More Sense Bloodthirst

Which didn’t mean they were necessarily well liked. As I stood beside my grandmother, I immediately received looks—some of them acknowledging, like between colleagues. Others seemed considering, looking for something. Most of the Mistral crowd paid us little heed, recognizing my grandmother but then moving on, uncaring of who owned what.

But a few, I Detected before I even saw, such was their intensity. It wasn’t everyone, it wasn’t even most people, but among those watching us were players, those who fought against the group that had once been nobles in confrontations that could be economic or violent. They knew who my grandmother was, what she had done, and they hated her, just as they hated me for standing beside her.

This was Mistral, now; the city famed for standing united in the War, divided three ways. Or was it four ways? It could have been five, depending on who you counted; maybe even more. Whatever the case, there were interests and enemies, politics and schemes, positions and territories—things that most people who lived there didn’t pay any mind, but things that happened beneath there city’s surface. The people staring at me with hostility enough to burn…they could have been anyone; criminals, police, or businessmen who remembered the Civil War and had been wronged or defeated.

And yet, standing there amidst all that, my grandmother smiled very slightly, looking utterly at ease. I followed her lead, letting the serenity of the Gamer’s Mind brush aware the unnerving stares and I walked just a step behind my grandmother, showing deference to the head of my mother’s family. I didn’t move closer or back away, but stayed relaxed and unruffled even as I kept my senses sharp.

“Grandmother,” I whispered quietly as I picked out some particular intense hatred coming from a calm-looking, balding man in his forties. “Thirty-seven meters to your right.”