Paragon - Book I

Starberries

He walks with a heavy, lop-sided gait, favoring his right side as his hands lie curled in his pockets.

Jernald Ashbury Brezkin does not dress the part of a wealthy man. The coat—leather—is frayed and stained, and although the pants are better maintained than a common man's, they have faded in the knees. Still, his beard is evenly trimmed, cutting just below sallow cheeks and a prominent chin, and his hands are pale and clean, the fingertips smooth and impeccably maintained. Toil is not a word Jernald Ashbury Brezkin knows.

He likes to walk from his estate to work every day—a ten minute stroll that passes through crowded markets and quiet alleyways. A discrete distance behind him trudges a thickset, hulking man—Vern, Brezkin's captain of household guard—and, farther behind him, Allayria and Meg lurk, observing the methodical twists and turns the pair takes.

This morning Brezkin stops by the baker for a pastry and then the local tailor, who owes him last month's rent. Allayria jots it all down in her small notebook as, somewhere else in the city, Ben and Iaves follow the reedy, feeble-shouldered Serfigue, Brezkin's personal advisor, and do the same.

"I hate this," Meg murmurs, shifting the cumbersome skirts around her legs. "Watching and waiting. It's been two weeks."

Yes, two weeks. Two weeks of slow, meticulous work. The day consists of tail work or observation. Tail work being, of course, tailing Brezkin and other people of interest; and observation the joyless act of sitting outside of his home, the opulent office space in the financial district, or one of his sprawling shops and factories, and putting together a daily schedule. Two people are always on night duty too, which consists of staking out Brezkin's manor, and, Allayria thinks with a sudden yawn, the lack of sleep is starting to have an impact on them.

"I want to talk to Ben about getting into some of these places soon," Meg tells her in a low murmur, and Allayria turns, pretending to look in her arm basket for money as a pair of guards pass. "Just for a peek around at night of course. Between the four of us, maybe we'll be able to suss out the stash without babysitting that asshole for another three weeks."

"Yeah," Allayria answers, rubbing her palm against her eye, "but if they catch on before we find it they're sure to move it."

Meg grunts and falls silent, eyes boring into Vern's broad back. Allayria suspects she's thinking of all the ways she would like to put the boorish bodyguard out with the trash.

Allayria glances up at the two shifting suns, calculating it must almost be mid-morning. Three more hours of tail work.

A change in routine would be nice, even with the risks. The visits to the library have stopped—even the careful tracking of Ruben has ceased, though occasionally a new dot appears on their map, wherever someone spotted him last. This worries Allayria, because all four of them are out almost all of the time now and even without Rex, who they all agreed is too distinctive to take out much anymore, they are not well-disguised.

So as the least-known person of the group Allaryia volunteers to grab the grub for that evening, hovering over a stall filled with a rising mound of starberries. It has been a long time since she's eaten any of the purple, strangely-shaped fruit, but she's thinking they might be the sweet splurge needed to lift the friends' collective gloom.

Her problem is, of course, that the point in her life when she ate starberries she had never needed to purchase them, and thus never learned the difference between a ripe starberry and a raw one. She thinks it has something to do with the tips of their points turning from a soft green to the deep violet, but then again maybe it has something to do with the tenderness of their skin. Or maybe that's just bruising from the cart-ride over. She doesn't think the vendor will give her an honest answer.