Born at High Reaches Hold, the son of the Steward and his wife, a former Harper who married well and then quietly retired to enjoy the luxury of her new station in life.

“Ahhh, but how can I be any more than the sum of my parts, my dear, dear father.” Davier said the words callously, his tone heavy with brittle mirth. At fourteen, most boys would still count their fathers among their heroes, though that delusion may fade before much longer. But this one, this boy, he understood that his father was ruthless. He had expected his boy to cut his teeth on those weaker, those with more scruples, and his boy had learned his lessons well.

Davier did not want to be the Steward of High Reaches Hold when he grew up. He did not want to sit in the lap of luxury, growing fat and idle and rich. He was young and hot-headed, and he wanted excitement, adventure. He wanted riches and wealth, true, but he wanted them to come without politics. He would rather pickpocket than embezzle. And his father was livid when he showed his letter of acceptance to the Seacraft, saying he would forbid his son to go, he would talk to the Craftmaster himself. Calmly, eerily calm for a boy of his Turns, Davier listened to the man's ranting, and then casually pointed out that it would take little for him to simply disappear. He did not have to admit his parentage. If his father would not let him go with his blessing, then Davier would go without it.

“You snide little bastard,” his father commented, infuriated.

“Ahh, but how can I be any more than…”

She was the most stunning woman that Davier had ever seen. Her brown hair, her blue eyes, her cool smile, her everything. And she knew that he was utterly attracted to her.

It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Neither of them was ever likely to walk the tables, neither the sort to play by the rules well enough to get ahead in the Craft. They walked out the doors of the Seacraft side by side, and stayed that way.

He was pretty badly hurt, and he knew it was going to hold them up.

Davier wasn't sure how long it had been “them” in his mind. He only knew that it now was, indeed, “them.” He never made a decision without her input. Usually, they didn't have to speak in words. A glance, a slight nod, a faint shake of the head… They understood each other intrinsically now, and he could see that she already knew what he was going to suggest while she sat at the end of his cot in the infirmary of Igen Hold.

"We can wait. Until your leg is healed."

He nodded silently, and countered, "We'll never get rich if we go soft now."

“Money is all that matters to you?” she asked, already knowing the answer.

Money is enough. For money, Davier would sacrifice his morals and values. “Nothing ventured,” he began, falling back on an old joke.

“Nothing ventured,” she answered grimly.

"I can't spring you."

"I know that already."

"I'll find out where they're sending you. We'll go from there," he promised quietly, certainly.

Though she answered with a nod, her words were hardly convinced. "It's better than the mines, but these work-farms…" She shook her head, exhaling through her teeth so that it sounded as though she had shushed herself, and Davier had to concede a nod to her point. It wasn't going to be easy.

"Just - " he began, but the heavy footsteps of the guard behind him ended whatever he might have said, and she dropped back down to her seat, holding his eyes for only a moment or two longer, shaking her hair over her face, resuming her silence. He turned and retraced his steps down the corridor, out of the guard tower, out to the courtyard.

...full entry...

The boy that was paid to watch his tent while he was gone - the son of the woman that cooked his meals for him - could say only that he'd been told Davier would be back within a fortnight.

The bartender - ever an advocate of minding your own fucking business - wouldn't say anything at all.

The men at the little pub outside the minehold - guards, they called themselves, though they generally just patrolled the fireheights of the mines and played cards - would only be able to recall a dark-haired trader with a Tillekian accent, hanging around a few days and asking after a woman who'd purportedly robbed him some months back, and he was hoping to recoup some of his losses. A couple of them, when pressed, might remember having suggested they talk to Visdran, 'cause that woman sounded like the one who'd "tried to escape" a week or two ago.

Visdran - the guard in question, the one who so willingly bragged about his handling of the attempted escape - wouldn't say anything at all. Ever again. Indeed, the last words out of his mouth, just before hist throat was slit and his blood was pouring out all over the snow, was a chuckled, "Gotta make an example, though, or else the others start getting - "

Davier - after dragging the body off the dark road, "Let's get some air, yeah? Stuffy as shit in here," after changing his clothes, after washing his hands, after losing a borrowed accent and making his way from the minehold to Telgar proper, after sending from the Telgar watchrider to an Igen dragon - would tell himself that he couldn't change the past. Revenge wouldn't undo what had already been done. But it still felt good.

Davier, rather than try to guess-work his way through all the subtext, quits his chair with a confident smile flashed at Evan, following the waitress on back to the bar. Leaning across it, there's a brief transaction, some nodding, and then motions they probably go through once or twice a week: Mac gets his beat-stick, 24 inches of polished wood that's probably a hotbed of DNA evidence, Davier gets his pleasant proprietor face on, and they stroll casually over to evict unwanted patrons. "Gentlemen," begins at the same time Goldilocks stands up, arresting Dav's forward momentum a yard from the booth, coincidentally in between their table and Azra's. Now, of course, the whole bar's bound to have noticed that Something's Going On, though they make firm efforts to stare hard at their drinks. "Let's take a walk." Polite as you please, the insistence is left up to Mac to impress, with a billy club clapping into his palm, slap, slap, slap, and his no-nonsense expression in place.

Confident smile, meet less than sure furrow of brows. It does look like Davier has things well in hand, or at least he has a protocol worked out for this sort of thing. Well, the sort of thing where there are customers who seem to be or are known to be trouble. Evan's long fingers gather up a stack of marks and let them trickle through with rhythmic wooden clicks, but that is all the longer she can distract herself. She swipes her marks off the table and into her pouch, but leaves her beer behind, tucking that hand into a pocket as she ambles over to Azra's booth. "Hey," she offers, low and even as she drops down on the bench opposite the girl. Her heel taps, bouncing her knee as she sits sideways, body loose but eyes keen. "That guy just order tequila?"

Rather concentrated on her own thoughts, Azra misses a good number of things, but for all that her eyes have been trapped by the table, her attention is on the rest of the bar, on that booth across the way. Her head lifts slowly when that one man stands, but by the time her eyes follow, Davier is in the way. She looks him over, the backside of him at least, and then her cigarette is hastily snuffed out in a grizzly piece of leftover chicken. Her weight pitches forward, rocked up onto that ready boot, but it's just as Evan shows up at the end of the booth and so Azra stops there, crouched with one knee under her chin, one foot on the floor. She doesn't answer, but a moment's stare from blue eyes is likely enough to say yes, that man. Though in all honesty, she missed the tequila. And the matching set of cigarette and match case. It's just a beat that she looks at the bluerider and then she's watching Davier again, and Mac with his club, and what she can see of the men beyond them. She lets her chin rest on her knee like she just happens to be comfortable like this. And really, with all eyes turned toward what looks like a brewing altercation, who would look at some little waif in a booth anyway.

Davier and his bartender really know how to put on a homecoming party. "What," asks Has-Hair, who we'll assume is blond, "We pay our bills." He unfolds a hand to gesture at Mac's stick; it is a looped-finger gesture that arguably means, what the hell is this necessary for? but could also mean, gosh, you have a long-ass dick. Behind him, Shaved's getting out of the booth— but Slick just drags on his cigarette and puts his matches back into his vest, dropping the dead one he lit from into a puddle of sweat and liquor on the table. He watches impassively, as though this is hardly unexpected when one keeps company as uncouth as his friends, but also irrelevant. Has-Hair adds, for Davier's benefit more than Mac's, "It's more expensive to beat the marks out of our pockets than to let us drink them out, you know."

...full entry...