To: Rogue / From: Rhetor

[Rance]

A folded piece of parchment. Proper parchment, the kind that was well-cut and expectant of important words, not torn like scrap from the spine of an old book. It had been given to the bartender at the Broken Dagger, with the instruction that it not be released to anybody but he to whom it was addressed, a one

ELLIOT BROWN

of particularly ill reputation. It was meticulously folded and sealed with a droplet of wax pressed down by a thumb. The sloppy text within was instantly recognizable, if more obviously chaotic than even her last letter to him had been.

elzo elliot,

i hafe chose to right you a letter abt. that we hafe many things to talk abt. sorry for my spelling i am takeing it vary slow and still lurning, i hafe mastered GH souns but not OU but has been only 1 2 3 4 days

1+3
2+2
3+1
0+4
4+0
5-1 sinse i hafe started tootlage at DARCONHOLT with PCTR. DUQUESNE whose name letters do not (DO'NT) mace sense to me much but my berains are a lot like scrampled akes, i will get there slowley but

sorely, may it be we can talk abt. what happint the other niGHt with the poshens and sarah righa on the path when you hunted a deamon and i also knocked a deamon on the head when i was angrey you sand said to me make your decided so id did i am bettering myself volintearing lurning RETERICK and ALGARISMS so to hale with jernowa jernowen jernoah like msr. cherny says punch it in the sack well i am doing just that i am a myrkener now or trying

firstdays seconday thirddays and forthdays of the weak i wait at sunwake for my deliverer from DARCONHOLT and am always 20 minuts early to wait for him outside the stables so meat me we will talk

your frend even if you do not do'nt baleave it

GLORIA WYNSEE

___________________________

I hafe lurned to spell my name and PCTR. DUQUESNE and MARSHALL ARIANE EMORY

[Glenn]

gloria,

i do not have any idea what you just said and now my left eye twiches but you said some thing about stables and i used to work in the stables and i could teach you how to ride a horse if that is what you want because Niall did not but you have to not punch the horse because for a girl that talks big and what ever RETERICK is you are very violet i will see you there may be to pro tect the horse

Elliot

[Rance]

A wooden lantern hanging from her hip gave her enough light by which to see, and she crunched her way through the icy snow and the frozen mud to the stables. Five hours before, it had been midnight; still, she had been awake, thumbing through books, scraping lines in the paper underneath important words and phrases with the tip of an embroidery needle.

Now, though, she leaned against the fence at the stables, a book spread on one of the endposts. Zoshee the Queryful Fox lay sprawled open under her fingertips as she squinted against the cold morning, trying to make out the pictures, the Standard words. It was a book meant to acclimate young readers to the wonders of uncommon letters. Early mornings were, after all, as good a time as any to discover the mysteries of z, x, y, and q.

Elliot's note was her bookmark. The barkeep had been forthcoming with it only after she had asked for her mug of morning tea. She could read it well enough, could read the Standard with suitable efficiency -- for the most part. It was the writing of it that defeated her.

Dreaded horses whickered sleepily in the stables, ignorant of how much the seamstress outside hated them. She had one boot up on the fencepost, sipping her drink. Occasionally, she looked up at the black woods, wondering if the boy would show this morning, or the next, or the one after it. Or ever at all.

Either way, he had twenty minutes.

[Glenn]

They had a meeting place. It was a meeting place that had nothing to do with her schedule. It was a meeting place with weight and history and meaning. He could have suggested that instead, could had made her deviate from her own schedule, because really, didn't he have things to do?

It was a meeting place, but it was not for this. Sometimes things had too much meaning. Sometimes things had too much of the wrong meaning.

No, the stables would do, and though he'd rather be petty and make her wait days upon days, it was best to get these things over with. She hit a demon. He'd read that and it had made sense. The idea of her kicking his prey when it was on the ground was a little amusing, yes, but it was the Cherny-Disease: you see someone else do something dangerous and remarkable and then you suddenly think that you can do it too. Well, guess what, Gloria? Elliot Brown was one of two curses to the Cherny-Disease. The other was much, much worse and he did not like to think about it.

Twenty minutes wasn't a long time to yell at her and even less to start teaching her how to ride, so he arrived shortly after she did. Solena was still away and that meant his mornings were more flexible than they once had been. "Oi. What's a Scrumbled Acre?"

[Rance]

"A what," the girl said, turning toward the sound of his voice. She was waiting for him, and though she was startled for a moment, it was not long enough to make her drop her book or knock aside her glass-pane lantern. "A scrumbled what, Elliot Brown?"

She closed her book and balanced it precariously on the endpost. She turned to him, and gave him a smile. Then, she stuffed her hand into one of her cloak-pockets and extracted from it a stony piece of bread. She pinched a piece off with her gloved fingers, and then offered him a lump. The hand that held it was surprisingly clean, as was her dress -- a more formal thing, cleaner, by far, than her other garments. Her tarsweat did not leave its usual odor. Duquesne required her to be presentable, after all.

"Do you want a bite," she said, gnawing a piece of bread in her back teeth.

"I thought that you were going to -- to keep me waiting, or maybe not come at all." And then, as if to answer for that thought of his (it was not for clairvoyance that she said it, but instead that she'd had almost the same idea) she added: "I considered Catch's woodpile, where there are old feelings, but my schedule is getting very compact. I am doing like you said, Elliot. I am being a Myrkener, and doing Myrkener things. Sewing gowns at the -- the Rememdium," a word said with care and precision, as if she might stumble over it. "Learning how to write and do arithmetic. Making my own place.

"So do you want a piece?" she asked, bread still thrust to him. "Or not?"

[Glenn]

"I don't know. I didn't bring your note with me." He wasn't the sort to use someone else's note as a book mark. Maybe if Galacia or Solena sent him a note. Maybe Nela, but that would just be to prove a Kaczmarek could read and write. He wasn't sure he had proof that Gloria could write.

The bread could have been a trap. She was cleaned up, somewhat. It didn't do much good because he could look at her and still picture what he usually did. It was good she had a nice dress though. Not everyone did, not even every dressmaker, and since he asked, he knew she wasn't a dressmaker at all but a seamstress, and he almost even remembered what the difference was, almost.

Ok, so maybe she sewed gowns anyway. That doesn't mean she made her own, or maybe she did. He found that after thinking about it for a few seconds, he really didn't care. "You put effort into your letter. So I'm here. Most Myrkenites.. not Myrkeners, Myrkenites." He had to pause there, regain his thought. "Most of us don't know a lot about reading and writing. I do because Solena taught me." He wished he had picked out a few more interesting books to promise to finish. In some ways, her absence being so damn long was helpful. In most, it was just frustrating.

Also frustrating was her insistence with the bread. "No, I do not. You're not the only busy one. I do not have time for bread." While he's standing there, talking to her, not doing anything else. Elliot Brown logic.

[Rance]

"I did not talk about aches in my note."

She chewed on the knuckle of bread for a few moments, watching him, almost obsessively brushing the occasional crumb away from the patterned fabric of her kirtle. Elliot Brown was perhaps one of the very few who truly did understand that there was a vast difference between a seamstress and a tailor. A matter of logistics, really. Not a lesser talent, but an alternate one. While she had certainly dabbled in the art of garment-making -- the Marshall had not yet expressed displeasure for her formalwear -- it was not her religion like a vine about the collar or a single, perfect flower stitched into the bottom of a cuff.

"Then what, if not for bread, have you time for, Elliot? A great many things, it seems. Yes?" She gathered her book from the endpost, clapped it shut, and stuffed it away into the leather satchel at her feet, where several other tome-spines reached out into the cold. "And if we are talking about letters, I should say that I find yours very agreeable.

"You are -- you're --" forcing the contraction, an unnatural practice, "a pretty smart fellow, Elliot. Enough to know that I -- I would ask you to see me only secondly for your company, but firstly, for business. Because I would loathe to be a waste of your very precious before-light time." A grin, one of uneven teeth, of a broken lower-tooth gap.

"It is too early in the morning to argue," she said. "So, Elliot, I will say this: I apologize for what was done to you the other night, regarding potions.

"I hope you will trust in me," came her quieter resolution, not a plea, but a simple, softly-spoken fact, "that it will not occur again."

[Glenn]

He didn't talk about her letters. He didn't talk about his own. He didn't talk about his busy days though maybe he was a bit taken aback by her own. She had come far in a few months and she was going to go further too, if she didn't get killed. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. He certainly wasn't going to to mention any of that until he figured it out.

No, she had mentioned business and at this time in the morning, business it was. The thing with business though is that it was full of disagreements.

"Don't you start and don't you dare, Gloria. You didn't throw the potions. The only thing you're guilty of is hanging out with some pretty stupid people, and I'm not going to ..." One might think a thief would know the world prosecute. One would be wrong. "put you in jail for that, because you might want to just start hanging out with better people instead, and that's me, and I don't have time for that. You did nothing to me that day, nothing. I'm sorry for hitting you with the stone; I was aiming for Raia. I'm not sorry for putting a knife to her throat. I'm not sorry for stabbing him, whatever he was."

Then, as if she'd be worried, because he had been worried. "I'm fine, though. Niall made sure. There might have been magic there, maybe, but it didn't affect me."

[Rance]

"And am I guilty of hanging out with stupid people right now," she asked, unlatching the lantern from her hip and leaning forward, dangling it between the two of them, squinting her eye -- the one yellowed by an old bruise -- as if to more closely examine him for any traces of idiot left like powder on his skin.

"I wanted to scream at you, Elliot Brown," the girl said, lowering the lantern down. "When you brought the knife to my friend's throat, I wanted to dash your head apart. But then I understood the moment a little better: that you too were frightened, that -- that you wanted control, because she could have very well done you harm.

"But this business is not to be argued about." This was clarified with slowness and precision, the seamstress' dark eyes never looking away from him, because what Elliot Brown may have not known -- may never know -- was that she enjoyed his challenge; though she might never stab his heart with a knife, she was determined to find its softer meat in other ways. "She acted out of impulse to -- to defend her friend; you acted out of impulse to defend yourself. No blood was shed, no harm was done, and the matter is finished. Done. It is done. Do you understand?

"I will be taking care of this matter of carelessness with potions. It is my responsibility as a Myrkenite." That word was used with sharp inflection, a weight, one that he himself had burdened her with. "To you, to Menna Raia.

"The Inquisitory -- that is what they are called, yes? -- will decide the nature of her concoctions. Not me. Not you. Not Niall. None of us are smart enough.

"But," she added, "I accept your apology. I have a very hard head. No poorly-thrown stone from some j'uka'd boy will scramble my brains around, and--

"Oh, oh! Eggs, Elliot. Eggs. Scrambled eggs. Not aches."

[Glenn]

The rogueling frowned at her slightly. She wanted to dash his head, and then she understood. In the moment? He wasn't very good at that. No one was. He doubted she was. She was too busy screaming or gasping or whatever else she was doing. His gaze was dubious as she peered in closely. "We don't have that.. we aren't that lucky, I mean. We're not. I learned to fight like I do because we don't get that chance here. We stop and think, 'oh, i wonder what that snake monster with acid goozing from its teeth thinks about its dear mother,' well, then we're gong to get eaten. I act. I acted. And that's how I survive. That's how we survive. You think too much here and you hesitate too much and you die." But, she had a point, or he had a point using her words. Maybe it was that. "I wasn't going to cut her throat. I wasn't. But what I needed to do was get into a position where I was in charge. Acting and killing someone isn't the same thing. I got her in a position where maybe I could figure out the whats and the whys, right? But where I was in charge first. So it meant if I didn't like them, I could do something about them."

She didn't understand, though, she still didn't. She couldn't. They hadn't told her, and he wasn't sure if it was his place to tell her. "We were poisoned for years, okay? Against our will. I lost years of my life to it. Two maybe. It's like a dream, trying to remember. We won't let that happen again, not to us, not to anyone. You take responsibility? You weren't made.. made to be victims like we were, okay? So what right do you have to do that? What right do you have to try to stand in our way?"

"It's not about being smart! It's about being careful. It's about surviving. Better safe than dead, Gloria and better the people I care about be safe than dead. And if that means killing a few people i don't care about die, so be it."

She could talk about rocks and eggs all day right now and he wouldn't care. This was too serious for that.

[Rance]

"I am not doubting your choice, Elliot Brown," the seamstress said, crossing her cloak-sleeved arms across her chest, her eyes given plenty of room to watch him from beneath the rim of that bonnet and the folds of her oversized, hole-ridden cloak. "You put a knife to her throat -- you knew she would be frightened, like she has anything she could possibly do to harm you -- and you hurt her friend." A pause. Endymion. "My friend."

She could not deny that striking Endymion -- balling her fists, and hitting something so much greater and stronger than her -- had not reminded her, for a few flashing moments, of Jernoah.

"It is all prosaic, Elliot," she said, using a word she had learned only recently, sliding it in like a homework assignment, clasping her hands in front of her waist. "It is more complex than saying I am angry at you, or never do it again. You know that knives frighten me, but -- but in that moment, you were compromised." Explaining his actions to herself, his want for violence, his need to take the upper hand, seemed almost moot. She knew why she was trying to justify it -- to the Veldt with him, she had grown to like Elliot -- for to befriend him was in conflict with so many other loyalties.

She listened to him, perhaps the way that no others listened. She watched him, the way his mouth moved in the morning, the way his body unfurled or tightened with each word. Language was not only words, but muscles, the minute movements of fingers and and eyes.

She let his words fade away before she said anything. "You confuse me, Elliot.

"I never said I was intending to stand in your way." With a step forward, her voice stern, but careful. "If you ever expected that I should challenge you, you are an idiot, a fool. What I do not have is time to waste letting boys stroke their egos -- and other things -- to thoughts of their stupid superiority. All this talk of being a victim, Elliot Brown, sounds so very different from the words of the boy I talked to weeks ago.

"Poisons or not, take your own advice. Get your brain out of Jernoah. Be a Myrkenite and not some teary-eyed victim. My heart is heavy that you should have gotten hurt, but that does not make you special, Elliot Brown; it does not make me special," she huffed, before rearing her hand back behind her head, the bread wielded like a heavy stone.

Had it not been for a drow, for Brandy, she might never have learned how to throw.

She threw the hunk of half-eaten bread at him -- did he have time for it now, when it came hurtling harmlessly at him? Which Elliot was she talking to, the proud-eyed rogue or the boy who showed off all his scars and said how terrible, how bad it was that he'd ever gotten them at all?

[Glenn]

The bread was caught and immediately tossed back at her head. Hopefully it was crusty enough to match her disposition. Up until now he had rarely gotten angry at her. Annoyed, frustrated, irritated, sure. Angry though? Even now, he wasn't completely there yet, but oh, he was on the verge. "What I was trying to do, moron, was to explain to you why I was acting the way I was acting. I wasn't going 'oh woe is me' or whatever you just said. What's done is done. I was just explaining to you why I wasn't going to ever let it happen again, because I did what I did to people that for some stupid reason you seem to care about." There was the urge to strike her, to put a hand against her cheek hard and fast and without mercy, because this wasn't some game she could win with words and idea or whatever else.

This was real.

"I thought you deserved to have some idea why. I was a victim then, and I won't be again." Then he closed in, one step, two, until he was close, too close, having invaded her personal space. "Victims cry. I acted. Next time I act, I won't tell you why afterwards."

[Rance]

A few possible outcomes she had anticipated:

Elliot, as if moving faster than a clock itself could click down time, surging forward, sliding one, two blades free of their sheathes. Legs in a lunge. Shins taut. Toes angled in just the right way to drive both knives forward so he could skewer the oncoming hunk of bread. A successful strike; a flip of the knife-tip; a flying hunk of bread that he caught in the air, bit, and tossed aside.

Or:

Elliot, broken-down, arms down to the sides, just a sad boy with a sad face, and that lump of bread smacking him right between the eyes, spilling crumbs down his nose and lips right before he poured out his weak-voiced life's story to the seamstress. Tears in his eyes. A quiver on his lips. Begging for friendship, that he had been so wrong with all that knifing business, and--

In the early morning, the hunk of bread knocked her right against the forehead, and then landed in the snow, sitting like an overturned teacup in the slush. She looked down at it, and never looked up as he spoke, scarcely having even had the time to giggle at the effort of the returned bread.

No, no laughter. Not with his words. Not on mornings as cold as this, where a smile could be frozen, could need to be chiseled away with the point of a knife.

I did what I did to people that for some stupid reason you seem to care about.

"The people I care about may not be many, but I care strongly for them, Elliot Brown. Perhaps you are on that list, despite how you speak to me. Perhaps you are not. But, I have decided to care for them, as any Myrkenite should. Yes? But never call my reasons stupid, and -- and do not call me that word." Moron. J'uka'd. A blatant, harmful untruth. "I did not survive being a child in Jernoah by being stupid."

Afraid? Yes, she survived by hanging onto the coat-skirts of fear, but never stupidity, though she -- and only she -- sometimes called it that. But Elliot Brown knew too little to make such a judgment. Always knew too little.

When he got closer, her breathing increased. Her chin turned down, her eyes glancing not away from him, but down, that she might see if there were knives at his hips. Her hands folded like a protective knot around her belly. That close, though a droplet of black sweat rolled off her nose and splashed against her collar, she did not have her usual odor to her -- a hint of cinnamon, yes, where the spice-powder had been laboriously scrubbed into her scalp to wick out the oil in her hair, but nothing more.

"You acted," she said, and then steadily added, "and now I am acting. Give me the opportunity to solve the issue of Menna Raia and her potions without any longer fearing your knives. Without fearing Niall's spear.

"Let me give her what -- what you gave to me, Elliot Brown: a forgiveness for foolhardy and impulsive things. Do you trust me with that, or is it false.

"Your friendship, is it false?"

[Glenn]

"Stop it." He had advanced in and now he was drawing back, anger giving way to annoyance. "You can't do that. You can't just go on and say i am false. In any way, especially in a way I never claimed, that you claim for both of us, right? You can't. It's wrong. You're wrong. I'm me, and I'm staying true to me, and if that's not true to whatever you THINK i am, that's your own problem, got it?" The words came fast and hot and his gaze was a glare.

He kept retreating slowly, one step after the other, keeping eyes on her. "What I'll offer is this: I won't finish things. If she comes after me, if she responds to something I say or do, if her weird demon creature does, then I'll act, despite you. I won't hold back, I won't back down. But I won't go attacking her without reason either, not with a knife at least." And yes, he had those knives on him, of course he did, though Galacia's talon was hidden somewhere, as it always was. Maybe she'd be glad that he was withdrawing.

"What that means, in case you can't figure it out, moron or not, is that you have time, depending on her, to straighten her out. That's the act I'll let you take, and if you're not quick enough, or smart enough, or ..or.. good enough with words," and he didn't have a word for that, which was particularly frustrating, "then, that's on you, your failure to act. That's a real Myrken thing. You act and you fail, then in the end, you still fail."

[Rance]

Stop it.

Perhaps Proctor Duquesne would be proud of her; perhaps he would be disappointed, that she tried so early to challenge someone with her words. The sudden, exalting change in Elliot's emotions and voice were her reward. Her phrases had been a catalyst of some small, abrupt change. She had made it very plain in her letter that she was a budding student of RETERIK, after all; her powers were growing, and it would not be entirely her fault if she'd used them unwittingly on innocent bystanders like Elliot Brown.

The seamstress took her small victories where she could find them.

"I have got it, Elliot Brown." Her tone soft, conceding, as her palms pressed at the air as if to push calmness toward him. "My problem. Of course it is, as long as it does nothing to tarnish our bargain of embroidery and new shoes." Beneath the morning-shadowed bonnet, a near-imperceptible smile. Elliot Brown was a boy who met his challenges with physicality, and while their precarious friendship was new, she did not put it past him to make a brash, abusive decision -- especially in response to unseen bruises.

"Anything you say," the seamstress said, "because I can certainly use some new shoes."

He gave her the standards of this new requested bargain. That was how it always was with them. Making bargains. Lunges. Parries. Deals. One teenager bartering with another, and for what?

That's a real Myrken thing.

"I will not fail. You know this. I may bumble with -- with other things in my life, but not with this." A pause, while in the trees, a resting cardinal that had just caught the first glimpse of cresting sunlight burst into the air. Like a little red arrow, it was gone. "Menna Raia will do as I ask, as you ask, to avoid you, and Niall as well.

"This is right, that it should be this way, Elliot Brown. I have given the Marshall one of her potions, that it may be proved how -- how harmless she is." Rather, that was not precisely how it transpired, but for Elliot, she would bend the truth just that much. "Laws are real Myrken things, too, Elliot. Let them decide her fate. Yes? You have better things to do, I bet."

Then, Gloria Wynsee did something that was not like her. She improvised. She hiked up her skirts just enough to show her rolled stockings, her scuffed, floppy boots, and she took a step closer toward him. Then another. A taste for figurative blood.

"Is something wrong, Elliot Brown? You seem -- you seem off."