Agony's intervention

[Glenn]

A visit to the Calomel Farm. In the mind of Glenn Burnie, this was supposed to have been very, very different indeed. Yes, Rhaena Olwak was at his side, even if she was not directly on his arm. Everything else, however? Different. It was to have been a pleasant evening, not a balmy morning. It would have been planned a few days in advance, certainly something worked out with Dom or Magda. The purpose of the visit would have been social, happy, consisting of food and more food and even some more food on top of that. The largest worry? Well that should have been dealing with the teasing that he and Rhaena would have almost certainly have received.

As it was, this was anything but social, and Glenn would be lucky he got a slice of bread out of it. More likely, he'd get cold steel for his trouble, which was, coincidentally the largest worry for the day. Hell.

The ride had been particularly quiet. Glenn was particularly gloomy and for once Rhaena could do little to help that. She was welcome to try again once this business was over. As for the business itself, well horses had stabled upon arrival to the farm and now they were heading out front, where they had been informed Agnie was seen last.

[channe]

The girl is sitting on the ground outside a half-built stone house with sewing, of all things -- she's mending the elbow of her Janeiro jacket, something which won't be replaced as easily as it would have been three weeks ago. A strange thing, seeing her involved in these womanly works -- but if you ask her about it she'll just shrug, mutter about how 'it's a Kaczmarek thing, better to repair than to buy new,' and especially when a piece of clothing has become somewhat of a talisman --

-- at any rate, she sees them coming, and there's just a bit of pleasantness on her face; a smile, if they can believe it, and a small wave. For she believes that Rhaena is on her side and that Glenn, for all his faults, will listen to Rhaena.

She's not wearing her sword, but it's laying up against a new stone wall next to her -- Glenn would see it, most likely, considering his worry...

[Glenn]

Hey. Look at that. A smile. Smiles were good. Still, this was not going to go well. "Hey, Agnie." Glenn waved as he approached. For a brief moment there was the slightest of movements with his other hand, almost as if he was reaching for Rhaena's, but no, this was on his shoulders, wasn't it. The veiled girl was only there because he had a damn hard time saying no to her.

"We um.. hey, we've got to talk. The unpleasant sort. And I'm going to be real blunt about it, too, because, you know that when I try to be careful with my words around you, it never goes well." That was how it had gone so poorly between them once, twice... at least three times. Glenn wasn't careful with what he said, or even worse, he was so careful that she could take it however she wanted and that was never good. "I had a long talk with Calomel the other day because I was worried about some of the things I heard about you and about him." And if she had any doubts where this was going, they were gone now. Obviously, this wasn't a thing to talk about here, so close to family, though. "Take a quick walk with us, Agnie?"

[channe]

There's a dark shadow crossing her face; if anything is proved by this for her, it's that she might be losing even Rhaena as an ally, and, boy, does that hurt.

"I haven't seen or talked to Aeryn." she begins, carefully, folding her hands and leaving her sewing in her lap. Let's not talk about some of the things she's left for Aeryn in a hollow tree in the forest. "Rhaena also 'splained what the Guv'ner actually meant by what he said to me, so that's clearer. I'm sorry I mistook it but I heard what I heard and kind of freaked out. Is that what you wanted to know?"

It's obvious she doesn't want to get up and take a walk with the two of them -- not about these things, at least.

[Glenn]

What? Like he'd miss that dark look. Like he'd miss the fact she's not going to go with them. He's trying to help her here. He went and talked to the governor for her sake. He's about to do a whole lot more. "I don't care about Aeryn Karolinger, Agnie. Don't care if they catch him. Don't care if he frolics around the woods scaring off wolves with his bare ass for the next seven years." Glenn looked at her cooly. He had heard how that talk between she and Rhaena had gone, though maybe there was time for some things to settle.

"What I care about is you. A lot because she cares about you, but not just that, ok? And I care about your family. I wouldn't have been by to read the letter, or brought Dom drinks or told you all about the Ashfiend otherwise." Here he was, Agnie, the foreign idiot come in thinking he knew everything. You know something, though? He doesn't care if you think that, becuase he's STILL going to do his best by you. Myrken's his home now, the first he's had in eight years, in some ways the first he's had his whole life. It was YOU that placed that last straw that broke his back. It was through YOU that Myrken changed him, and he was not about to back down now. "Calomel cares about your family too, Agnie. He's tryng to find a way out that doesn't end with your neck in a rope. You helping catch Karolinger for what he did is just the easiest way. It's not the only way. Go in and cooperate with him, even without giving up Aeryn, and he'll do as much as he can for you. And I'll do my best to make sure of that"

And here was the point, and was he ever uncomfortable saying, doubly with Rhaena present. "You know I don't talk her business, Agnie, ever. That's how damn important this is to me. Think of that while I speak. I know what this is about. Part of it at least. See, Rhaena mentioned a word to me, one you said to her. Doesn't matter if you like Calomel, does it? Can't trust him because it's not fair. Why does she get a pardon and you don't?"

He had to say this quick, before she hit him, or stabbed him or shut down or screamed or... before HE broke down from the pressure of it. "You think that she just waltzed into the Constabulary, got a pardon and walked out? It cost her. It was not free. And it's not my place to tell you what it cost her, but it did." While he knew a thing or two about what mattered to Ariane Carnath-Emory, what affected her, what she valued, and what might cost her, he was, for the most part bluffing, for there was so much he did not know. He only knew just enough to stand by his words, to know them to be true.

"Whether you want to see it or not. Life isn't fair. YOU told ME that. Myrken isn't fair. You can save your neck. You can save your family the grief and pain, but damn it, Agnieszka Kaczmarek, it's going to cost you too. It might not cost you Aeryn, but at the least, it will cost you pride. That too big a cost for what you did? For freeing your family?" His hand had reached not for Rhaena now, but to his sword hilt. He was expecting the cost he had to pay for saying those words to be high indeed.

[channe]

Rhaena mentioned a word to me.

This is not the first time Rhaena has passed on things supposedly said in confidence; and that drives the girl into stony silence, into picking up her sewing, gathering the jacket into her lap and putting the needle and thread aside completely. She looks at Glenn, but not at her best friend.

"I can't help," she says, quietly. "Aeryn weren't one o' Kerrak's right-hands fer nothin'. He's gone into the forest and I can't track 'im worth a damn. I ain't no tracker. Even if Calomel were makin' me do it to save my neck I couldn't turn him in, because I ain't got no way of knowing where he is. And if I knew, I wouldn't say, because I don't care what Ariane did, Cinnabar didn't ask her t' turn in Guv Bromn -- and, man, you ain't had your stomach turned until you hear what he did to pretty li'l girls as part o' that Baie cult. I don't care if he was brainwashed or not."

For once, she keeps her voice measured, although her face is considerably angrier. Perhaps the reason is the family nearby, inside the house, around the corner. Maybe they'll be walking, yet.

And then. Another pause, as she goes back to her sewing. "I don't want to die. Not like that, at least. You want me to talk to Calomel? I'll talk to Calomel, even though I don't think he can hang me. But I won't help him hunt Aeryn and that is final. I didn't want McCoy to die, and if it weren't that hopeless little shit of a Constable lyin' dead I wouldn't even do that. But McCoy didn't deserve t' die. An' I'm really sorry that he is."

She looks back up, then, narrowing her eyes at the two of them.

"Oh. Yeah. And thank you both for blabbing my problems around to everybody. Rhaena, I tol' you that fer a secret. Does everything I say to you end up in Glenn's ear? An' how much you told Ariane, hm? Did she talk about me? Talk about how screwed up I am? You want screwed up? She ever tell you about Bea Kanaya?"

While we're talking Ariane's business, that is...

[Jirai]

She had no idea what words would be said here, when she insisted on accompanying the mapmaker. That insistence had been born out of Glenn's own concern and out of her own worry for both of her friends. She has been a silent figure until now, arms curled tightly around herself.

"You don't have to turn in Aeryn, or do anything to harm Aeryn, Agnie." And there is a shift of her shoulders for Agnieszka's other words, though the pained expression on her face is hidden by the veil. "I only told him! He's trying to -help- you, Agnie. He knows Cinnabar, he talked to him..." Her voice trailed off uncertainly, unhappily.

[channe]

"You only told him? That's enough, Rhaena, I didn't tell you that so you could tell people!" She throws her sewing aside, and stands up quickly so she can look the two of them in the eye. "This is what I get for trusting you with this stuff, Rhae? Gawd, you can't even tell what's to be kept between friends and what's not? And, oh, I know she didn't just march in there and get a pardon. But she did get a pardon, an' for somethin' like Miz Kanaya, and not just Miz Kanaya, fer the Swithins an' the rest o' the koltists, too." she said, leering.

She expels a breath. "Listen. I 'preciate you stickin' up for me with Cinnabar. But next time don't you dare do any o' it wi'out tellin' me first. I ain't no baby girl that can't handle this shit. But -- but, you can kill seven koltists an' you've done a public service an' get a pardon an' end up advisin' people, even if it's hard earned. When it's not a koltist, yer a dirty damned hellbound freak. You said it yerself: I'm not gonna get a pardon, though I won't get hanged. That's not good enough. What does Ariane 'ave that I don't, Glenn Burnie? You ever thought about that? Myrken ain't fair. Damned right it ain't fair. An' I proved it."

And with that, she looks away, and crosses her arms. "I'll talk t' Cinnabar when he comes home t'night. I won't go to the offices, not yet."

She turns away. "Or I might jus' go."

[Glenn]

What does Ariane have that you don't, Agony? She takes responsibility for what she's done instead of going on about someone else. How about that?

Glenn Burnie was staring at her hard, angry now. "She just tried to help you, Agnie. That's what friends do. And it's what Rhaena does always. And it gets her stabbed and worse, and she does that for you and I. And I won't have you belittling it."

But then this wasn't getting them anywhere, was it? Restraint. He could practice it. He's been working at it. He's... ah, maybe he hasn't been working on it enough. Teeth locked together for a moment as he actually sneered at her. "You go and babble on about what's fair and what isn't, what someone else got that you won't... you go on shooting your mouth off like that, like a little needy brat and you'll deserve that noose around your neck, Agony. You hear me. You took a man's life in your hands. You decided between life and death. You chose DEATH. You can't do that and then go on acting like a child about the consequences, no matter what anyone else got. Go talk to Cinnabar. Don't go talk to Cinnabar. I don't care. I tried to help." He whipped around, and started to walk back towards his horse. Stubborn idiot.

[Jirai]

This was... well, not quite as bad as she'd feared. No blades had been drawn - at least, physical ones. Still, words were almost worse. There is a long look for Agnieszka, her own words held in reserve until Glenn has moved off a few steps.

"I won't see you hang, Agnieszka." She said quietly, her voice carefully controlled. Then she was spinning around, lengthening her strides to catch up to the mapmaker.

[channe]

'You've changed,' she wants to say, 'ever since you've started hanging out with that damned mapmaker. You've changed -- and maybe for the better, even.' 'Maybe you're better off without me.'

'People who're with me change for the worse,' she wants to say. 'Look what's happening all around.'

But she doesn't.

She just watches them go.

[Vanidor]

She had been right about Aeryn's ability to vanish in a crowd. To step into the woods and make himself seem like he'd never been there. Light above, he'd even led the Constables on a merry chase for a particular Pritchite farm and then promptly disappeared, as if he'd never been there. If only he'd had the same skills as Rautha, the Sergeant of the Scouting Corps, then he'd have taken them even further. But, it is what it is.

Here, though, he stepped out of the shadows that half-built house, pulling from the crown of his head a worn and beaten slouch cap. He had been listening in, that was the truth. And he had been watching until the two had made their way out of sight. His first words would be a whisper. A hush that had been familiar upon a feathered pillow, or between rustling sheets.

"You could just tell them that I did leave." In his breathy whisper, that was. HE was armed, of course, and his hand fell lightly upon the hilt of his sabre. A breath next, and eyes turning to follow the path that the other two departed in. "Glenn is no as smart as he makes himself out to be. He be as much a needy child as he do say you be. Always running his own mouth, and sticking his foot where it do no belong...." That last with a slight smile. "By the By. I will no allow you to be hanged either, you know this, yes?"

[channe]

"So get back before somebody sees you, dolt," she says, but that smile on her face is bigger than anything; she turns and goes to attempt to push him back into the shadows, gently at one shoulder -- "I'm not gonna see you hanged, either, but I get the feelin' my case is gonna be easier than yours. They're keen t' see you on a string. It ain't Glenn Burnie I'm worried about; all full o' himself, saint-man on the makin' --"

But Glenn said she'd chosen death, and hadn't they both? If Glenn's keen to save her, it's not the shouting she'll listen to...

She pauses, and lowers her voice. "Yer right, you know, they all turn on you, all of them..."

[Vanidor]

"In time, they will. People. They do change. Some for the better, as we see it, or the worse. This is, how they say, it is life, yes?" A rueful smirk to float across his face, then a subtle shake of his head. He was already drawing the hood of his cloak back up over his face, to shade his eyes from the sun and his face from onlookers.

"You are right though. They canno make you do anything against your grain, there are so many secrets and reasons for others to see the gallows, yes? Remind Cinnabar about this, and perhaps he will have to hang half of the town. That would be a merry sight, I think he would try it. " Then. A hand to reach out and touch at the other's cheek. "We am going into the woods, deep. We... I have what I need to make it through the winter, if I do no just leave the land completely. If they continue to hunt, then we shall see. If no... Then we shall see, yes? Stay alive, Agnieszka, until I do come back."

[channe]

And many people have quite an opinion on how these two are changing, opinions which aren't at all shared by Aeryn and Agnieszka themselves.

And she's making a quick decision, dragging off the beads from her wrist and pressing them into his hand. "Take these. Bring them back. They'll keep you safe. Freezing's even a dumber way to die than hanging. It ain't your style."

A serious subject, talked about in her typical way -- joking, with a half-smile, something that very few others see these days. But the embrace she's giving him is tight and also quite serious, and as she pulls away that smile is gone.

"Everything'll be sorted by spring. I'll make arrangements. I'll make it happen. Everybody got blood on their hands here an' Cinnabar ain't no exception. And if it doesn't work, I'll run, too. I'm not dyin' for that asshole. Now get, before I get all wierd and try to hide you in the shed all winter."