Silver Blades: Prize Fight

Part 3, Section 1 - The Mission

L.E.Y. 3252

Ivy.

The first step wasn't hard. His reputation and Brother Tully's litany had told me that much. Once we started with the wine, he finished cups regularly. He'd be drunk in no time.

Getting him to open up wasn't hard, either. Every man has a passion, even the silent types. Usually it was work or money, but Clasicant didn't seem to have either to speak of. I was surprised, the way the spirits vanished, that it wasn't liquor, but he didn't seem to want to talk about that at all, for all he drank like a fish.

No, Clasicant's topic of choice was swords.

"The khopesh, on the other hand," he was saying, drawing weapons in wine on the table, "is sharp on the outer edge, so while still distinctly sickle-shaped and relatively contemporary, it is a vastly different weapon from the Kopis or Shotel."

"Intreshting," I heard myself say. When was the last time I'd said 'interesting' to someone? Prolly that morning, when I heard how much this job paid. Damn me. I'm turning into a bloody pretentious bitch. I covered my accidental smirk by nodding and pretending to be fascinated.

"So one didn't develop into the other?" Course I knew shotels and khopeshes were different—In the cage I'd fought with every blade invented. What did I care what shape, so long as it kept me alive?

Still, the wine was making it easier to appear interested, and it was kind of obvious he didn't care what I thought. This was the part I was having trouble with. Didn't even ask if I had something in my eye when I tried fanning my eyelashes. Just didn't damn notice me at all.

If I couldn't turn his head soon, I was going to pass out, and he would just go on babbling. Already the room was starting to tilt something fierce.

"Not at all!" he proclaimed. "Although I wasn't there to see them develop, elders tell me the Khopesh is derivative of early battle-axes, while the Kopis is descended of agricultural tools like the scythe." 

"Gotcha." I filled his cup again, although mine wasn't even half gone. He didn't notice. He weren't a slackwit—knew more than books—but for a man of his reputation he had a weird way of not noticing a girl throwing herself at him.

I tried crossing my legs, puffing up my chest, messing with my hair—all the fool things floozies in taverns from Swordock to The Empire do to land men. I licked my lips a lot too. Dropped stuff to fetch his attention when he wasn't watching. Wiped sweat from my neck... (Although I can see how that mightn't be appetizing. I wasn't dressed to show cleavage and the cloth I had was blood stained, thanks to the theatre in the alley.).

I had to find some way to get that sparking brain of his to slow down and see me as a bloody woman.

"Now the harpe, also a vaguely sickle-like weapon is very similar to a bill, and is in fact descended from a spear-like polearm—"

"I think I'm drunk!" I blurted, in self defense. If he started in on pole-arms I would've hung myself.

"Are you?" he said in disbelief. "We've only had a few–"

"Bottles." I finished. Hells with all this coy crap. If I wanted a man in my bed, by the gods, I was going to drag him there. "Three bottles. And you've been outdrinkin' me two-ta-one."

"Impossible," he said. "I'm not tipsy at all." A strange, suspicious look came over his face as he surveyed the damage. Two of the dark bottles lay on their sides, and the third still stood with a finger of Maxevino's finest at the bottom, shaking in its boots.