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Despite agreeing to join Mirabelle's quest to slay the King in the first place, Odile had never actually seen the man. If she were a sane woman, she wouldn't want to.
(But she wasn't sane, by most metrics. For one, she was a craftonomist, and nobody who wanted to make any real progress in Craft, either as an art or a science, could remain in the sane bubble of predictability. She also pulled out all her vacation time at once to hop on a ship to Vaugarde to try and find her heritage without telling any of her family until the last minute.)
She'd heard rumors though, of course. Towering like a dragon of myth, a lonely spirit's sobs that lured in kind hearts to help the being that would only end their time, death-pale hair trailing in his wake like a freezing mourner's veil. Intimidating, distant rumors that felt more embellishment than truth.
Except Mirabelle had seen the man herself, and the rumors were anything but a panicked populace's fabrication.
So much as it would be convenient that the rumors around the King's power were an exaggeration, Odile was quite aware just how dangerous their quest was, despite the pleasant closeness she'd grown into among her party members, and how much more centered she'd felt on the road with them compared to the sand-shroud monotony that had become her life in Ka Bue.
… Granted, Odile had expected more reasonable travel-dangers on her quest to find half of her heritage. Stormy weather, perhaps a wandering Sadness or something mundane such as that. Not time-frozen swathes of land capturing the last gasps of an entire country in an eternal funerary portrait. Not onyx-spire armor in the shape of a man, taller than any human had a right to be. Or possible thieves, assassins that same man might send the party's way.
Like the fair-cloaked, fair-faced- but not entirely fair-hearted, Odile's absinthe-sogged logic was certain of this- rogue perched at the bar proper with Mirabelle, smiling contentedly into his drink as he listened to what was likely one of the housemaiden's horror-dumps, if the enthusiastic sweeping gestures and sparkle in her sea-dark eyes were any indication.
"M'dame Odile?" Isabeau, who had made the same wise choice Odile did by sitting at a booth rather than trusting his inevitably-inebriated balance to a spinning bar stool, prodded for her attention. "You've been staring at Siff and Mira for a few… A while."
"Not more than you have," Odile blurted out ahead of her own thoughts. And then didn't take it back despite the faint cringe she allowed to grace her visage, because she wasn't wrong.
She'd have to be blind to be wrong, especially when Isabeau's laughter filled the air at every single one of Siffrin's offensively corny jokes. When the man's eyes followed Siffrin's gloved fingers, or their mischievous smile, or, on rare occasions, their rear.
Ugh, young love. Disgusting.
Almost as disgusting as Siffrin increasing the volume of their jokes dramatically when Isabeau was so entertained by them- and then started making even more when Odile and Mirabelle protested the assault of horrible, corny punnage. It was too easy to tell that he was fishing for a reaction, with how he'd glance at them with enough cheek to make a hamster feel inadequate.
… It was endearing, in an unfortunate way; and Odile could at minimum respect the mirror-deft fluency needed to fling out so much wordplay, when doing so in one's non-native language. Vaugardian truly was a bizarre language, compared to Ka Buan and… whatever Siffrin's mother tongue was. She'd never actually heard them speak it, only how it influenced their accent.
It was like the King's, Odile knew, even if just from secondhand stories. Mirabelle had remarked upon the similarity once- and never again, because it was already a fresh enough wound, her panicked flight from the House of Dormont with the curse chasing her heels like a winter wake. And because it was apparently a particularly severe faux pas in Vaugardian society to ask about someone before they Changed- so since Siffrin never talked about their life before they'd become a vagabond roaming the country, it would be far too rude to poke at it.
It was also something Odile herself sympathized with, being burdened by the assumptions and projected stereotypes because of everything that marked her as foreign and other. True, people were rarely rude about it, but it certainly was… a bit awkward, and she didn't even have to worry about people associating her with a night-wrought anathema of Vaugardian Body Craft that froze countless lives and undermined the very basis for their religion.
Odile was a researcher, thank you, not a conspiracy theorist who relied on shared geographical origin to assess another person. She had better, more valid reasons to be suspicious of Siffrin.
Which, right, she was getting off track. And Isabeau seemed content to let her stay lost in thought. Even in the static-mist of her alcohol haze, Odile could read that Isabeau hoped his silence would kill the conversation about his mortifyingly obvious crush.
She decided she'd let him get away with it, in favor of the epiphany her cautious nature had seen fit to grant her after her second drink. Or fourth? She’d forgotten.
Odile shifted closer to Isabeau, leaning conspiratorially to whisper into his ear- and then kept leaning, because was the bench tilting, or was that just her? "Listen, between you and me- I know you like them, but you should be careful. I have reason to believe Siffrin is an…" Hm, what was the Vaudardian word… "Unscrupulous agent of some kind."
"I mean, his jokes aren't that bad, even if you can't always appreciate a proper pun, M'dame…"
"No, no, that's not it." Odile sloppily flicked her fingers at him like she could shoo away his cotton-fluff haze of attraction to the subject of her scrutiny. "Like an assassin. Or something like that." Hopefully only something like that. A spy acting as eyes and ears of the King would be far easier to handle than a more… direct saboteur. Knife-licking-across-unprotected-throats kind of sabotage.
Isabeau attempted to gently nudge her back upright, because despite his suspect taste in love interests, he was a polite young man.
Or at least he tried to, but he ended up just slumping against her instead. Ah, the follies of strong alcohol and a young liver, or something. His fault for ordering the same acid-burning drink Odile did.
“M’dame, uh… no. They're not?” Isabeau frowned, brow furrowed as if he was actually considering Odile’s theory. “That’s a kind of… rude? Rowdy? Thing to say about our friend.”
Odile spared a glance to the aforementioned friend. Who had graduated from listening to Mirabelle to actively playing some sort of game where Mirabelle tossed ice cubes left over from her drink in increasingly high arcs for Siffrin to catch in his mouth like a begging seagull perched at a fishmonger's pier.
… Heh. They were already lightless-and-darkless patterned and coastally-adapted enough to be a seagull, and what with the way their cloak feather-splayed out when they decided to show off their more airborne acrobatic combat techniques. Siffrin-bird. Birdfrin.
Unfortunately, the visual of Siffrin as some kind of brooding fowl in their bulky over-cloak didn't exactly inspire knife-blade caution.
… Neither did Isabeau's expression, now that Odile's words finally managed to sluggishly slither from his ears to his drunken brain.
Because ah, no, that faint scowl wasn’t an expression of deep thought or pondering stimulating hypotheses with a peer, but one of personal disappointment. Okay, maybe Odile could see how the visual of Mirabelle and Siffrin goofing around didn't exactly inspire confidence in her sense of caution.
Unfortunate, but Odile could explain. “Nearly every location where we found an orb or stayed a few nights ended up frozen not long after we left- and that was only after Siffrin joined us. Out of nowhere, might I add, with no indication of personal reason for embarking on a possibly-fatal quest with a party of strangers besides the fact that he 'didn't have anything better to do'."
Now well and truly sliding down the slope slippery with conspiracy- and possibly booze- Odile ticked off points on her fingers. "They possess skills and a foreign combat style that has no place and nowhere to learn it in a country that hasn't seen war in your grandparents' lifetimes." Odile would know, since she studied many a channeling method and combat application in her goal to cast every type of Craft herself. She lifted another finger. "They seemingly have no personal stake in this fight, so why would they join us? Unless they had some other reason." Third finger- though, it was getting harder and harder to tell visually, what with how her vision blurred. Could be four fingers, for all she knew. "Nobody tells jokes that bad on purpose, unless it's as a cover for something else."
"Aw, M'dame, am I an assassin too?" Isabeau pouted, feather-fluttering his eyelashes.
Well, since they were already airing the hidden character of fellow party members… "No, you just do it to nudge away how intelligent you are under your whole simple and loveable, emotionally-available jock face."
"Huh? I- wait, no, you're distracting me! I'm supposed to be telling you why you're being paranoid about our buddy!" Isabeau shook his head, and the immediate regret of it flashed across his absinthe-nauseated expression.
"You want to tell me a tetherless rogue who fights like a spyhawk is harmless?" Blindingly fast, knife-taloned, stealthy, and specialized in sniping down messenger pigeons and sowing chaos like salt in a rice field among communication lines- yes, Siffrin very much resembled the raptors trained by military-employed rangers in Odile's homeland.
See, the Siffrin-bird association didn't disprove her point at all!
"Maybe not harmless. I mean, like that time our campsite almost got robbed! Siffin caught them..." Isabeau snapped his fingers in realization. "Hey, if anything that shows that his 'suspicious skillset' and your conspiracy stuff make sense in favor of his innocence, too! Why would someone trying to undermine us, protect us in our sleep?"
… How was Isabeau so articulate while so obviously sloshed? Even with Vaudardian as his native language, it took a whip-sharp brain to remain so mentally present.
The incident was admittedly something Odile had forgotten in establishing her theory to Isabeau, but if anything it supported her points. Robberies, like most crimes in Vaugarde, were rare, and even rarer out on the road. But desperation, that of a starved curse-survivor, would drive even the most upstanding citizen to theft. Such as the man Siffrin caught untying the flaps of the ladies' tent long after the sun set.
Of course, Mirabelle had sat him down at their campfire and shared a meal and supplies with him, once they figured out he meant them no ill will, only to feed himself for a little bit. He'd professed as such… after Siffrin had caught him.
She'd woken up to a commotion of Craft-lit lamps flaring to life, a shriek of surprise, and the oilcloth-rustling crash of tents ripped open in their residents' panicked haste to see what was going on.
By the time Odile managed to bend her aching bones- hazards of sleeping in a bedroll on the dirt- the scuffle was already over.
Siffrin, behind a man and with a dagger held in poison-steady hands, blade kissing his neck just lightly enough to not draw blood- but only just. If the intruder moved, he'd cut his own jugular.
Siffrin previously established themself as a goof- a skilled fighter and survivalist, but still a bit awkward in a bubble-sweet way- with a sometimes atrocious sense of humor. But there had been nothing goofy about him in that moment- the slant of his eyes, foreign to both Vaugarde and Ka Bue, shadowed despite his lack of hat and just as keen as his crescent-curved dagger. It wasn't a motion with any hesitation, and that spoke to Odile's totally obvious not-tinfoil-hat conclusion that they might be an assassin of some sort.
Which she then voiced her reasoning for. Again. Maybe he'd get it. And also maybe Odile would remember her logic herself if she spoke it aloud rather than let it drown in the anise-sharp drink fogging her veins and mind. "That just says I'm right. Did you see any hesitation when they held up that man?"
"... No."
As one, both of them turned to observe the subject of their debate.
Over Isabeau's shoulder, perched at the bar itself, Siffrin was a darkless ash-smudge in Odile's vision.
Somehow sensing her scrutiny despite the distance and mutually inebriated states, he winked at her, sticking out his tongue in obvious taunt-
Only to get nailed right in the cheek by Mirabelle's frozen cubic projectile. "Hah! Gotcha!"
They swiveled their stool- almost overshooting and sending themself spinning around- to glare at Mirabelle, but before long the slant of their eyes creased once more into an expression of cheer. "Miraaaa, we win when I actually catch your ice cubes."
"Um! Sorry, sorry!" Mirabelle fluttered her hands around him before remembering his aversion to touch. "But! It's like- like when you see a cat, and you need to poke it? Like that? If it makes sense..." she trailed off, words slurring.
Oh dear, Mirabelle really was a lightweight, wasn't she. Someone would have to make sure she drank water, and ate something, and slept in a safe place.
… And that person was probably going to have to be Odile because Isabeau, Gems bless the man, would let Siffrin take a bloodied blade to a sleepover so long as the rogue winked sweetly enough at him.
Case and point, Isabeau turned back to Odile and continued to argue his side. "But, okay, they were trying to protect us, and also looked really like… cool, doing it? Scary in a hot way?" He muttered under his breath, verbal filter and volume control both shot to hell enough that Odile still heard him over the tavern-din. "That's a thing, right? I'm pretty sure that's a thing. Mira's books have some stuff like that…"
Odile raised an incredulous eyebrow so high that it could possibly be classified as a new species of bird. "You think Siffrin threatening someone is attractive?"
Bang! The booth table rattled as Isabeau's knee jerked into it, the man himself wearing an expression not unlike a spooked horse who had spotted a deadly flutter of paper in his periphery.
"Um! I- I just- I don't see him without the cloak and hat much, is all! And! I think it was sweet he was looking out for us!" Isabeau sputtered fruitlessly. Paused. Trailed off into a quiet epiphany that, once again, he failed to hide from Odile's ears. "... And I kind of want him to do that to me."
Wow. Okay. Odile knew about his transparent crush on the rogue, but this was certainly something.
For the briefest moment, Odile made the attempt to view the incident in Isabeau-vision, in the interest of research and fair debate. Siffrin with his lightless underlayer, form-fitting and stealthy, ungloved hands littered with tiny scars like he'd whittled himself instead of wood too many times.
… She couldn't see it. Isabeau just had some… very specific tastes that Odile was not going to think more on, nope, cutting off that profoundly awkward and kind of rude train of thought and stuffing it in a box that Sober Odile would hopefully forget to open tomorrow morning.
In the interest of not thinking about their tastes, Expression of Memory take her recollection of this conversation, Odile capitulated. "Well, whatever floats your fancy. Or however the Vaugardian saying goes. But if I'm right and you're wrong, then I will tell the others about your affections, including Siffrin. Assuming we aren't throat-slit corpses on the ride of the road."
"Noooo…" Isabeau sank in his seat, sliding down further with each protracted 'O'. "How will my dead body recover from the embarrassment?"
"I'm sure your pride will be fine. Because we'll be dead," Odile smirked sloppily. "But at least I'll be dead and right, so hah!"
---
… Ow.
Odile certainly felt dead that next morning, but that was the hangover. Head pounding and mouth wine-sour with dehydration, she turned her head to the other side of her pillow.
… Someone had left a glass of water from the tavern's kitchens at her bedside table, Crafted to preserve the refreshing chill. Odile reached out, slow and sand-creaky and embarrassingly like a woman crawling across a wasteland of blankets to reach for oasis-
Something fluttered in her periphery, and she froze.
Smoke-silent. A lightless cutout in the shape of a person, so impossibly soundless Odile feared the ghost of a time-frozen human had escaped from their frostbite-dark body to haunt the Saviors-
The silhouette placed another glass of water at Mirabelle's bedside table with nary a clack, and slipped something long and thin from their sleeve with all the quiet dexterity of a lifelong thief. As they bent down to nudge the covers back over Mirabelle's starfish-splayed body, a cloud-crown of darkless hair bowed down far enough that Odile could see it through squinted eyes.
… Oh. It was just Siffrin. Which should concern Odile, what with him looming over Mirabelle as she was dead to the world, with supposedly no witnesses to see if he slipped something into her drink, or left a knife between her ribs as a parting gift.
But that was Drunk Odile's concern, and she was stupid enough to keep swigging Vaugardian absinthe after her third shot, so her opinions were on Validity Probation.
After they left, a silent spectre that snaked between scattered belongings and cramped inn furniture despite the near-total darkness, Odile reached over to the nightstand. Managed to grasp her prize without rolling it to the floor.
Fibrous texture, around as long and thick as a finger. Some kind of root or tuber? It certainly smelled edible.
In the interest of scientific curiosity, Odile stuck it in her mouth.
… Huh, licorice root. An old hunter's hangover relief, if Odile remembered correctly. Not the most effective, but useful when one had no access to a House of Change or even the basic medical supplies of a town healer.
Which Siffrin likely hadn't had access to all that often in the past, if they had it on hand somewhere in their endless array of pockets. And still passed out what he had to friends facing the consequences of their own alcoholic actions.
… He really was sweet, in the same way the hangover cures he passed out were. Quiet, and a bit splinter-sharp, and took a lot of chewing to get past the bark of stupid puns covering an otherwise taciturn nature to the core of care, but clearly someone who loved deeply, in his own way.
Odile was just as averse to touch as he was, and not particularly inclined to emotional confessions any soppier than her usual desert-dry tone, but she did love Siffrin too, just as much as Mirabelle and Isabeau did.
… Drunk Odile could never come out again.
Because the hypothetical of Siffrin overhearing her conspiratorial accusation and taking it seriously- he'd be able to tell, she was sure, that she had been serious in her conspiracy theorizing. Drunk-serious. Stupid, but serious- seeped guilt into Odile's thoughts like ink. And, equally importantly, Drunk Odile made everything so awkward. Never again. The mortification would be too much.
—
At a very late breakfast provided by the inn, Odile graciously did not mention anything Isabeau talked about with Drunk Odile, for their own sakes. Less so with self-served magnanimity, but far more genuine, she made sure to thank Siffrin for the aid he left on their nightstands.
Under the mumbly chorus of 'thank you's around the table, Siffrin nodded into his cloak. But not far enough to hide the soft smile and pale flush of his face.
