A Missive Received at Calomel Hall.

[Cinnabar]

"Another argument against the Vault - who'd see him there, locked away in the dark? No, dragons are notoriously vain; so noble a creature must insist on being admired." So maybe the windowsill after all, to bask in the sunlight and dazzle the eye - while plotting against that upstart crystal bird.

Calomel, meanwhile, finds a place for himself with a shoulder against the windowframe. No more than a glance spared for the view past the glass, instead watching that careful matter of heat and wax. For her praise of his time as Governor he can only offer a shrug, but his grin and glance aside give the lie to such a studiously casual gesture.

"Did it suit me?" Echoing the question, chewing it over with care. More serious, thoughtful. "It's not a role I'd've taken were there an alternative. Were Bromn not absent, were Janeiro not traitors, were the Council worth a tinker's damn. But there were matters that required attention - serious matters - to which no one seemed to be attending. And that office, that desk, offered the readiest means to see things resolved." An echo of old anger, old frustration that had pushed him to what some had called a coup. Even now, years later, there was still fierce heat in the memories.

"But it was satisfying, yes. To have the freedom to act effectively. To see a problem and be able to say, you there, take some men, deal with that - and have it done. For all that much of the time I'd've liked to go with them." For all that a good part of the time he had.

"Then the problems that could be solved in that way were solved, and the role became one of politics - dealing with men unaccustomed to being instructed, who must instead be flattered and persuaded." The thought brings a grimace to his features, especially given some of the specimens requiring such treatment.

"I wasn't trapped with that desk, but good excuses to leave it grew fewer. So I moved it to a more convenient room. For me, at least." He waves a hand towards the window, towards his home. "Apparently people become much better at solving their own problems if the alternative involves walking a few miles."

He nods approvingly as the candlestick is made complete by the addition of a candle, held fast between jaws of gleaming iron.

"Finally someone decided their problem was that the Governor was too hard to reach; in solving that problem they also solved one of mine, and I was free." His hands, fingers spread, mime a bird taking flight; his grin is pure mischievous delight. Indeed, Ariane, here is a small jig to illustrate his feelings on learning this news: a half-dozen sprightly steps in a small circle, ending with a flourishing bow.

"That is how well it suited me. It was useful for a time. I think I wore it well enough to look the part. But it was not made for me, nor is it something I'd choose."

[Carnath-Emory]

"Another argument in its favour," retorts the swordswoman, with some particularly arch glance. "Perhaps I do not care to encourage so vain a beast, mn? Perhaps it must be satisfied by admiring its own self; its scales shine like mirrors, yes? So. Let the thing stare down at its belly, and glut on its own admiration for hours." Oh, the smugness of that hard little smile.

But she's dormant enough after it - with the gift nestled into her lap, and carefully for sake of trying wax; with her back rested against the windowframe, and precious ease seeping back into stinging legs. Dormant but hardly inattentive, for he describes an experience distinctly contrary to her own - of that time, of any time. He describes the ease of delivering commands, to a woman who's only ever received them - excepting for on one, notable occasion, and on that night men had died and fields had burned; she will always wonder if the destruction of Stonebrook had infected Kerrak with a capacity for madness.

"I think that I admire - " oh, look; a concession. " - your courage." A mild enough tone for words so uncommon; a mild enough set for her features, as well. "Or perhaps your certainty: to see a thing gone awry and bend men's wills to the solving of it. I could not do that." No great admittance; this faint smile acknowledges that she speaks a thing they both already know. "The responsibility - it would be too heavy upon me, I think; I am too like to hesitate," and she's laughing then; laughing the more when he describes not the constabulary but the government. "Oh, politics," she's snorted - and shrugs the idea aside with one shoulder. "Smotr'yu, a v butylke ni khuya net, Cinnabar; do not dirty my room with such talk. Do you know what politicians are good for? Acquiring enemies - which necessitates guards - whose purses very swiftly fill with the coin of men they wish were dead."

So that she's laughing again despite herself, and all the moreso when hands become a bird become a dainty little dance; has the retired Governor ever seen eyes so wide? "Oh! So very fine, ty Van'ku. I think perhaps you must have another of your costuming parties, mn? More room for a free man to dance. Less opportunity to step upon something unfortunate."

[Cinnabar]

Smug, but deservedly so! For here's a blink, then hands lifted and head bowed to admit defeat on that point. Let none ever accuse the swordswoman of pandering, whether to noble or politician or worse. Pride like steel.

"I'm not sure it was courage. Possibly arrogance; possibly ignorance. The certainty that such a thing could be done, that it was simple - you, do this; you, do that; there, was it so hard? I think I assumed those in government to be fools or sluggards or both, not to have seen the obvious solutions." He shakes his head, a hand lifted to echo her own gesture used to forestall. "If I didn't hesitate, it's because I didn't see why I should; of course I was right. After all, was I not wonderful?" His grin at this is a touch rueful, self-conscious. Oh, but he'd believed it at the time; and so had others.

"But I learned later that the one who pauses most likely understands what he risks, and how closely he risks it. The one who questions himself, who doubts, as he ought."

He'd had opportunity to think things over, in the years since, quiet moments for reflection, examination. Each decision, each choice, barely noticed at the time but stark in hindsight. The zig-zag path he'd taken along the edge of a knife, with a gaping abyss on either side.

"I wasn't wise. I was fortunate. I had some luck, and I had a great deal of aid from a great many exceptional people. Ones who understood the risks and followed me anyway." So please, his gaze entreats; save your admiration for them. For the names graven in stone, up in the mountain foothills.

A lighter mood returns at the thought of a dance, however, his mind casting back to previous such gatherings while carefully skirting around one in particular.

"It'll need to wait a little while. First, so that you've no excuse not to dance; second, because I'll have to see our Governor well settled in his place before I can know I'm free."

[Carnath-Emory]

He might, though, justifiably accuse her of pandering to the monstrous; the swordswoman had let a madman fall into the hands of cultists, perhaps, but spared him the executioner's noose before that, over and again -

"Possibly youth," she's supplied - mildly enough, and not without some wry amusement to shape her mouth. "Oh, Cinnabar - even at twelve, barely a woman grown, I was ready to manage my father's House. It would prosper beneath my hands; I was certain of it. Its fortunes restored by my careful management, its guard polished and cajoled and beaten into true fearlessness. We would reclaim what had once been ours! And I would begin by exiling my lackwit, irritating brother," and she's laughing then for true, a shake of the head dismissing a child's fancies. "No. Cinnabar, you'd been amongst us - a year? A scant months longer than that? But consider this: despite any question of youth or of experience, you inspired, mn? Men lent their lives to your cause, and they did not do this because fortune favoured you. It is talent - or it is skill," and here a shrug concedes that brutish sellswords have little ability to differentiate between the two.

But: was I not wonderful?, he's grinned, and long days from now she will hear those words echoed in a room filled with mad things and dying flowers; she will remember this moment, and wonder.

"Consider this as well," and here she's slightly sobered; these are reluctant words, slowly spoken. "What you have just described is a thing of which we were - not unaware." Her eyes are for the windows and the landscape far beneath; are for the gift yet nestled into her lap, and so seldom for Calomel himself at all. "These things - you yourself - were ... much for conversation between us. What you speak here now is what he knew already - perhaps long before you did. Do you understand what I say?"

It has been reluctantly-spoken, but never hesitant.
It is undoubtedly a caution.

But the downward glance which follows it is not born of shame or regret but only practicality; he'd mentioned dancing, after all, and she can almost laugh with it now. "Do you think I'd need an excuse to keep to my seat?" This small, hard smile. "No; Cinnabar, it would be good for you; very good for Cambree. For me, no dancing until... " A shift of the fingers; a pause which Calomel's mind may fill with whatever ideas it likes. It's an old trick; learned from an architect, years ago; learned very much from her student.

[Cinnabar]

"Until you're healed." Until she feels it warranted. Until some requirement, unknown for now, is somehow met. Leave a space, and let the listener fill it as they will. "I't'll be excellent for Cam, yes, and she'll excel at it; already does, with the children. Every day a festival." Another man's tone might have been indulgent, tolerant; his is delighted, proud.

"Youth is well-supplied with arrogance and ignorance both. So yes, quite probably that." Is it strange, to consider one's youth a mere four, five years ago? As if it's a distant thing, a lifetime between then and now. Certainly there's further between the swordswoman and the ambitious child she describes.

"I think I'd've liked to meet the young lady - she sounds like someone of vision. Unsatisfied with how things are, and full of ideas of how they might be made better." The removal of impediments is a clear first step, of course. His glance turns to the room, then to the window and the grounds outside, and his hand sweeps to take in Darkenhold as a whole. "What would she make of this, do you think? Of where you are now?"

Where, and what.

That warning is considered carefully, given the attention that the shift in tone demands; silence from him until she asks if he understands, and though there are a few points he might draw from her words, he cannot be sure.

"At what point would you have acted? Had I not proven deserving of such trust, such power. Was that something you discussed?" It must have been, if they'd known so long ago that his leadership was based on a foundation of mere confidence - overconfidence - and good intentions. His tone is light, carefully so, but grey eyes are unflinchingly steady, fixed upon her. "What other conclusions did you reach?"

[Carnath-Emory]

Conditions. Requirements. Things of which we do not speak, because they are of so little consequence, and because they involve the most personal of superstitions. He has dismissed the question and she is glad of it; gladder still for the description of a Cambree in such high spirits. It has her smiling of a sudden, although she will mock a solemn caste for long enough to add: "And so she should; she was very good with it, I remember this. And do you grow flowers there for her hair, and herbs for her holistics? It had best be so, m'Ser Calomel."

But how strange is it to discuss such things as youth with a man of Cinnabar Calomel's singular history. For all that it was a subject she'd introduced herself, he's managed to quietly surprise her with that question, with the fact that he's willing to explore this at all. "Vision," she echoes - musing eyes wandering back towards that pretty landscape outside; towards the glitter of fountains and halfway-manicured lawns. "But Cinnabar, you have never known these things. What it is to be young and helpless, what it is to have nothing. When that is your life, Cinnabar, then everything you see around you has you wanting for change, knowing that anything you might do could not make things worse. It was not vision. It was desperation."

Still... She has a backwards glance towards her room, this swordswoman; towards tall ceilings and delicate fabrics; towards candle-sconces well supplied, rugs of particular quality. Towards the two paintings, one hung and one set against a wall; blurry landscapes, the both more concerned with a harmony of colour and texture than with actual representation. She has eyes for these things, and takes her time with them before speaking again: "She would fancy herself Queen of the World," and laughing now, soft and easily. "And all she'd wanted for was a home upon the cliffs and her brother's horse." It is no answer to his question; not really. It skirts its edges and little else. But perhaps he understands, this once-Governor, that what he asks is so very large...

Then again, given the scope of what follows perhaps he doesn't at all. And see how his words tugged her eyes back to him with a sudden jerk of her head; see how the eyes frown, caught somewhere between bristling and disbelief. "'Acted'," she's echoing him, the head a tilt and slowly shaken. "You mistake me - yes? I am no Kingmaker, Cinnabar, and never have been. Acted? I leave that to, to - hungry mobs, to Janeiro, to cultists and tailors and - " A flick of the hand shoves it all away. "We spoke of those things, Cinnabar; we spoke of you." As if that should be explanation enough, when clearly it isn't, and the lips struggle for a moment before: "Not the Governorship - that is - not if or not you should be deposed. What, do you think we would come at you with knives as you slept?"

A thought so ghastly that she is laughing, for all that the sound's so terribly inappropriate.

"What we concluded, Cinnabar, was that you loved to l - " And pauses over again; has a frown for her knees, a curl of her fingers about this gift's silvery surface. Has her eyes lifted back towards him in another jerk of motion; his gaze is steady and it is quickly, piercingly searched. "Would you know these things? Really? And if I tell you No, you will imagine - horrors and conspiracies and lurking treacheries, is that it?"

[Cinnabar]

"She's got a herb garden, yes, and a couple of very helpful assistant gardeners. The flowers grow on the tower roof. I hauled the soil up there myself, to fill big pots with the stuff." His arms describe a circle too wide to fully embrace, a clear foot between his fingertips. "A dozen? A score? I lost count. It was a surprise for her, a year or two back." Almost bragging; no, more like conspiratorial delight, so pleased by the memory of it. Sneaking buckets of earth up those winding stairs, and her reaction when he'd at last brought her up to the rooftop. Imagine it.

The idea of a young Ariane Emory is a strange one for the man who's only known her as a grown woman.. After she'd been living in Myrken Wood for years, with all that entailed. Strange. Intriguing. Scarred over and again, but still standing.

"I've not known it exactly, no. But something similar? Seeing things that are wrong, and wanting to stop them, to change them? Frustration, discontent. I know that." Perhaps close enough to grasp the generalities of it. That conflict between what a young mind imagines to be right, to be fair, and what it discovers the world to be instead. The struggle to reconcile expectations with experiences.

"Ah! No, no." A hand lifts, moves as if to brush aside that line of assumption, or to wave it back onto the right path. "Not like that, no. I misspeak. More like... hm. Intervened. To prevent harm, or doing harm. No knives, I'd not imagine that. Warnings." A glance for the window, and the dancing fountain beyond. That sort of action. Her laughter draws his attention back, but with a quieter smile in reply.

"Treachery? From you, no." Unshakeable confidence in his voice, and the very idea is discarded as absurd. He'd expressed doubts about the swordswoman, allowed that he found her sometimes surprising, unpredictable. But in this matter his certainty, his trust, is absolute.

"Not for an instant."

The two of them, swordswoman and mapmaker, had seen him more clearly than he'd understood at the time, more than he'd wanted to; had faced him with knowledge that he'd struggled against for months afterwards before he could accept it as essentially correct. So would he know these things? Yes, if at all possible. Would he force the matter? No, absolutely not.

He could ask, and hope for an answer.

"Loved to what?"

[Carnath-Emory]

The flowers grow on the tower roof.

The flowers grow on the tower roof.

Why hadn't she and Quincy ever thought of that! And look at how quickly a prideful brute becomes a student, utterly engrossed; look how she leans, an elbow on her knees and her eyes sharp with ideas. Except that it feels almost like stealing, really: taking something from Cambree's place and adding it to her own, except that hadn't they done so much of that already? Aithne's tall windows and pale tiles; a hundred clever things that Quincy had heard about, or read about... Really: flowers on the roof; it is like a revolution for her mind, and already she can see Cambree's eyes so wide, her cheeks so red; the swordswoman's grin has grown to painful proportions. "The most excellent of surprises," she's laughing then, and with a clap of the hands to applaud it. "But how did you coax her to come down again? I might never have left. I picture a struggle."

Which has her laughing all over again, and some of that spirit lingers even when they move to different matters; to stranger things entirely. For: "You have not known it." Flatly said, if not unkindly. "You have not in all your life known what it is to be powerless. And even that is only a part of it, Cinnabar: it is not that a single thing demands to be remedied, or even that many things do. It is that every thing is worthless, every thing frustrates; had I the power to then, nothing would have gone unchanged. It is a - " the vocabulary fails her; fingertips move in some small pattern, shaping something tiny and indistinct. "It is a wholeness. It was happily I waited to join my husband's House, to leave behind everything that I knew. That was its worth to me. You have not known this; what frustrates you, you solve - or else defy," and that is when the smile can resurface.

Not for the last time, either, for - had he realised that spirit of dread which had begun to move through her? He might have; for a time her manner was reminiscent of other moments, of long-ago times and trying conversations. He must, for isn't that precisely what his answer means to banish? And she is careful as she listens to these things, a still shape upon its windowsill perch. Is nothing but ears, marks the moment only with some slight swallow of the throat. Exhales breath only half-held, and surprises herself with: "To learn. You loved to learn."

Which is a ridiculous place to start. Or, for that matter, conclude. Allow a moment, retired Governor, for a swordswoman who means to gather her thoughts; who has dragged long fingers through her hair and smoothed the frown away from her brow. "You were so young - mm. You must be patient, mn? I am not sure that I will speak this well." Because the word had sounded like condescension even to her own ears, and yet there was no remedy for that at all. "So. You were so young. So was Glenn Burnie, of course, but - " In a different manner. As they both know. "Your experience were so small, and your heart so kind. Glenn Burnie wished, more than anything, to be a friend to you; a friend that you could truly trust, who would never - betray, or deceive. It was a wish we both shared. To be that friend, he need to understand you - you know? From - " a touch of fingertips to her chest " - the inside to the out. And Cinnabar - a man of your experience, your strengths, already ascending to Government? You needed that friend.

So you see that we spoke of you - so very much. The things which he had come to understand, or only believe; the things which I had. We would share these things - as discretion allowed." That word. Always that word. "And see where our understandings would meet, and where they would quarrel. And if you wish to understand Glenn Burnie's sense for discretion, understand that for six months we each alluded to your nature, never realising that the other already knew of it." It is the quietest shadow of a smile.

[Cinnabar]

"Ah, yes. Fortunately I have wiles." Behold a most devious look, ever so sly, though soon replaced by a grin and a shrug. "And, you know, siegework. Keeping food and drink downstairs, being exceedingly patient." Not that he'd been in any especial hurry to lure her away from such delight. In any case the swordswoman's reaction has him beaming, and offering a small bow for that applause.

He really can't argue with her point on helplessness, so it's with a nod that he must concede; even when new to the province, when he knew no one and nothing of Myrken, he still had options, ways he might defy circumstance. Indeed, he'd been a free agent, unbound by any obligation at all, able to act almost entirely as he saw fit. So, no. He'd never been powerless.

But then: to learn. An answer considered and readily accepted. At first he'd been forced to learn - to be a student of everything he saw and heard, applying every faculty to making sense of the world around him. It had turned out that he was good at it, and occasionally even managed to share that understanding, to help others see the world through new eyes.

He takes the attitude of student again, now; listening carefully, attentively, as she elaborates on those conversations, on the reasoning behind them. Not gossip or even conspiracy, save a conspiracy of kindness between the swordswoman and her student. It is a measure of their success that he so readily accepts this explanation as truth; that excess of discretion is somehow so typical, and he can only imagine their conversations - a dance to mirror the swordplay they practiced, each striving to discover how much the other knew without revealing their own suspicions, for fear it might be an inadvertent betrayal. It is perfect.

Yet as a smile begins to spread there comes a realisation, a terrible instant of understanding and his gaze holds nothing short of horror; in the next moment he must look away, must turn and offer her his shoulder as his hand lifts hurriedly to shield his eyes, fingers that faintly tremble as they wave in some helpless request for patience. No words, not a sound; not even trusting himself to take a breath lest he choke on it.

[Carnath-Emory]

"Siegework." Oh, these dubious eyes; still, amusement works at the corners of her mouth. And: "Subterfuge," she supplies, with a lift of the brows; that, for this talk of tempting suppers very much elsewhere. "Which she ought to have expected, I think; Cinnabar Calomel and his chessboard."

And there has been so much laughter that perhaps it somehow accounts for what followed. Perhaps that delight had infected the words which followed - quieter though they were, and more sober by far. Perhaps the intriguing idea of rooftop flowers - and imagine that, a hundred hungry, colourful blossoms all turning their faces up towards the sky - had sapped some of the sharpness from her, so that the swordswoman's words were not so much clumsy but poorly aimed. Poorly chosen. For the dance which Cinnabar imagines is not the half of it - teacher and student had circled each other over and over for months, lost hour upon hour to debating the ethics of deceit, of weighing necessity against the discretion which they so prized - and she might easily have elaborated on its intricacies. Has surely meant to - even now has parted lips, on the very edge of new detail -

And he silences her with a glance. He paralyses her with a sight that she'd seldom imagined and never thought to actually see: Cinnabar Calomel, punisher of Ashfiends and torturer of strange assassins, overcome with something like fear. There is an instant in which the woman's eyes are incredulous; a heartbeat of this before she's marshaled her features into stillness again. There is a small space during which she hardly breathes at all; Cinnabar, after all, who through all the years that they'd discussed him had struck student and teacher alike as impregnable. It had been almost a game for them, sometimes - the sort of gruesome game that soldiers sometimes play; who couldn't Cinnabar trounce? In a fair fight, in a dirty fight, in any circumstances at all, and sometimes deliberations had ended that way: Well, if all else fails we'll just let Cinnabar hit it until it screams for mercy.

But he's turned away.
He's still quite wordless.
And so is she: outright staring, until she catches herself at it; outright frowning, after that. And quietly then, so very slowly: "You tell me this. When you're ready." A quiet breath. "Please."

[Cinnabar]

To his credit, this... whatever it is, this paroxysm is mercifully brief: a hoarse bark as he clears his throat, followed by a handful of deep, deliberate breaths; the heel of his hand swipes at each eye in turn, and then control returns - is imposed, fiercely. When he glances back to her there is still something stricken in his gaze, but furiously contained, though he has to look away again after. Quiet words, hesitating, stumbling.

"What I said before - I was wrong even to think it. I'm sorry. You were right." Thoughts still disarrayed, and it takes a few moments for him to organise them in a way that might make sense. "You have never been anything but true friends to me, both of you. I know that, have known it, but I haven't properly appreciated it. How much... That friend I needed? Him, always, and I accepted it as my due. You see? That it was natural, that of course someone so true and faithful would... that it was nothing less than I deserved." Arrogance, vanity.

No. More of the same, this self-centred self-indulgent self-pity; oh, my friend has suffered and it's all my fault and I feel simply wretched about it. Try again.

When next he speaks his words are carefully-chosen, precise; delivered with unflinching brutality.

"I have failed my friend - my best friend; I have done him a terrible wrong. And I am afraid in case it can't be put right." There. That is the heart of it, laid pitilessly bare.

"I want to put it right; and I want to say no matter the cost, but I cannot. I cannot."

[Carnath-Emory]

What a still thing she is, when Calomel begins to speak. How quietly she watches. Never let it be said that the swordswoman lacks a capacity for patience; it is demonstrated here by a woman who might as well be a pallid shadow by the windowsill, so slight is her presence. The impassive grey of her eyes neither condones nor condemns; it offers nothing at all but a witness to the way in which this man wrestles himself free from the tangles of horror, of remorse, of -

No. Of this she does not wish to make a full accounting. The attempt pains; it also tempts some cruel corner of her, which had once worn a woman's name like a collar upon its throat, the leash gripped very firmly by a Governor's hand. He does not know what he does, she'd insisted to an architect, one very bleak night. He does not understand, she'd cried - and meant: from the inside out. And some cold part of her would like to crow over this, some portion of a woman who'd never claimed to be kind, and with very good reason. Some part of her wants very much to satisfy itself by shouting words that are not even true, but when she speaks what emerges instead is his name, and quietly-said, very simply to coax him out his quiet, hurt assessments.

And see? That the voice does not condemn, that the grey eyes have not lost their calm; that she has not fled the room in outrage. "Cinnabar." Again. Just to hold his eyes. "These were things which you already knew." Things which he had said not an hour ago, when he was only newly arrived to her home. "Nothing has changed, except that now you know it in different ways. Do not make us over into saints, Cinnabar; sometimes we doubted, you know? You; ourselves. Nor do not draw yourself as a monster, mn? You have done a thing you ought not have, and who alive cannot say the same? Except for children, perhaps, who haven't had years enough in which to err," and that is so dangerously close to those old training-room conversations that she's still for a while after it, quiet with thought -

No. A shake of the head dismisses deliberations unvoiced. "It is possible to lose your self to pain and to regret. And to do this leads to nothing of worth, to nothing of any value at all; it will choke you until you cannot breathe, cannot act at all. And I think," with an echo of a smile, "that you know this already, just as you know that there are prices which you cannot pay." Which is her only comment upon the matter, from a swordswoman who has sometimes said the very opposite. "I hope that you understand this as well: that I do not tell you these things for any reason at all but that you understand how...." What had the words been? No; these, she can never forget. "How his mind has never been idle on the subject of you."

Borrowed words, deeply significant, which have lent her eyes a moment's distance - but only that, for already she's tilting her chin towards a chest near the foot of her bed, and: "Would you? In there, beneath the things with horses upon." The General's things, these, treasured for years upon years - and nestled beneath them, a folded board.

[Cinnabar]

A terrible thing. A terrible thing, made only more so by his reluctance, his refusal to properly grasp it. He'd known it already, yes, had admitted it, but it had been kept at some remove; Ariane, there is this problem which I have allowed to arise, and I need to solve it somehow. And that had been the extent of it - a problem, worrying and frustrating. But one to which they might put a satisfactory end, as they had with previous problems.

And then, more recently, the realisation that it might not be possible. That this error might not be repaired, that there would be no way in which it might be properly healed. That his absence had cost his friend something awful and irrevocable, utterly beyond his ability to replace.

Silent for a time, fuming; hands clasped tightly behind his back, curling fingers unable to decide between balled fists or--

flesh and bone become screaming pulp and splinters in his grasp wet iron and offal on his tongue dark figures scurrying like swarming spiders that writhe and shrivel when forge-white brilliance fills the lightless depths with--Something like startlement at the sound of his name, and his eyes hold a fading reflection of that fire and fury as he looks round; followed by a moment or two in which he must blink, and strive to recall the words that followed immediately after his name.

He listens quietly as she explains further, as she soothes and reassures, and any other time he might've found amusement in it - Ariane Emory, dispensing balm to a troubled soul. Here, now, he can only be glad for it. And nod, slowly. Pain and regret remains, yes, but controlled - firmly contained so that it doesn't overwhelm.

"You're right. All of it."

and,

"I'm sorry. It - Nothing is achieved by, by such wallowing." He is better than that. He is better than that.

Welcoming the distraction, the excuse to move, he follows her direction towards the chest. He crouches to open it, carefully moving these other items aside, and she will know he has found what she means from his stillness; that and the searching grey gaze that lifts to meet hers a moment later.

[Carnath-Emory]

A terrible thing. A thing so vast that if she were to allow it, if she were to permit it a moment's liberty at all, it would surely swallow her. Like an ocean, like the storm of which she'd dreamed weeks ago, devouring her from the inside out -

Unacceptable. It was an interval of neglect which had left her student abandoned; she will not repeat that here, now.
And merciless, she has demanded the same of their once-Governor.

How the man struggles. In the wake of her words, in the midst of them, and although she is a silent spectator to his wracking hurt she is not by any means unaware. Murderer alike of kindly women and of mercenaries - men whose only crime was a single, poor choice - the swordswoman surely knows the look of a man who wrestles only with himself. And could but recognise the point at which horror threatened to overflow; as if its sickly light shone from the very pores of his skin, as if enormity crawled beneath the skin as surely as if it were that day in the forge all over again, a m mess of flames and sparks and flesh which did not burn.

This, she might have said -
This, too, is planishing.

But what she says is his name, and she speaks it like a summons. So that he will hear those words which must be said, but also to make an anchor of her voice; make of its sound a path which a man might follow in order to return from There to Here. Because here is where he is needed, and it is a necessity which she cannot permit him to forget; because he was once her friend and has surely become so again, and there will be no losing him to hurt.

"Not now," she's agreed; the mouth is some small, grim motion but the eyes have not lost their warmth. "But if you insist to have it, then you may save it for later. For - after the world is mended, mn?" Which is just another way of saying Never At All, and at that she has almost laughed.

"Yes. That." When he has dug deeply enough beneath folded garments that his hands have lit upon what she sought - and is there approval in her voice? Surely so: for the care with which he has handled these things, folded shirts all murky green and coppery brown, and rich with their embroidery. Things that will surely never be worn a second time but only kept, as so many things are kept, in remembrance. "The pieces are inside. Over here with it - would you? I need to see this before I can know where to begin. I don't," and this time it's laughter after all, "I don't even know what a beginning would look like. I have stepped into the middle of a game and I am directed to someone else's seat - do you see?"

There's a desk that he might draw near, if he cares to; might have to, in fact, for the woman shows no signs of leaving this windowsill perch. Has finally dragged the boots from one leg and then the other - unforgivably casual, and absolutely necessary when she reaches like this for a pot of some greasy substance and for what feels like the hundredth time, applies it to healing burns.

[Cinnabar]

Her directions are welcome, lending purpose to limbs that briefly burn for something more catastrophic, providing an outlet for that sudden restlessness. Fine garments replaced where he found them, the chest closed carefully, firmly upon the memories it contains. Each motion, each gesture made as if surrounded by a world of spun glass and cobwebs; controlled, restrained, in absolute denial of that urge for the most terrible violence. Press it down, let it sink and fade.

The desk, then, is drawn closer to the window - lifted, even, lest a vulgar scraping of wooden legs break the wall of quiet that he carefully builds within himself. A chair too, and then the very serious matter of opening the board, dividing carved pieces into dark and light, leaving a single grey-hued pawn standing with very firm ambivalence between the two camps. Eyes lowered, focusing entirely on the task at hand as she tends to her wounds.

"Then we begin as it is meant to begin: two armies, and a clear field between." He sets out the chessmen with practiced motions, first dark, then light, the nobles shielded behind their line of stalwart pawns. Gaining confidence as he concentratest on the board, on stylised figures cool beneath his touch, adjusting each until it stands just so in its square. "Just a game."

Narrow the world down to a simple grid, populated by pieces that can only move thus or thus, free of concerns, of doubts or fears or wishes or dreams. Each absolutely loyal to the end, unflinching in its readiness to die for a greater victory. Is it not an enticing way to view things? So stark, so pure. So simple, so rich in potential. So wrong.

His hand dips into his pocket for a moment, a silver shilling balanced on his thumbnail in the next. An element of chance introduced - but a small one, entirely manageable, affecting only which of them might move first. At last he looks up, great eyes clear again, steady, the barest hint of mischief curling at his lips. This is deliberate, this gamble, for he knows which colour she'd choose - or rather which colour she'd assign to him.

"Call: heads or tails."

A flick of his thumb sends the coin singing into the air.