3 Cylus 722
Martin, that stupid drug dealer, was right despite how much she loathed to admit it. She was in a bind. When she landed in Scalvoris she knew she had just enough bare skills to score a job as a mercenary. She had to do some proving, but it was done and she earned her keep. Even when that opportunity was scrapped she wasn't helpless. She found other ways to make ends meet. As long as she had arms and legs like everyone else there was always the possibility of finding some kind of gig.
Until Etzos.
This forsaken city pushed back and pushed back hard. The filthiest mercenaries wouldn't hire her. A tavern wouldn't give her a second glance. Fucking Immortals even the cemetery brushed her off. When the job was to literally dig a hole in the ground they couldn't even land that. Best qualified in the door or not, it felt like the reason she was turned down was eerily the same. Whether they said it aloud or she detected it in the way they looked at her, it was evident. In no capacity, not a single time over an arc of searching, did any employer trust her to serve them. Not a single one.
It made no sense until it did. She tried putting on all sorts of acts, hoping to manipulate her way in. No matter what façade she wore it never worked. A lot of drinks and spent Ambrosia joints later, she started to understand why. After that it became readily obvious. The only large change about her was Famula's damned curse. It wasn't just the visual of the chains running in and out of her skin along her extremities. Like her marks, she assumed something about them had an effect on the people around her. Her ability to survive by any normal pro-social means had been uniquely sabotaged.
So be it.
Maxine was a slave to her instincts, if nothing else. Lack of employment wasn't going to lead to her starvation. The threat of malnourishment would only let a different, baser animal out to mitigate the challenge to her survival. The only good news was in the fact her standard of living had become absurdly low. She was homeless. Most of what she owned she wore and wore repeatedly. She barely ate. All she needed, all she cared about, was scoring her next fix. Little else mattered.
"Looks right to me," Maxine murmured to herself as she approached the small home. It was in a more downtrodden space of the city, rife with the sort of characters one would be best not to make eye contact with. The windows were cruddy, weeds sprung up from the gutters, and the roof was half-shingled. Morning light didn't even cut through the grime on the glass.
Yeah. Definitely it.
She wandered toward the home, careful to note who was an aimless wanderer and who might be a watcher. When she discovered no one that gave her an odd feeling about her intentions, she ventured into the shadows adjacent to the place. The only sound-looking structure on the building was the front door. Surely that was locked. Better to bypass the obvious approach in favor of one with less chance of being seen.
Max slipped a dagger from her waist and got to fiddling with the window. Prying wasn't as easy as she expected. The edge of her knife had to sweep away layers of sediment and filth before she found a lip to tuck it under. After several bits of wiggling, it finally popped up. She paused after the success. She nodded to herself.
Not a sound.
She pushed the window up until she could fit her slim body through. After an unceremonious drop to the floor of the other side, she was in. She clapped her hands together and peered through the dark, noting the scurry of mice as they fled from her entrance. The place was horrifically lived in. It hadn't seen a maid, let alone someone mistaken as one, in at least a decade. Cabinets were left empty and open. She could smell the mildew hanging on curtains and furniture.
Still it was quiet. So she set to work. Drawers were pulled, trunks were searched, and every space was inspected in her quest for...really anything. In the kitchen she found a half-finished, dusty bottle of some grog. She popped the cork and took as swig as she moved into the living room.
"Pfffft!" she spat the unagreeable swill out in a sputter. "Fuck. That's bad. Even for me." She abandoned the bottle on a nearby dresser, fighting the urge to brush her tongue off with her fingertips like it might help. Knife still in her other hand she eyed the old bed jammed in the bedroom corner. She tapped the blade against her outer thigh. Then she crouched down, driving the edge into the side of the mattress and opening it up.
Sure enough, her junkie instincts had been tingling for a reason. Crammed deep inside the little hole she'd noticed, a small sack was nestled inside the mattress. She sheathed her knife and scooped the sack up. A couple of coins jostled inside, but she could tell by the weight it was of incredibly small value. What piqued her interest was a different shape within. She dug a finger inside to loosen the top. She procured the small key and held it up before her eyes, studying the cheap thing curiously.
Under the sink.
Maxine placed the sack in her pocket and wandered back to the kitchen. Under the wash basin, hidden behind some empty containers, she found a wooden box nailed into the wall. She jammed the key into the keyhole and gave a turn. Sure enough it moaned open, and she pulled the door aside.
Dammit.
Empty space greeted her. She sat back on her heels with her brow furrowed.
"Why the fuck would you hide a key to an empty safe?"
"Pete!" a voice called before hammered on the front door of the house. Maxine froze, turning only her head to stare at the quivering locked door. "Pete! You in there?" The speaker yanked on the door to no avail.
"Probably gettin' pissed still," a second voice lamented.
"Might be right," the first voice grumped. "Stupid bastard. He knows I only deliver once. No exceptions."
"Aye. Teach him a lesson then? Let him fiend?"
"Hm. Yeah, boss'll like that. Give an extra to Samuel. He's gotta be hurtin' and we owe him for the last batch bein' less than good. Color on this one is better. Boss'll like the smoothin' with no extra expense."
"Fuck Pete then. Let's add the vials to one box, make it look nice."
As the foot steps retreated, Maxine hustled quietly to the peep-hole. Apparently the glass on it was the only thing this Pete guy kept up with, likely out of paranoia or eagerness to these gents. The strangers wandered back to their horses with a small sack in hand. The first man, now an identifiable red-head, slipped open the sack and dropped the contents into his hands. The vials banged together mutedly.
Katomise...
Maxine's eyes were locked on the palm of the man's hand. She watched intently as the red-head waited for the second man, a balding guy, to procure the small wooden box. The Katomise vials were added to the box, stuffing the small container with as much as it could evidently fit, before it was re-fit with an appropriate blue gift bow. The prepared wooden box was then carefully slipped into a side saddle bag. The two men mounted their horses and grabbed their reins.
Max, on the other hand, nearly tripped over herself racing back to the window. Fuck cleaning up after herself. Fuck not making it look like someone had absolutely snooped about and stolen a small savings. The petty crime would become obvious to Pete anyways. The Rusalka all but threw herself out the window just as the horsemen urged their horses on and out of view.
The addict wasted no time. She pushed herself back up on her hands, tugged the hood of her cloak up over her head, and made quick work walking back into the street to blend. At a leisurely riding pace, Maxine was confident she could keep tabs on them without too much cardio or drawing attention to herself.
She turned to thieving to make up for her Immortal-cursed inability to secure a job. While she technically needed to eat, she'd be kidding herself if she thought she was hungry for wealth for any reason other than keeping up her shitty lifestyle. If she was going to steal for dope, it made far more sense to just steal the actual dope outright. It wasn't the lick she assured Martin she could get. It was an opportunity to stave off the feeling of her body turning on itself for several trials though. That alone was worth its weight in gold.
