[He slides her a sidelong look and does not pause in their progress through the switchbacking alleyways and narrow backstreets, but there is some element of re-examination anyway. Is he a little chuffed to find something he'd said off the cuff enshrined so? Well wouldn't you be?]
Yes, I suppose I did say that. It doesn't exactly help keep you from being thrown into some deep dark dungeon though, now does it? Not that it seems like that Artemaeus [Ugh. He hates that.] is having such a hard time of it.
Well look at that. It sounds like you have a biddable sidekick right there. Not one with a great reputation, I'll give you that, but it sounds like you don't have much of one either.
Someone who'll disagree with me. Not because they want to show me I'm wrong, or to be an arse, but because they care. About people, about the world...Not someone who wants to be told what to do. Someone with ideas. Especially if they're ones I've not thought of yet.
[What an appalling answer! Imagine being so lacking in self-awareness that this is what she comes up with.]
That is absolutely not what you want. I've disagreed with you more times than I can count and it's always complain, complain, complain in response. And don't think I haven't heard you getting into it with the sky and everyone under it over the crystals.
Let's not get carried away. What part of anything that I have ever done, either in this world or any other, would lead you to believe that I--
[Oh, he's gearing up for something good. He can practically feel the shape of the wholly reasonable diatribe welling up in him like the pulse of that hideous weight in his left hand, and he can sense in the very texture of his Essence that it's going to be rewarding to say. Nothing like a proper rattling off of holier-than-thou sentiment to really get the blood pumping.
Which is, naturally, when they turn a corner and find themselves face to face with three of Kirkwall's more roguish denizens. A fourth appears from a shadow in their wake.]
Oh for the love of-- can you go nowhere in this city without being mugged?
[Which gets the reaction that one should more or less expect when they're being mugged two versus one and don't show the proper amount of deference: knives are drawn, threatening gestures are made, so on and so forth. It's all meant to be desperately intimidating.
Bartimaeus sighs. The lean youth begins to roll up his sleeves.]
It's just money, Bartimaeus. Honestly, if you weren't so stubborn, then -
[ Then that robbery, all those years before, would have gone better. Well, no use thinking about Tim now. She sighs, and drops the purse into their greedy waiting hands -
Now what he's got. The lead thug gestures with the knife. Kitty says, skeptically: ]
Of course I have. [He scoffs openly back at her.] What do you think I do all day? Just skip out on tabs and nick and new shoes whenever I feel like it?
[He waggles one foot for emphasis, though the shoe in question isn't exactly a stunning examples of his use of money. They're thin sandals, with more bare skin than shoe. He likes them. Bare toes make people uncomfortable.]
--Yes, yes, you can stop waving that knife around. No, I will not be giving over the contents of my pockets just because you say so. Take the girl's purse and consider yourselves lucky.
[Which goes about as well as one might expect. The words 'lead balloon' come to mind.]
[ Kitty is so flustered by his refusal, and so incredulous (for some reason, like that wasn't utterly predictable) that she lets her guard down for a moment. For a critical moment, unfortunately, when she's standing a little too close to one of these awful boys. When she takes her eyes off him, he grabs her by the wrist, and yanks her close, and lifts the knife to her throat.
It's all dreadfully embarrassing, really. Such an amateur move, to let this happen. She's supposed to be clever and strong, and she could definitely beat this boy in a fight if it came down to it, but somehow he managed to trick her. Not even trick her - take advantage of her stupidity. This is so humiliating.
The thug grunts at Bartimaeus as Kitty silently, excruciatingly, fumes under the blade. How about now? ]
The problems, of course, are two fold. One: you humans are just so delicate and jumpy. By the time someone gets a knife up against a soft part like the neck, there's very little he can do about it. Transform into a tiger and take a leap at him? The boy might be overawed to the point of hacking and slashing his way through whatever was most convenient. Snag one of the lad's friends and put him in a similarly uncompromising position? Well who can say how friendly they really are, eh? Two: Switching guises isn't exactly as blink-and-be-done-with-it as he'd like these days and it'd be embarrassing to get only halfway to a Nile crocodile before things got really hairy.
Bartimaeus clucks his tongue in irritation - not at the knife wielding would-be rogue, but at the girl in the triangle of his arm.]
Oh honestly.
[With a labored sigh and a wiggle of his fingers to show he's unarmed, the boy reaches into a pocket and produces a coin purse. He shakes it for emphasis, and then lobs it over Kitty and Ol' Kinfey's heads farther down the alley. She's not wrong. What's he need money for?
Distraction, mostly. The grimy young gentleman in question half turns to follow the trajectory of the purse, making a noise of protesting as a series of coin begin to spill from it. The knife parts from Kitty's throat by the required degree and then the boy in the open toed sandals becomes a tiger and makes its leap.]
[ And Kitty might have been an idiot for a moment, but only for a moment. She catches on soon as the coin-purse arcs too high; she grabs the boy's arm and shoves it away from her throat, tumbles out from where she'd been trapped...
And then a tiger slams into him. Oh. That's - rather a lot, isn't it. But even if that boy's well taken care of, now, he's got friends who are perfectly capable of finding the soft bits of a girl or of a tiger to stab at, and so she turns and finds one standing quite near her and so she punches him hard in the crotch, and he goes down. Then the third - her own knife comes out, rests against his throat, and she hisses at him - ]
Don't make a move.
[ And then, soon as he's looking properly cowed, she looks round to see whether Bartimaeus has eaten the stupid kid. ]
['Eaten' is a strong word and the taste of human flesh has never really wet his palette in the way it does for some other spirits. Still, even he might admit to drooling a little more than is strictly necessary for the show of it around the kid's head in his mouth. Look, you might strongly consider a lunch of unseasoned, boiled vegetables too if you spent all your time being slowly siphoned through a magical pin hole poked into the fringe of your Essence with nothing to show for it but an increasingly haggard appearance and disposition. Would eating the boy satisfy? Not really, but sometimes you just want to eat things because they're convenient and you're hungry.
But they've been having such a nice time of it, and it would be a shame to ruin that over someone who doesn't deserve anyone's pity much less Kitty's outrage, so soft mouth and ominous growling it is. The combination (and the tiger's weight crushing him into the dusty paving stones - let's not forget that) is enough to terrify the would-be thief into dropping the knife. The tiger flicks its long, banded tail. Somehow, without removing the boy's horrified face from its mouth, it says:]
Well don't just stand there, Jones. Fetch our things.
[ For once, there's no back-talk from her. Evidently, she was embarrassed enough by her earlier slip-up that she doesn't quite have it in her. She shoves her hand into the pocket of the boy she's got at knife-point and pulls out her coin-purse. Then she kicks him hard in the back of the knee so he goes tumbling to the ground. ]
You sure you don't want to kill 'em?
[ She's got her tough voice on, now, that gruff street urchin growl that says sure, I'll cut your throat if I think you deserve it. It's reasonably convincing. She's had a lot of practice with it, to be fair. She steps over the boy who she kicked (who, admittedly, seems rather more pants-wettingly terrified of the shapeshifting tiger-boy than her tough voice, but every bit counts) and goes for the purse that Bartimaeus had chucked. ]
No real loss, you know.
[ She trusts that Bartimaeus will understand that this is purely for the purposes of intimidation. ]
[The tiger appears to consider this. The spirit actually does give it some thought - on one of many levels of consciousness, he entertains the idea of snapping shut the tiger's jaws just to see the look on everyone's faces - and the intervening pause, genuine or otherwise, is enough to send the boy in his mouth sobbing something indistuinguishable against the roof of the tiger's mouth.]
Oh boo hoo. —Best not. The meat on this one will have gone all sour anyway.
[And just like that, the tiger opens its jaws and the boy is scrambling backward.]
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Yes, I suppose I did say that. It doesn't exactly help keep you from being thrown into some deep dark dungeon though, now does it? Not that it seems like that Artemaeus [Ugh. He hates that.] is having such a hard time of it.
So, hey! Maybe you're worrying over nothing.
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Benedict is a fool and a coward who's happy to have all of his choices taken away from him so that life gets easier.
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Geeze. Get this kid a hobby; her brain's going to melt out both ears.]
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Don't whistle at me. It's what he said to me. Oh, Kitty, tell me what to do, I'll do whatever you tell me to.
[ Is this relevant? No. Does she want to bitch? Yes. ]
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I don't want a sidekick. I want...
[ She trails off, a little uncertain how to end that. ]
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Yes? A what? Speak up, the wind is absolutely howling through here.
[No it isn't.]
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[ But. A sigh - ]
Someone who'll disagree with me. Not because they want to show me I'm wrong, or to be an arse, but because they care. About people, about the world...Not someone who wants to be told what to do. Someone with ideas. Especially if they're ones I've not thought of yet.
[ A shake of her head. ]
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That is absolutely not what you want. I've disagreed with you more times than I can count and it's always complain, complain, complain in response. And don't think I haven't heard you getting into it with the sky and everyone under it over the crystals.
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You seem to have missed an important bit in there - someone who'll disagree with me not because they just want to be an arse.
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So you disagree with me because you care about the world. And people.
[ Is that......a confession???? ]
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Let's not get carried away. What part of anything that I have ever done, either in this world or any other, would lead you to believe that I--
[Oh, he's gearing up for something good. He can practically feel the shape of the wholly reasonable diatribe welling up in him like the pulse of that hideous weight in his left hand, and he can sense in the very texture of his Essence that it's going to be rewarding to say. Nothing like a proper rattling off of holier-than-thou sentiment to really get the blood pumping.
Which is, naturally, when they turn a corner and find themselves face to face with three of Kirkwall's more roguish denizens. A fourth appears from a shadow in their wake.]
Oh for the love of-- can you go nowhere in this city without being mugged?
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Oh, honestly.
[ She puts her hands on her hips and stares at them, chin set stubbornly. ]
D'you mind? We're actually having a productive conversation for a change, the two of us.
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Bartimaeus sighs. The lean youth begins to roll up his sleeves.]
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Here.
[ She pulls out her purse and holds it forth. ]
Take it. That's all we've got.
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Kitty, honestly. How could you?
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It's just money, Bartimaeus. Honestly, if you weren't so stubborn, then -
[ Then that robbery, all those years before, would have gone better. Well, no use thinking about Tim now. She sighs, and drops the purse into their greedy waiting hands -
Now what he's got. The lead thug gestures with the knife. Kitty says, skeptically: ]
Have you even got anything?
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[He waggles one foot for emphasis, though the shoe in question isn't exactly a stunning examples of his use of money. They're thin sandals, with more bare skin than shoe. He likes them. Bare toes make people uncomfortable.]
--Yes, yes, you can stop waving that knife around. No, I will not be giving over the contents of my pockets just because you say so. Take the girl's purse and consider yourselves lucky.
[Which goes about as well as one might expect. The words 'lead balloon' come to mind.]
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[ Kitty is so flustered by his refusal, and so incredulous (for some reason, like that wasn't utterly predictable) that she lets her guard down for a moment. For a critical moment, unfortunately, when she's standing a little too close to one of these awful boys. When she takes her eyes off him, he grabs her by the wrist, and yanks her close, and lifts the knife to her throat.
It's all dreadfully embarrassing, really. Such an amateur move, to let this happen. She's supposed to be clever and strong, and she could definitely beat this boy in a fight if it came down to it, but somehow he managed to trick her. Not even trick her - take advantage of her stupidity. This is so humiliating.
The thug grunts at Bartimaeus as Kitty silently, excruciatingly, fumes under the blade. How about now? ]
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The problems, of course, are two fold. One: you humans are just so delicate and jumpy. By the time someone gets a knife up against a soft part like the neck, there's very little he can do about it. Transform into a tiger and take a leap at him? The boy might be overawed to the point of hacking and slashing his way through whatever was most convenient. Snag one of the lad's friends and put him in a similarly uncompromising position? Well who can say how friendly they really are, eh? Two: Switching guises isn't exactly as blink-and-be-done-with-it as he'd like these days and it'd be embarrassing to get only halfway to a Nile crocodile before things got really hairy.
Bartimaeus clucks his tongue in irritation - not at the knife wielding would-be rogue, but at the girl in the triangle of his arm.]
Oh honestly.
[With a labored sigh and a wiggle of his fingers to show he's unarmed, the boy reaches into a pocket and produces a coin purse. He shakes it for emphasis, and then lobs it over Kitty and Ol' Kinfey's heads farther down the alley. She's not wrong. What's he need money for?
Distraction, mostly. The grimy young gentleman in question half turns to follow the trajectory of the purse, making a noise of protesting as a series of coin begin to spill from it. The knife parts from Kitty's throat by the required degree and then the boy in the open toed sandals becomes a tiger and makes its leap.]
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And then a tiger slams into him. Oh. That's - rather a lot, isn't it. But even if that boy's well taken care of, now, he's got friends who are perfectly capable of finding the soft bits of a girl or of a tiger to stab at, and so she turns and finds one standing quite near her and so she punches him hard in the crotch, and he goes down. Then the third - her own knife comes out, rests against his throat, and she hisses at him - ]
Don't make a move.
[ And then, soon as he's looking properly cowed, she looks round to see whether Bartimaeus has eaten the stupid kid. ]
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But they've been having such a nice time of it, and it would be a shame to ruin that over someone who doesn't deserve anyone's pity much less Kitty's outrage, so soft mouth and ominous growling it is. The combination (and the tiger's weight crushing him into the dusty paving stones - let's not forget that) is enough to terrify the would-be thief into dropping the knife. The tiger flicks its long, banded tail. Somehow, without removing the boy's horrified face from its mouth, it says:]
Well don't just stand there, Jones. Fetch our things.
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You sure you don't want to kill 'em?
[ She's got her tough voice on, now, that gruff street urchin growl that says sure, I'll cut your throat if I think you deserve it. It's reasonably convincing. She's had a lot of practice with it, to be fair. She steps over the boy who she kicked (who, admittedly, seems rather more pants-wettingly terrified of the shapeshifting tiger-boy than her tough voice, but every bit counts) and goes for the purse that Bartimaeus had chucked. ]
No real loss, you know.
[ She trusts that Bartimaeus will understand that this is purely for the purposes of intimidation. ]
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Oh boo hoo. —Best not. The meat on this one will have gone all sour anyway.
[And just like that, the tiger opens its jaws and the boy is scrambling backward.]