(2024-07-17) A Perilous Proposition

Details

Author:	Athena
Summary:	Natalyah storms the Azerothian Interest to make a deal with Peril Farrens, to get something of a job, and also make an agreement on how best to help Lathrik. No one cries over spilt coffee, but it does happen. 11k~ words. Personal Character Plot RP.
Rating:	T for Teen

In the four days since Lathrik and Natalyah fixed up the house and she learned the truth about the curse, the routine has altered slightly. There is still coffee for breakfast, but while Lathrik has his lunch on his break, Natalyah has hers as well from the store of food. His work is steady, and the shifts long, with no days off since. Still, he comes home every day to Natalyah there, the house lit up warmly when the sun has set, and dinner on the table; it should be noted that the dinner is not cooked well so much as cooked over well-done, and by this we mean that it is burnt usually. She is no natural cook, and the learning process is rocky. Lathrik eats it all without complaint, and sometimes possibly without notice at all of the state. Food is fuel; you get picky about what goes in the tank, your engine is going to die — a lesson learned a long time ago.

Most days, he's too tired to do more than come home, eat, be kissed — a new, startling but not unwelcome addition — drink a mana potion, and collapse onto the couch to sleep.

Natalyah has not been idle either, although her side is more erratic, if equally exhausting. She tracked down where Lathrik sourced his mana potions, and acquired more of them, with a discount applied in exchange for providing a large amount of the necessary ingredients. No skimping on mana potions will be allowed, now. She spent two days hunting large game to sell to local inns and taverns, a temporary fix for money, aware that others hold the regular jobs already, and encroaching on another hunter's territory might not be wise for long term. Still, it gets her enough to add money into the dwindling supply, and that's what counts.

By Wednesday, in the still mid-early morning after Lathrik's left for his shift, she's moved onto her next potential place for some money: the Azerothian Interest. She's dressed smartly in a green and light brown summer button up, mid-calf length, capped sleeves tea dress, and with the stripes of the brown marbled, the specific colors are reminiscent of the malachite butterfly. Her white shoes top off the effect, and her hair is left to its own usual wild silk wave tumble around her face and shoulders. She's using her canes, easier to get around the city with, and she balances carefully on one to knock on the door.

A lanky man with dusty brown hair answers the door, a blush coming to his cheeks when he sees Natalyah. “Uhhh… how can I, um, help you?” Uncertainty flits through his eyes, followed by panicked realization. “Oh, shoot. That’s wrong, sorry. Let me just… sorry.” He closes the door again.

"I — " Natalyah blinks at the shut door. "What…" She scoffs, sets her hand on the door frame, and raps her knuckles again on the door, harder and louder, the knocking equivalent of exCUSE me, but —. "Hello?" She calls loudly as she does. "I'm here to speak with Peril!"

The door opens again, right away, and the same lanky man from before stands there, although straighter. Much straighter. “A-Azerothian Interest, the Greatest News in Azeroth and Beyond, how can we, uh… Oh, you wanted to see Peril? Um, my boss is currently out on busin—”

There is a scrambling noise on the stairs as Peril all but trips down them. “Milo, it’s — let her in, that’s Nat K.W., the lepidopterist.”

“Oh,” Milo says, staring at Natalyah. He’s still standing dumbfounded in the doorway. Then it seems to click, and he stumbles aside to admit her. “Oh! Sorry. Come in.”

Natalyah waits just long enough for it to click, giving Milo a tart smile as she pushes on through the doorway, before turning a real glowing one onto Peril. "Peril!" She sounds genuinely happy to see him again, as she strides into the room. "I'm so glad I caught you in between investigations and writing. I hope I'm not interrupting anything? I can wait, if you're in the middle of something."

“Nonsense,” Peril says, straightening his shirt and fingering his hat. “What better time than now to greet the arrival of the Mysterious Malachite?” He tips his hat back so she can better see his eyes. “Was I right?”

Milo gets the door behind her and then just lingers there awkwardly.

Natalyah's laugh peals out of her, delighted, as she preens a little, shifting her hips to sway the dress ever so slightly, some of the shorter pieces of her hair floating around her head as she turns it in place, not unlike the slow float of the malachite. "Remarkable. It's the underside, so almost no one gets this one either. As a matter of fact, I picked a difficult one just to see if you'd get it. You don't disappoint, Peril." She moves farther into the room, looking for a seat to land on. "If you have some free time, I was hoping I could speak to you about the paper, actually, on a couple of points."

“Of course, of course,” Peril says, beaming, gesturing her to a seat on the couch while he pulls a chair from a nearby desk. He shoots a stern look at Milo, who quickly returns to his own desk to continue sorting various pieces of mail.

Natalyah sits down, arranging her canes right next to her, propped against the couch, and leans forward, clapping her hands together lightly. "Well, first thing is that I thought I might be able to do something for you, since you mentioned it's been difficult to get out for some investigative reporting, by bringing you some of the newest news about the big scoop of the Alliance: worgen. You can be sure there's going to be all sorts of boring talk about control and the forms and the kaldorei druids and so on, but I'm here to let you in on what will really sell. The weird things. I can give you the insider knowledge, because I am one, and I can tell you about the most absurd parts."

Peril tilts his hat back down, and there’s something of a wicked grin that flashes across his face. “You’ve come to negotiate,” he says. “Alright. What are your terms?”

A tiny green ball of felfire peeks down at them from the top of the stairs, watching with interest.

"Anonymous tips on worgen, and pending a successful pitch of an idea, you let me write an article under a pen name, and in exchange for those two things, I get a reasonable proportionate percentage of the sales of that issue past the point covering your operating costs," Natalyah says, smoothing out her dress, her own impish smile on display. "I have a feeling that the issue will prove popular given the nature of the subject. Curiosity is high, and worgen are still a bit of a mystery. The time to capitalize on it is now."

“Hmmm…” Peril strokes his mustache thoughtfully, pausing an appropriate amount of time, probably for suspense. “If you will allow,” he finally says, “I have one condition to add to the arrangement.”

"By all means, go ahead and say it," she replies, primly. "I might not agree, just as a fair warning. But I'll hear it out."

“Fair, of course,” Peril says. “My condition is this: None of the information given to me regarding worgen must cause you any amount of distress to impart. I will not have us profit from your suffering, whatever the size of it.”

Natalyah's expression wobbles dangerously in surprise and sentimentality, before she gives Peril a meltingly sweet smile, and nods, shaking her hair back over her shoulders and shaking the smile off into a professional air. She's put on some Dignity, but it doesn't disguise the lingering sense of being touched, emotionally. "Oh, very well," she says, like it isn't a big deal at all. She is not terribly convincing, but she's trying. "If you insist." She sniffs, and sets her hands together in her lap. "The transformation itself isn't distressing at all, you should know. Not for me, at least. Some don't like it, either direction, but it doesn't bother me, especially when I'm doing it on purpose. I can get tired if I shift back and forth a lot, but that's different, that's like…running back and forth, sprinting."

Peril gestures to Milo behind him. “Draw up a contract, if you will,” he says. Yes, a contract. On everything that was just said. Hope you were listening, Milo.

“Uh, y-yes sir,” Milo says, scrambling to comply.

“I haven’t seen a great number of worgen in the city, as of yet,” says Peril, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “Is it… something people are ashamed of?”

Natalyah partially mirrors the forward lean, her eyes alight with conspiratorial enthusiasm.

"You might have seen more than you think, but you mean the worgen form, yes?" It's a rhetorical question as she continues on. "Some of that is there just really weren't that many like me, citizens of Stormwind. And the way they left the Alliance — well, you probably remember. So if they're ashamed, not all of it is about the beast.

"Some of it though is that they're not really here, they're still a lot in Darnassus. The Forsaken attack was sudden and brutal enough that an evacuation wasn't smooth, not everyone got their minds back and got home to grab their wallets, you understand? Money is an issue and the kaldorei are letting people stay there for free. Hard to beat those prices.

"If you wanted to see more walking around in the beast form, that's where they will be. The ones who get here are more likely to be those of us who can hold the human form well enough to not draw attention, or worse." There's a tightening of her hands, a touch of trepidation in her expression played off into that bravado. "The ones who can't hold the human shape hardly at all stay mostly by the calming tree." U kno, the Calming Tree.

Peril frowns at the ‘or worse.’ “This is a time for the Alliance to come together,” he says. “Anyone can see that the people of Stormwind, Lordaeron, and Gilneas have all had their hardships. It’s not the time to squabble over who wasn’t where when. Fortunately, I’ve found that humor helps to ease tensions, and we happen to be in exactly the right position to make that happen. Not to mention…”

Peril trails off, fingering the rim of his hat. “I could try to encourage donations, to see if we can’t set some of our wayward allies back to rights, or get them started, at least. You uh, mentioned a…calming tree?”

She nods, looking off to the right for a moment. "The kaldorei grew it for us. Really, they've been very generous, donating their homes and food, and they brought us our humanity back from being lost to the worgen. We're not ungrateful for all of it," she adds, a defensive guilt in her tone, like Peril has accused her of not being thankful enough for what they have in Kalimdor.

"The tree does something to the wolf spirit we've been cursed with, calms them." She adjusts her dress, picking at it, unsettling it from the smooth lines. "Even ferals feel it. A male alchemist back in Gilneas managed to make something that mimicked it, to get our minds back." She swallows hard, and moves her arms around herself. "But the tree is where it makes you like that, sentient, without the concoction. That's where you — " She bends forward a little more, clenching her hands into fists. "I'm sorry. I can't really… tell you. Abiding by our agreement." She isn't looking at Peril, staring accusingly at the floor like it's responsible for this. "But after, you can control the shifts and you can look human again."

Huh. Odd choice of words maybe, look rather than be. Or maybe they're accurate.

Peril does pick up on the wording, and follows with a moment of silence, that kernel of knowledge tucked away somewhere in his mind.

Finally, “It seems another trip to Kalimdor might be in order,” Peril says. “Not… right now, of course. A tree doesn’t seem the safest place to be with a fire breathing dragon flying around, even if it is in the middle of the ocean.” A pause. “I-I’m sure the elves have everything under control, of course, I’m certainly not suggesting that a dragon could fly over and torch the whole thing with ease, just that if it were to happen, I’d prefer to be… here.” Ehem. Doing great Peril.

“I don’t know where I’d find a desk to hide under, in Darnassus,” he continues, perhaps inadvisably. “I will admit, hiding under a desk is not really better than being in a tree, but it’s what I did when he came here. Deathwing, that is. I like to think I have good instincts for crises. They haven’t failed me yet, at least.”

Natalyah isn't surprised about Deathwing — thanks, Hana — but she does look interested at Peril’s accounting of it. Is she going to ask him more about his strategies?

"Can you not die either, then?" Oh, so. No, not Desk Strategies. "Like — " She barely stops herself in time, as she glances at Milo, her expression filling with wariness and uncertainty.

"Like that man I heard about," she says instead, settling her right hand over her breast, near her heart, in a close approximation to where Lathrik's curse resides on his chest. "Do you have one, too, A Thousand Lives, or whatever?"

Emotion jolts through Peril; surprise, pain, guilt, fear. His next breath is sharp, but catches midway through, as if he can no longer find any air in the room. He lowers his head, the rim of the hat casting its shadow across his lower face, his eyes hidden. “No,” he says hoarsely. “No, I…”

He clears his throat, and tries to sit up straighter. “Milo,” he says, his voice firm, but with a slight tremor to it. “Bring us some coffee from the Blue Recluse.”

“But sir,” Milo says, looking up from the paper he is currently writing. “The contract?”

“Coffee,” Peril insists. “Now.”

Milo shoots a bewildered glance between him and Natalyah, then sets the pen back in the inkwell and hurries out the door.

Peril’s expression is grim after Milo leaves, and his hands tightly grip his knees. “What do you know?”

Natalyah bites her lip as Peril has a moment, and sits back, watching the interaction between him and his assistant with a guilty chagrin mixing oddly with a wary certainty.

She meets Peril's gaze, her hand pressing hard against her heart, and a deadly seriousness in her velvet eyes. "I know what your mother did, or at least what Lathrik says she did, what you told him. I've seen the curse on his chest. And I know that even if it does do something to keep him alive, it's also slowly killing him, and he's keeping the tether going through a possibly literally unholy amount of mana potions and pig headed stubbornness, of which I find myself oddly grateful he possess at the moment, but don't quote me on that for later when he puts his foot down about getting a better couch," she says, the wit held to her like a security blanket to hide the real fear in her voice that maybe one day Lathrik's stubbornness will give out.

Peril is oddly quiet, the silence stretching for an entire minute, while he remains almost statue-like in his stillness, what breaths he does take small and shallow. At the top of the stairs, the watching green ball of fire seems to brighten in ecstasy at its master’s pain, its flames dancing vividly, taking on a healthier, fiercer glow.

“I’ve never… had this conversation with anyone before,” he finally says. “I don’t know where to begin.”

"Well, don't look at me for guidance, this isn't exactly my ordinary Wednesday tête-à-tête either," Natalyah returns archly. She sighs and sits back a little. "But I guess I know something of it. I'm not entirely ignorant. I studied at the Northshire Abbey in Light and Shadow, when I was younger. I can use a little Shadow myself, although not much. I understand more than I can really do. I don't need to know anything of it though to know that this can't go on as it has. Something has to be done. He said that a way to break it is to kill your — kill the caster, but I don't know if that would…be worse somehow. Do you know where she is? Have you ever found her again?"

Peril shakes his head. “I haven’t seen her, but it’s suspected that… SI:7 suspects that she’s fallen in with the Twilight’s Hammer cult. That makes her an enemy of Stormwind, given their recent activity, so it’s surely only a matter of time before someone…” He swallows hard. “It doesn’t have to be us.”

Natalyah winces at the revelation that she's likely gone full cultist. "Twilight's Hammer?" She curses so quietly it's mostly inaudible beyond the sh. "I was hoping that maybe, with all the time that had passed, if we could find her, talk to her, maybe she could remove it herself. Apologize like a person. But they're crazy people. I mean really crazy people." And yet, still almost an understatement. "How sure is it that if it breaks, it won't break Lathrik? Because I know the Church, and how much they love to say things like they're sure, but really they're guessing confidently like a man who's confused an unproven hypothesis with a scientific theory."

“No one’s sure of anything,” Peril says bitterly. “It went from ‘we don’t know what it is, maybe a threat to public safety,’ to, ‘actually it’s more of a threat to Lathrik’s health, and potentially a danger to anyone who messes with it.’ The first couple years were the scariest. We didn’t think to try mana potions, so he was…sickly. He could barely move most of the time, but sometimes he did, and it was as though… he wasn’t himself. But I… I do what I can to support him. Originally, I had hoped it was a curse that would fade over time, but it doesn’t…seem to have done that.”

This does not reassure Natalyah, and it shows, in a blend of rage and fear that for a moment — brief, a blink, nothing more — her eyes are gold. She takes a few breaths that are shaky pants of air, before she sets her hands up to her face, pressing along the length of her nose. She breathes in slower, controlled, and lowers her hands again. There's nothing odd any longer about how she looks, except for a fainter cast of sweat on her brow.

"No, the thing that's fading isn't the curse," she says tartly. "Is it new that sometimes he has difficulty waking up, like he goes cold and doesn't respond to his name or touch or anything? Or has that always happened?" She clearly wants Peril to say that it always has happened, that things aren't getting any worse, and that maybe Reniya was just wrong that it's been happening lately and more often. Maybe Reniya just didn't know that Peril used to be Lathrik's alarm clock? Secret…brother alarm clock?

Unfortunately, this comes as news to Peril. “He… he what?” The reporter loses a shade of color, and his hands, still gripping his knees, start to tremble. “Since when? How often? He hasn’t said anything about this to me. You’ve seen it? How is he after?”

"I don't know when it started. Reniya mentioned it to me. I don't think he knows why, just that sometimes Lathrik hasn't been waking in time for his shifts. It's only happened the once since I've been there, but that's only the past two weeks. They'd been waking him up by throwing water on him. I woke him up with…" Oh, is Peril about to learn intimate details about his brother's romantic life?

She sighs, and shrugs helplessly. "It might have been…the Light. Possibly." She bites down on her lip, chews it for a moment in uncertainty. "Well, I tried something, and he was groggy, but himself. I would have known if it wasn't him. He didn't even seem to know that it had happened. I don't think he believed it was really going on from how Reniya said it, just that they'd been using it maybe as a reason to prank him. He believed me, though, because Lathrik's not a fool." Yeah, she's a respected scientist; take that, Reniya. "I made him tell me why, what was going on. He couldn't have hidden it from me, really. I felt shadow on him, like a veil being pulled back when I pushed on it with what might have been the Light."

Peril covers his face with his hands, muttering softly to himself. “Pull it together, Peril, this isn’t the time for panic… You’re Peril Farrens, and surely… Surely there’s something…”

He returns one hand to the rim of his hat, regarding her with a confidence that can only be described as false. “First of all, I would like to thank you for staying beside my brother, especially given his…new struggles. I am grateful beyond words that you’ve been able to look after him the way you have, and that’s no mean feat considering words are my talent and passion. If it was the Light you were able to call to wake him, you may be able to call it to heal his injuries as well, which is a weight off my mind. As for the curse… you can leave it to me. I’ll find a way. Look after him for me, in the meantime?”

The imp at the top of the stairs rubs its hands together gleefully. Is it…larger now? Its grin is unmistakable.

Natalyah looks indignant on so many fronts that it's hard to parse the tone of it beyond that singular emotion driving behind it. "Really? You think that I would leave him just because I found out he's been cursed by something he never chose and alters every aspect of his life that he manages day by day, a disability he has to hide so that people don't underestimate him and don't pity him so much that he can't serve the way he wants to?" It's a little unclear if she means her worgen curse or her leg, but maybe it's both. "I might be able to heal him, but more importantly, he's going to learn how to heal himself, too."

This is another threat.

"I'm not letting you take it all on yourself, either. That's foolish. There's no reason to not collaborate, as we have obviously proven! Every one of us around him knows something, but not everything. It's all in pieces, this and that, and it's slowing the research and ability to do something effectively down," she says, jabbing a finger accusingly at Peril, her brows drawn down. "He isn't alone, and it's time he stops acting like it. You, too! You're the older brother. Set the example." There's an imperiousness to her voice, something of an order in the words.

Milo walks back in, carrying a tray with three large white cups. “I’m borrowing the tray and cups, so when we’re done I’ll need to bring them back…

“I’m going to Outland,” Peril says, without even trying to defend himself.

Milo drops the coffees. The cups shatter when they hit the floor, spilling glass and hot liquid both in a big, dark, fragrant mess.

Natalyah flinches with a gasp, and there's a brief roll of fur over her hands before she sets them on her knees, breathing harder as she controls the shift.

“Sh-shoot, I’m sorry,” Milo says, leaping over the expanding puddle and hurrying to find a mop, or a broom, or both.

“Coffee, Milo,” Peril says again, his tone irritable.

“But sir,” Milo says, freezing with one hand on a broom handle. “The mess?”

Peril gives him another stern look, and Milo slinks back out the door, leaving the mess on the floor.

Natalyah crosses her arms over her chest, glaring at Peril. "What's in Outland?" she demands.

“From what I’ve heard, there’s a gathering of Light creatures called the Naaru,” Peril replies, crossing his own arms. In his case, it seems a more protective gesture, like it will shield him somehow from her glare. “If they are beings of pure Light as it’s said, they could know more than we do of the Void’s workings, given that they are cosmically opposing forces. It’s… worth a try, anyway.”

She huffs. "And what are you going to do when you get there? Just describe by memory the runes, what you remember happening two decades ago, give an overview from what a bunch of priests have said that they've guessed at? Think, Peril. Anyone who isn't just guesser is going to want to see it for themself, actually look at it and feel it, examine it properly. They might not know anything until that point, because it's not a 'curse' to them it's a…" She flutters her hands vaguely. "Actual Scientific Name Something, or whatever. It's not you who needs to go see these naaru creatures. It's Lathrik."

“He won’t…” Peril says quietly. “He won’t leave his job, his friends. Maybe you can convince him otherwise, but I can’t. And until then, any possible clue is better than what we have now.”

"Not if it's the wrong clue about the wrong type of thing," she argues. "If you describe a Viceroy butterfly to someone and they think it's a Queen butterfly, their advice will be utterly and completely useless." Gotta watch out for those mimicry butterflies, Peril. One is super poisonous, and the other is not at all. "But it would be good if you had some sort of confirmation that they would help, and if they would even be of any use at all, or they'd just see a shadow curse and smite him, or something." She sits back against her seat. "If you could tell me that, and how long it would take to get him to see the naaru creatures, then I will get him there, if I have to do it by dragging his job and his friends there, too, if he won't leave them." There's a stubborn, willful set to her jaw.

There is a flash of rage in Peril’s eyes, hidden quickly by the rim of his hat. The only visible, remaining evidence of it is his jaw, tightly clenched. His fingers are, for once, completely still. The imp on the stairs begins a rapturous cackle, ending in an oof as Peril nails it with a thrown bag of spices.

“I will do as you ask,” Peril says, not even once pausing to look at the imp. His voice is tight; forced.

Natalyah startles at the imp's laugh; she might not have realized it was there until just now.

"We're both on the same side," she says, and there's a penitent tone to her voice, some chagrin and guilt wrapping around each other. "And we both want the same thing. Lathrik is going to be all right. He has to be." There's a force of a sigh from her. "I only just found him. I don't want to lose him already."

Peril takes a deep breath, breathing out harshly as if to expel his tension by force. It works about halfway, at least. “You won’t,” he says. “Not when we’re both on the case.” He gets to his feet and fetches the dustpan from where it clings to the broom, then kneels by the coffee disaster and begins to pick out the pieces of glass. Maybe he needs a distraction; maybe he just hates the mess.

It isn't much time after he kneels down that he's joined by a large worgen — the transformation revealing that despite all reason and sense, her dress has grown to fit her in this form, although her shoe is missing from a large clawed foot, as she balances between a hand and her foot in order to reach out her other hand to hold the dustpan steady so he can sweep the broken pieces of the mugs into it.

"A strange thing for me is that I can't actually shift in the morning until I've had my morning coffee," she says to Peril conversationally, no change to her voice despite the vast difference of her head shape. "As a matter of fact, I've even tried going without for a whole two days to see, and all it did was give me an enormous headache."

“That’s the withdrawals, from the…” Peril trails off. She probably knows. He side-eyes her worgen form as he sweeps up the shards, as if he is trying not to stare, but can’t help his insatiable curiosity. The tension has completely left him now, replaced by unspoken questions and suppressed fascination. “That is… a unique thing? The coffee? Or is it common?”

"Well, I haven't done a formal survey or anything. So, no idea how common coffee is, but almost everyone has something. A block or a weird thing that makes it hard to hold the shape. I don't know of anyone who can hold it entirely through sleep, either, but maybe some can. Sometimes you can see it in people, what their Thing is. The worgen form is always close, for anyone, really. It's holding the human form that's difficult, and the worgen form is easy, so when things go wrong, and your body has to pick, it's the worgen. Really strong emotions can force a shift, but anything with enough adrenaline and it'll do it, even if just for a little bit. A bad startle, for some, like a gunshot. Others, just hearing a commander yell something on the battlefield and poof, there they go. Honestly, some people, could be as simple as a really aggressive goose honk, which you can't blame them for. Those things bite," she says, so defensively that someone might wonder if some of those people who are startled into the shift by aggressive honking geese sounds are in this very room.

“I trust said biting goose was promptly made to regret its choices,” Peril says, ushering the last of the pieces into the dustpan. “I myself have been chased by a flock of overzealous ducks whilst attempting to feed them. The druids will tell you not to feed the ducks, but they don’t say it’s because they’ll be out for blood when you stop.”

The door opens and Milo enters, carrying another tray of coffee. He yelps when he sees the large worgen in the room, the tray wobbling perilously (ha ha) as he startles.

Natalyah's unfettered cackle that rings out at Peril's accounting of the danger of duck feeding cuts short as Milo yelps.

Somehow, barely, he manages to regain control before they have yet another mess to clean. “P-pardon me,” he says. “I think I got the wrong build…ing.” His gaze falls on Peril. “…Or not.”

She shrinks slightly, not looking at Milo, a curve of self-conscious shame to the set of her shoulders, as she lets go of the dustpan, moving on her hands and leg to the couch, where she rises with a stand and an iridescent shimmer — it's barely a blink and there's the woman again, holding herself with a stung sort of pride. "Either you need to pay more attention to where you're going," she tells Milo tartly, "or the mages around here really need to stop altering door realities to mess with the local temporal spaces so that it's not such a common danger to use the same door and enter the wrong building."

“People will get used to it, the more it’s seen,” Peril says, scowling at Milo, though his comment is directed to Natalyah. “Eventually it will be as natural as seeing draenei about, and trust me, the face tentacles took some…time. To say nothing of their size.”

Flushed with embarrassment, Milo carries the tray to the nearest desk, then returns to his work on the contract. Peril mops up the remaining coffee spill, then retrieves the tray, offering Natalyah a cup. They have coffee now, might as well drink it.

She sits back down onto the couch before she takes it, and there's a hesitation that suggests she probably doesn't take it black, and is looking for evidence that Peril and/or Milo keeps vanilla bean infused cream milk and sugar around. But she doesn't ask for it, or ask for help getting to it.

"It probably also helped them that they don't have an entire subsection of their kind running around naked and murderous, unless Hana left out the most interesting bits of that story," Natalyah says, the tiny curl of her lips in that wicked smile showing, even if her eyes don't have the fuller merriment behind them just yet.

“Well, not naked and murderous, but there is an entire demon corrupted variety of them called Eredar, and one of their former leaders not only destroyed Dalaran, but also attacked Mount Hyjal and forced the kaldorei to sacrifice their immortality.” Peril takes a breath. “And, they also crash landed onto our world, scattering their weird crystals everywhere, which I hear was not particularly healthy for the local rabbit population. There were…more tentacles involved. And teeth. Big, nasty teeth.”

Peril sets the tray back down after she has taken her cup.

"You see, that's encouraging. Worgens have also not been particularly healthy for the local rabbit populations, and I hear their smear campaigns can be difficult to out number," Natalyah says with another peal of laughter to Peril.

“Um, do you… We have cream,” Milo says, still not quite recovered from his embarrassment, but working on it. “And sugar. Peril drinks his black, but I can’t, so.”

"Oh, yes, thank you," she says to Milo. "To both." She holds out her hand expectantly, like she assumes that Milo will now hand these things to her so she can add them to her coffee herself, rather than have him serve her them.

Milo gets back up and goes rummaging. Someday, surely, the contract will be finished. The sugar is easy to find, as it is sitting in a little ceramic sugar bowl decorated with leaping frogs on the corner of his desk. The cream, however, is in a cooler location; a chest back behind the tables serving as desks. He brings both to the coffee table, setting the pitcher of cream — white, and decorated with a single, blooming lily pad — onto a coaster, so Peril doesn’t kill him.

Meanwhile, Peril’s brain seems to be working circles around him, and he sits back in his chair, scarcely taking a sip of coffee before blurting a question. “What happens if you undress while in worgen form? Do the clothes stay bigger? Could you start a business of making bigger clothes just by wearing something while changing forms and then taking it off again?”

Natalyah busies herself with pouring a good amount of both cream and sugar into her coffee, shaking her head enough to send some of her hair floating slightly in the air with the movement, silk strands settling back down in entirely new ways than they were a moment ago. "Wouldn't that be something? But no, it's strange and it's definitely magic. Whatever the size of the clothes were before you put them on, they adjust. This dress was made for my human form, and so when I wear it, it will grow. If I did manage to get it off — and that is a big if with this dress — when I did, it would be that size once off me, and I wouldn't be able to get it back on again until I shifted down once more. If I have something sized for my beast form, and put it on, when I shift to human, it will shrink, until I take it off and then revert to its true size. It's tied to the magic of the shift, but it's dependent on some sort of physical contact to an extent.

"And," she continues, settling back with her coffee, sipping delicately at it like a high born lady, "it gets even weirder." She lifts her foot to wiggle it, showing off her shoe. "No matter what shoes we wear on our human feet, no matter the size or style, when we shift, they're always gone. The beast form is always barefoot, and then the shoe comes back when we shift again. Where do they go? Is there some sort of metaphysical planar closet that worgen use where we leave our shoes? Does it ever get mixed up? Is it one giant closet, or a personal one?" She asks the questions with a gleeful sort of absurdity, an extended joke within actual scientific query.

“Hmm, a shame about the clothes, I could have seen a business starting up called Multiform Modifications,” Peril says. Aww, he’s already named it. “But I could imagine the shoes go the same place as a druid’s clothes when they change into cats or bears. A great big closet… It would make an interesting story, then, if a trickster mage were to find said closet, and wear the clothes contained within, leaving the shifter with nothing when they resume their alternate form.”

Natalyah laughs, an unfettered wicked cackle. She wiggles a hand at Peril. "I don't know how much someone would want to go into that closet, assuming it's also where one of our fingers goes," she tells him, the conspiratorial glow in her eyes. "The beast form has only four fingers. Which one is missing I can't entirely tell, if it's combined or simply gone." She moves her fingers in the air, setting her pinky and ring finger against each other for one second, then her middle and ring finger, then her index and middle. "At least we get to keep our thumbs, so that we don't need to have an entire revolution to redesign the can opener to not end up in the dilemma of cats and dogs."

“You lose a finger?” Peril asks, gaping. “How does that… is that strange? Do you get ghost finger? You feel like it’s there, but it’s not? Does it throw you off when you go to pick things up? Wait… what if you were wearing a ring on every finger? Do you suddenly have two rings on one, or does one just vanish? Could you start a ring smuggling operation?”

Natalyah's expression lights up in eagerness. "Oh, I didn't even think to use rings. I tried it with gloves, but the gloves just grew and changed to have four fingers, like the clothes adapting." She looks around the office like maybe Peril is secretly a jewelry hoarder. "Do you have five rings? We could try it right now."

Even before he can answer her own question she adds, "And yes, as a matter of fact, it is very strange. You can sometimes tell the difference between someone cursed recently and cursed years ago by how awkward they are in the beast form, and how clumsy they are grabbing and holding things. The trick is to not think about it too much. I've been one for four years, so as long as I'm not thinking about it, my hands will be normal when I grab things. Writing is still practically impossible. I can't figure out yet how to hold the pen right, but it's only practice, I'm sure. I don't know if others feel a phantom finger or not. I've no experience with it." She glances down at her left leg, and sets a hand on it. "I was born like this, so no ghost leg to contend with. Now. More importantly: how many rings do you have on you?"

Peril, wrapped up in his own enthusiasm, manages to follow Natalyah’s swift changes of subject easily. When she circles back to rings, however, he feels the pockets of his vest and shakes his head. “I uh… don’t have a lot of reasons to carry rings with me I’m afraid,” he says. “Besides, I get the feeling Lathrik may have a thing or two to say if I started offering you rings.”

Natalyah makes a little chirp of a laugh. "Out of fear that I'll take over the ring smuggling operation world? He should be afraid. I would be beastly about it."

Peril chuckles, then his mind seems to shift to other things, possibly how his brother would have to tie her up if she became a criminal, and what that might lead to if their relationship is what he suspects it might be. His thoughts are made apparent by the blush overtaking his cheeks. “Yes, that would be… uh.” He turns quickly to Milo, back at the desk. “Is the contract done yet?”

Milo puts some final scratches on it, then jolts up from the chair. “Yes, sir! But, be careful, the ink is still…”

Peril snatches it out of his hands and looks it over, nodding thoughtfully. “Good,” he says. He grabs a wooden board from the desk, then sides both onto the coffee table, retrieving the pen and ink pot next. “It’s just a formality at this point.”

It probably speaks to either a level of trust or a level of recklessness that could very easily get her into trouble that Natalyah does not seem to actually read the contract she's given, just glances vaguely at it, and reaches forward to dip the pen in the ink and sign her name with a flourish. Wow, hope Milo didn't put anything weird in that.

"I'll have to find out about the rings," she tells Peril. "They'll have to be all different rings to determine which one is missing, of course." Science! She holds the pen back out to Peril, and there's a roll of black fur that rushes over her. A blink and there's the beast form of the worgen. Sure enough. Four fingers on each hand.

“Fascinating…” Peril breathes, taking the pen back. “Yes, do check on the rings. Imagine, if it disappears entirely, worgen could be used in secret communications, if we know which finger to secure a paper to before transformation. The Horde would be none the wiser.”

"Ooh, paper rings," Natalyah says, latching onto this eagerly. "You have paper! We could make some paper rings right now, number them, so we know which ones disappear." There's a shimmer along her skin, and there's five-fingered Natalyah again, her hands spread out as if Peril has just immediately made these paper rings in the two seconds since she mentioned making them.

It is likely obvious to their audience of one (1) that these two are a possibly dangerous duo of absurdity and science.

“Milo,” Peril begins, but the assistant is already collecting blank paper and scissors.

“On it, sir,” he says. Perhaps he is used to the absurd requests of at least one of them.

Peril collects each strip of paper as it’s cut, handling the numbering since he is the one with the pen. His handwriting is incredibly neat and fluid. When they are finished, he brings the strips over to Natalyah, along with a roll of tape, and kneels in front of her, holding his hand out in a request for hers.

What a moment for Lathrik to walk in on, if he were going to.

Natalyah ignores the connotations of the set up, lightly slapping her hand down into Peril's, fingers spread, and a wicked smile on her face. "I am ready to begin my smuggling career," she tells him eagerly. Let's do this.

Peril sets to work, rolling the paper around each finger and taping it securely — but not too tight. It isn’t until about halfway through that he realizes what this might look like, and he nearly fumbles the next strip of paper. Then he tries to put it on without looking, which… goes about as well as one might expect. He’s not sweating, you’re sweating.

“Science,” he says. “This is…for science.” As if it needs to be said.

Yes, obviously. Get on with it, says Natalyah's expression. She isn't sweating. Yet.

As soon as the five paper rings are on, she flexes her hand eagerly, and shifts, in that quick roll of fur.

One of the papers winks out of existence, leaving only four paper rings around her fingers. "Oh, look! One is gone," she informs Peril excitedly. "Which one is it?" It's practically a demand, but she starts to take off the paper rings herself, a difficult endeavor given the clawed fingers of the beast form.

Peril helps without being asked to, reading off the numbers as he slides the rings free. “Let’s see… that’s one, two… four, and five. Three. We’re missing three.” He checks the table, the floor, then the cushions of the couch. No mysteriously vanishing paper ring.

Natalyah makes the classic, ah-HA! sound, triumphantly. "The middle finger is the one that moves then! I thought so. I still think it combines, rather than just pops off somewhere, but the evidence is compelling to suggest the Metaphysical Finger Closet hypothesis." She immediately shifts back to human in that iridescence. Okay, now she is sweating, and panting a little, as if she just took a very fast sprint around the room. There on her middle finger is the last ring, reappearing into existence. "Ah! And it's intact! It does work!"

At least for Natalyah, it does. It's not clear how much her own physiology and the magic of the worgen shift under her control influences the outcome, either by subtle confirmation expectation, or some necessary decision she is unaware she makes when she changes.

She makes an excited squeal, and throws herself partially onto Peril for a celebratory hug, only half still on the couch. They did it! They did a worgen science!

Peril is not expecting this sudden addition of weight, and his balance fails him. One of his legs snags the coffee table on the way down, causing the table to jerk backwards, and the pitcher of cream to wobble violently, but fortunately, nothing spills or breaks. He lands on his back, his hat hitting the floor and levering itself off his head to reveal that he is, in fact, a bit short on the old head fibers. He has hair, just… less of it than some people, and unlike Lathrik’s dark hair, his is reddish brown in color.

Natalyah, perhaps more used to his brother's sturdiness, is not expecting the fall, and the pitcher of cream taking a wobble divides her attention enough that any initial attempt to right herself is lost in the confusion of what to try to fix, and she ends up doing none of them, landing with an awkward sprawl half on the floor, half on Peril, all off the couch.

"Damned graceless gods," she mutters, pushing off Peril and back into a lopsided sit on the floor by his legs, blowing a breath up at her hair where some has spilled onto her sweaty forehead and caught there. "I've been called a tempest before, but I've never actually blown someone over, so that's possibly new." She doesn't seem to pay particular attention to the state of his hair, or quantity, her frown of concern directed more at the fact that she might accidentally snap him like a twig if she's not careful. "Are you all right?"

It takes a moment for Peril to pull himself together, but finally he sits up, swiping his hat from the floor and returning it to his head. “Well, I hope you enjoyed your ride on the Peril Express. We don’t give refunds, seeing as Danger’s the first word in the name,” he says. “I’m fine, this happens more than you’d think. Are you?”

"Probably not as well as I was before I heard I rode the Peril Express," Natalyah quips, but she's laughing with it, as she reaches back to set an arm on the couch, and begins pulling herself up. "I'm not unused to it, either. I'm easy to topple when I don't have my three leg balance." She must mean the canes, and maybe the beast form. She plops herself back onto the couch with a huff. "But I suppose now we're even, and we won't have to call for an arbitration on hard line ticket refund policies."

Peril smiles beneath the rim of his hat and gets to his feet. “Any worthy arbitrator would rule in your favor, regardless,” he says, heading over to the desk where he left his coffee. It might be cold by now, but if his name is any indication, Peril Farrens is not deterred by the perilous prospect of room temperature coffee. Sure enough, there is a slight wince as he takes a drink, but he doesn’t set it back down.

He turns back to face her. “Is that our business concluded, then?”

"I still have to come up with an article pitch for you to approve," she reminds him. "And I wanted to ask you something about a woman you might have been investigating — Ilanya Ravendusk — and if you have any idea why Count Amerith would have her following and watching Lathrik?"

You know, normal questions.

Peril freezes. “They… They’re doing what? But he never said anything about…” His hand tightens on his coffee cup. “Milo, why don’t you take a lunch?”

“Um, it’s not lunch time, sir,” Milo says. “And I just had coffee, so…”

“Do it anyway,” Peril says, that stern expression returning.

Milo ducks his head and once again removes himself from the building.

Once he is gone, Peril takes another long drink of coffee. “They must have discovered my relation to Lathrik. I wasn’t…careful enough.”

Natalyah frowns, crossing her arms over her chest. "Wait, so they're really investigating you? Why? The paper?"

“They’re not—” Peril sighs and wipes his palm across his forehead. “What I’m about to say doesn’t leave this room. Count Amerith is… a sponsor. A financial backer. He provides various resources, clearances, basically whatever I need, and I write the paper. I can only guess why they’ve suddenly gained an interest in Lathrik. I did…mention I had a brother when I met the Count, but that was before Azerothian Interest. I hoped he would forget. But wait…Ilanya is working for him?”

Natalyah absorbs this information with the same level of odd resiliency she's had ever since holding onto Lathrik has led to an entire cascade of oddities. She's done weirder things. Not a lot, mind you, but butterflies go into some weird places and do some real weird things. Some feed off of animal dung, and some form protective detail alliances with ants. Subscribe to her friendship for more butterfly facts.

"According to Hana she is. Ilanya was part of Lady Ravendusk's house, and Count Amerith, for some inexplicable Count Amerith reason, absorbed all of the Ravendusks, possibly on the sole reason that she was assassinated the same night that Harvey Morningdew killed three cultists, and was later assigned to Lathrik for a guard." She pauses, frowns, looking equal parts consternated and amused. "When I say it out loud, it sounds a bit crazy. Which is fairly typical of Count Amerith. Anyway. Hana said she saw you, and recognized you as Peril Farrens, investigator and reporter of the Azerothian Interest, taking note of Ilanya in the market, where she and Hana both shopped. Hana is Lathrik's fellow guard Joelle's cousin. There's a chain of connections there for someone looking for it, and if Lathrik visited you or you him, maybe someone followed you."

Peril sits heavily back in his chair. “Okay,” he says, sucking in a breath. “Okay, well… They haven’t… done anything bad have they? Maybe it’s just idle curiosity? Maybe… he’s just looking for some way to blackmail me? He could already destroy my livelihood if he chose to, so I don’t know why he’d need another way to do so.

“If we’re looking for how they figured it out, it was probably…the payments. My income supports Lathrik’s. I’ve been… helping to keep the roof over his head.” Peril takes one last drink of his coffee.

Natalyah sighs. This doesn't surprise her. She's seen how much those mana potions cost in bulk. Y i k e s.

"It might not be your livelihood he's after. It might have started as curiosity, but now… Lathrik's situation is unique as far as I can tell, and bizarre. Every rumor about Count Amerith is that he loves those things, and thrives on chaos. My parents used to bring up some of his House antics, years ago. And I've probably not helped that. A shadow cursed paladin living with a former noblewoman turned worgen? We might as well paint a sign saying Extremely Strange Things Here." She frowns. "Actually, I wonder if that would help, by making it less of a mystery, and therefore more boring. Or if just walking up to the Count and saying it all out loud could spoil all the cloak and dagger investigation and do the same thing. I'll think about it." I mean, it's one possible method. No one could accuse Talyah of not working to think outside the box.

“That’s…what I’m afraid of,” Peril says. “Who knows what he would do with that information. He might even… I-I don’t know, try to find our mother?”

Oh no. She's so obviously thinking about it. "With his resources…he probably could. Do we want that to happen? It sounds like it could be a solution to a problem we're not going to be able to solve on our own. He might do something very weird about the information or when he finds her, but I don't think even he would go so far as to have a Stormwind guard murdered. There's eccentricity and there's evil. He's not evil, is he?" She eyes Peril with scrutiny. Does he work for Evil?

“…No,” Peril says, after some thought. “Not intentionally, at least. When we met, he told me, ‘the world’s going to end sometime, we might as well enjoy the show.’ He might do things that hurt people, but he wouldn’t do those things just to be cruel. There would be… other reasons. Does that make someone evil? It depends on who you’re asking. He might, for example, do something that convinces someone else that Lathrik is a threat, and maybe that person does the murder. He could…inadvertently destroy Lathrik’s entire career and reputation. He could even…bring our mother directly to him and let her…do…whatever it is she would do, after all these years.”

The reaction Natalyah has to that suggestion is not what one would call measured. Or calm.

The snarl that starts in a human throat does not end in one, a suddenly very large, very angry worgen there on his couch, protective rage bursting out the beginning of a roar that she forces closed, snapping sharp jaws closed, and a shimmer — back to human, sweating heavily enough that there's dampness around the collar of her dress and her hair flattens a little, sticking to the sides of her cheeks. "That will never happen," she tells Peril breathlessly.

“I’d probably murder the Count first,” Peril agrees casually. The rim of his hat casts a shadow over his face, but there is still a small gleam of green visible from his eyes. The imp on the stairs bounces eagerly. It’s ready for fire!

"Well, then, let's maybe think of another plan that doesn't start with a repeat issue of the Azerothian Interest with a House Member murder setting off a chain of events. Readers hate that sort of thing," she says tartly, pushing her hair back off her face, and reaching for the rest of her coffee. It's definitely cold, but honestly, she could probably go for an ice coffee at this point.

“I could… steal Ilanya from him?” Peril suggests. “He could hardly object if she were to fall in love with me, right?”

"Really? What if she flips you," Natalyah points out. "What if you fall in love with her getting her to fall in love with you, and she's convinced Count Amerith would never hurt Lathrik, and he tricks you both?"

“Ilanya’s a nice girl, she wouldn’t…” Peril stops to consider her words. “Okay, new plan. But I can still get her to fall for me, right?”

Natalyah shrugs with a little bit of an amused scoff, but not for the reasons he might initially assume. "You know women don't all know each other, right? I have no idea what she likes, or if she even likes men, but I don't see why someone wouldn't, as a general thing. You're funny, clever, well read, cute, and possibly a little crazy. Lots of women love those things. I'm not certain Ilanya's really all that nice, and I think she might be possibly a spy or an assassin or personal guard combination of both, but as long as you don't mind them a little bit crazy yourself, it could be a good match, I don't know."

“She’s… she’s a maid,” Peril protests. “She buys groceries, and picks flowers, and walks along the canals a lot.” It’s… possible Peril does not actually know what maids do. He does blush faintly at the compliments, though.

"First off, you can be a maid and a spy and an assassin. Women are fully capable of multitasking and working several jobs, especially in this economy. Second off, she's definitely not only a maid. I met her in a bar, where she was stalking Lathrik, carefully and subtly, and she stopped to speak with me because I was…" She glances away. Uh. "At the bar, too." She sighs in surrender. "And also probably very obviously interested in Lathrik, and she wanted to poke at that. Anyway. I watched her come in with one personality on and switch it right over to another after I started speaking. She knew things, and she deliberately set me at looking into 'her new employer,' without telling me who that was, saying that I seemed clever so I would figure it out. Which she wasn't wrong about it. She is not a passive player in this, Peril, there's no way she is."

Peril crosses his arms, one hand pinching the bridge of his nose. “If it’s like you say, and she’s really some sort of spy, then… she’s probably already aware of my interest in her. Which means the Count probably knows too. And if she was baiting you, then I wonder if he’s… expecting you to approach him?”

"I have no idea. The worst part is that I could probably find out something more, if I could just…" Natalyah sighs heavily, sinking back into the couch. "It doesn't matter. I can't do it anymore, so. We have to think of something else." She gasps, and leans forward again, already thinking of something else. "Unless Count Amerith has some sort of pet he keeps around all the time, a lapdog or cat on his hat, or a bird even, although they give me headaches if I hold that too long. Reptiles I really don't like but I might be able to hold it long enough, if I had to."

“He’s…got a lion?” Peril offers. “She’s not always with him, but she lives in his manor. The problem would be getting there without being obvious. It’s up in the hills behind the city. His Stormwind home was burned down by a crazy redhead who once nearly killed me with a rock elemental.”

A lion. Sure. Okay. And a redhead arsonist who can summon (?) rock elementals. "You really know the most interesting people," she tells Peril.

Natalyah shakes her head. "But we don't need to get into the manor ourselves, just near enough to it to encourage something else into it. I can cast my sight into any animal for at least a little bit of time. If we sent in a mouse or a rat, even if the lion attacks and eats it, it would give me all the time I need to transfer to the lion, and then I could see through it. I can't hear anything, but I can read lips decently and at least describe what I see as well. If we set it up to coincide with a time Lathrik goes to a bar and Ilanya observes him to report back to Count Amerith, we might learn something. I can hold the sight for as long as I can stay awake."

“Right, so how do we encourage a rat into the place?” Peril asks. “Rats, as you probably know, do not necessarily follow commands.”

"We could ask the others. I feel like it's a toss up between Reniya, a set of lock picks, and sneaking, and Joelle, and finding out he knows how to play a flute that charms rats into following orders," she says. "I'm hoping for Elle, but I'll take Ren's skills as a back up."

“If we’re asking his friends, we’ll probably have to clear it with Lathrik first,” Peril says. “It’s… possibly a legal grey area.”

"Well, of course he has to be in on it." Natalyah looks at Peril like he's said something strange. "He's the first person to speak to, obviously. Not only because he has to be the bait at the bar, but…this is his life and his career. I wouldn't just crash all over it without him agreeing," she says defensively. "If he says no, we'll call it off, and figure something else out. I'm not going to keep anything from him, he's my …" Huh. What is Lathrik to her? This stalls her out for a moment, and a blush rises to her cheeks, making her freckles stand out.

"He's very important to me," she rephrases, tossing her head as if to dislodge the blush. It doesn't work. "I won't hurt him, not for anything. I just want to help. And I know you feel the same way."

Peril clears his throat. “Yes. Well. I do feel a way about Lathrik, but it’s more of a… brotherly way? But you’re right, I wouldn’t hurt him. I… suppose I’ll be sitting this one out, then?”

"Why?" Natalyah leans forward. "I told Hana I knew you to ask about Ilanya. I didn't say it was because you're Lathrik's brother, but you and I are both part of the publishing world. You know me professionally. I know you professionally. You could be there as my friend, and no one has to know about you and Lathrik, if you both don't want it known. You have a lot to offer and contribute, Peril. And Lathrik and I have an expander table now and six chairs plus the couch. Everyone has enough room to be there."

“You don’t think they might be…weird around me?” Peril asks. “I’m uh, not an unknown entity.”

Natalyah laughs, a bit of an evil sounding conspiratorial chortle. "So what if they are? We're not exactly planning a normal heist here. Maybe if they're being weird, they'll think creatively, and we'll come up with something even more brilliant. It's like I said, if we stop trying to have everyone just going their own way trying to help Lathrik, and pool our research and knowledge together, maybe we'll really help him, and it'll be enough." She pauses, and looks over at the earlier coffee mess, and wrinkles her nose. "Maybe leave your assistant behind though. He's too weird."

“That helps, when convincing him to go on wild adventures and carry my bags,” Peril says. “But I take your point. Besides, someone needs to remain in the office.”

Natalyah nods, and she reaches out for her canes to readjust them closer to her. "Especially if you're going to run another edition soon. I'm thinking about what if I did a bit of a trial run for the heist, and wrote about it without making it obvious how I've done it. You know, the absurdist version. Writing from the perspective of something I could follow around Stormwind or Goldshire or even Westfall. A bird's eye view. Oh, no, weirder, a cat's eye view of Stormwind or whatever?"

Peril breaks into a grin. “A cat’s eye view of Stormwind? You could see all manner of interesting details. Whose laundry do cats prefer? Where are the best sun spots to lie in during the day? Which parts of town are more generous with their meal handouts?”

"How many people think they own one particular cat, who actually has five owners who don't know about each other? The scandal," she says, with a touch of that cackle coming out along the wicked curls of her smile. She gets her canes to the sides of her and pushes up into a stand. "I'll work on it, and hand something over to you for feedback in a day or two, and let you know what Lathrik decides about the heist for a day to come over and work out the details. Deal?"

“Deal,” Peril says, wearing a grin of his own. He rises to see her to the door. “A pleasure doing business.”