Les Liaisons Dangereuses or Busywork at the End of a Blade

Re: Les Liaisons Dangereuses or Busywork at the End of a Bla

Postby Glenn » Thu Jun 14, 2012 1:39 pm

Four walls to petition to. Too late, if only by seconds, does he realize that there was a little joke about petitioning the gates again. This was a solitary man, one who walked with no company but his shadow and his flask, who sat with strangers every night, rarely the same ones twice. Never turned away but never welcomed either. He had no such thoughts in the moment, but in retrospect? There was much room for retrospect within him, yet despite that so little room for change.

There was a danger in angering Ariane Emory and a stark apathy to such dangers in the Detective Constable. Dying at the hands of an angry duchess of iron and stone... well, there were worse fates, and sometimes, even after all this time, especially after all this time, he still felt drawn to that ledge.

But she had asked for honesty and he gave it in spades, first asking for the bottle, petitioning for it in exchange for what he would give her anyway, and then admitting the only true danger he could possible ware: the loss of whatever purpose he had left in life, the only thing he still had after losing even his loss.

Now, though, it is a slow ritual. Bottle taken. Flask lifted. Opened. Drink poured. Only when the liquid has traveled from one container to the next, does he reach for those papers, to hand the crumpled, stomped upon things to her. "One answer's plenty." He does not drink. No need. That the flask is full is enough for now. Security in liquid form. Treasure locked in its chest. "You ask me? It's all about what you make of it."

Honesty. And what has he given her but that? Kurt Lentham fully rises to his feet again and looks the broken swordswoman dead on. If she wants to look to those tired, clouded eyes, to try to discern fabrication and guile within them, she can, but she will be looking for a very long time indeed and find only what she wants or does not want to see. "Don't know. Didn't ask. Don't care." That was his answer. One answer in three sentences. Did she expect otherwise?

Still, it would be unfair to offer her just that. "Read it before," and that was why he was a Detective Constable, that gift of his late wife's, one that would serve him long past both of their deaths. "Some of it's hooey, but it's hooey I've seen with my own two eyes. Wouldn't need to be here otherwise."
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Re: Les Liaisons Dangereuses or Busywork at the End of a Bla

Postby Carnath-Emory » Thu Jun 14, 2012 2:04 pm

Would she actually have murdered him? Here - in her own home - in any place at all, on account of nothing but the most casual sort of trickery? Except that it might have pleased her to imagine he thought that possible. It might have, this woman who is so often of two minds, and so easily surprised by where her will leads.

She has eyes for this silent ritual, and a thinly-veiled impatience as well - for no reason at all but that her anger's typically slow to fade. But something has thawed in the manner of her, and when she accepts this handful of papers it's with a wrinkle of the nose for their muddiness - but a quietly murmured thanks, as well. Hungry eyes, then - for all that a first glance makes out so few of the printed words. Hungry, for all that some ridiculous corner of her resents having to read at all, and so distracted that she doesn't realise he's watching her until he summons her attention with those words.

"Was it Government?" With a small nod, an acknowledgement that the question itself was put very poorly. The name hardly matters, after all. Its affiliations surely do. And if her eyes search his at all then, it's gently so - with the recollection of what it is to be scoured, and the knowledge that whatever might have passed between them moments ago he has done nothing - nothing at all - to warrant such treatment.

"If you've seen it - " Some small, distant nod. "Well enough. You're not superstitious, and you're clearly no fool. What's a hooey?"

See. One answer's never enough.
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Re: Les Liaisons Dangereuses or Busywork at the End of a Bla

Postby Glenn » Thu Jun 14, 2012 2:57 pm

Edging towards that ledge. Terrible habit. Terrible urge. Sometimes it became a game. Three words. Four words. Enough to make someone kill him? Or maybe that didn't happen. Maybe it just seemed like that in retrospect. Lots of retrospect in Kurt Lentham. Lots of time to think. A nice big flask, constantly full, to help mitigate that.

Ah, but now he handed off the papers and she had seemed so pleased with the stomping before. How times changed. Well organized, lots of words, introductory, background on Karolinger. She could see some of that on the first page. A summary. A book. Sacrifices. Gods. Thessaline. Key words. Handwriting she wouldn't recognize. Perhaps that would be different in pages to come.

Ah but another question, and such honesty between them. "Who else would have made that? Government." Then a pause, hesitation as he put the flask to his mouth. No sip though. He brought it back down and stared at her. "This needs to be done. No matter anything else." He'd given her an answer. Now it was all about what she did with it.

As for the rest, her question would only bring a small smile, just a tiny one. "Hooey. Cursed books. Blood gods. Decapitated heads walking through the woods.That hand. Hooey. Karolinger is a murderer. It's as simple as that." A nod to the paper. "Everything else is hooey."
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Re: Les Liaisons Dangereuses or Busywork at the End of a Bla

Postby Carnath-Emory » Thu Jun 14, 2012 3:54 pm

Context is everything. Papers blackened with words are excellent for trampling underfoot or else discarding completely. Papers blackened with irritating words are excellent for sweeping off scribes' desks by the armful until everyone's shouting too much to remember them. A years-long disaster of personal significance, however, transforms such pages into an object which demands a swordswoman's immediate attention, and so they have arrived at this moment. It's awful, though, the way in which she devours these things. It distinguishes a soldier from anything much else at all: the slouch she's already adopted upon one of the benches, the one knee caught up and the other leg left akimbo; the way this hand's already rifling through the bundle, lifting one section after another, the better to be frowned over. The way it discards one page and then the next, and then a whole handful -

No. Two piles are forming, haphazard but distinct.

"Mm. No. It matters. If I wanted myself slain," despite all the paperwork she can't help smiling at the phrase, "I'd direct me to something that's too large for just us. Whatever the outcome, it's a win for the one doing the directing; stoning birds, you know?" Well. Maybe not. And she's shrugging it off in any case, for: "I wouldn't allow us to be informed, though." With a demonstrative little wiggle of loose pages. "It matters if you're me. Have they questioned Burel on this?" Eyes torn from the pages for one essential moment. "Karolinger. Jons. Have they made any - mm. Over-towers at all?"

Cursed books. Blood gods. She's been gone two years, but Myrken turns years into strife-filled decades. It begins with Orvere - or so Karolinger believes, at least; so does she, but with the fatal awareness that this doesn't necessarily mean it's true. That hand. She'll need 'Siris for this. Best if she could have Lentham just recite the whole litany for her, but that's not a need to which she's about to admit, not in this company. 'Siris will serve in his place: a handful of papers shoved at her and 'Read this to me' afterwards. It'll hardly be the first time. Two piles, until then: the likely legible and the completely incomprehensible.

"It's not hooey," she's added meantime, "if he's murdering them with something other than his sword."

Hah.
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Re: Les Liaisons Dangereuses or Busywork at the End of a Bla

Postby Glenn » Fri Jun 15, 2012 2:42 am

She sorts papers and he makes his little motions with the flask, watches her, stifles a dusty yawn, perhaps. Been through those papers. Wouldn't have given them up if anything in them was useful to his hunt. There was a responsibility there that the Governor didn't understand, that the other constables barely began to. In all honesty, Lentham neither knew nor cared whether she did or not. He wasn't looking for a kindred soul, but instead, for closure; some definition of justice, perhaps, but mainly resolution.

In those papers, before long, she would find writing of familiar hands, a recounting testimony by Agnieszka Kaczmarek, a translation of said testimony by a much nicer hand she DID not recognize, and dozens upon dozens of notes in the margins, on almost every page, by none other than Glenn Burnie.

Informed. A trap? These were the very thoughts he was doing so well at not thinking. He didn't just passively not care about why he was sent here. He ACTIVELY didn't care. It was an important distinction. "Not sure if they talked to Burel himself. Made any Orvere over-towers. Don't travel in the high muckety muck circle. Not in the papers if they did. A trip to see someone though, Marshall and Burnie's bodyguard. Her report's in there. Comments from two al Neruns." Surprisingly competent suddenly. And for good reason. He was an expert on one thing in this world. Taverns and Pubs of Myrken Wood. On a second, however, he was a specialist: Aeryn Karolinger. He gave up that report so freely because he needed it so little.

"Lot of hooey in Myrken." This with a shrug. "Lot of hooey."
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Re: Les Liaisons Dangereuses or Busywork at the End of a Bla

Postby Carnath-Emory » Fri Jun 15, 2012 11:41 am

There must be a hundred different words in those first pages that she can't begin to decipher, but she identifies the outlandish hand of Agnieszka Kaczmarek's from the moment it begins to scrawl across the page. Inevitably, for there are certain memories which the passage of years cannot begin to dull, and this one involves a pastry-maker, his lover, and a ring forced so determinedly onto her finger that days later she was still worrying about fractures. Agnieszka had been an angry-eyed witness; angry at the mouth, as well, although that was nothing unusual. Agnieszka Kaczmarek, scrawling notes with the one hand as she puzzled over a document penned by -

Ah.

Aeryn, of course.

There are a hundred different reasons to suspect Agnieszka's judgement as regards Karolinger; there always have been. The swordswoman is cautious of applying terms like 'compromised'; wary of assuming too much, but wary also of ignoring too much. No; this will be a consideration saved for far later, when she's had time to properly read these words - or have them read - and certain inquiries have been made.

"Give me your cautions." When her head lifts from its sorting, and with the easy tone of a woman who has made a business of being other people's weapon. "Do you do this in secrecy?" Clarification: "Are there areas of government which should not be aware? Any names at all that I must avoid?"

Two al-Neruns: Kerrak and ... the other one. She'll locate that name soon enough. No: Christoph, clear as day upon - this page, and then the next as well. She'd have hunted for Lamai's name as well, if she'd any notion of its spelling, and for a time just searches for capital L's instead. To no avail, but this Renea Something must be the Marshall. "The governor has a bodyguard?"

Not that it's surprising. Why, people even attack Myrken citizens before they've properly passed its borders, did you hear? Hah. Oh, look: there is Feul's name; the first half of it is the easiest thing to read on the whole page. With a silent gratitude to the Marshall, she's examining the description which follows -

Oh. They'd ordered his execution.
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Re: Les Liaisons Dangereuses or Busywork at the End of a Bla

Postby Glenn » Fri Jun 15, 2012 1:58 pm

A lone, dusty Detective Constable stood in a training room in the most impressive stronghold for miles and miles and he watched a swordswoman with iron in her blood fight with words on paper. For a man who no longer remembered learning to read it was a peculiar thing to witness, the equivalent of a starving man picking at crumbling, week old bread. She was in her own world, but that was fine and well by him; he spent his life wandering through worlds that may or may not be of his own creation.

Then she spoke and it took a moment for him to full process what she had said, even with the moderately helpful clarification. He looked at her through the flask, an exceptionally tricky proposition considering that it wasn't at all opaque even when empty. Government to avoid? "Depends on whether or not you owe the fat man money?" Lentham had survived years without paying Aloisius Treadwell a cent. He never picked up his salary. He didn't have a place to sleep. Not even the engorged monolith of Myrken Wood could tax whiskey and piss.

Unkind, though, again. One thing when you were waiting for your glass to be refilled. Another when it was mostly empty. "Don't know. Don't care. Wouldn't have given me the papers if they didn't want you to have them. Big pile like that, lots of important names and facts. Couldn't keep it a secret for long." Then another examination of her, legs, legs, and then up slowly, until finally, almost begrudgingly, he'd reach that head. "Harder to notice me than you, but not by much, and not much by either."

That she asked another question was almost a mercy. "Bodyguard. Southerner. Shit taste in spirits. All fruu fruu Southern wine. Tastes like posies and the sea. No place for either in Myrken. Ended up in the Remedium, anyway. Thought Karolinger did it at first, but nope. Too intact." No sympathy, not for just another lead that went nowhere, not when the lead in question bandied about such irritating swill.
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Re: Les Liaisons Dangereuses or Busywork at the End of a Bla

Postby Carnath-Emory » Fri Jun 15, 2012 4:13 pm

It's horrfying, it really is. She'd always known so; had burned under the weight of it since the hour she'd fled her father's House, loathing such plain evidence of her ignorance. And yet all the years which had followed - not to mention the best efforts of scribes and architects - had failed to remedy this lack. Her scorn for those teachers' insistences hadn't helped, of course, nor her disdain for the whole laborious process: deciphering one squirmy little letter from the next, interpreting the placement of a dot, a squiggle, a splotch - what, isn't that intentional, doesn't it mean something, that clumsy little mess where you spilled your ink? No? Then why were you such a clumsy damned oaf in the first place, this is supposed to be your trade -

And the fruit of it all is a battered weapon which hunches over a handful of filthy pages, picking out words which seem like they might be significant and throwing them at a constable in hopes of provoking something useful.

The constable, incidentally, has just earned himself a very pointed glance. "No. Areas. Of Government. If I wanted a guide to surviving Myrken Wood, I'd have bought one from a Kaczmarek." With a thin snort of sound she's bent her head to this ridiculous work again - and really, Karolinger, really, a woman's inclined to make it slow for you just on account of this - but when her eyes lift again, it's because she's become the focus of a particular gaze. Not the sort she distrusts, not the sort she need interrupt at all, but when the man reaches his conclusion: "Not by much?" What a comparison he makes. It doesn't quite unsettle. "Ser Detecting, I've drawn 'notice' since I crossed Myrken borders. I don't intend that it - collide, with your efforts. It is not quite so simple as Here is your weapon, go wield her against the madman. Anyone who's said so is lying."

But allow the swordswoman a little credit: two piles have rapidly become four, a fifth is beginning to take shape, and her scowling work barely hesitates at all when the constable adds a string of words with particular meaning. Old habits: the hands continue their work as the mind processes its shock, the features remain at ease when the thoughts become a shout. Too intact. Posies and sea. South. As far as you can go, Bella. Then a bit farther -

"Bodyguard. Hn."

Hells.
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Re: Les Liaisons Dangereuses or Busywork at the End of a Bla

Postby Glenn » Sat Jun 16, 2012 3:35 am

Pointed gazes. Unfriendly? Just focused? Really didn't matter. Battered against him like a chilly northern wind and he just kept on staring. Good joke, though. Buy one from a Kaczmarek. Good joke. She was already back to what she was doing and he was back to standing there, idly playing with the flask.

Then, finally, a truth. Honesty expected in return. Just what HAD he intended by coming here? Just what was his endgoal? "You hunt someone for years, someone they say doesn't matter anymore, when you know different, someone that the Wood loves and suckles in ways that just ain't right?" Someone that won't die and certainly won't stay dead. "You do that, and you try just about anything. Me being here, talking to you, giving you that. Seemed as good as an idea as any other." Finally another little sip, then back to staring. "Told you, Duchess. Don't know how to fight gods."

Yes, the bodyguard. Hn, indeed. At least she was starting to speak his language.
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Re: Les Liaisons Dangereuses or Busywork at the End of a Bla

Postby Carnath-Emory » Sat Jun 16, 2012 4:53 am

Unfriendly. Focused. Or just irritated, because the work is irritating and because having an audience just makes it all the worse. It's simpler with Duquesne. Each night, devoting as much as an hour to assembling a list - not nearly so taxing because spelling is irrelevant; she shapes the words by their sound. Each midday, receiving a list freshly revised with corrections and definitions, although it must be said that she'd had a close eye for the one and scant attention for the other. A simple process. Elegant. A thing from which she'd derived no small measure of pride.

Detective Lentham is the only person who's ever found her jokes funny. That's a joke, too.

"Yes," she's answered him after a time, grateful for the distraction; less-so for the recollection. But that doesn't seem sufficient, not when her eyes have strayed back towards him a second time, and: "I do know. What it is to hunt a thing for years until it has become a phantom: all eyes are closed to it even though its handiwork is everywhere. I know what it is to hunt a thing which has been permitted, knowing full well that the consequence for its death will be my own. I know exactly how much you will try, exactly how far you will go, exactly how few your limits - " Is there some quality of detachment to her tone? But he has educated her, this constable: these are only words, words which form an explanation likely to matter very little, and she need not particularly devote herself to them. These are words in the air instead of on a page, and already she's lifting a hand, eyes dropping back towards the page, for: "They've told you this already, I think."

Pauses, mouth mulling something silently. "How does a head walk if it's been decapitated?"

Hooey.
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Re: Les Liaisons Dangereuses or Busywork at the End of a Bla

Postby Glenn » Sat Jun 16, 2012 3:08 pm

A good joke was a good joke. Some people just didn't have any taste. Those people, such as Lentham, were inclined to appreciate her humor.

"Didn't tell me much. Didn't ask anything. Know what I know." An admission. He'd lived in Myrken his whole life and he remembered the last half a decade or so. It was only natural he'd know a thing or two about her. Not to say he went out of his way. There might be records about her for one reason or another. Didn't really help his search. And before the search he didn't care at all, not even why she was on that Dragon during Haberdasher's Row.

Still, she knew. That was something. Quite a bit. "Gave me papers. Pointed me in your direction. What I knew is what I told you, and what I asked you." How do you fight a god? Quincy Randall was unavailable. Of course, Lentham didn't want to kill the god. Didn't matter to him at all. No, he just wanted the acolyte, the avatar, the cultist, as it was.

"It grew legs." How else. Even hooey had to make SOME sense.
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Re: Les Liaisons Dangereuses or Busywork at the End of a Bla

Postby Vanidor » Sun Jun 17, 2012 4:50 am

In all honesty, the man did not think that he would make it all of the way through Darkenhold without being seen. It was a task he was good at, this whole being unseen and hidden. Something he took a malevolent sort of pride in, and justifiably so. Many secrets. Many words. Many dealings. All done under the ice-dark eyes of this one. A man who took many roles in order to achieve what he needed. Servant. Guard. Cook.

He'd spent a month as a scullery MAID in order to assassinate a man once. A detail he'd never spoken of to his employer. It was just a job to be done, and handled quietly. That man had choked on a fish bone, in the end. It was these very same skills that, this Hidden Hand of a certain Duke, utilised in order to infiltrate Darkenhold. It just didn't get him all that far.

There was an issue in coming to a place where everyone, quite honestly, knew everyone. By face if not totally by name. It was also another thing that he couldn't just correct any problem that would occur. His long blades and hefty mace could not be turned on that guard that saw him skulk past, doused lantern in hand. But a friendly wave of a catchpole (used to close some of those annoyingly high windows against the storm) could make that same guard think he belonged.

At least for long enough for the shadow to move on. It also helped, perhaps, that he himself HAD stayed within these walls some time in the past. Though that was long before the Mistress of the Hold had gone on her walkabout. A semi familiar face in the wipporwhorl of stormy evenings and darkness... Well. At least he didn't have to mace anyone in the face. It made him feel good. And it also made him miss his shifting cloak. Damn Burel for recalling all of those relics for his Aegis.

It was in this manner that a VERY familiar man would make a way to a certain chamber of the Hold. He would not enter, though he most certainly would make certain that he was seen by another certain woman as he moved past. If she looked up from her papers and her drink and her conversation with another very persistent fellow. Long enough to peer with those ice-dark (were they soulless or just deep?) eyes, and then turn to move on down the hall to another part of the Hold.

His task was done. It was time to leave.
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Re: Les Liaisons Dangereuses or Busywork at the End of a Bla

Postby Carnath-Emory » Sun Jun 17, 2012 5:14 am

They're moving in circles. Which is not unpleasant for a woman who'd dreamed of a predictable existence, one moment much like the next - but the moment demands something more productive of her; Lentham's need certainly does. So that she's reached a point at which the hands have stilled from their sorting and the gaze has dropped to her knee, lost for a time in some pointless examination of muted colour and some frayed bit of thread -

"Nor should they have. Little of it's of any use to what you intend, and what is - " there; distinct piles, their edges far neater than some of their handwriting. " - everyone knows." The Silver Witch, they'd dubbed her in Orvere, except that sometimes the word wasn't Witch at all. A lift of her head returns this glance towards him, a constable who's been patient enough with his illiterate weapon. "So. What do you intend next? What do you plan - if anything at all? If there's nothing then we are done here, and you may overnight in one of our rooms if you don't care for another walk." And in such weather; drafts don't intrude here and bulky stone separates them from shuttered windows, but still some part of her imagines to overhear angry rainfall, staggering winds. Which is to say that a walk will suit her well - and soon; but quite alone, because this is whimsy and peculiar need, of a sort which she shares with no-one here at all. "I have questions to ask. Few of them are your concern, but the asking will require time. So."

Wield the weapon you are given. Or else retire, and see? The swordswoman is already stretching from her seat, with some small reluctance in moving those legs at all; has papers folded between her fingers with care to their arrangement. Already her eyes are straying towards the doorway -

Blinks. Just once.
Turns an accusing glance towards Lentham's bottle.
And is into that doorway in something like silence and everything like haste.
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Re: Les Liaisons Dangereuses or Busywork at the End of a Bla

Postby Glenn » Sun Jun 17, 2012 6:09 am

Plans. Perhaps if he was better at coming up with those, he would have Karolinger by now. What he had instead was dogged determination. He didn't stop. He didn't hesitate. He didn't slow down. Granted, he also rarely sped up. That made things particularly frustrating when, while hesitating and working out his answer, she was gone.

A Constable KNEW. A change in the air. A change in one's mannerisms. She was in PURSUIT. Lentham may not have known much about walking heads and magic books, but he knew pursuit. She moved with haste. He sipped of his flask once more, made a resigned grunt, and was after her.
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Re: Les Liaisons Dangereuses or Busywork at the End of a Bla

Postby Vanidor » Sun Jun 17, 2012 9:26 am

He does not go far, this shadow, and his path is easily tracked to be honest. There are droplets from the hem of his cloak dotting the stone underfoot. A stamping of moist footprints as well that lead in some general direction of OUT. But indeed, he does not go far. One knows the sound of pursuit, and so one simply hangs the sodden garment from whatever was available to dry and leave a small puddle. He does not stay with the thing, of course, but instead finds another convenient item to settle down upon.

And so. This is how they would find him. In clothing of grey and blue, dark where dampness has seeped past the over garment. Hair that is combed back by thick fingers into sweat-stiff spikes. He does not draw a weapon (for there is no need) and instead leaves those particular instruments clearly visible. He has provoked one into action, there is no need (and a hope) that there is no provocation into violence as well. Still. Here he is, hands dipping into a pouch at the side and the man stuffing a pipe full of weed.

A look up. A pause. "Would either of you have a light. It would seem the storm has robbed me of such." It is a VERY alive Jonathen Feul that asks this, wryly so indeed, as if he was just another visitor to come across their path.
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