young volcanoes

Calan

"Hold it straight," Calan says under his breath, which is a perfectly reasonable instruction considering the ice cream is leaning dangerously toward becoming street food and they just have the one. They had enough money for one, which is not the same as having enough money for the correct number, and while sharing is caring and during the course of their lives the twins will share a great number of things, this is about the principle, namely that they really should have been given money for two and now are simply rectifying that particular parental oversight. 

Calan takes his turn with careful seriousness, licking a melting line before it can get away, then angles the cone back toward his brother without quite letting go. His eyes, however, have already gone past the ice cream, past the press of shoppers, and back toward the stall where the man who sold it to them is wiping his hands on a cloth and looking as if he has not yet realized he is involved in a larger situation. "He didn’t see both of us," Calan murmurs, low enough that the idea stays between them where it belongs. "So what if I go back and say a hel stole the ice cream?"

He glances over one shoulder, not guiltily, because guilt would imply the plan is already bad, but with the narrow-eyed interest of someone conducting an important study on adult softness. The ice cream man has broad arms, a flour-dusted apron, and the sort of expression that might go either way depending on whether he has ever loved anything helpless. Calan considers the cloth, the stall, the neat row of tubs, the way the man had counted their coins twice without smiling, and then, more importantly, the small chipped bowl of extra sprinkles set near the counter.

"It's tricky," he whispers, because some men will take pity on a boy robbed by a horrible bird and some men will tell that same boy to pound sand, which is a rude position to take when there is clearly still ice cream available. "I think he might believe me if I look sad enough, but not if I look interesting." This is inconvenient, since Calan is fairly sure he almost always looks interesting, which means Carlo also always looks interesting as well.

you are a victim of the rules you live by

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Carlo

"I am," Carlo replies, also under his breath, and he really is in his mind. He isn't taking into consideration that his version of straight doesn't account for the fact that he's crouched about half a foot lower than Calan for some reason, or that they both have a hand on the ice cream cone. Either way, it's not street food yet, and once his brother is finished with his turn Carlo leans in to stop the ice cream melting in the other direction, which is just good resource management if you think about it.

"Mm?" he asks, tongue still out as he follows his twin's gaze over to the man running the stall, head tilting a fraction as if trying to gauge whether or not a hel will be enough to persuade him for a pretend-replacement ice cream. "I dunno," he half agrees, frowning and finally pulling his tongue back in his mouth as he offers the cone to his brother. "There's loads of hels in Torchline. He'd have to replace a lot of cones if that was a good reason for it."

Sighing, Carlo glances in the other direction for inspiration, his eyes widening a bit as he spots another stall, this one selling oysters. "Okay, but what if," he says, "you sneak up and take some of those oysters on ice - see the ones he hasn't got ready to sell yet? And then we tip them into a bucket and pretend we just got them, and sell them to him? I could distract him while you take... aw, wait. That won't work." Given that it will look, to the merchant, that the same boy is doing the distracting as is later selling him oysters, apparently within a twenty second timeframe.

know the rules well, so you can break them effectively

Code stolen from Queen Sky

and it will be hard

The shoe was too small. It pinched Ren's toes and scuffed at the heel even when they left it unlaced. Its mate had a ripped seam along the side, letting in water and sand and too much fresh air for comfort. They hadn't pointed this out to their father yet. He always got such a pinched look around the eyes whenever money for new things was mentioned, somewhere between guilt and anger, and it really wasn't bad enough yet that it felt necessary to ruin the mood. After all, hadn't Ren been allowed to come along on this trip already? Work for the father, a much needed break for Ren's mother, and a splendid adventure to the youth, who couldn't wait to see more of the exotic city after their brief walk from skyport to inn.
"Where are you going?" Father looked up from the papers he was sorting as Ren got up and reached for the door.
"Out. Maybe do some busking." Gods knew they needed every coin. The father grunted, rubbing day old stubble on his chin and cast a glance at the bustling city beyond the grubby window.
"Don't leave the city. And be back here before nightfall."
"Yeah." Ren reached for their beat up lute in its case, and slipped quietly outside.

Escaping the run down inn was like plunging straight into a vortex of color and sound. Everything was vibrant, from the clothes people wore to the buildings and the wares they hawked from market stalls and boutiques. In some ways it reminded Ren painfully of home, but in most it was completely different, in a dizzying, exhilarating way that they decided must be a good thing. Wandering aimlessly for a while, it was the sound of music that drew them in to a square. The reek of seafood mingled with fragrant spices and sweets, an ice cream stand had customers queuing long past endurance, and a jongleur sent green-and-yellow balls flying in a mesmerising circle above her head. A man with a forked beard strummed away on a lute, cross legged by her feet, and Ren stopped to watch, their fingers tapping a quiet rhythm against well worn trousers. Longing to join in, painfully aware that they hadn't practiced for weeks - or months, truth be told.

but that's not all it will be

REN

Calan

Calan does not answer immediately, because there are times for talking and times for properly considering. The hel plan had been tidy in shape, which he still likes, but Carlo is right about the trouble with Torchline having too many birds and too much experience with them. A man selling ice cream in Haulani has probably heard every hel excuse there is, including the ones involving actual hels, and Calan sighs through his nose as he looks from the ice cream man to the oyster stall and back again. The oyster plan is better. It has pieces. It has movement. It has a crime that turns into business if no one looks too closely at the middle part. Unfortunately, it also has the kind of flaw that ruins otherwise excellent work.

Calan’s mouth twitches into something that's not quite a smile, before out of the corner of his eye, he spots someone standing nearby: thin and still with a beat-up lute case. Calan’s gaze sharpens at once and he snaps his fingers softly. "Okay," he says, already quieter than before, as if the plan might run away if startled. "What if we steal the oysters, but we get someone else to sell them?" His eyebrows lift, and he tips his head toward the thin girl by the music, or what he thinks is a girl anyway, because from here the important thing is not really that but whether she looks like she might want coins more than she wants rules. 

"We could say we think he’s giving us an unfair price," he murmurs. "Then we ask her to see if she gets something different, telling her we'd been offered something really low so that anything he does offer seems really good in comparison and takes the deal." He glances at the cone between them, measuring how much ice cream remains against how long this plan is likely to take, then looks back toward Ren with the bright, contained interest of a boy who has just discovered that every crowd comes with spare parts you could use to fix an unfair situation.

you are a victim of the rules you live by

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Carlo

"Hmmm," Carlo says, not because he doesn't think it's a good plan but because he's chasing another melting line of ice cream away from dripping onto the ground. "Hmm," he repeats, more decisively when he's finished, before nodding. "That could work." Automatically his gaze follows Calan's towards the person near the busker nearby, small enough to be considered a child and therefore automatically in for whatever shenanigans are up for grabs.

"Okay, but we should probably check the actual price of the oysters and see if it's enough for at least two ice creams," he adds, gesturing to the other kid. "Because we're gonna need to maybe pay her with one, unless you think she'll do it if one of us gives her a sad face?" Either way, they ought to probably put this plan in motion before it escapes and becomes someone else's idea.

Leaning in suddenly to take a bite of the ice cream (and pretending not to instantly regret the way his teeth sing in protest), Carlo gestures for Calan to take the rest and straightens up to his full and unimpressive height. "You be thief, I'll be beggar," he decides, before marching off to linger near the kid in the hopes of getting her attention. (He even waves a bit, to see if it'll help).

know the rules well, so you can break them effectively

Code stolen from Queen Sky

and it will be hard

The jongleur was good, but the musician was better. A small crowd was gathering around to listen, hands began clapping and some even crooked arms to dance a lively jig that sent people staggering into one another. Ren was jostled this way and that, with  thin arms wrapped protectively around the lute case, until they found themselves nearly at the back of the audience. Looking around for a gap in the throng to slip into, their eye caught on a pair of boys around the same age, so like to one another that they had to be twins at least, and clones being the more likely. One of them waved at Ren, and gained a shy smile in return. Sidling over, a dark head of hair partially obscuring the young face nodded at the performance. "Did you want to see them too?"

but that's not all it will be

REN

Calan

Calan thinks about this with his eyes narrowed and the cone held between them. "Well," he says after a moment, shrugging as if the answer has simply arranged itself neatly in front of him, "if she does it for a sad face, then we’ll have an extra ice cream, and if she doesn’t, then we’ll be set with her payment." That seems sensible enough to count as strategy.

He accepts the remains of the ice cream with the seriousness of a boy taking charge of important supplies, then mumbles, "deal," around the last cold mouthful before crunching the top of the cone between his teeth. The sound is too loud in his own ears, which makes it satisfying, and by the time he has swallowed he is already looking away from Carlo and Ren, because looking at the people involved in a plan too much is how adults begin to suspect that everyone nearby is involved in a plan.

The oysters are sitting in their little bed of ice at the edge of the stall, fresh and silver-lipped and practically screaming about how easy they are to see, and with the crowd clapping around the jongleur, Calan only has to stumble once, knock a hanging string of shells hard enough to make three people look the wrong way, and drag one small basket beneath his arm before the stallkeeper has finished frowning at the noise. From there he walks—because running is basically a confession with legs—down toward the docks with his chin lifted and the basket cold against his side, stopping at the first seller who looks busy enough to not pay enough attention to remember Calan's face. "Excuse me," he says, polite as anything. "How much money could I get for these oysters? I caught them myself."

you are a victim of the rules you live by

Code stolen from Queen Sky

Carlo

His first step is a success, because he's gotten the other kid's attention, and his second step must be a success too, because his brother is no longer anywhere to be seen. (Hopefully that means he's getting hold of the precursor to their next ice cream instead of being caught by the ear to be dragged before their fathers - or worse, their sister queen). "Huh? Oh, yeah," he says as the kid asks whether he was trying to get a look at whatever entertainment now involves a rowdy jig and clapping hands. "Yeah, I'm really into... into that."

And he probably would be were it not for the importance of his current business.

Sidling a little closer, Carlo straightens up in the way he's seen other grown-ups do and sticks out his hand for the shaking. "I'm Carlo Tal....lula," he says, his cheerful demeanour only dampening for a second as he sidesteps his own surname in lieu of something not so obviously demigod/royalty branded. "Me and my brother work down here at the docks sometimes. Are you from Torchline too? We catch all sorts. Wiggly things, swimmy things, shelly things..."

know the rules well, so you can break them effectively

Code stolen from Queen Sky