A library at Darkenhold.

[channe]

The woman's great interest in Agnieszka's doings hasn't escaped Petronela as she runs her fingers along the book-spines, her fingertips feeling the slippery tanned leather and the feel of money. Finally, she stops on the proffered book, slipping it out from the stacks, opening up the front cover. Her mouth moves slowly as her finger slides from line to line -- slowly, so slowly. The actions of a rank beginner. Finally, she raises her head to regard Ariane, the book still crooked open in her hand.

"It must have taken thousands of shillings to build," she says, and isn't that so cute, that the farm-girl may have no reference for a number over that? "... well, not exactly. She's not a councilor, but she heads up the defense committee. I don't know what the difference is." A pause, as Petronela notes Ariane's quill, just about to be put into action. "Well, I don't know. She doesn't talk about Razasan. At all. I mean, I guess it does. You know her, she just loves bossing people around." A final, punctuated roll of the eyes for that one.

[Carnath-Emory]

This girl - with her pretty, jeweled hair; with her fingertip advancing from word to word, just so; the sight engages, gently charms. It evokes old memories: in its very early days, she'd wandered Darkenhold corridors, fingertips trailing across rough stone as her lips silently shaped new words. Common words, foreign words, and all the time the texture of coarse masonry whispering through her senses. Ours, that touch had said; Ours, each clumsily-whispered word.

And these are things that she cannot speak of - here, and in such company. These are things for sisters and for architects, and in their absence it is enough to watch this girl at her work and be quietly grateful that such memories exist.

"Thousands, perhaps," she murmurs after a time. "Perhaps even more; I could not say with certainty. Not all of it was mine." And because an architect had once begun explaining this to her: had begun to speak of vast quantities of coin, how it might be moved and exchanged and hidden and made to grow, so that coin begets coin - hah! Her headache had grown apace. When the question which had begun it all was so simple, and answered with a word that wasn't: self-sufficiency. The means by which a stronghold might thrive -

"The Defense Committee," she echoes - sets upon that phrase, as Petronela might well have anticipated. "Myrken would have a committee addressing its needs," and the tone approves. "Nor should it. And if you reckon her for bossing, sera, then she is well-suited indeed," and this might have been laughter; muffled, but unmistakable. "Find two Councilors who will agree on anything but the need for a second dinner; no, they need for a strong hand. Hers does not lack."

No. It is not young Nela who should be party to such conversation; who is likely quite tired by it already. It is most certainly not Nela who can be asked the question which should follow - that while the Governor's man would name him a defiler in one moment and a saviour the next, the most immediate evidence she has on these matters is the building of a school - and a student whose lot has abruptly improved. The news has surprised; it has delighted.

It is tempered by the furious ache of a shoulder which remembers an assassin's knives.

[channe]

So. She is charming.

Petronela, if she knew this, would be filled with glee. A farm-girl is not charming, and after a certain age is nothing but yet another ugly mouth, another womb, another pair of hands. Like her sister, Petronela has dreams. Unlike her sister, she dreams of rubies, not blood.

"This one," she says, finally, looking up from the first page. "It has a princess." Ah, and what is a princess to one such as this? Certainly not someone who works. A pause, as she listens, then, to Ariane's next words --

"Well. Agnie says that the Governor thinks it's best that three voices have a vote, to avoid what happened with Ser Nerun and the meetinghouse." She pauses. "But I think most of us wonder if putting Ser Thessilane back on the committee will just make history repeat itself. Do you think so?"

And hen -- laughter joined. "... yes," she says, "I'm kind of glad she's out of the house and, you know, not bossing me around anymore. I was kind of sick of it." Back to the stacks, to find a second book. Her fingers resume their journey. "Do you have more stories of princesses?"

[Carnath-Emory]

A princess, to one such as this - a charming girl with little room to practice charm at all? A princess is an aspiration. The swordswoman might have said as much, if she'd realised. Sold so many years ago to rescue a House's flagging fortunes, she might well have sympathised. They'd hoped for sons, after all. She'd dreamed of making them warrior-kings.

"Mm. Two shelves to your right - and then you'll want for the ladder, for its row is all the way up there - do you see it? The green, the very new." It's not kind, perhaps, to have the poor girl climbing like this. Or perhaps it is; two sisters had laughed so at the prospect of ladders upon wheels, and the shelves' safety had been compromised when they began to - Ah. This place is rich with kind memories. And a climb shouldn't trouble a girl, not when its objective is so particular. "It is not so long, its words are not so - aggravating." A new word. A fast favourite. "It is a very short history of the Princess Renaud - of Derry. Are you familiar? I think you might find it interesting."

Between the wars and the intrigues and the generals, it whispers of ambition.

"They have set a Thessilane upon the Council?" This perplexed tone; this bewildered contradiction to such things as Kerrak and Meetinghouses. Things of particular importance to her, in the very same sense that Jons Feul is important to her - and which surely have little at all to do with unlikely Governors and - how had he said it?

Bloodless atrocities.

Five years ago she'd have sworn that no such thing ever existed.