Casting the Bones.

[Carnath-Emory]

The hour is quiet and bitingly cold -- which is to say that it suits the day's business very well indeed. So that she's taken herself to these offices on account of it, leaving tall Hrimfax to linger darkly at the building's edge. Some few of those here may recognise that beast; they surely keep a cautious distance.

And inside there is some quiet talk, some quiet exchange of question and reply. That the Governor is presently occupied, which news meets with no displeasure on Ariane's part. That he is aware of the matter regarding which she's arrived here; that of course, she is content to wait, in a chair right...

Here.

[Cinnabar]

A short while passes, the Governor presumably in some quite involved meeting or other for the time being; some span of minutes rather than hours, though, so that before too long has passed a young boy in a Constabulary grey tabard is ducking a bow to the swordswoman and inviting her to follow.

It's a path that she's trod before, along corridors and up stairs, finally ending in front of the door to the High Constable's office, from which he also performs his duties as Governor. The door's open, and the runner bobs another bow to Ariane Emory a few feet short of it before hurrying off to his next errand.

Inside, the Governor puts the finishing words to some piece of paperwork or other, then sets down his pen at the sound of footsteps from outside. And waits.

[Carnath-Emory]

Oh, it's all of it familiar ground, and they're some of them familiar faces; she hasn't yet taken the liberty of greeting any of them by name, but not on account of ignorance. In any case, the wait's far less than she'd anticipated, and soon enough it's to her feet once more, and through a network of stairs and corridors, so that she arrives at the Governor's door with the long coat swirling loose and lively at her heels.

The Governor's door, except that what she visits truly is the High Constable. Sometimes a woman must wonder at the feel of that transition...

But there she enters in any case, loosening scarves from her throat but not removing a one of them, and with a spread of fingers afterwards, to display their emptiness. No bottles today, no dainty little cakes; some wry twist of smile concedes that this is perhaps no loss.

When she pauses here, it is to ease the door gently closed behind her, and on turning back about:

"Not yet.. known, this matter of Vraal, of a corpse," she explains.

[Cinnabar]

Calomel himself is rising in greeting, a broader grin at that show of empty hands, and perhaps it's just as well; vile liquor, for all that the cakes were pleasant enough. There's a moment in which he might have spoken to offer tea, to ready the kettle and cups and blends of herbs, but the swordswoman's words give him pause; a lifting of brows instead, head tilted curiously. An ambiguous greeting at best, and one which requires some translation before he can respond.

"Not widely, no. I'd rather not grant the Violet Dawn a martyr of their own." Doing what he can to undermine the cult, to deny it the food of Belief, to deny the citizenry of Myrken Wood the desperation and fear that drives them to such sects. But then there's another meaning, another interpretation that has him regarding the swordswoman more closely.

Not known, she says. Not witnessed, not confirmed, at least not by the evidence of her own eyes. Hm.

"You doubt me, hm?" A small smile to defuse what might be an accusation, a shrug to reinforce that. To doubt is... natural, in Myrken Wood, where monsters may seem to die and lie dead and yet live once more. To doubt is reasonable, and this is the worst that Myrken Wood offers: that destruction of all certainties, all that might be relied upon; even the certainty of death is no longer so adamant.

"I doubt it myself, to be honest."

[Carnath-Emory]

An ambiguous greeting, and not quite as pleasant as she might have wished for; hadn't her student described something like this to her this very morning? But there's no help for it at all, except to offer some wry edge of a smile in return, and reckon that maybe that might almost count for an apology. There are seats here, and she'd rested her hands against the back of one for a while; now, 'coat and all, she sets herself down onto its edge.

"As well. The Order, it was more than Belief which fed them. Faces, names; people who became ideas, mn? Better that the Dawn's is simply ... gone."

So speaks the atheist, victim of cults, breaker of cults, in every way unqualified to hold an opinion on the matter, except that those very cults had instilled one into her. To this day, she wears their tenet upon the skin of her back...

"But -- no. You mistake me; it is not you that I doubt. We speak of this before, of Thadius who would not die; of Baie, who might not perish as he ought. I carved a wing from that Vraal's body, and both we burned it, and I wonder if his corpse lacks it still. I think..."

Here is some slim smile, some fold of the hands.

"I think very likely it does not."

[Cinnabar]

"Mm. Well, we have his body, and he is recognisable as he appeared in life - the brand on his brow, hm? Quite distinctive. As for what to do with it, though, that's a delicate decision." The swordswoman takes a seat, and the Governor resumes his with a nod, holding a palm towards the ceiling as if to weigh up some thought.

"On the one hand, present them with a body and they have a martyr, one who was alive, then died, and whose memory now feeds their faith." A death, a grievance around which to rally their anger and dissent. He shrugs and holds up his other hand likewise.

"On the other hand if we leave things unresolved, leave them with no news at all other than that their teacher was here once and now is not, and they have a legend. One who was alive, may be alive still and will be forever. One who brought them wisdom, then departed, and will return when they have greatest need of him. Not the dead meat and revered memory of one who was ended, but a symbol, a hope, undying and unkillable." He moves his hands as if they were scales balancing the two ideas. After a moment of such, they fold neatly on the desk in front of him.

"They must know he is dead. But they must not see him as some glorious hero, some martyr, some beautiful and immaculate transcendent being" His expression is sour at those words. "slain above the rooftops of Myrken doing battle with the Fiend, a champion for their faith that they might revere and adore. Fortunately the confrontation took place while they were all in the Temple, so none of them saw the Ashfiend and Vraal fighting. That makes our job easier in that regard." A thin, mirthless smile at that. Small mercies, indeed.

"They will see him as meat and bone, corrupt and corruptible as any other. Probably found in some alleyway, gnawed on by rats and stray dogs. His body will be harder to venerate when it is flyblown and stinking. People prefer to worship pretty things." A level grey gaze upon the swordswoman's own, as the High Constable describes these indignities with which one might kill Belief.

"The wings, though, we shall have to do something about. Yes, both of them."

[Carnath-Emory]

The morning had been bitterly cold, surprising even the swordswoman's northern sensibilities. It had given way to a lesson walled on the one side with old anger, on the other with outright bewilderment, the most of it courtesy of a student who'd arrived with surprises of his own. Which is to say that the unexpected had been the day's theme, and it continues in this very hour -- for Calomel's approach to her question is nothing that Ariane had thought to anticipate.

The swordswoman is an attentive student to his explorations, this being a role they've traded back and forth during all the months of their friendship. A compact thing upon her seat, lent slightly forward, and with some thin and inevitable frown near the end of it all.

"So you mean to break their Belief," she concludes. "You mean to leave them with remorse and ruined hopes. Better than fighting them, mn? Better than frighting them." And this last with some thin chuckle of sound, a concession to her efforts of a year and more ago.

"I agree. They must know he is dead, must know that ... wings and glory and blizzard, they were all a deceit. And it is so important, this thing, for he meant ... he meant to make them over in his own likeness. Or something like it; they would become what they worshipped, he said. So." Eased back in her seat then, palms for her knees, some wry smile for her lips. "Break them cleverly. However..."

There is a balance to be sought here, there is some concern for phrasing. She takes her time with it -- as Calomel might expect; a godless woman must necessarily experience some difficulty with the concepts they discuss. In the end, it proves simpler to say the least of it.

"I ... must also know that he is dead. I must be certain of it, and I think that this must be done soon. Very soon. And for me, as you know, a corpse does not suffice."

[Cinnabar]

The Constable-Governor nods, smiling slightly as she grasps his intent.

"Precisely so. To take their Belief, their imaginings, their faith in the Violet Dawn, and to murder it. To bring them disillusionment." He is a cold, callous, calculating thing at this pronouncement; cruel, in his plans to destroy the hope which had sustained these people in their time of hardship.

"It will be arranged. I shall call for some of them, ones held in high regard by their number, to view the body. It is... it is an unlovely thing. Some story, perhaps, of it being found in a ditch, or an alley, or on a midden-heap, abandoned and unmourned. Then, when they have seen this evidence of their teacher's ruin, it will be burned, the ashes mixed with blessed water and placed somewhere safe." A firm nod at that, grey eyes keen on the swordswoman.

"Will that suffice?"

[Carnath-Emory]

Cruel, which is itself interesting; hadn't she levelled that very charge at Vraal? And not without some measure of hypocrisy involved, as he had surely known, he who'd not denied a single word of it. But that was long ago, weeks ago, whereas here and now...

Here and now, her business is very much one of corpses and the inspection of theml. Is absolutely grounded in such memories as twice-dead Thadius, as untouchable Baie, who'd eaten down wound after wound as if he were passionate for them.

"It does," answers this very cautious woman, she with her grim features and her satisfied eyes. "It does very well. Let them learn futility; let that Vraal know a lasting death; let it all be very soon -- have you a day for this pyre? I mean to be there for it. Have you the means to hold him until then? For I -- "

Pauses a moment then, with eyes for her knees, for the hands set neatly atop them. Some quiet, considering period of this, before she lifts her gaze to his again.

"I was to safekeep that urn from harm, as he took himself to slay Vraal. And now he is done with that business, or imagines that he is; myself, I am not convinced, I cannot be, until that wreck is given to flame. You understand this." He must. "He comes to me, to fetch that urn back from my hands; on the night of your dance, he told me this."

It is a considerable revelation. Of course, given present circumstances, it might pale in comparison to -- oh, so many other things. Channelers and walls and murderous paths...

"So. He is to come. He is to reclaim what is precious to him. But now so many die, and now there is this uncertainty of Vraal's state, and -- do you see? I am ... unsure."

Guide me. Add something to this.

[Cinnabar]

"He is held. As I say, the body is to all appearances quite dead. It looks like a corpse, it stinks like a corpse, we have not been able to find anything to indicate that it is not, in fact, a corpse." A slight smile at this, this litany of exactly how corpselike the dead body is.

"The body can be burned once it has been viewed. It can be viewed as soon as the cultists can be brought in to view it. It can be done today. By nightfall, Vraal's body can be so much dust and ash."

And then there is this news of... a different sort of ash. Or at least, a different urn of ashes. There's a frown at that news of the Ashfiend's warning, that he would come for what is his; some surprise that he warned her of such, but more because she had not told him, being a woman of such strange loyalties, such strange priorities; some disquiet there also, mingled with stifled anger and regret at not having put an end to this whole affair long since.

"He trusted you, to give you that urn - to keep it safe from Vraal, perhaps. But what did he intend, when he handed it to you? That you were to hold it while he murdered his way across Myrken once more? Did he expect for you to do nothing, make no objection to this new bloodshed, to stand by and allow it?" A question in his gaze, unspoken but clear enough: did the Ashfiend intend this, and more importantly, did Ariane?

"I have not pursued him as actively as I might have done, of late - concerns over Vraal, concerns over Burel, these things required attention and in the meanwhile the Fiend was quiescent, seemingly inactive. I hoped maybe we had... reached him, had perhaps weakened the Ashfiend in favour of Penroll. So a truce, of sorts. But now... this." A hand waved to papers on his desk, reports and analyses on the ghoul's trail of murder and abduction across Myrkentown.

"Twenty-one people missing, presumed dead, houses invaded, whole families butchered or gone. We have tried to bring him redemption, we have tried to find Penroll beneath the Fiend, and what has come of it? A score of people dead or disappeared. A score of people who are dead because I hoped, because I tried to trust in him, because I thought he could be saved. Because I thought him worth saving." There is guilt there, regret that pains because his responsibility is to keep the people of Myrken safe, and he has failed.

"I am sick of it, Ariane. I cannot do what I should be doing while such horrors roam unchecked. I would see it ended. I would see him ended." Carefully contained fury here, grey gaze glittering silver.

"No more pity, no more sympathy, no more appeals to who he was. He has not a scrap of remorse in his entire being, and we can have none for him. He must be stopped."

[Carnath-Emory]

This is a welcome litany, which fact the Governor will read in the easy set of her lips, the slim edge of pleasure which quirks their corners. It cannot satisfy quite so well as would viewing the thing with her own eyes might, as shattering the thing with her own hands might -- but they have entered into demanding circumstances, and these inspire compromise.

"'By nightfall'," echoes the swordswoman, with a small, firm nod. She with her strange priorities, with her particular loyalties, with too many influences -- so that it had seemed reasonable, at the time, to say nothing at all of that very frightening encounter. But there is nothing strange at all in the way that thin colour feathers across her cheekbones, nothing strange in the slight lift of her chin at what follows Calomel's assurances.

"Glenn Burnie asks me this thing, mn? He watched as that 'Fiend placed her urn into my hands, and he heard what I said to him of it, and that morning next he asked me what I intended. He asked me of my sympathies. So. I give you the answer I gave him, yes?"

Having heard these things. Having heard tell of the 'Fiend's murderous progress through Myrkentown. Having spent a difficult half-hour in conversation with that student, with the Governor's second -- this being the only convenient term that she has for Burnie, whose actual title doesn't seem to suit. There is some subtle edge of dignity to the straightening of her back, the very faintest taint of cold bitterness.

Neizbezhnost Raskayanie', the Dauntless term such things as these. Regretful necessities; the necessary quality of regret.
"I mean him to be ended. By my hand; by yours; by the blade of any Constable you care to name. The hand which holds that killing blade does not interest me as much as that it does ... kill.

"I do not forget Foggy Bottom. I do not forget the -- I hold Sera Kaczmarek for my friend; she has taken me home and I do not forget that, and were it not so, still I would reckon those fires intolerable." Unbearable. "I forget no part of the harm which the 'Fiend has wrought, and I will see it ended.

"I cannot understand what his business is now; I do not pretend to. Glenn Burnie, he reckons it concerns Elysia; me, I hear talk of Heath and wonder if he kills an army with which to march there. We burn our dead, mn? There would be no other way. I cannot imagine what he expects of me, except that -- he explains why -- "

A slip of paper is produced, folded over and worn; fingertips hover lightly just atop it.

"-- and that he will have it returned. Did you reckon redemption possible, for what he's done?"

And here the head must lift again, must draw its eyes from that folded letter and towards the Governor's own. Some small, quiet tilt of smile moves her lips then, some inclination of the head; perhaps this is actually gratitude.

"I did not. Not redemption; not absolution. I do ... not. But I do not regret hoping for it, and I am glad that you did."

[Cinnabar]

Her answer is comforting, reassuring, this list of atrocities remembered and murders unforgotten. He nods, then, satisfied for now.

"I had thought, perhaps, it might be possible to end the Fiend and restore Trevellyan Penroll, to reclaim him. I am a believer in second chances, hm? Perhaps I am a fool for it." A wry smile at this, to the woman who had bargained for a pardon, a fresh start, who knows more than well enough the meaning of beginning anew. The smile fades quickly, however.

"No longer. Not for the Ashfiend, in any case - he has had his chance, even after giving us reason after reason to seek his destruction. We have tried to, to aid him in becoming who he was. To save him. but we have failed, and innocents have died for it. So, the only recourse is to put an end to him, as you say." Cold eyes, the grey of bleak winter skies, treacherous ice.

"I care not what his actions work towards. He murders, he abducts, he strikes against those who have done nothing to warrant it, he pays no heed to the lives he takes. That is enough to warrant a stop to whatever he plans." A glance for that piece of paper, reaching out to slide it across his desk towards him, opening it flat with dextrous fingertips. A pale, unblinking gaze as he reads the words inscribed there, a slight deepening of his frown. Eventually, though, he looks up again, folding the note over and sliding it back across the desk.

"That is useful to know. We may have need of it, when the time comes." Thoughts of traps, of lures and bait come to mind. The possibility of capturing the Ashfiend, of bringing him to a battleground of their choosing, rather than waiting for him to strike. A reclamation of the offensive. A betrayal indeed.

"Meanwhile, if you wish to look upon Vraal's body before the cultists do, that can be arranged."

[Carnath-Emory]

"A second chance is not a redemption. It does not absolve." He had told her this himself, four days before. With every urgent caution murmured at her ear, and perhaps they'd even been necessary. Only time can determine this. "But even if it did, this would mark you for no fool. Just kinder than I, mn?"

Some edge of sardonic grin at the corner of her mouth, then; some inclination of the head, as if in small salute of the notion. It must suffer slightly at the sound of what follows, however, must begin to diminish to the tune of salvation, of failure and innocence, and into the midst of it all she offers:

"Do you know Glenn Burnie's other notion? For he'd wondered if they were themselves cultists, if the 'Fiend simply meant to put an end to the whole of Vraal's work. No wond'rous savior at their midst, no god for them to emulate -- "

Folded paper is slipped neatly from beneath her fingers; it has the whole of her gaze, and where prideful colour had flooded her features before, now there is some subtle absence of it. Of any life at all. She watches, a quiet thing again; watches what is hers, but watches what is his, as well. Those angular features, they with their knit of frown between the brows, the unblinking attention of grey eyes. Cheeks that might colour, a mouth which might move to shape words, to shape anger or delight or any thing at all. Only when that slip of paper is slid back towards her does she exhibit any other motion at all: fingertips touch down upon the edge of it, slide it gently back towards her, lingering upon its face after.

"'When the time comes'," she echoes then; some subtle nod, some searching glance for those features. "Very ... soon, I think. Arrange what you can; I'll be glad of the chance to ... know. You have my gratitude for it."

[Cinnabar]

"It's a kindness that has cost lives." He grimaces at that, clearly not entirely agreeing with her diagnosis that he is no fool. That other thing, that idea of Glenn's, though, has him blinking, and frowning.

"I shall have the possibility looked into. It... I am not sure of it. Vraal's cultists were not so subtle and hidden as the Baie's, hm? With their farming and their schools and orphanages and marks on their foreheads, hardly subtle at all. Though that said," There's a hint of bitter humour there, some sour twist of lips to accompany it. "if they were subtle enough, perhaps we wouldn't know of them. But down that path lies unending suspicion and mistrust, with Coriolanus Helstone visible in the far distance." Unkind, certainly, but it's been an unkind few months. Still. Arrangements. Preparations.

"Very soon indeed. And if you want to view what's left of Vraal before we send for the cultists, that can be done." A firm nod, and he moves to stand.

"Now."

[Carnath-Emory]

It's a kindness that has cost lives.

It is absolutely possible that the Governor had not meant those words to haunt her. It is absolutely certain that they must. It is a Question, this balance of need against integrity, and for this one she has no answer yet, none at all.

"Down that path," she replies instead, "I do not follow you." And this with some subtle quirk to the corners of her mouth that might have been amusement, that might have been more than that -- for a phrase that was less like humour than a promise, an implication of long-ago things. To her feet then, in tandem, with time enough to settle the sit of some slim satchel against her hip, and wind a scarf back about her throat. Just that much, and...

Be sure, she would like to say, to absolutely urge, and the satisfaction in that is knowing that she need not. Meet this with care, she wants very much to advise, but hasn't that always been his way? Since those early, ambitious days, when a newcomer had seen a space, and very deftly filled it. So that instead she is turning for that door, and pausing short to sweep a bare palm towards it.

Lead me.