"Let them convince you, Helstone..."

[channe]

A mask for Kerrak – silver and strange.
A mask for Suede – revamped, repaired, replaced.
A mask for Giscard – the stone walls of Lothbury.

And a mask, now, for Coriolanus Helstone.
It comes with the job, does it not?

There is a sharp mind behind that fop’s hair of his; wheels turning behind eyes rendered red from sleeplessness. Emotion sublimated behind reason, belief behind logic – that’s the kind of man he’s always been. The stuff that runs through Cory’s veins is ink, not blood; his heart beats to the rhythm of the law, the turn of a page, the twist of a phrase.

...I would be much obliged if you would not address me ever again as if you do not know me...

The beast had complimented him on his readiness, accompanied by a sneer of jagged yellow teeth; that sneer had lingered, even at the point of Rosa’s blade.

...call her back, Helstone. I’ve no doubt that Kerrak, Roschen, and Guillaume would show displeasure if you broke what they, for the sake of your people, had tried so hard to create...

He tries to sleep that night, but cannot; despite the scotch Rosa basically poured down his throat to staunch the raw, raging nerves left in Audmathus’ wake, he paces from one end of the flat to the other, questions igniting questions, concerns burning holes in his world. He is no naïf; he a lawyer, not a blind believer in a beautiful, fictitious human nature. He does his lawyer’s work, then, turning over their conversation, examining Audmathus’ searing words with the barbecue-tongs of the barrister’s viewpoint, turning them over and over, comparing them with the truth as he knows it.

He talked of traitors, but whom?
The werewolf, the barmaid – or the landlord and the tailor?
He talked of threats, but where?

He speaks with Roschen in his office a few days later. He pours the man his best brandy; a sign of collegiality, yes; a tongue-loosener, certainly. And the few pithy sentences the tailor tells him is worrying, at best; as reliable as the lips that gave it, which isn't saying much. As terribly reliable as the information forwarded to him by the rest of the Council, by tight-lipped, tight-arsed lord of Lothbury and the increasingly strange Kerrak al’Nerun, who have been curiously silent in the wake of such a surfeit of important information given two weeks ago.

And completely out of line with the information given him by Audmathus.

...no alliance has been made, though we’re going to need one... I’ve dealt with drow and been to the underdark more than once. I know how little they can be trusted – but they might be the ones we can trust the most right now...

Slowly, black ink turns to red blood.
Tea to scotch. Words to actions.

Coriolanus Helstone is no fool, though the drow and his esteemed colleagues attempt to box him in as so. Clients try to sweet-talk him all the time; they proclaim their innocence under eyes lidded by the memory of blood and murder. They slip him granules of truth and hope he’ll ignore the packaging of lies that surround it: the strings that bind, the pins that stick, layer upon layer of packing-paper that suffocates.

Layer upon layer of lies, and Helstone yet again charged with picking through them like a diamond-miner searching for one crumb of clarity in a dark hole that the mining-companies had given up on decades before.

Coriolanus Helstone, barrister of Myrken Wood and latest victim of the Judiciary Council, looks out the front window of his flat, swirling cold, sweetened tea in his hand. He shakes his head.

...Rosa. Do you display the same stupidity as your human counterparts, in believing you have an inkling of control over whether I stay… or go?...

He remembers something Rosamaria said after the black-elf twisted into dark smoke and dissappeared, her eyes twinkling madness and surety over a crystal glass of scotch.

He smiles.
He makes a decision.

He puts on his mask.