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Who:Gaheris Rhade and whoever helps him out...
What: Rhade is running from Candlelighters after he's been found out.
Where: Right on the outskirts of Dog Fenn, coming in from Syriac Well.
When: Late in the evening. Date flexible to mun necessity.
Warnings & Notes: Blood. Violence likely. Always with the angst warning. Until his boneblades grow back they won't be readily visible.

This section of Baedal has gotten cool and crisp at the late hour. The families in Syriac Well are probably enjoying their sleep, or their firelit night in one another's company. No doubt a couple of tired parents are interrupted by children disturbed by sounds outside, or the folks themselves are left to stare at the ceiling at the sound of thumping or a heavy impact. At least one block will have something to talk about the next day, unfortunate though it was they would probably have entirely the wrong idea later.

The source of these noises hits the pavement with a roll, before continuing up the sidewalk toward more busy, populated areas. Somewhere that might have more signs of night life and decent lighting. He fumbles with a blood soaked hand to try to send off a message from his CiD- not even of himself at that moment. Recordings of a few conversations he'd been privvy to, because no one suspects boyish expressions and demure natures (that were excruciatingly against his instincts to emulate) to be anything but honest. The screen lights up a smear of red from his thumb.

These shoes are impractical and too loud. He puts the device in the pocket of his overcoat and begins to sprint, realizing that he couldn't abandon the wingtips like some sort of bizarre pastiche on a Grimm fairytale. He'll be just asking for the militia to hunt him down on some manufactured charge.

He's so close to Dog Fenn. He can smell the restaurants closing down for the night, and still hear the buzz of a few more people out. He doesn't stop running. In fact, he throws himself into it. Faster than any normal human, but not like a vampire. He still has to strain, feel the pounding of blood in his chest and his head grow dizzy. As long as he stays ahead, as long as they don't stop the message from going through, he'll have accomplished something.

He hurks at the feeling of sharp metal in his shoulder-blade. He will have to commend the man for having impeccable aim with that crossbow. He's barely made it past the first shop and he had to slip into an alley and pull that one free of his body, too.

Few people here knew Gaheris Rhade before he "vanished". He'd not made a point to be personable, and when he'd discovered what was happening in the city it had filled him with a sense of resentment. A reminder of what drove his people to subjugation over the humans. A reminder that the lives of his people were simply offered to the Magog, that they weren't entitled to compensation after the planets they brought life to were obliterated by the horrors of their invaders.

And then he had gotten his mind stuck on Dylan, on Dylan's face, and that last question to him.

Gaheris. What have you done?

And he'd vanished, he'd become another person, a Mr. Emory Morris (a poor boy with a home education and a fear of the unfamiliar city, needing his new employer to show him around and all the kinds of people that he needed to be wary of). A poster-boy smile and a chipper tone for all the old hands he worked around and impressive to the haughty ladies. And he remained that person until the nasty moment that finished his recording, where someone grabbed his arm and realized that the boneblades he'd sanded down were still there. They'd asked him what sort of freak he was. He said the proper insult was Uber, and it was after that final word that it cut off. That's the final thing Hasi would recieve.

Rhade does his level best to keep from leaving more blood than necessary. A trail will defeat the purpose of losing the men following him. He hangs onto the bolt with slick fingers because he'll need something to make a last stand with.

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Hasibe considers her options for a moment, and when her smile appears, it's with that softly wry edge she wears sometimes, a mask of unflappable self-awareness. One of those masks that's grown a little too real, possibly.

"I just might take you up on that."

But for now, she's heading in to see Rhade.

Rhade sits up just slightly as she enters. The wounds have settled to a vague throb, and it's not much of a bother. He suspects they'll be concerned anyway. And he... stares at her wardrobe.

One eyebrow climbs right up there. It takes effort to avoid a wisecrack. "I didn't intend to interrupt any occasions. But I wanted to make sure the message reached you and request that I be briefed on the current state of affairs."

She raises her eyebrows right back at him, a little bit insouciant, a ghost of a smile in her expression. Hasi slides into a chair next to where he's set up, legs crossed neatly at the knees. "If you think this is over the top, you see what I wear out at home."

Hasi sets her handbag down on the floor.

"Current state of affairs is highly relevant, in fact." She casts a glance toward the door, and tips her head back just slightly; it closes, in accordance with the movement, though she doesn't touch it. "Beko, their candidate mentioned in the messages. He's slated to win. He's the moderate, and he's done well with Howl Barrow. That can't happen."

There's a trace of sympathy in her voice. She does understand the position Beko is in, but she also thinks he sort of put himself there, and the consequences, if he is allowed to get what he wants, will be catastrophic.

"Agreed. Politics is no place for individual desires," possibly why he resents it so much. "I wasn't aware of his progress in that region, I just know that they're determined that he would win. And I suspect it would be catastrophic for the city in general as well as the xenians, more than the his backers would ever allow themselves to contemplate."

He could go on and on as to why, but he guesses she has a few ideas of her own.

And he looks at that just closed door, with a canid cant of his head, chin ever so slightly raised. "...Did you do that?" Just needing a confirmation. He rubs the filed boneblades, barely protruding from the wrap of one arm absently as he considers.

She inclines her head, with a ripple of movement in her shoulders that might have been some bare approximation of a shrug. Most often what she does is little movements like closing a door, simple tiny things that seem comparatively harmless--it's to ease people in, and she never really shows all of her cards, but this way they're not so surprised if something happens by accident.

"I did." No shame, but no particular attachment to the act, either. "I can pretend to be what the Candlelighters would perceive as 'normal' pretty well, and I'm discreet for reasons of flexibility, but I take their dogma personally."

But she can put that aside to sleep with a bigot who'd probably like to see her vivisected if he knew her true nature, if it benefits the cause at hand.

"In those transmissions," she says, leaning forward, a touch more earnest now, focused, "they made it seem like they'd really refined their stelanmancy. Like they could bring just about anything in."

"They have," he confirms unpleasantly, drawing his attention away from the strangeness. He's developed something of a mentality that magic is still science, he just has yet to understand it. Therefore there's nothing freakish or bizarre about it, simply mysterious.

"At the very least it means that they'll not run dry on revenue," he continues. "But I can't imagine they would readily give him his sister without some guarantee that he would follow through with their platform." He starts to cross his arms and- no wait, that's a bad idea right now. He settles for prissily folding his hands over his stomach.

She taps her fingertips on the side of her chair, mulling that over. "You're right. They'll use her as a lure, a hostage, until they've run him dry and probably secured other people in his cabinet."

But then she abruptly rises out of her chair, expression creasing with mild frustration, which, in terms of Hasibe, speaks to a great deal more. She paces a little toward the window, turning to look at Rhade. "If they're that good at stelanmancy, they are the only ones. Even the guild-official stelanmancers aren't as precise. The Beko problem is bad enough, but this has a lot of far-reaching implications."

She can't imagine what the Candlelighters could bring through. Weapons? Could they put things out the other way through?

"We can hope that it's exaggeration. I never saw it in action as I reserved myself to a cowardly character. But I do know they were extremely optimistic." He watches her move around the room, shifting in bed slightly. He can't seem to sit still. The sutures itch while he's healing and it's uncomfortable, and he has to keep himself distracted.

"I probably could have found out more, but after they discovered me I had to run."

"You got a lot as is." While it would have been beneficial to have more time there, certainly, she's--pleased isn't the right word, but Hasibe is pretty glad they found this out. "We had no idea about Beko. Now we just need to figure out how to play it. The papers, maybe."

She reaches for the bag she brought with, having remembered his request to bring along a clean shirt, and reaches to withdraw a plastic-sealed pressed men's shirt.

"A lot of people have been inclined to kill as many of them as possible," she says, regarding the Candlelighters, "but I'm not sure that's the best tactic."

There is a bit of an implicit inquiry here as to what Rhade thinks; she knows that her instincts are strongly anti-killing (a funny life choice, as often noted, for a woman who spends so much time around violent homicidal types, such as vampires), but she's willing to accept that her perspective is not always the reasonable one.

He sits up with a grunt and accepts the shirt, unwrapping it and unbuttoning it.

"I used to be a member of Argosy Special Operations. Assassination and extraction was my specialty, but I could do long term missions." He straightens the collar, and tucks it into his dark slacks. But he leaves the top two buttons undone and scruffs his hand through his hair, so he looks less Emory and more Gaheris. A change in expression and he nearly looks like a different person.

"I became a commander aboard a High Guard ship, but I fell out of love with the military and the Commonwealth when they made an agreement, 'for peace', that would permit invaders to have Nietzschean settled territory that they invaded. Places where they were responsible for the deaths of billions.

"When the Nietzscheans united to overthrow the Commonwealth, I agreed to help them. Betrayed people close to me, even, because I believed in their cause and that they would push out the Magog. Instead, they took advantage of their new dominance situation and abused the weak, and they made themselves more vulnerable to the invaders."

He finishes and stands, knowing that he said quite a bit about what he'd done. He'd have to let her judge. "I don't want to see either happen. Especially after what's happened to the vampires. I'll go with whatever you decide, as I'm readily capable of assassination and if the final option requires it, I can make sure he's no longer an option as a candidate." And he considers himself expendable.

She much prefers him this way, she thinks--more his natural self. The skein of another person he'd assumed was a necessary one, but like how she plays up her own inclinations toward glamor to the point it becomes a caricature (she refers to this persona she wears as 'the Jessica Rabbit act'), it's nevertheless artificial. Though she conceals a lot of her reaction to the story he tells, her eyes are readable, and she has a visible response to the numbers involved--billions. That's a hard number to conceive of, but she's felt the collective heartbeat of the earthbound population at home, and she can imagine what it would be like to feel them snuffed out, too.

She resettles in her chair, a little bit still again--maybe too still, but she's prone to being back and forth that way.

"That situation sounds roughly as untenable as the one at home." So there are some universal constants, and they are all hideous. She presses her fingertips against her knees, absent-mindedly careful not to ding the fabric of her stockings with her nails. "Right now, I don't think we need Beko to be retired as a player...but we may want him to switch teams."

The idea has just occurred to her, but he'd make a good asset, and she's not necessarily opposed to using some deceit to persuade Beko to turn, as cruel as the thought does seem.

"...what happened, with the Magog? Did they at least push them out?"

Billions. Once upon a time, the mere idea of it threw him into a rage. And as it turned out, his opinion that the Treaty should never have existed was correct. His opinion that the Commonwealth needed to be disassembled? Was not. So he's unsure of what route to take here, and would much rather entrust it to another's hands.

Most xenians, for all their weaknesses (whether it be sunlight or in his case, mood swings and a chronic sense of suspicion that's more genetic than learned) also have strengths beyond compare. And in the wrong hands those strengths are extremely dangerous.

"He can be gotten. My other skill is extraction. If they do obtain his sister and try to use him against her, I can make sure that they do not keep her." It's almost disappointing that he can button his sleeves at the wrists with no issue about how they go over his arms. Or worse, he's almost getting used to it. He feels like half of himself.

"No. And they were never going to be pushed out while my betrayal stayed as it was. So an opportunity came to change it- think of stelanmancy, only involving time rather than universes. I had the chance to change things. I did." And died. "And then I was here."

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