Noriel looked at them from the other side of the bars.
He was sitting on the edge of the cot, elbows on his knees, the yellow scarf pulled up to just below his mouth. The cuts in his jacket showed the edges of scars. Not dramatically, not displayed. Just present.
"Are you another one of those people that came to get their fix in," he said. It was spoken like someone that knew an answer and wanted to confirm it.
"No," Raum said.
Noriel waited for more. He waited for it to become something else. A setup before something worse happens. But nothing came.
"They let everyone in," he said. "Warden's idea. I'm apparently very safe to look at."
"We noticed."
Noriel's eyes moved to Vaelora, who had been looking at the cell with an open mouth and curious expression. As if she hadn't just spent a night in something similar and it was her first time seeing something like that.
"Is she always like that?" he asked.
"More often than not."
Vaelora didn't comment.
Noriel looked back at Raum. "Why are you here then."
"You," Raum said.
"I'm an assassin." He said this the way someone says their profession when they've stopped expecting the word to land with any particular force. "What kind of assassin falls for an obvious honeypot."
Vaelora turned to Raum.
"I think you knew. That's why you went after them." Raum said.
Vaelora had moved to the bars. She was watching him with the flat, contained attention of someone who hadn't given a verdict yet.
"I think you wanted to get caught," Raum continued "Isn't that right?"
"Walked right into it," he said. Not bitter. The way you say something that has been examined from every angle and stopped surprising you.
Noriel went quiet in a way that wasn't agreement.
"And?" Was his only response. "I'm scheduled for execution today. Whatever you want to learn from me is pointless."
"I want to learn about you. Why did you become an assassin. You don't look like you chose this."
Noriel exhaled and sat back on the cot. He looked at the wall the way someone looks at something they've been looking at long enough that it stopped being just a surface.
---
I was nine years old the first time I understood what the number meant. Other kids were playing fictional pirates and eating nice meals. My family had a debt. Not to a person. To an institution. The kind that doesn't send letters.
My father ran the numbers. Between my parents and my siblings none of us would ever come close paying what was due. So he made a business decision and sold his most valuable asset.
"You promise you will leave us alone?" My father asked as he released me and brought me towards them.
The person taking me away didn't answer. I kicked. I cried. I screamed. I did what any kid that was just separated from their family would do. I looked and saw my dad. He was in tears too, but they were a different kind.
Relief.
The guild was not cruel. That's how they raised everyone else. As if we were their own kids. They fed me. They gave me an education. Trained me. Gave me a bed and enough structure to fill time. They were building something useful, and they built it carefully.
I ran the first time at twelve.
---
Noriel brushed a part of his neck covered by his scarf.
---
They found me before nightfall. I was sold out by the shopkeep that promised to smuggle me out of town. He happily took their money as he watched me get dragged away.
The first time there was never a punishment. Everyone received the same treatment regardless of where they came from or progress within the organization. They brought me back, and expected this would be the first only time they had to do this.
I ran at fourteen. At sixteen. At seventeen I made it three months. Each time I was sent to the edge of death. Maybe even beyond that, just to be brought back.
By the time I stopped running, it wasn't because the walls were higher. I had found the end where each road took me. Back to the same place.
I finally got my first contract when I was eighteen. There were other people who had taken several by the time they were thirteen. I was just a late bloomer I guess you could say. I won't tell you how it was done. I'll tell you that afterward I sat in a room and waited to feel something other than the absence of a next move.
I've waited a long time.
---
He was quiet for a moment.
"Twenty years," he said. "I did whatever was put in front of me. Because there wasn't another option."
Vaelora had gone still. She was watching him with the expression she got when something had gotten genuinely worth thinking about.
"Does it bother you?" she asked. "About what is going to happen?"
Noriel looked at her. Already knowing what he was going to say.
"Your friend is right," he said.
Vaelora glanced at Raum who only gave him a nod of acknowledgment.
"I've been this for a long time. The city's got the paperwork to prove it." He looked at the wall. "Maybe I did let myself get caught. I stopped being bothered by it a while ago."
Vaelora nodded slowly, processing this the way she processed things she found genuinely worth processing.
Noriel looked at him again. "You saw the poster."
"In another city."
"And you followed it here."
Raum glanced at Vaelora who had looked away quickly hoping he hadn't seen her.
Noriel sat back. He had the air of a man who had just updated a ledger. "So what is it you actually want," he said. "Because you're not here for the story. You're here for something."
Raum looked at him for a moment. "Come here."
Noriel slowly approached. Raum reached his hands into his cell and lifted his scarf just slightly to see his neck. Noriel quickly snatched his hand.
"Don't" He said through gritted teeth. "I might not be able to cleanly slice your head from this angle but you've given me more than I need to work with here." His words and hands were shaking.
"Raum!" Vaelora exclaimed.
"Relax. Both of you." Raum said.
"What was that?" A guard said coming down the stairs. "Oh its just that cellmate" he mumbled to himself and went back up.
Raum didn't push it further, he saw what he needed to see. Charred skin, bones that looked they were rebuilt just to be broken again, and scars. Too many of them to count.
Raum took his arm out of the cell.
"You asked me what I want?" He asked.
Noriel made a slight nod.
He raised his left arm, slow and deliberate and pointed his index finger up.
"I'm stealing the Moon"
Noriel traced the finger, looking at the ceiling, then back at Raum.
"The-"
"The mooooooon," Vaelora said, from slightly behind Raum's left shoulder, with the energy of someone who had been waiting for exactly this moment.
Raum sighed, slouching his shoulders.
Noriel looked at her. He looked at Raum. The arm was still up.
"That's what you want," Noriel said.
"It's just the start," Raum said.
"I'm being executed tomorrow," he said.
"I know."
"And you came here to offer me what, exactly."
Raum lowered his arm. He looked at Noriel through the bars without any particular performance of conviction, the same flat way he looked at everything.
"I'm going to get you out," he said. "You can come with us after, or you can go wherever you want. That's up to you."
Noriel studied him.
"Why," he said, "No one else has ever given me a chance like that and you just met me."
Raum thought about the poster. The square outside the Shifter's city. The way he'd stood there longer than reading required.
He didn't say any of that.
"You're worth more to the world than anyone out there knows," he said.
It wasn't the whole truth, and they both knew it. But Noriel didn't push it. He looked at Raum the way a man looks at an outstretched hand from someone he has no particular reason to trust.
He didn't say yes. But he didn't say no either.
He looked at the wall for a moment, at the light shifting across the stone, and then back at Raum.
"Seventh bell to midday," he said. "You've got some time left."
Raum nodded once. He turned and walked back the way they came from.
Vaelora looked at Noriel for another second. Still with that open, mildly curious expression, the same one she had given the flower stall and the scorched stone and the warden in the square.
"Nice scarf," she said with a slight snort.
Noriel looked at her. He said nothing. She followed Raum down the corridor, her footsteps lighter than his, fading behind him like an afterthought.
Behind them, the cell was quiet again.