Things Held in Darkness

[Glenn]

It would have been a win.

Did she realize that? If he walked out, right there, after saying that, after accomplishing what he did, after staring her down, then this would have been a win. It would have been a notch on his belt. Was it a tantrum? Was it from the heart? Maybe, but that didn't mean it couldn't be deliberate too, as she suggested. The scope and scale of a victory between her and him was so very different.

In the end, though, she prevented him that.

Ser Malaroth? One of Malaroth's. He was, of course, but never directly. No, he belonged to someone very, very different now, and not once in this exchange had her name come up. Elliot was careful in some very particular ways. There was that one grasp towards his dagger, that one climb towards the ceiling, but Ariane did not see the latter and the former, that was cut off quickly. If she had ever seen Solena, Elliot had given the Lady of the Fortress nothing, nothing to link his mentor with himself.

Now he was giving her nothing but a back against a wall and eyes, perhaps a bit worried (finally), that stared, that bore into her. This time he did not argue with her when she modified his terms. He didn't even necessary want some of this, or he didn't know why he wanted it. It just felt good to make such demands, to be in demand. He would answer however. "I can tickle them. Only a few I've ever come across that I can't. And I've gone some pretty tricky places to find them, but making them. I have... ideas, but I'd need someone who can.. I'm not trained in forging metal or anything."

There was pride in that but it was a dangerous thing. He was far too committed now. He had shown far too much of himself in that. So when the paper came, there wasn't much he could do. Before escape would be a win. He began to draw. Darkenhold. Just the lines, the important bits. All business. "Wells." One, two, and so on. Circles. "If I was REALLY going to attack you, I'd use the wells. It's hard because they're used enough, well guarded enough, even if casually." His tongue was out just a little now as he was thinking. It was a terribly rare sight because he rarely thought like this. "But there's a run every morning with them. A lot of water for the start of the day. Hell on the hands because of the amount that has to be pulled. It's a chore that no one wants to do. I heard people complaining about it. So they have heavy duty gloves, right? It's not the same people every day, so they're stored in a central place, but who guards gloves? I introduced a harmless agent," repeating professional terms, "that takes a few hours to really turn the color of the water red. It's clear before that. A bit of it flaked off of the gloves while they were getting the water, and a few hours later, all of the wells changed at once." His voice quieted a little. "I could have used something else if I wanted all of you dead." So there it was, how he did it, how they could prevent the exact thing that he did. It was very, very specific, however. There was no sign that had a damn thing more. Releasing mice into the kitchen didn't exactly take that level of skill or planning.

He was worn out by the ebb and flow of all of this; it had hit him when she got him back against that wall. If he had to try to escape he would, and damn it if he wouldn't succeed or die trying, but for now, he offered her this instead, and nothing else.

[Carnath-Emory]

It would have been a win.

In the opinion of a swordswoman who was once a hungry young girl, half his size at nearly his age and every bit as desperate. Who lived on lies told in dangerous company, every day balancing risk against reward or just against more risk; who'd taken at some point to adding 'mercenary' to the end of her name, knowing very well the whole meaning of that word and that 'sellsword' wasn't even the half of it. Sitting to a table like this one was all about hunger: you ask for everything you dare to, reckoning to actually leave with maybe a fifth of it; you come ready to out-bluff things ten times your size because at a table like this one everyone else certainly is. And if everything should go awry. If there's nothing to gain and all that's left is risk. If the anger and the loss and the vicious resentment rise up like a burn in your gut so that you spit in their eyes and turn away, and should you happen to walk away intact even then -

It's in every sense a win.

You walk away gloating and you never forget, and this was the line the swordswoman had drawn for herself when she approached this boy in her own hallway. Long before they removed to these seats, she had established the point at which this would cease to be amusing and become something else altogether; knew the mark at which there'd be no more room to be giving because she would not allow this boy that kind of satisfaction. Not over her, and not like this.

It's a little easier between them when the paper arrives, and her arm lowers enough to permit his return to their table; Aneirin, for his part, has already left, supremely disinterested. The bench again, for Elliot; for herself, a lean of her hip up against the table's edge as she watches across his shoulder and over his bent head. He will not see her slow smile, lost in this work as he is; he will not know the fleeting instant for which it becomes a sudden and delighted grin. Plain enough from the beginning that he'd never intended any sort of exchange between them; the clear implication is that to some extent he's been improvising, just as he'd been doing this whole time - and successfully - and that is valuable. Exceedingly more so is the vulnerability that he's identified, which is -

"Good." Slow now, quietly. "That's good," with a fingertip tapped atop one of those crudely-sketched wells; once, twice, and then she's stepping around the table's edge to take her seat again, eyes gone solemn but considering. "The wells have always been a problem. There's a secondary system - " But this is nothing which she cares to detail; a shoulder shrugs it away. "Do you know the military application? You can take a city by poisoning its wells, of course; anyone knows that." A small, humourless smile. "But you can cripple a camped army as well, even if you haven't such means. If they're taking their water from a stream, if you have a few corpses; animals will do, as old as you can get. Placed far enough upstream - "

Grotesque. Satisfying. A hand's waving that aside as well. "It's good. It's clever. Not the intent, but the research. Do you have more of this 'harmless agent'?" The words feel exotic on her lips. "Our builder is curious. Also curious as to how long the taint lingers," and it's all these questions of a sudden; it is a woman leaned forward a little in her seat, quietly intent; of a sudden this is business. Had he thought they were negotiating before? Perhaps he will understand that this is where it really begins. "What would you require - were you to make such things. Locks, the sort of locks which are - excruciatingly confounding. If you had access to a person very comfortable in a 'smithy and interested in cooperating - what else?"

[Glenn]

There was improvisation and there was something else entirely. This had fallen far into the latter category. "I know a lot about tactics." A little shrug. Basic things. Things they'd teach a squire. "That, though? It's not the kind of thing they teach squires." It didn't mean it wasn't interesting, but he wasn't used to thinking on that scale anymore. The idea that he could have poisoned them all was energizing, liberating, but t was also more than a little unnerving. He HAD to say it that way, but it didn't exactly have the intended result.

The next question then, and he really doesn't mean to laugh but there it is, small, slight, but definitely a laugh. "Well, it'll go away in a few hours. Of course, I really laced those gloves, so if I hadn't told you, you would have seen a repeat of it every morning for a week, I bet." It would have been something to remember him by. Except for she wasn't supposed to have anyone TO remember.

The Sparking of Real Negotiations Between Baroness Ariane Emory, Supposed Weapon and Monster of Some Ill Repute, and Elliot Brown, Reprobate-in-Training, as Expressed by Viewing the Face of Young Master Brown:

-Excitement, firstly, at the thought of working upon the locks, of using what he had learned from the inside out, to achieve things that locksmiths, stuck in the box as they were would never, ever, learn.
-Suspicion, that this may be a trap. The change in tone, the change in mood, in atmosphere; it weighed upon them now, upon him especially and the stakes had just risen so very much.
-Realization, of those risen stakes. His list was a careful thing. Boons for others. Things for him that were not material. To see this. To be listened to about that. A room that could be abandoned. Food that could be forsaken. This was different, an exchange of something more than suggestions.
-Excitement, for it was an opportunity as well, a change to branch out, become something even more, to accomplish things he had yet to imagine with resources behind him he had not expected.
-Fear, distinct, true Fear, because this was more, far more, than he had agreed to as of yet for very, very good reason. The temptation was strong, but the consequences? Oh the consequences.
-Nervous Seriousness, of an extreme sort. His body had stiffened, his eyes gone to the side. And finally, he spoke.

"I am not... That is, it would not be. I can't.." There were official words, words that would end questions before they began. The teenager did not have them. Finally, he stumbled verbally, forcing words out. "I can't make a deal like that without someone saying it's okay."

-Finally, a look that has no simple classification but that she knew very well. It can only be summed up with six very distinct words:
Because It Is You, Ariane Emory.

[Carnath-Emory]

And for some terrible moment she was a half-inch from dangerous ground and falling blindly. Neck-deep in something like collaboration, shoulders hunched over a map and - this is what we would do, and it would begin with that, and the moment is so vivid with potential that when the boy demures, citing the intricacies of what a squire is and is not taught, her half-laughing reply would have been: But that doesn't mean you can't learn -

And the realisation is a slow coldness behind her eyes, a shock so complete that there can be no words at all because her lungs lack the breath for them.

What are we doing here? Dyes. Reagents. Harmless agents. His mouth shapes the words; her ears catch their echoes. A slow, careful breath dispels the killing cold of barely-averted disaster, and it's the stubby knife in her hand again then; it's a sliver cut free from the apple, tart and cold. And she knows, now, knows the most subtle nuances of that very-nearly error when a boy's hundred different impulses resolve into a single, long gaze. It is not precisely condemnation. It has weight to it nevertheless.

And just like that, we stand on familiar ground.

"It's good that you're cautious with this." And this is the ease of a swordswoman whose footing is so sure that she has dispensed with the need for hesitation. It is some casual posture upon this seat, quiet grey eyes fixed upon the boy even as she nods her chin towards the kitchens' doorway. "Take it with you - if you'd like to." The beginnings of an opportunity; a thing not even halfway negotiated. "But only if." Which is just another way to say: be sure, be certain, and she's unwinding from that seat then after all, bending for just the moment it takes to fold his sketch lengthwise and then again. Small, deft motions; a page's crisp, clean seams.

"With the understanding - " a pause; an glance fixed back upon his eyes. " - that it won't be this again. This - agents, this thieving, this breaking of things and troubling people who've more pressing concerns than the chasing of clever young men." Straightening; she leaves the knife, keeps the apple. "You don't return home tonight and tell your young friends a tale of - mm, breathtaking audacity. Not even if you very much want to boast of it. You'd be right to be proud. But inspiring your friends to follow your example would be - a grave error. Bad for them. Bad for you, too.

Do you understand?"

[Glenn]

His friends. His little friends. Cherny, N'Vek, the ones who'd be interested in this. Not Nova, not Niall. Catch wouldn't even understand. With the others? Well, there was little worry there. Friends. "I won't brag." This said coolly, without much enthusiasm. That final realization about just what he could and could not do deflated the boy completely.

All that spirit had gone, the wind lost from his sails. It was not a dutiful, respectful teenager left behind, no, more surly and frustrated, but still, he nodded."If I'm back, it's because I can.. we can work with that. Otherwise, I won't bother you again." It would hurt too much, the pride. She had her treasures, hidden or in plain sight. Elliot Brown? He had his pride, bolstered and bruised. And a piece of paper.

For all his work.

He'd move to depart. It would not be until he was halfway to town that a smile would gradually find itself onto his face once again. Bruised and bolstered. Bruised and bolstered.