire had taken over. She wanted to feel his fingers on her skin, to touch him and taste him, to have his eyes slide over her as she arched and moaned on his bed. She could picture them moving together, their bodies slick with perspiration, and she dug her nails into the palm of his hand.
His breathing quickened.
“Lady,” he said. “Do that again, and we’ll not make it to my room.”
His words made the heat pool low in her body again. She scraped her nails against his palm instead of digging them in, and he growled. He tugged her ever more speedily up the stairs. Once through the door to his room, with it firmly shut behind them, they stopped and stared at each other. Elai stepped forward slowly, fascinated by the way the moonlight through the window gilded his pale hair and turned his eyes into pools of shadow. At that moment he was very beautiful to her, and she wanted him. She stood close to him, their bodies touching, and she rose up on her toes again until she could feel his breath on her face.
“Elladie …” he whispered.
“Hush.”
She kissed him. His mouth felt soft and warm. It opened, and his hands closed on her shoulders as the kiss became deeper and fiercer. She could feel his arousal hard against her belly.
“I want you,” he said, into her mouth.
Elai broke the kiss. “I want you too.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
“I fear I’m over-ripe in my eagerness, lady."
"Not a problem. Long as you last long enough to unlace your breeches, we're good."
His hand closed on her hips, thumbs caressing the skin just above the bone. "Elladie Byrne ..."
His touch made her want to bite him. Hard. Leave marks that Minfilia would see. "Thancred Waters ...Don't pretend to be shocked. My ability to seduce my mark is part of what I do. Gathering secrets is easy over a bit of pillow talk."
"So I'm a bit of pillow talk now?"
"No. You're the tantalising prospect of an intriguing fuck. So are we going to do it, or are we going to fight about which of us is the biggest trollop?
His eyes danced. "Do it. We can fight about it afterwards."
Elai leaned forward and up, taking his bottom lip into her mouth, sucking on it, applying teeth. He backed her towards the bed; she felt the line of the mattress against the backs of her knees and tumbled obligingly onto it, pulling him with her. He propped himself up on his elbows and grinned down at her, his eyes still dancing with heat and humour.
“You talk too much,” she said, wrapping her fingers around fistfulls of hair and pulling ...
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It had hurt, fighting side by side with Thancred against the voidsent, trying to protect the Sultana. Knowing that he had no idea who she was. Knowing that he didn’t even recall her name whereas she could remember how his face looked when he came inside her. As they stood together she’d grinned at him, unable to help herself, and he’d grinned back as if somehow, someway, he knew. But he didn’t know. And it hurt.
Elai levered herself upright, planning to sort through her stuff and tell Momodi she was leaving, and was promptly sick again. The vile pool in the chamber pot was nigh on overflowing.
“Yeah,” she muttered, falling back against the pillows. “Yeah, I need to stop drinking so much. And I need to get out of Ul’dah. After I get rid of my hangover. And empty the pot. Tomorrow.”
Trouble was, she didn’t really want to leave; she had nothing left of her old life except the bits and pieces in her pack, and so she didn’t want to lose Momodi, not right now, not yet.
It didn’t take much to persuade her that Camp Blackbrush was far enough, that she could rent a room at the Coffer and Coffin and still visit the city once in a while. Even when she realised the merchant she was employed to guard had somehow managed to get on the wrong side of the Syndicate - at which point any sensible person who wanted to keep a low profile would have made her excuses and backed away - even then she hung around to see what would happen.
A golem had happened. Summoned out of a pile of rock and rubble lying in the entrance to the Sil’dih ruins. There had been a bit of chanting - wasn’t there always chanting? - in a language she wished she hadn’t understood but did, because that was one of the many - and slightly less annoying - aspects of her Echo, and then the stones began to fly through the air towards each other as if they’d suddenly discovered some hitherto undiscovered law of gravity. They formed themselves into a golem at least twice her size which bent its burning orange eyes on her and quickly made up its mind she needed to die.
Naturally Thancred - with his usual exquisite timing - showed up just as Elai got the upper hand in the fight.
"Thal’s balls,” he complained as he jogged up, almost exactly as the golem collapsed into a heap of rubble. “Did I miss all the fun?” He sheathed his daggers and looked down at her, kneeling amidst a pile of broken rocks. “I can see you didn’t require my assistance this time.”
Elai exhaled, blowing golem dust out of her nose and mouth and tried to remember why she was still in Ul’dah. She scowled at Thancred and put away her cesti - abandoning knives in favour of fists seemed sensible when fighting a small mountain - and he grinned.
“It seems trouble likes to follow you around, my friend,” he said.
She shrugged, ignoring all her turbulent emotions, aping a nonchalance she really didn’t feel. “Or it follows you and I get caught in the crossfire. Are you tailing me for a reason? Or are you just bored?”
“You wound me deeply.” He put a theatrical hand on his heart. “As for tailing you, no such thing. When I felt an upheaval in the aether in this direction, I came as quickly as I could.”
They both looked down at the golem remains. Thancred poked them with his foot. With the sun shining on his bright white hair and his brown eyes thoughtful, he looked no older than he had when he bade her farewell before Carteneau.
“I … don’t know,” she said. Mysterious voices out of nowhere chanting nonsense that only her Echo understood… well … that made her sound like a crazy person even to herself. “I … ah … I guess the Brass Blades had it. In … ah … storage? Under there.” She pointed at the looming cave entrance that led into the ruined remains of Sil’dih.
Thancred raised his eyebrows. “Really?”
“Do you have a better explanation?”
“No. But I wasn’t here. That’s why I’m asking you.”
“I don’t know.” It was true, she didn’t; the Brass Blades had clearly been working on the orders of Lord Lolorito, but they’d seemed as surprised by the golem as she was, and they’d taken to their heels as soon as it appeared. “I was just helping out, I wasn’t expecting the Brass Blades to turn on us.” She waved at poor Wystan, the merchant. “They gave him a good beating before I got here. Shouldn’t we take him to a healer?”
Wystan groaned as if he agreed with her, and Thancred frowned.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “But tread carefully, my friend. This is the second time you’ve been caught up in trouble in naught but a moon, and I’m concerned about the wheretofor of all of it. What happened here was clearly sanctioned by one or more members of the Syndicate …” She noticed that he didn’t mention Lolorito by name and wondered if that was ignorance or caution. She was starting to feel torn between giving him the information he needed to solve the puzzle or keeping her head down and her hands clean. “The Sultana’s enemies grow bolder every day, and it worries me that they seem to have outside assistance. Voidsent and golems. Believe me, even for Ul’dah that’s unusual.”
“I believe you,” she said fervently, helping Wystan to his feet. Some of the others employed by Wystan were starting to creep out from behind the rocks and in the tunnels where they’d hidden. “And I’m not wishful of becoming embroiled in any quarrel with the Syndicate. It’s probably time I took myself out of Ul’dah for a while.”
“Speak with Momodi,” Thancred told her. “She’ll know if anyone else has heard of your involvement. I have business elsewhere otherwise I’d escort you back to the city myself.”
“Don’t trouble yourself,” Elai said quickly. She didn’t want to spend any more time in his company than was necessary. “It’s probably for the best if no one sees me speak with you; even if my name isn’t known, I feel sure yours is.”
He nodded. “True. Take care then.”
She watched him walk away towards the slope that curved up out of the ruins. There was an ache inside her at his departure as if - with this farewell - she finally saw that Elladie Byrne was gone forever, that she had died at Carteneau as surely as those whose bones mouldered in the earth. She put a hand to her throat, unconsciously trying to ease the constriction that had settled there. Then she turned and offered Wystan and wavering smile.
“Let’s get you back to the Coffer and Coffin,” she said.
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Thancred opened the door to the Waking Sands very slowly and peered inside.
Tataru was at her desk in the outer office - which was annoying - but she was busy with some paperwork, and she was humming to herself as she scribbled away. With care - and some good luck - he should be able to sneak by her. He pulled the door closed again quietly and took off his boots before he crept inside in bare feet. It reminded him of being a boy in Limsa, edging across the jetties to thieve a fish for supper.
He picked his way across the floor, knowing by rote which parts to avoid because they creaked. A sad testament, he thought, to how many times he snuck in and out of the Waking Sands for some reason or another. He was halfway down the stairs to the inner door when he realised Tataru’s humming had stopped, and he stood very still and held his breath.
“I know you’re there, Thancred,” the lalafell scolded. “I’m not deaf. Or blind.”
He winced and climbed back up the stairs to apologise.
“It’s not me you should apologise to,” Tataru said. “You know it upsets Minfilia when you avoid her like this.”
“I’m not avoiding her,” Thancred protested. “Not as such. I don’t have much time - trouble’s about to bubble over in Ul’dah, and I ought to be there when it does - but I needed to talk to Urianger.”
“So you can spare five minutes to pop your head round the solar door then …”
“Tataru…” he sighed.
She folded her arms and looked down her nose at him. It was a profoundly impressive skill, especially since he was a few fulms taller than she was.
“Fine,” he said. “Fine. I’ll talk to Urianger, and then I’ll go and see Minfilia.”
Tataru smiled. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
“I don’t have time for tea …”
“I’ll bring drinks into the solar in fifteen minutes.”
He rolled his eyes and sat down on Tataru’s stool to put his boots back on. It was pointless arguing with the lalafell secretary; she was an irresistible force. He was half-convinced that if they unleashed her on the Garleans, the Empire’s legions would beat a hasty retreat. He looked a little longingly at the door back outside. If he was quick, he could escape. It would mean he didn’t get to talk to Urianger, but he’d avoid Minfilia that way. He loved Minfilia devotedly, but he felt horribly guilty every time he saw her; guilty about never being around, guilty about neglecting her, guilty about feeling guilty. It fed on itself, his guilt. Consciously he knew he was never going to be able to assuage it - he’d started off by killing her father… well… more not managing to save him... but still - yet everything he did seemed to make it worse. He hated himself right now because he wanted to run away instead of sitting down and taking tea with her.
“You can do this,” he muttered to himself. If only Louisoix hadn’t died at Carteneau; if only everyone hadn’t and left him in charge. “They depend on you, you can’t let them down.”
He pinned what he hoped was a jaunty smile on his face - people expected him to be smiling because he always smiled - and made his way towards Urianger’s study. It wasn’t really a study - more of a cupboard - but the Elezen mage had insisted he needed somewhere that wasn’t filled with chatterers; they had managed to cram in a desk, angled just so, and Minfilia had built shelves to fit in the remaining space for all of Urianger’s books and scrolls. There wasn’t much room left, even for Urianger. Two people in there meant a level of intimacy Thancred wasn’t sure he was prepared for. He left the door open and leaned against the wooden frame, else he would have been obliged to sit in Urianger’s lap.
“Thou lookest at me amiss,” Urianger observed, and Thancred grinned.
“Just thinking about sitting on your knee,” he said.
The mage looked worried. “An unnecessary manoeuvre methinks.”
“But worth it just to see the look on your face.”
“Didst thou travel all this way merely to persecute me?”
“Sadly, no. A long shot - since you never leave your cupboard - but have you run into an Auri adventurer called Elai recently? Elai Cart … something. Khatahdin, that’s it.”
“As thou sayest, I rarely leave my study.”
“That’s a ‘no’ then?”
Urianger inclined his head. “Indeed. Perchance there is some purpose behind thy question?”
It was always hard to tell what Urianger was thinking. Partly because he always spoke in such impenetrable language - and Thancred was sure he did it on purpose, entirely to be impenetrable - and partly because of the way he dressed. He wore robes and sandals with a cowl over his head and metal goggles over his eyes. Every aspect of his appearance apart from his sideburns was hidden. The goggles were part of the apparatus that helped the mage in his aetherical studies, but Thancred was positive Urianger really didn’t need to wear them all the time. Underneath the cowl and goggles, he was an attractive Elezen male.
“Perchance there is,” Thancred agreed, watching his friend very carefully for the least flicker of expression. “I met her for the first time a few weeks ago and …”
“I trust that thou has not travelled all these malms to regale me with the details of thy latest infatuation?”
“That hurts, Urianger.”
“I believe it was needful.”
Thancred grinned. “She’s certainly not ugly, though she could do with a bath. But that’s not why I wanted to discuss her. She’s … confusing. Intriguing. She doesn’t make sense.”
“Her speech is perhaps foreign to thine ears?”
“I don’t mean she talks nonsense,” he replied, laughing. “She doesn’t say much at all. But she shows up when there’s trouble. As you know, I’m concerned about the situation in Ul’dah; I’m pretty sure our ‘masked friends’ are behind the recent spate of incidents. Nanamo snuck out to take a walk, as is her wont, without any attendants, and she was attacked by a voidsent. If Elai hadn’t come running, I would have been hard pushed to deal with the creature. Then this morning there was trouble with a golem.”
Despite the cowl and goggles, Thancred was certain he saw the tiniest frown mar Urianger’s forehead. “A golem. Art thou certain?”
“I didn’t see it myself,” he admitted. “And I don’t know where it came from. But I felt a massive aetherical surge and, when I rushed to investigate, I found Elai kneeling amidst a pile of rocky debris. The merchant who was employing her - and the rest of his men - also attest to the presence of the golem. It seems Elai slew the construct single-handedly.”
Urianger was definitely frowning. “A powerful warrior then.”
“Absolutely. More powerful and skilled than her age warrants. She is five and twenty summers at the most, but she does battle like a grizzled veteran. She’s mastered both dagger-work and fists, and Momodi says she’s a gifted healer too. Momodi is full of praise for the girl.” Thancred didn’t add that Momodi said Elai drank too much and suffered from terrible nightmares, although he wasn’t entirely sure why he kept that to himself. Except that he had liked the girl from the little he had seen of her.
“An Echo user then perhaps?” Urianger said. “Twould somewhat explain her relative youth compared to her skills. Tis often seen that those with the Echo are blessed with myriad talents besides.”
“Yeah,” Thancred nodded. “I mean, if you just said what I think you said, then yeah.”
“Spare me,” Urianger retorted. “Thou art blessed with as much intelligence as any other here, much as thou triest to conceal it. As for thy Auri friend, perchance thou shouldst bring her to meet Minfilia?”
“Yeah.”
“Dost thou trust her?”
Thancred shrugged. “Momodi certainly does. But I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve met her somewhere before, and it troubles me. I think I’d rather wait and watch a while longer. See what scuttles out of the woodwork. Cheers, Urianger, you’ve been a big help.”
The mage nodded. “I confess I am uncertain in what measure I have assisted thee, but thou art welcome.”
Thancred grinned and walked away, closing the cupboard - study - door behind him. He strolled down the corridor, whistling, and wondering if he could pretend that he forgot about taking tea with Minfilia.
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