Opening the door a few inches, she saw a man wearing a black outfit, reminding her of the warrior assassins used in Niliwan, this man, however, was no expert of stealth and combat. He was a common rogue. Probably hired by the same magician as hired her, as insurance. The idiot had just chosen the wrong night to try his caper.
His eyes were open, and he watched her as she stepped over him. A hoarse whisper emerged from his lips as she walked down the hall, causing her to turn around.
"Sharesh." He whispered, his eyes rolled up to look at her at the edge of his field of vision. He looked over her slim body and partially smiled.
She stepped back. "You know me?" She asked, eyeing him suspiciously. In a fit of uncharacteristic generosity, she bent over and plucked the tiny dart from the middle of his forehead, flicking it negligently toward the corner..
The man nodded. His mask had fallen from his face and she looked at him carefully. "Well, I do not know you, human." She said. "If you are not found before the poison wears off, I recommend you leave quickly. The wizard is fond of traps, and I would warn against trying to abscond with any baubles."
A minute nod of his head told her that the poison was already weakening, else he was a very tough man. She smiled down at him. "Good luck." She said, and headed for the stairs.
Moving up the stairs with speed and agility, she was through the trap door before it finished opening, and out into the hall again before it closed. Her emerald eyes scanned the hallway quickly and she swept through the door up to the roof, letting it hang on its hinges. In a few moments, she would be completely free of the tower, and leaving a trail behind her was not to be worried over once she was on the ground.
As she ran up the stairs, she hunched over and started assisting her motion with her hands. By the time she cleared the lip of the topmost stair she was speeding along almost twice as fast as a skilled human runner. There were shouts from down the stairs. Then sounds of alarm. She grinned. "Too late, fools." She said as she sprinted on all-fours across the open rooftop. The guard she had blindsided as she came in was just standing as she bounded off his back and leapt into the darkness beyond the crenelated wall. His head bounced off the wall with her absorbed momentum and the man groaned and slumped back down, his lips flapping in unconsciousness.
Sharesh tucked herself into a ball as she fell through the cold air. Fifty feet was a bit much for even a rakasta, but she would manage, though it was likely to hurt some. She uncurled and landed on both hands and feet, splaying them apart and the digits of each, as well, with claws extended. It was reflexive, the distributing of her weight, but it served its purpose.
She landed hard, her body nearly hitting the ground before her springlike muscles in her arms and legs absorbed enough of the kinetic energy to stop the downward motion. Her arms and legs all stung from the shock of the landing, and her left leg almost collapsed as sharp pain shot through it. She had pulled a muscle. Not terribly surprising, considering the fall, she thought, but stopped only a few seconds before launching herself, despite the pain in her leg, off into the night.
On the rooftop, two guards were helping up their fallen comrade. "Did you get a good look at him?" One asked.
The injured guard shook his head, and immediately regretted the move. He felt as if his brains were going to run out of his ears. The other two said that they needed to go tell the wizard something was amiss, and they both headed down the stairs.
The guard remained on his post, having two near concussions marring his night. He looked around and finally found his spear. He reached down to pick it up when something hit him in the head again, ringing off his helmet like a gong. He collapsed over onto his face, and never saw the slim man slipping over the wall and down a black rope into toward the ground.
---
Sharesh stopped near Vilders at a nice inn on the highway between that city and Malin. She checked in with the bartender who gave her the key to her room that she had rented earlier that week. She ignored the smell of cooking breakfast filling the common room and walked with a noticeable limp up the stairs. It had taken all morning to get here, even with her ground-eating lope. Her leg screamed in protest at its abuse.
She looked around her room, then smiled at the soft bed. Curling up in it, she fell asleep almost instantly.
---
She awoke the next afternoon. Her leg ached, but was now healed enough to walk without a visible limp. Her hands ran over her fur. She felt nasty, too dirty to clean with her own tongue. As much as she hated bathing 'human-style' she called down to the innkeeper from the doorway. "Landlord, I require a bath and raw meat, please, sir."
A moment later, the man who ran the bar, a tubby little man who seemed unable to stop sweating or staring, for that matter, called up. "Yes ma'am, right away."
She smiled at his quick response, but given how much she had paid for the room for a week, he could be solicitous toward her. A few minutes later, a young man came to her door, and rapped gently. She opened it and he held out a long robe. "If madame wishes to bathe." He said, quietly. He was perhaps twenty years of age, though human ages were sometimes hard to guess for the rakasta, and she only concerned herself with them insofar as the younger ones usually had protective parents. Rakasta have, relative to humans, short life spans, only about fifty years, assuming old age takes one. Sharesh, herself was but twenty years of age, though that made her almost thirty-five in human terms.
With a wide grin she nodded and took the robe. Without closing the door all the way, she slipped off her shirt and skirt, making sure to stand where he could watch her if he liked. She had liked his dark eyes and olive skin, and wanted to find out if he had other curly brown hair anywhere, as adorned his head.
She slipped the robe on and went back to the door. His expression told her that he had indeed opted to watch her change, and she smiled at him. "What is your name?" She purred, her tail sliding over his bare legs beneath the long tunic he wore.
He stammered a bit. "Ah ... Alan." He said as her tail explored up under the hem of his tunic.
"Please, Alan, lead the way to the baths." She said, and followed him as he turned down the hall. "I must say, I am impressed with the forward thinking of this establishment, to send a young man to help me bathe. Very metropolitan." She murmured as they walked.
His back stiffened at those words, and his walk became much more mechanical. She grinned softly at his discomfort. Her mind ran through the odds of his taking her up on the bath or whether he would bolt, like a scared deer.
"Um ... Yes ma'am." He said, and tried to smile casually. It looked more like he had something in under his tunic too tightly cinched. He would accept, she decided, and her tail started twitching in anticipation.
The pair entered the bathing room, where a large tub sat in the middle. It was half full of water, as she watched he began letting water in from a large barrel suspended over a warm vent from the kitchen fireplace below. It ran steaming into the tub, and he finished filling it with the hot water. "You are certain you need assistance?" He asked, the nervous expression on his face finally made her take pity upon him.
"Only if you wish dear." She said, touching his arm with a padded palm.
His nervous expression changed quickly to a relieved one. "Well, ma'am, as far as what I wish," he said, his eyes drifting down the length of the robe, which outlined her curving figure well, "I would wish you to have me do so, despite my own fears."
She giggled, the sound through her alien larynx rather peculiar, but obviously a soft laugh. It sounded almost like hissing. "You do as you wish." She said and turned her back to him and held out her arms.
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