[Author’s note: This takes place pretty much exactly a year before the start of Blood on the Snow]

There were plenty of things Sabbat could’ve been doing with his solstice. 

Drinking, for one, since that was part and parcel of the way Sacaan celebrated the longest night, and booze was a damn sight cheaper than the kind of slap-up meal the toffs’d likely be sitting down to (though most of the places he could get halfway decent liquor would also serve him a decent enough meal to go along with it). Taking advantage of the fact that half the rest of the city would be getting drunk to lighten a few purses, for another – plenty of rich idiots who fancied touristing down in the slums, and fully half of them so plastered even the most cack-handed pickpocket’d be able to lighten them of everything they were carrying and then some. Hells, if he was feeling particularly inclined to violence, he could always roll one of the silver-spoon swaggerers who thought coming down Steepside every festival and kicking in a few beggars made them proper street thugs – though, unless there was a whole pack of them on the prowl, an honest barfight’d scratch that itch significantly better and with less chance for the Watch to get involved. 

Point was, there were any number of things he could’ve chosen to do with his evening. Which was, of course, why he was currently hanging one-handed off a gutter four storeys above the ground in one of the richest districts in the city, trying desperately to get a toe-hold on the icy stonework and swearing a mental blue streak at the owners of the house, the concept of solstice presents, and whatever bastard had decided that what the world really needed in the way of instruments was a godsdamn wooden fife with delusions of grandeur. 

He hadn’t had to steal the flute, of course. But Archer’d mentioned that he wanted one, back in a conversation during the heatwave, when there’d been nothing to do but talk, and apparently nobody in the city made anything near as good as the ones you could get back in Efir. And since he couldn’t go to Efir, and he’d be damned if he’d get Archer some shonky splintered piece of shit from one of the pawnshops down the way, the only logical course of action had been to work out who in the city had a flute which’d match the specifications that they’d not immediately miss, and then go and take it. 

(more…)

[Because it’s National Coming Out Day today, apparently (not sure whose ‘national’ we’re talking here, but it serves well enough as a prompt), and I realised that I’d not actually written the point at which Archer found out that Sabbat was trans. Or, more specifically, the point that Sabbat realised that Archer knew and confronted him about it.
This takes place a good few years before the start of Blood on the Snow, back when the two of them were crewmates on board a pirate/privateer ship (depending on whose definition you were going by at the time)
For additional context, the worldbuilding post about transitioning in Sacaan]

“So,” Sabbat said, once the silence had dragged on long enough to be suffocating. “Y’saw it, then.”

It wasn’t a question, and Archer was smart enough not to take it as one – he nodded, once, but said nothing.

“An’?”

“And?”

Fucking spit it out and have done with it, why don’t you? “We goin’ t’have a problem?”

Archer blinked – or, at least, closed his eye for a second. “I beg your pardon?”

“I said, we goin’ t’have a problem?” His fingers itched – with an effort of will, he kept his hand away from the razor and flat on the table in front of him. Ain’t drawing steel on him. Not yet.

“Yes, I heard you. And no, I don’t believe we are – at least, unless you’re planning on killing me for it.”

(more…)

“You’ll be fine. Stop fidgeting.”

“Easy for you to say,” Seb groused, twisting the end of his braid around his fingers. He leant his head against the window, glaring at nothing in particular. “Nobody’s likely to tell you you’re too city.”

Viola rolled her eyes, barely resisting the urge to kick her twin (gently) in the shins. “It’s not like you suddenly turned into a bloody furless, Seb. You’re as much a part of the clan as anyone. We both are.”

“Even though we were born in Sacaan proper?” He pulled a face. “You know what they say about-”

“I do. And if they try anything, I’ll break their sodding noses.” She grimaced. Seb was supposed to be the solid rock – the anchor to her storm, the unchanging point at the centre of the compass – and yet, every year, when it came to the journey back to the Spring Fair, she found herself suddenly thrown into the role of older sibling and hating every second of it. “You don’t have to justify yourself to anyone, Seb. Least of all a gang of wet-behind-the-ears puppies who wouldn’t know a good idea if it jumped up and bit them in the face.”

(more…)

[Author’s note: While this story is about a trans male character (it’s a chunk of Sabbat’s backstory), it uses she/her pronouns and the character’s previous name for the majority of it, because that’s how he was thinking of himself at the time.
I am a transmasc person who conceptualised myself as ‘girl’, ‘she’ and my previous name while working myself out, and that part of this story is based on personal experience – if it’s not going to play well with your brain, that’s very fair and you’re very much allowed not to read.
Content warnings: misgendering, discussed child abuse (beating, locking in room, forcing a trans kid to wear the wrong gendered clothing)]

Running away was, it turned out, surprisingly easy (not running away from home. Wasn’t home, never had been). 

Took planning, of course. Then again, when’d anything worth doing ever not?

Planning, and luck. 

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