Rough Waters

[Glenn]

It was in the very name of the place, there in plain sight for all to see: Myrken Wood. Wood. Wilderness. There was nothing particular about the geography of Myrken Wood to suggest such relative underdevelopment. it was landlocked but still somewhat central, or at least convenient, to trade on the continent. There were mountains that became impassable in winter but it was best not to travel in winter anyway. No, it was not geography which set Myrken Wood back. It was chaos itself, monsters both human and otherwise, poor harvests and poor planning, poor people making poor decisions and rich people making malicious, self-interested ones, that had held the province back.

This was not at all the case for Razasan. It was temperate and mild. It was a nexus point of power and wealth. It's sheer size enforced some level of stability. There was too much vested in its success for failure to be allowed. When problems arose, more resources could simply be tossed at them. Often times, those resources could be artfully siphoned from the other provinces. When others opposed such methods, as had Thessilane, it became not war but a slow and steady stamping out of resistance. There were rich and poor in Razasan as well, but even the poorest man there had a level of stability that he would not have elsewhere.

Believe it or not, Glenn Burnie resided in relative squalor, relative to those around him at least. This was partially due to his means, which were not inconsequential except for in that selfsame relative sense, and partially due to choice. Had he been sponsored by another province or foreign power, he could afford better. As it was, he received a stipend from the crown (indirectly given) and his own independent means. Between these two sources, he could have managed an impressive terraced house, maybe even a small manor, if he had but decided to live in a less central location. For a man who had become something of a hermit, however, convenience mattered. He had but a few rooms, ill space to host guests, and basically worked where he slept. All of this suited him, especially if it meant he could reside in the Foreign Quarter.

The neighborhood's moniker was only partially true. Yes, this was where many of the ambassadors and intermediaries from the varying provinces had come to reside, likewise the representatives of the larger trade houses. All of that had been a symptom of its initial function. It had developed, a century before, into the main area of residency for many of the top bureaucrats in the kingdom, either lesser nobles who inherited such positions or men of administrative talent but no formal title. That foreign interests had come to flock there was out of a desire for convenient accessibility and ideally, convenient influence. Near this quarter were the great banks and some of the higher end shops. Even within the city, it was miles away from the great manors, as it was miles away (in the other direction), from more impoverished areas. The cobblestone roads were wide enough in one direction for carriages to travel back and forth. They were not in another.

Glenn Burnie rarely hired carriages. He avoided parties (gatherings in general, truly). More than that, he avoided Court, which was unimaginable for someone in his position. While he would occasionally accept a lunch invitation, he avoided anything that seemed like outright frivolity. This was acceptable for a few reasons. The first was that, by refusing patronage and influence, he constantly stymied all sides, meaning that there was always someone who wanted him to be kept in his role to frustrate someone else (even if those exact people changed and even inverted at times). Second, there were those in Court, Kostroma and Surdemer especially, who would sharply oppose any suggestion that a higher position be forced upon him. Third, he was quite good at his duties, especially relative to his predecessors. So long as he didn't seek out more in life (which would make him positively unique in a two mile radius), he successfully avoid promotion or removal, even while minimizing his general human interaction.

Still, money spoke, and even without many formal connections to livery providers (the sort of which he absolutely fostered in Myrken as a way to prepare for any eventuality), a clean enough carriage was hired and sat outside his door, a large, balding man in a sun-faded, second hand uniform sitting ready to drive it. Burnie had recently emerged, dressed in simple finery, cotton and wool and velvet, matching the current style in the most minimalist way possible. While he leaned towards earth-tones in his more casual wear, his formal colors were black and white and little else. The only flash of color a small decorative handkerchief of Myrken black-and-red (most certainly not red-and-gold) against the white. Hats were in style and he was not, especially not after the events of the day. He had been waiting for a few minutes and would wait at least a few minutes longer.

[Niabh]

It had taken her a while to realize that a woman walking alone at night was either regarded as insalubrious or assumed to be a natural fool who deserved whatever happened to her. At first she thought people just meant her, that she was doing something unusually out of the way, but sooner or later she grasped that label extended to all women, be they ever so upstanding and well-intentioned, and no matter what their errand. Just now she was thinking of her mother, who was ever rolling off her mat and flinging a cloak over her naked body to dash across camp in the middle of the night (no one ever seemed to fall ill in the daytime), and what the tultharian might make of that. Meg wouldn’t care; Meg would slap them out of her path like a surly bear if they stood between her and a patient. But Meg would hate it here, worse even than she did. Meg was such a shy, solitary creature who preferred her own quiet company: poking into rootholes, counting moorhens’ eggs in their nest, bringing home fox skulls and hares’ spines and turning them over and over in her hands to determine how they were put together. Meg hated crowds.

Poor Meg. No moorhens here. No delicate sharp-toothed skulls to dig out of the earth and wash clean at the Ealainn’s bank. No Ealainn. No sky that was not hedged in by a rim of buildings so close together that betimes she felt she might scrape her shoulders squeezing through them (and had she not once had a nightmare about that very thing? She barely recalled it. The walls silently, slowly pressing together to crush her between their palms). The lights of so many houses crowded together had created a kind of bloody fume that stained the night sky. The first time she noticed it, she had gone cold and stiff on a street corner, thinking to herself in a daze of horror and amazement They have erased the stars.

Still the sea, though. If she strained her ears over the city sounds, the constant creaks and thumps and shouting voices, she could hear it as plain as if she were up to her ankles in it. Its salt tang hung in the air, mingling with every other stink to give the city a faint, briny undernote that was both comforting and deeply depressing. That smell, as much as anything, was home. To have it here in such a foreign place, full of walls and angles and iron and the ugly, dough-faced tultharian, only made things worse.

On the corner before the turn she slowed down and went still. This turned out to be a mistake: as if they had to rush somewhere several blocks behind to catch up with her, a bevy of chattering thoughts rushed into her head: He’s counting on you showing up. The best thing you could do would be not to. Deny him. Pick another seeming, slip in behind him, and watch him in secret all night. See if he starts peering into people’s faces wondering if they might be you. Prove him wrong. Better still: just go home.

I can’t go home. I can’t even go back to Myrken right now.

Then, darkly: If he’s gone through my things, I’ll knit his fingers together. See how much writing he gets done then.

Plotting revenge, even against a grievance she couldn’t be sure existed, always bolstered her a little. Trailing behind her, a light, clopping hollow beat—the sound of a woman’s wooden heels against the pavers—began distant, grew louder. She inhaled. When the footsteps caught up to where she stood, she started forward again, falling in time with them just as she made her grand turn around the corner: a very tall figure shrouded hairline to hip in a dark cloak that could not quite contain the billowing scarlet skirts that rocked with her every step. The skirt’s hem marked the edge of the unspoken circle she kept apart from Glenn Elias Burnie as she paused before him.

Beneath the shadow of the cloak’s hood, her skin was noticeably lighter. A pair of quite ordinary brown eyes dipped down, slowly crawling up Glenn’s attire. “Well. It’s not brown.” The eyes paused on his face. “You look very well.” That was polite. “You have very nice calves.” That probably wasn’t, but she could never be sure.

[Glenn]

He was planning on her showing up. He'd told the raven as much. That said, he was quite surprised that she showed up here and now. He had expected her to come incognito to the ball and vex him for hours, maybe shifting forms to and fro all night so that he talked to her a half dozen times before realizing it. The altercation earlier on gave him some sense that shifting clothing might be more difficult, or at least less pleasurable, but even then, she'd find a way.

Honestly surprised, he smiled. It wasn't a grin or a smirk or a gloating exult. It was quiet and earnest and pleased. If she had come to negotiate a peace, he'd shown his hand too early by appearing happy to see her. Burnie was generally a better negotiator than that, though here, he already had a better case scenario than he had expected.

He did not offer to return her belongings. Frankly, she wasn't dressed for that and they were safe enough in his room. She could gather them after the ball. Whatever he might have said instead was lost to time, for before he could even open his mouth, she claimed the initiative and commented upon his appearance. Burnie did clean up well enough. Granted, the clothes were more noticeable than the rest of him, calves aside. "I usually hide it. Better people think that I'm just an endless cacophony of words contained in a body that can barely even carry them." Was that all that different from what she did? The lines had blurred for him significantly since his fall from power.

"I'm glad you came back. I'd rather do this with you." He did not comment on her dress or her appearance. He did not apologize. He did not threaten her. Burnie had words for every situation. Here he missed some very easy ones (though perhaps that cannot be blamed due to her subterfuge with the kiss only a few hours before). Still, it left a moment of awkwardness. "You've spent good coin for me to enjoy myself. Ultimately, that led me to Wynsee, not whimsy, which wasn't right at all." When he smiled again, it was a near sheepish thing, closer to that quasi-embarrassment of before than anything else, younger than he usually showed. "I'm glad you now have the opportunity to firmly place matters into your own hands."

[Niabh]

The lady recognized a small victory when one was before her. A smile, a light in the eyes. Fortunately for them both she was too conscious of the last failure, and perhaps a little too nervous, to crow about it. Just a small interior hum of pleasure—I did that—followed by genuine relief that he seemed in good spirits, in spite of everything else. For the first time since storming out his door, she had a glimpse of a future where this might not have been a terrible idea.

“I’m hardly in a place to judge what people may or may not conceal about themselves, though I will say keeping the calves covered is a shame.” There. Impeccable blend of coquettish and cheeky. A tone had been set. “I would not leave you in the lurch—particularly as I am the one who got you in the lurch.”

His little sheepish smile made her smile back in return, warm and confident, with a touch of something odd to the edges: less coquettish, more a doting aunt pleased by a visit from a favorite nephew. Without meaning to, her hand lifted and reached for his face. It got no higher than his shoulder before the fingers folded into the palm and the whole arm shot quickly back to her side beneath the cloak. She scarcely needed to apologize: the awkwardness was all over her face, writ large in the way her brown eyes immediately settled on the pavement and roved about, as if she were hunting something she'd dropped. In that moment she seemed no older than he was.

As if on oiled wheels she gave a quarter turn away from him to regard the carriage itself. In profile, the hood hid her face, but her expression was dubious. It was going to smell bad in there, she was almost certain of it. Hanging from the door were two little steps, black wrought iron. Her teeth raked her lip as she considered a plan of attack. She was long-limbed enough that she could grab both sides of the door, take a high step over the little stairs, and make it inside, but there didn’t seem a way to avoid at least brushing them. Damn, damn, and double-damn. It might be all right if she could make it a quick single move.

Back she turned, and in the same coquettish tone, a pure mockery of court propriety, said, “Glenn Elias Burnie, a lady is about to be discommoded. Be a dear and avert your eyes?”

There wasn’t much hope for him averting his eyes, and frankly it was less conspicuous were it done quick enough to make people doubt what they’d seen. In a flash and a rustle of scarlet, she brushed past Glenn and rushed the carriage door, caught hold of the sides and launched herself up and in successfully, but for the predicted snag of a skirt on the corner of the step. When she plopped down in the dark interior and slid herself deep into the slick, burnished seats, the cloak remained intact but now she was back in her ratty, wrapped boots, fringed kilt, and the blue-and-silver tunic she’d crafted from Hok’s old Order robes.

[Glenn]

Glenn Burnie was never much of a gentleman. There may have been a time, before things had all gone very, very wrong, where he believed in some sort of ideal of chivalry. That was long ago, well before he even arrived in Myrken. Moreover, there were a litany of mitigating factors in this specific scenario. For instance, he had not had much direct interaction with women for a very long time. Then there was the fact she had drawn a flying book towards her face through words alone just a few hours before. She was hardly a wilting flower. Even with all that, he still hadn't quite begun to understand what sort of difficulties she might face during everyday travels within his world. He likely leaned too far in thinking her as just another being.

In the moments before he did, yes, choose to avert her eyes at her wishes (good faith was still a thing, truly; it might be the only thing they had left), he did not recoil from her near near touch. He also did not show any embarrassment about her appreciation of his calves. "No," he did manage as well, "but you might come find me in the lurch at your own convenience."

Then came the averting. In some ways it was a shame. It would have let him see something that could never so easily be captured by even a hundred letters. What was not a shame was that his self-patience for wordplay was done and he did not make a play for discommoded. Still, she was in and he was quickly behind her. "See," an upward lilt in his voice as he tried to figure out exactly how much space she'd need and not take up too much accordingly, all in the poor light. The lilt wasn't for his own movement but for her garb. "That's what I don't understand. Where's the line? You practically fell out of the dress before. How are you ever in a situation where that might happen when you can just control my perception of it all in the first place. I think part of the act is that you control your perception of it as well. Were you just so flustered? Does it only apply to you? If I get you so upset, can..." and for once and his life, his voice faded off. He caught himself. Oh, it was three sentences too late, but it was a rare effort. "I'm just honestly curious," which wasn't exactly an apology. "Let's not talk about that though, any of that. Not now. I've said that I'd try to do things that you would find enjoyable, not just me. I mean to live up to that."

[Niabh]

She actually hesitated, one skeptical eyebrow slowly rising as his words wound down—this man, who seemed able to speak without pausing to eat, sleep, or inhale. Eventually she decided the pause was an invitation to answer. “Wait, when did I fall out of a dress?” Uncomfortable, she adjusted a flap of the cloak across her chest. Then her face lightened. “Oh! That. That dress was not a glam. According to a dressmaker, I do not have a fashionable waist, so she tucked me a bit too tight, and the tuck tore open when I dipped. I can fix it,” she added in assurance, if the ruin of the dress was his real concern.

Once the door was shut and the two of them situated, the scarlet dress exploded back into existence with the weird disconnect between what-had-been and what-was—halfway between asleep and awake, dream already slipping away, details fading fast but central image burning bright—but also with fewer layers of petticoat, so as not to end up piling half her skirts in Glenn’s lap. When the contraption began to move, she jerked as if a hot spark had jumped into her lap, glancing around quickly, but then eased back once more.

“You’re always honestly curious. The honest part’s all that keeps it from being rude, betimes.” But she shrugged. “My gentleman’s asked the same. It’s…a topic for a longer carriage ride than this one, let’s say, better saved for a proper letter.” A casual suggestion, but one extended a little timidly: that there would be future letters, that either of them would feel like speaking again after this. “Actually…” and now her tone turned teasing “…I was going to see if you didn’t want me to glam you. Go incognito. Mock all your fellow nobs in secrecy while maintaining your reputation as a recluse. Find out what they say about you behind your back.”

It did stink in here: of too many tultharian jammed in too close, like a barrel of fish, their scent ground into the pores of the leather seats; of the rancid, oily smell of the leather itself. A prickly smell like pipesmoke—which was probably what it was—was woven into the curtains. Combined with the unfamiliar jouncing of the carriage and her mostly empty stomach, it made her light-headed. It was far too warm tonight for the cloak and her pits were starting to feel sticky, but be damned if she’d shed it. Instead she squeezed her arms tight to her sides, pressed her hands in her lap, shifted the small of her back away from the seat. It occurred to her that such tight quarters would be a very good proximity for murder. It also wasn’t very good faith to believe that Glenn would hire a carriage just to murder someone in it. She was thinking too much about this.

“So,” she asked, looking up at him brightly, “how is Gloria getting on these days?”

And perhaps it was the accent—the broad vowels, the stress slightly off-center of the proper syllable—but it came out a bit too much like that other name: Glour’eya.

[Glenn]

He had been so careful to seat himself next to her with the exact, proper amount of room, not exactly contorting himself, but certainly giving her the better half of their current space constraints. After that, it was a bit of a shock that she felt the need to shift back into the more elaborate gown. It took a moment, there in the near-dark, for him to realize that she had been considerate enough to accommodate their new environment, though there was something unnerving about it as well. He knew well by now that reality mattered far less than perception, save for extreme matters of life and death. If you felt the ground was shifting beneath you, the truth of the situation hardly mattered.

"For a letter then," he conceded. At some point she would leave, yes, and then he'd be left with the life he had before she arrived, save for any namesake transformations she might manage in this time. He knew himself, his mind, his limitations. He could hardly deny her letters, except for out of spite. She knew that. The question was always whether or not he'd ever reach that point where spite was the only possible option. Apparently, he wasn't there yet.

That didn't mean there wasn't some distaste with her suggestion of disguising him. "I'd rather not. I understand that there are similarities between what you do and what I've done in the past, what I do every time I open my mouth, really, but there are differences too. People have a fighting chance with what I do. They don't with you. I imagine your people do, of course. I'd rather you not do anything involving me though." The word violation hung heavily between them. That couldn't just go away.

"I know what they think of me anyway," he shook his head, "and I need to be myself in order to..." Whatever he was about to say was overshadowed by the name she had dropped and him catching up to it. There was no reason to question her pronunciation, for he knew how literal she could be. If she had heard it spoken from Gloria's mouth, she'd say it the same way. He wasn't surprised by any of it, really. She had been through his papers after all. Moreover, the raven could have well reported back on his activities. Glenn Burnie was capable of surprise, even of showing surprise, but this would not do it.

He did frown, however, though whether she could fully see it, even with the close proximity was beyond his awareness. It was more for him than her anyway. "I never knew her well in Myrken, Gloria, that is. By the time she arrived, I was already governor and I was already lost. If I had been otherwise, we would have been good friends and good rivals. She's like an Agnie underpinned by learning. We both would have cared too much." Her question had been specific, not general, however. "She's a bit lost herself, I think, and trying to find herself in all of the wrong ways. I always wonder how much to intervene with her. Too much and she'll learn nothing at all."

[Niabh]

“Aye, but if I glammed you, then you would know how it works.” She was still teasing but she knew what strings to pluck to tempt him: solve the puzzle, see for yourself, practical applications, experience. It was fun just shy of being mean-spirited, the sort of fun she found very hard to resist, even with that ominous word violation hanging between them like a thunderhead. Perhaps even because of that word, to diminish it with fearlessness and ridicule. “Which would save us a whole letter that would be far better spent…oh, I don’t know, declaiming morality. You insisting you’re so much older than I. Me calling you a trout-mouthed gabbergob.”

She did see the frown, quite clearly; her eyes were very sharp in the dark. She could not rightly tell what it was meant for, though: himself, back then, or for the lost opportunity. She listened quietly, in polite attentiveness. After a time her gaze shifted to her hands against the field of red.

“I scare knew her myself. I thought I wanted to be friends with her. She seemed earnest, in a way most people here were not. There were…there were things she wanted quite badly.” She paused long, thoughtfully, lips parted to say more. Instead the tip of her tongue emerged and made a languid, vulpine rotation around the point of one incisor. She swallowed, then went on. “She seemed lonely. I was lonely too, of course. So I sought her out a time or two, until she told me to my face to stop it—that we were not friends. I wondered what it was that I had done. I near to decided that I had been too forward and offended her. Then a few seasons passed, and she vanished. It was only after she was gone that I learned she was right along: we were not friends.”

With a flat, unpleasant smile, she gave a small incline of her head to conclude the short tale.

“I am going to say this, Glenn Elias Burnie, and beware it comes from the position of having no good will toward her. Betimes people will not survive long enough to learn anything without intervention. It’s why we don’t leave babies alone near a fire.”

[Glenn]

Thankfully for him, if not both of them, Burnie's arrogance was of a certain academic bent, one that leaned far more towards philosophy than science, perhaps even towards sophistry more than anything else. "I can well work out how it operates," and there it was again, that rehearsed sort of language that wasn't rehearsed at all. Operate came so quickly after work, so effortlessly, since he obviously didn't want to repeat the word. There was no thinking, just a rapid fire, steadily, calmly impassioned burst of words, "without actually experiencing it. If I am not mistaken, last time you utilized it directly upon me, it wasn't just a matter of convincing me but convincing yourself as well, or at least not allowing yourself to see alternatives." Was there truly a force more powerful than the absolute and undoubtable rancor of a woman' scorned? "I'm not at all convinced you could spell gabbergob anyway."

He listened to her recounting of Gloria. They were correspondents and he had affection towards the young lady, certainly, but he would not defend her in front of this fairy queen, here in their carriage, riding towards an uncertain doom. "It is very easy for someone to spite opportunity itself for the sake of it and then consider that a victory when it is, in fact, simply a boastful retreat. One may look back, years later, at a string of such victories, of such notches upon one's belt, and find only regret." Before it had been a frown, but now it was a slight, wistful smile. "My regret falls upon different lines, of course, but I think that are we to waste any further time of this ride speaking of Gloria, we may look back on all of this unfavorably."

He stared directly at her instead, her vision obviously better than his, but his trained in certain specific ways so that he wasn't looking at her ear or her neckline but instead directly towards her eyes, whether he could actually see them or not. "We are friends, you and I, and we are going somewhere you wish to go, and I have all but promised that I will try to enjoy myself. Knowing what you do of me, how exactly do you think I intend to enjoy myself there, in your presence?"

[Niabh]

He was right, loathe as she was to admit it. It was useless—dangerous, even—to spoil a perfectly pleasant (pleasant with limitations) evening dwelling on Gloria. That would only make her cross and brooding, and as her schemes on that front were already set in stone, it did no one any good for her to spend the whole evening mentally refining them at the expense of missing the moment. Present mirth hath present laughter; what’s to come is still unsure. The old song was good advice.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she replied airily. “I half-pictured you sitting along the walls nursing the same cup of stale punch all evening, trying very hard not to be noticed by anyone who knew you, and if you were recognized you’d remind them quite sharply of some piece of business the two of you had not yet resolved, or some money you were owed, so that they would suddenly remember a small matter they left unattended on the far side of the room. You’d make cutting remarks on the ladies’ hair, or their jewels, or the music. If I should pause long enough beside you, we’d end up talking about how all this reminds you of balls you attended ten years ago with her and you weren’t much fond of them then, either, with me biting my tongue for patience all the while, until I, too, remembered something left undone and excused myself elsewhere.” She smiled at him, as if this were one of his traits of which she was most fond, and swatted her hands impatiently against her lap. “I don’t know. You don’t gamble. You don’t swive. We have never confirmed whether or not you dance. I am not even certain what there is to be done at these sort of affairs. What would you like to do, except for leave early?”

She had abducted him into this mess, and other than all the shouting and the throwing of books, he had been rather a sport about it. And she was not above engineering entertainment if it insured her host had a good time.

[Glenn]

Despite his every instinct, there was no denying it; this felt good. Burnie had lived a long and painful enough life, too many years in too short a time, to miss the blatant peril in that. She painted a very vivid picture of their near-future at the ball, one that wilting listlessly to toneless music, clad in drab grays. “See, this is good,” he said, with real lightness to his voice. She challenged him. She provided conflict. She fulfilled the most basic need of human interaction, give or take the human bit. All of that was to be expected. Much of it came from his own isolation and the decade of near-constant stimulation which had preceded it. This was different, however. This was specific to her. He was about to surprise her and it felt deeply and thoroughly good.

That's not why he told her things were good, however. It's not even why he smiled now, an open and easy smile that carried down to his limbs. Even without preternatural vision, she would have known. “Just get it all out. Everything you expected. Let me respond. We’ll get it behind us.” The smile didn’t fade when he spoke about Rhaena, not this time. “Barn dances, not balls. You can’t really go to balls in Myrken. Sometimes, once or twice a year, there’ll be a bigger party but not like this. Those were just larger barn dances with a theme and no barn. Early on, we went to farms, danced in their barns, got to know them.” She was friends with the Kaczmareks. He created ties in those years that served him well as he rose in power, a connection to the people that took years for him to destroy. “Yes," a hint of drollness squeezed past his lips. "I danced. It was informal. I wanted to go as fast as I could with her. Everyone would lose themselves in the fiddling and if we flung each other fast enough, her veil would fly up." He was fighting, with marked success, the disquiet she expected from him when it came to his late 'wife.' "You have to understand; back then, right at the beginning, every time I got to see her face was special.”

He shook his head, breaking the mood of the moment. “That's past us. What next?” It was as if he had jotted all of her predictions in his mind and was recalling them at will. “I do know how to formally dance, as well. I hope you do or else you’ll be stepping all over me. You ought to be your real height, by the way. My presence alone will be outlandish enough but you as yourself will push it far enough over the top to make the whole thing seem surreal. What pride I have will not be wounded by either you leading or you towering.”

It was a testament to how far he had come or how far he had fallen that he was able to so effortlessly talk about magic that way. “The point, Finn, is that I’m going to have to be me. They have to know I’m me. They have to see me there." That was definitive enough but he could never just let things be. "I'm used to dealing with Gloria (and it’s on you for bringing her up in the first place). She often lacks in language, understanding concepts but not the words behind them. With you, that’s rare. For instance, you claim hedonism as a personal philosophy (though, I have my doubts),” which he was not hesitant to raise, albeit muttered loudly under his breath, “but you did not know the word. Do you know catalyst? That’s what we shall be tonight.”

Physical contact between the two had been rare during this visit. Only once had she tested she waters, despite further temptation. Now he dove right in, reaching out and placing a hand upon her knee as he brought his head towards her. Conspiracies ought to be discussed in close quarters. There was something slightly manic to his voice. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to stay my hand, Finn? My job has the ability to affect the perceived worth of people. I draw a line this way or that and suddenly the man who owns a string of houses pays more or less in taxes, receives more or less of a share of votes for how those taxes are used. He’ll work harder to attract tenants or treat better the ones he has. If it goes the other way, people might get driven from their homes outright, because there's more value in renting shops. It’s not necessarily life and death but it’s maybe the next best thing. The problem is this: one too many generous pen strokes and I’m thrown out on my head. Everything I do benefits someone and makes someone else suffer. It’s all I can do to be consistent and fair, even as people suffer.” She had suggested a disguise where he might overhear conversation and walk in secret. “I don’t care how they talk about me, Finn, but I do care about people suffering because of my action or inaction. You’re here. I feel emboldened. I say it’s time to take some calculated risks, to cause a stir, to free some bears.”

To lapse.

[Niabh]

Her response was not quite a smirk, though she managed, with admirable restraint, to lower her gaze and look chastened. Half the reason she painted that picture was because by virtue of her mentioning it, he would make a moral obligation of not doing it. He prided himself on predicting others while remaining unpredictable himself. By saying it aloud, she challenged him to avoid it and so staved off her own future boredom. There was no trick in that, really: most men were so, and he was only a degree more desperate and determined about it than the rest, solidifying another man’s stubborn resolve into a life strategy. The other half of the reason was that she really did believe that he really would be a bore all night were he not motivated to do otherwise.

Except the longer he went on, the more he showed every evidence of being motivated. Oh dear. It was a bit like climbing into a barrel and being rolled downhill: a fine fast ride, except for not knowing if the ride would come to a gentle halt against a haymow or shoot right past it and crash into a tree. For her, the uncertainty was part of the fun. For him…well, all the more motivation to insure it went off well. If it went badly, he might never be convinced to try again.

Her mental scheming broke off with a short, harsh gasp when he touched her. For a moment it was exactly as if the thick stench in the carriage had manifested a hand and wrapped it around her throat. Both knees snapped together. Her long fingers locked around his wrist like a shackle.

It was one of those overlaps where the reaction was simultaneous with the realization she had overreacted, followed by the irrevocable edict: do not harm the host. The latter as much as the former caused her grip to loosen before it even had time enough to harden, though the tension in her hand, like a coiled spring, revealed how near a thing it had been. Her hand withdrew to rub the knob of her collarbone. She could not tell if the sick twisting there was her heart or something else.

“I beg pardon.” The calm evenness of her tone did not match what could be seen of her expression: back stiff, utterly alert, bristling like a wild animal. “I…I am not much used to closed spaces, is all.”

It was both true and woefully inadequate. This whole city was a closed space, the carriage both a microcosm and a reminder of what lay outside, a concept more sensed than expressed. All she understood was the blind panic when she thought about it too long, the way a rat might drive itself to madness trying to struggle out of a trap. The only solution was not to think about it, to jump from one moment to the next without lingering or anticipating. It was perhaps the most fundamental difference between them.

With a long, deep exhale and a shiver, she forced herself to relax, to respond lightly.

“So you’re going to be that one tonight, are you? I hate it when someone makes the party all politics.” This was, as were many of her statements, only half a lie, considering that the person making parties political was very frequently her, often simply by showing up. One’s very presence could be interpreted as approval. One of the few advantages to being Here was the ability to be some anonymous pretty lady who could tease and flirt and play favorites and cause chaos without having to deal with the aftermath for two years afterward. The freedom had somewhat spoiled her.

Nevertheless she listened attentively. The other half of being a quick study was sorting the unfamiliar into a context one understood, while being flexible enough to radically amend it as new information came. Voting she understood in theory, even though she found the very concept irresponsible and ridiculous; ’twas plain enough that if you let people decide what you were going to do with their money, they would always choose the path that let them keep most of it and the rest of the country could starve. The worth of people was a mystery, but if the tultharian were literally setting a price on each head, that explained a lot for how they treated one another. The rest was all land and tribute, that’s what it came to in the end. That they called tribute “taxes” and paved the roads with it was a mere trifle.

She stretched lazily, resting her elbow against the back of the seat, her fist propped under her jaw.

“Catalyst? Something that triggers something else, you mean? I can’t say I’m much fond of the idea of causing mischief and not getting the credit for it, but there’s something to be said for mischief as its own reward.” Now she was more sober. “Glenn Elias Burnie, fair warning: my chief concern this night is you: your wellness and your comfort. I’ve nothing to gain from playing politics here; there’s nothing in particular I want, save the one thing, and you’ve already stated your objections so we needn’t discuss them further. All the rest is trifles. Fair game. What that means, though, for all practical purposes, you have a queen as your hireling. I am very effective. If all you need is a signature, I can get you a signature. I can even make them think it was their own idea. But I’ve a feeling you would find my methods unethical.” Unethical was a word she offered for his benefit alone. Her own opinion was that it was a waste of a perfectly good glam. Why glam someone for petty matters when you could pin their loyalty to your sleeve permanently and not have to worry about it in the future? “So I ask you this now: are you enlisting me to your cause, or are you trusting me hold you back should you go too far? Because there’s two things at play there. The first being that if you trust me, you are going to have to trust me. The other is knowing that my idea of too-far may be very different from yours.”

To make up for the earlier violent recoil, she steeled herself, then slid her warm hand atop his. Now her voice faltered, less from fear than tenderness and sympathy. “I…might have some notion how hard it is to stay one’s hand betimes.”

[Glenn]

She was a catalyst already, one who deserved and received much credit. She had taken him out of a slumbering comfort and thrust him back into the world. He was an imperfect, incomplete thing, one that had been broken repeatedly, had been put back together or had put himself back together. She had touched upon it: for someone who had so valued humanity, he had grown knotted so as to keep himself at arm's length. Here he reached out and her response was both startled and startling. She dissuaded when she hoped to do anything else. Upon the release of his arm, Burnie withdrew.

The letters may have been a comfort to both of them, but there was no succor to be found, as of yet, in each other's physical presence. He did not shield her in the least from the carriage, from the city, from its people. She did not lift the specters which consumed him.

Yet there they were.

He did not rub his wrist. The moment has passed and he was a creature of near-control once more. The explanation was no shorter, no slower, and there was still passion to it, but it was presented to her face and not her midsection. Posture was maintained. It was presented with a professional sheen that it might not have had otherwise. She listened and from all indication, she understood.

"This is how I enjoy myself, by being that one." That wasn't quite her question (being not the first time he's done this). Still, it almost brought a smile to his face; certainly it engendered the desire for one, though he refrained. It would be bad form to be smiling primarily at his own cleverness. "Look at dancing as a metaphor. This is how I dance. If I go to a ball, it's what I'm going to do. I might be moving my feet to music as I do it, but," some of the momentum and energy had faded from her physical retort, and his sentence petered off. "well, there you have it."

All of that led to her warning, and that left him shaking his head softly. "The child you wrote of. The bear. Beings without the means to protect themselves from predators. That's what this is about, Finn. For me to act directly, I'd use up my ability to act at all in the future. We can trick it tonight, force it, shift the scales, and those predators will be none the wiser. I'm neither enlisting nor am I trusting." She was so matter-of-fact about it, as if they were entering into a fairy accord. In different circumstances, he might have allowed himself to feel just a tad honored and show just a bit of appreciation, but that wasn't what this was about. "I'm offering well-meaning mischief that we can both get behind, that benefits neither of us directly but that supports causes we can perhaps agree upon, with costs we'll both find acceptable." Her hand fell upon hers somewhere in there and he met her eyes, his own sharp, intense, with that hint of something that could be a wellspring of madness or pure, unbridled inspiration. "Just as much, it's something that we can do together, that we both may enjoy."

[Niabh]

Chuckling, the woman drew back her hand. “Oh-ho, I don’t like that look.”

But she did like that look. Very much. That mad, brilliant look, in fact, held the potential for the reason why the two of them might be perfectly awful for one another: because it was similar to her own look when she got it into her head to cause trouble, and even distantly akin to the avaricious glitter in her father’s eyes when he maneuvered himself within cutting distance of a throat. Beyond mere practicality and purpose, Glenn enjoyed this. He was good at it. He’d been stifling himself to keep away from it. No wonder he was so damn boring; he was bored.

It was on the tip of her tongue to remark that there were more flavors of hedonism in the world than just the sensual, but that would be petty—and might also encourage him to give up the idea.

Her original agreement was mere politeness. Now she was interested.

Well, she thought, amused. Took us long enough to get here.

She was never very good at playing coy. The tultharian seemed to find it charming in their women but it got one nowhere back home. Her posture shifted subtly and her skirts rustled as she crossed her legs. “I for one find it difficult to dance to a metaphor. Just how abstract is this plan of yours, Glenn Elias Burnie? Is it something that can be accomplished in an evening? Do you have a mark picked out? Will they be expecting anything?” Her brows knitted in brief consternation. “Am I going to have to sleep with anyone? I’m not saying I won’t, but I’d rather know.”

[Glenn]

Her final question took him by surprise. This was partially because he was out of practice (both in general interaction with others and in dealing with women outside certain norms. It had been many, many years since he had either befriended or antagonized teahouse girls, for instance) and partially because he did not entirely expect that out of her. There were some things that did not translate to writing and it was true, of course, that she claimed to take on certain airs within her missives. When he spoke in response, his voice was droll, deadpan, as if he was going through the motions. "Well, now that I know that's an option, let me..."

Just like that, his voice faded off and he shook his head, more than ready to move past an amusing response to business. His body tensed with anticipation, not for any traditional flavor, as she recognized, but insatiably nonetheless. "Yes, I have a plan. Yes, I have targets. It's more abstract than I'd like, I'll admit, but you didn't give me much time to work with. I don't have an Inquistiory at my fingertips." Then, something he was far less happy to admit. "I thought I'd have to spend half the ball finding you, too. This is a happy turn of events, but now we have to make the most of the time." See, she surprised him twice today.

Maybe even three times. He had not expected her attentiveness to be quite so sharp when he had explained his position and limitations before. It was heartening however, and despite all of his care and cautiousness, he was as susceptible to being heartened as any other male. "There's one neighborhood in particular we'll be looking to help tonight." Storytellers often had props. Burnie was a surveyor and his face twisted with a slight bit of frustration that there was no light and no map at his disposal. This would have been easier if he hadn't driven her away earlier in the day. "It's inhabited primarily by families who moved two hundred years from the Aja Islands, traders who settled down. I came across one while looking into your people, actually. Just by chance; no getting ideas," he muttered as an aside before continuing. They had enough problems. "They're susceptible to certain illnesses every number of years. It's an interesting phenomenon. Generally through preparing a particularly repugnant fruit from their island they can mitigate most of the effects, but either bad luck or outright sabotage led to the ships being lost. None of that's important. Point being, they're through the worst of it, but many were unable to work for a span of weeks and they're going through hardships as a community."

That was quite a bit and none of it was all that important for her to know. It was also a testament to why he didn't act. The city was massive and his job wildly complex. This was the plight of one neighborhood learned only because he bumped into someone and heard about it. Were he to act on a larger scale, there would be winners and losers and despite his talents, he didn't have nearly enough information to weigh the results of that action. He could make things worse for many even in trying to make things better for few.

"The land of the neighborhood is owned by two lesser nobles, a pair of Grafs (I'll tell you about them in a minute). Maybe a seventy-thirty split." He was drawing it in the air with his hand, even though he thought she probably couldn't see it. The motions were precise, and he seemed to even erase one imaginary mark he made with a little twist of his palm, before finishing. "The minority holder's the far kinder and more lenient landlord. Our primary task is to either convince the one to sell cheaply or the other to buy despite the cost. Either we convince the first that taxes will be levied soon due to, oh, let's say, impending military action or we convince the other that there's some sort of important vote upcoming and he needs the extra population under his purview."