Post by White Mimic on Apr 25, 2012 2:08:38 GMT -5
The market place was abuzz with color and brilliant conversation, the haggling of prices from the shrewd costumers, mastered in their art of consumerism with ages of experience, as well as the cunning swindlings from shady businessmen, out against the world to earn their buck, blaring throughout the street corners and narrow bazaar ways. Every color one could possibly imagine danced around in the streets of the Waq Waq, backed by the brilliant whites of sunbaked buildings and the clear blue sky above. Truly, it was the very definition of a bustling economy. Stands lined with goods, produce and spices, gems and jewelry, wares, sundries, and, most importantly, fabrics of generous spectrum and luster crowded the streets of the busiest district on the entire desert island. The citizens rushed by and crowded various wooden booths, carts, and tents in an almost elegant clockwork, trying to clamber for the best deals, for the best products. One by one, market stands would empty and refill with the trade of the land, following the barterers custom for anything that could be pasted with a value.
However, over the course of several weeks, the market had seemed to slowly transform in slight ways that only now were becoming more and more noticeable. It started with the fabric stands. The brilliance of their fabrics and intricacies of their creation had increased by almost ten-fold, spurring one of the largest trade booms in months. No matter, it was simply a pattern of the trade. But then, the merchants had gradually become less and less lenient with prices, refusing to let their prices drop too far. Naturally, it was the tendency of any merchant to get the most for their honest product but something was different, off. Whereas any merchant would willingly combat negotiations with a customer to get what they had coming to them, this stubbornness seemed more out of desperation than the typical vibes of frugality. Prices skyrocketed and more and more money flooded the fabric various fabric outlets of the market, and who would notice with those products, as far as the people were concerned, the quality far outweighed the price they had managed to pay. And yet, the merchants were becoming ever more desperate for money which they didn’t seem to take advantage of at all. And still, no one seemed to notice the pattern, not until recently.
The first one to disappear was Shalzda Nazim, one of the younger small time merchants who was frequently forced to set up shop on the outskirts of the market place. He was too timid and too easily bullied by the more successful traders to have ever asserted himself and his product, but now he was gone, without a trace or word, not even the slightest hint to his family either. It was as if he were simply vanished away in the middle of the night. Others had begun to meet similar fates, attracting attention from various authorities and vigilantes, but Nazim was the specific reason she was here.
Victoria had a tendency to investigate murder when it arose, and the case of Nazim and the others was a serious one. The murder of the innocent was something she hated far more than the wayward pirate she turned in or the occasional crew she would personally dismantle out here in the blues before it even reached Reverse Mountain. Unfortunately, she had only been investigating the disappearances for a few days and had not yet grasped the patterns, the inner workings of shady occurances on Zarzara Island. The most she had gleaned from the families of those since vanished were that they had been restless for the past few weeks, not wanting to talk about their work or the market place at all. However, Victoria had been lucky enough to find one outlier family of the third person to disappear, Minwu Shadlandi.
Apparently, out of all four families she had investigated, Minwu was the only merchant to have given his loved ones any trace of what was happening. “He said… that no matter what happened to him… he told us that we had to get to Ciudadela… and not look… and not… I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You have good reason to cry.”
Victoria sat on one side of the small ornate table, a plush cushion underneath her. On the other side of the table was Minwu’s younger sister, collapsed in herself, sobbing as she tried to recount to Victoria the last few days she had been with Minwu. Victoria waited patiently for the young lady to recollect herself before pressing for more information. She looked to be about 17, dark and slim, like many of the people here on Zarzara. Victoria always hated dealing with more sentimental cases like this, but not because she was callous. Oh no, the loss of a loved one and the reaction it produced, it was all too close to home for comfort and whenever she saw it face to face once more, she could only think of her own experiences and emotional baggage. When she managed to stop crying, she wiped her face with a yellow draped sleeve and sniffed at the air, trying to contain the tears long enough to assist the one trying her best to help find her brother.
“He told you not to come back until he told you and your family it was okay?” Victoria had the same conversation with most of Minwu’s immediate family. He had told them to flee for Ciudadela and not return unless he said it was okay, this was the case with his mother, father, older brother, and now his sister. She nodded pitifully before looking up at Victoria with tears winning the fight to escape her eyes, as hard as she tried to deny them. In her eyes, Victoria saw a slight trace of doubt and then reluctance, however. “You look like you want to say something.”
“Well…” According to the other family members, Minwu was closest to his sister, Hadi, in terms of communication, which indicated she was the most likely to have known something the others didn’t and further the search for the kidnapped.
“Did Minwu tell you something before he disappeared? Anything at all?”
“He… he said to not stop to talk to anyone until we got to the canal houses, where it would be safe…”
“Anything else?” Victoria leaned in towards Hadi for the information that was all too visible on the tip of her sobbing tongue. “The day before he… he…” She went silent for a few seconds before wiping her face again, staining her yellow clothing with the salt of tears. “He told me to make sure no one left until the ship was here to take us to Ciudadela. We were… too close to danger here…” She teared up again and looked over to the beaded archway, the portal to the room where the rest of her family were waiting with frightened anticipation for Victoria to leave and the ship to arrive today. It was a great difficulty for Victoria to find these people, but she had found them and that alone was a great discomfort, a huge indication that anyone could find them. The only thing more difficult than finding them was getting them to trust her, but she had assured them that she had removed all traces of where they were going when she found their house, taking them with her as a means of locating them. She even promised she would create false trails for them when she returned to her investigation but they were still anxious for her to leave.
“Too close… what could that mean… Thank you for your time Miss Shadlandi, I should get back to my investigation now. I’ll be sure to make sure no one knows where you and your family went. If you like, I can escort you and your family to the ship when it comes.” She placed a hand on Shadi’s shoulder and rubbed it gently, trying to comfort her. “Could you please?” Victoria smiled warmly at the girl and stood up from her cushion. “Of course I can.”
It would be a slight distraction but she needed to make sure the family remained safe. If they were the closest to danger, it would mean they needed the most attention, at least until they were safe. And if they were in any sort of danger at all, it would be imperative to get the other families out of the city as well. “But I should make sure no one else dangerous tracks your family down as well, so I’m going to leave, only for a few minutes, to make sure there’s no trail leading here.” She laid a hand on the table in front of her before sliding it across, leaving a trail of glass knives, neatly glinting in the minimal light of the room. “Make sure you all remain hidden and keep the lights off like you’ve been doing. Use these to defend yourselves if you need to. I’ll be right back. I promise.”
Hadi started crying again but nodded after looking at her family in the next room. Victoria whirled around to the door, the black abaya she was wearing frilling a bit in the spin as she fastened her niqab back on. It was an unusual garment for her to be wearing, but she wanted to blend into the crowds to keep watch and, with her pale skin, if she wore anything else she’d stick out like a polka dot in a room of stripes. Before opening the door, she put a single finger up to her covered mouth, opening the door quietly when she saw that Hadi and the rest of her family got the message.
“Okay grandma, you make sure you to get your rest, I’ll be back with the medicine in a little bit. Sleep well.” A common ploy where she was from to trick would be thieves into believing someone was still at home, it seemed like a good idea to mislead any possible listeners, IF she were being followed in which case, the glass knives she gave the family would be apt protection for the few minutes she needed to run down to their house in the residential district and cover up their evasion.
However, over the course of several weeks, the market had seemed to slowly transform in slight ways that only now were becoming more and more noticeable. It started with the fabric stands. The brilliance of their fabrics and intricacies of their creation had increased by almost ten-fold, spurring one of the largest trade booms in months. No matter, it was simply a pattern of the trade. But then, the merchants had gradually become less and less lenient with prices, refusing to let their prices drop too far. Naturally, it was the tendency of any merchant to get the most for their honest product but something was different, off. Whereas any merchant would willingly combat negotiations with a customer to get what they had coming to them, this stubbornness seemed more out of desperation than the typical vibes of frugality. Prices skyrocketed and more and more money flooded the fabric various fabric outlets of the market, and who would notice with those products, as far as the people were concerned, the quality far outweighed the price they had managed to pay. And yet, the merchants were becoming ever more desperate for money which they didn’t seem to take advantage of at all. And still, no one seemed to notice the pattern, not until recently.
The first one to disappear was Shalzda Nazim, one of the younger small time merchants who was frequently forced to set up shop on the outskirts of the market place. He was too timid and too easily bullied by the more successful traders to have ever asserted himself and his product, but now he was gone, without a trace or word, not even the slightest hint to his family either. It was as if he were simply vanished away in the middle of the night. Others had begun to meet similar fates, attracting attention from various authorities and vigilantes, but Nazim was the specific reason she was here.
Victoria had a tendency to investigate murder when it arose, and the case of Nazim and the others was a serious one. The murder of the innocent was something she hated far more than the wayward pirate she turned in or the occasional crew she would personally dismantle out here in the blues before it even reached Reverse Mountain. Unfortunately, she had only been investigating the disappearances for a few days and had not yet grasped the patterns, the inner workings of shady occurances on Zarzara Island. The most she had gleaned from the families of those since vanished were that they had been restless for the past few weeks, not wanting to talk about their work or the market place at all. However, Victoria had been lucky enough to find one outlier family of the third person to disappear, Minwu Shadlandi.
Apparently, out of all four families she had investigated, Minwu was the only merchant to have given his loved ones any trace of what was happening. “He said… that no matter what happened to him… he told us that we had to get to Ciudadela… and not look… and not… I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You have good reason to cry.”
Victoria sat on one side of the small ornate table, a plush cushion underneath her. On the other side of the table was Minwu’s younger sister, collapsed in herself, sobbing as she tried to recount to Victoria the last few days she had been with Minwu. Victoria waited patiently for the young lady to recollect herself before pressing for more information. She looked to be about 17, dark and slim, like many of the people here on Zarzara. Victoria always hated dealing with more sentimental cases like this, but not because she was callous. Oh no, the loss of a loved one and the reaction it produced, it was all too close to home for comfort and whenever she saw it face to face once more, she could only think of her own experiences and emotional baggage. When she managed to stop crying, she wiped her face with a yellow draped sleeve and sniffed at the air, trying to contain the tears long enough to assist the one trying her best to help find her brother.
“He told you not to come back until he told you and your family it was okay?” Victoria had the same conversation with most of Minwu’s immediate family. He had told them to flee for Ciudadela and not return unless he said it was okay, this was the case with his mother, father, older brother, and now his sister. She nodded pitifully before looking up at Victoria with tears winning the fight to escape her eyes, as hard as she tried to deny them. In her eyes, Victoria saw a slight trace of doubt and then reluctance, however. “You look like you want to say something.”
“Well…” According to the other family members, Minwu was closest to his sister, Hadi, in terms of communication, which indicated she was the most likely to have known something the others didn’t and further the search for the kidnapped.
“Did Minwu tell you something before he disappeared? Anything at all?”
“He… he said to not stop to talk to anyone until we got to the canal houses, where it would be safe…”
“Anything else?” Victoria leaned in towards Hadi for the information that was all too visible on the tip of her sobbing tongue. “The day before he… he…” She went silent for a few seconds before wiping her face again, staining her yellow clothing with the salt of tears. “He told me to make sure no one left until the ship was here to take us to Ciudadela. We were… too close to danger here…” She teared up again and looked over to the beaded archway, the portal to the room where the rest of her family were waiting with frightened anticipation for Victoria to leave and the ship to arrive today. It was a great difficulty for Victoria to find these people, but she had found them and that alone was a great discomfort, a huge indication that anyone could find them. The only thing more difficult than finding them was getting them to trust her, but she had assured them that she had removed all traces of where they were going when she found their house, taking them with her as a means of locating them. She even promised she would create false trails for them when she returned to her investigation but they were still anxious for her to leave.
“Too close… what could that mean… Thank you for your time Miss Shadlandi, I should get back to my investigation now. I’ll be sure to make sure no one knows where you and your family went. If you like, I can escort you and your family to the ship when it comes.” She placed a hand on Shadi’s shoulder and rubbed it gently, trying to comfort her. “Could you please?” Victoria smiled warmly at the girl and stood up from her cushion. “Of course I can.”
It would be a slight distraction but she needed to make sure the family remained safe. If they were the closest to danger, it would mean they needed the most attention, at least until they were safe. And if they were in any sort of danger at all, it would be imperative to get the other families out of the city as well. “But I should make sure no one else dangerous tracks your family down as well, so I’m going to leave, only for a few minutes, to make sure there’s no trail leading here.” She laid a hand on the table in front of her before sliding it across, leaving a trail of glass knives, neatly glinting in the minimal light of the room. “Make sure you all remain hidden and keep the lights off like you’ve been doing. Use these to defend yourselves if you need to. I’ll be right back. I promise.”
Hadi started crying again but nodded after looking at her family in the next room. Victoria whirled around to the door, the black abaya she was wearing frilling a bit in the spin as she fastened her niqab back on. It was an unusual garment for her to be wearing, but she wanted to blend into the crowds to keep watch and, with her pale skin, if she wore anything else she’d stick out like a polka dot in a room of stripes. Before opening the door, she put a single finger up to her covered mouth, opening the door quietly when she saw that Hadi and the rest of her family got the message.
“Okay grandma, you make sure you to get your rest, I’ll be back with the medicine in a little bit. Sleep well.” A common ploy where she was from to trick would be thieves into believing someone was still at home, it seemed like a good idea to mislead any possible listeners, IF she were being followed in which case, the glass knives she gave the family would be apt protection for the few minutes she needed to run down to their house in the residential district and cover up their evasion.