[color=rgb(153, 153, 153)](At this point, I’m going to assume everyone who’s not posting regularly is long gone. Maybe they got lost in the chaos of the attack, or something. If they want to come back, they can write themselves in again.)
Jane looked around. The pounding sounds of the thugs were getting closer. Looking frantically out at the closet, Jane darted out one last time, to grab a few small items from the chest of tricks. Then, she lunged into the passage, pulling the secret door shut behind her. It sealed from the inside.
The passage was lit, in a desultory way, by glowing scarab-beetles. It sloped gently down and showed signs of being deliberately shaped, despite being made out of the uncarvable black stone of the spires of the Bazaar. Towards the bottom, the sound of gentle water met the ears of the escapees.
“I won’t reveal all my secrets,” Jane said, grinning, “but this has saved my hide more than once.” Grabbing a scarab off the wall, she held it forward as the passage leveled out.
A tiny dock, in a small chamber at the river’s edge of the spire, met her light. A small rowboat bobbed, tied up to the stone pier.
As they got in, Jane pulled a rough curtain aside, revealing a small passage that led to the Stolen River. The boat slipped through, and the tricksters were off into the night.
Meanwhile, the assailants had finished breaking into Jane’s apartments. Slowly, the tendrils of the plant slid along the floor, reaching out to meet them…
[/color] edited by ladymadsci on 3/17/2012 edited by ladymadsci on 11/14/2012
“I don’t know,” Jane said, grunting as she pulled at the oars. “There are a few possibilities. Someone could have been watching the first meeting… other than me, I mean.” She stopped, looked at the river, and pulled on the oars again. “Or, there’s the usual suspects. People being followed. Messengers waylaid. Flocks of bats. This is Fallen London, after all. Everybody is watching someone.”
“We stop at the Carnival, yes?” she asked, as the boat glided along the Stolen River.
Dorian perched at the rudder, his deep green eyes afire with the infinite possibilities at hand. Though he could never be entirely at ease knowing that someone had already discovered their plot, there was an inexplicable element to this new challenge. At the core of his personality, he was a man who thrived on scandal, and the ever-present threat of being caught, or far worse.
“Yes, to the carnival Jane. We’ll have to move much faster than I anticipated, but otherwise we do as planned. You lead the others in the distraction and get to the information. I’m going to see if I can hit a certain mark that might have more…”
OOC: Sorry guys, I got a little caught up with other stuff (This is code-word for “I go totally obsessed by My Little Pony Friendship is Magic and I started spending all my free time writing fanfics…”)
Jack Owlfisher woke up on the sidewalk and the first thought that ran trough his mind was “not again.” MEldoy elpfully licked his hand until he regained consciousness enough to pet her.
“What happened?” He thought to himself. “There was this fight, and I got overwhelmed…” Jack studied his hand and noticed that somebody had tattoed correspondence symbols all over it… wait, this wasn’t real correspondence symbols. If it was he’d ve spontaneously combusted by now, this was a pale imitation, made either by someone who didn’t know what they where doing or, and this was the part that made Owlfisher shudder, by someone who knew EXACTL what they where doing. Still confused, he called out for the others.
(Sure! Let’s all meet up at the Carnival. That’s where we were going, wasn’t it?)
Jane docked the boat a little ways from the Carnival gates. She got out, eyeing Dorian carefully— he seemed to have fallen asleep. Checking that her wig was in place and her outfit was in order, Jane walked towards the gates. A quick look confirmed the others weren’t there, so Jane decided to play her part while she waited.
Drifting over to the Refreshment Pavilion, Jane purchased a large, sticky hunk of spore-toffee, floating in its gluey brown sauce. Positioning herself in a narrowing of the space between tents, she just needed a target.
It came in the form of a bizarrely (but richly) dressed fellow with a distracted air. As he passed by Jane’s position, she noisily began to eat the toffee, ‘accidentally’ spilling a gigantic gob of the sauce on the man’s waistcoat.
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Jane said, pulling a handkerchief out of her corset (it was a good way to ensure the mark’s eyes would be on it, Jane had found) and began ostentatiously wiping the sauce from the man’s waistcoat. With her other hand, it was the work of a moment to flit into a pocket and retrieve his wallet.
Jane stowed the billfold in a secret pocket in back of her skirt, covering by giving a particularly expressive final wipe with her other hand.
“Sorry, your Lordship,” she said, in mock deference. She’d count her money later. What mattered now was that, out of the corner of her eye, some of the carnival staff had noticed. They’d be over later to demand their cut.
(If you want the guy to be Narciso, I’ve left it open so you can jump in with him. Otherwise, you could have him come along and recognize Jane (let’s assume he was there for the disguising scene earlier.))
They say you can tell the quality of a fortune-teller by the number of her scarves – if it’s true, Narciso must be determined to give Madame Shoshona a run for her money, swathed like a clothes-colony in silks of red and gold, cards flitting between his open hands. He spreads the card out on the blanket where he sits, and calls to the crowd to come glimpse their fates for a few trifling secrets. “All the glories, all the tragedies,” he promises, “all the wonders you will witness, all the answers you seek! Come, now, come, the future is yours --”
Eyes alight, he tilts his head towards Jane. “Well, hello. Already making a profit, are we?”
‘Tabitha’ tilted her head, coyly. “No more than you are, I hope.” She offered Narciso a chunk of the brown sticky sweet. “Would you like some toffee?”
Lowering her voice, Jane decided it was time to get down to business. “Titus is with me,” she said, referring to Dorian. “He fell asleep on the way here, and I don’t know how long it’ll be before he wakes. What should we do now? Besides giving Mrs. Plenty a cut of our earnings this ‘evening’, that is?”