A Missive Received at Calomel Hall.

[Cinnabar]

Calomel might not know the extent of her injuries, how bitter her fight with the Governor's man had been, but he could make a very good guess. And in the face of that need, what sort of person would he be to begrudge a friend his help for the sake of a voice briefly raised, to force her to make her own painful way to the kitchen, or to go without? Hardly humane.

Talk turns to the relative importance of dogs and children, and that has him shrugging lightly. "A parent would say so, yes. The Hound would disagree. That causes difficulties, hm? Perhaps the Hound has his own children to consider."

That pause is well-noted, the moment of realisation, and even by the time she strives to keep her thoughts closed he's had a very good glimpse. He nods slightly as she lists what the assassin knew, or at least what he admitted to, a glance for the gleam upon her skin; interesting.

"He fears you'll spoil the Governor's plans. Which means he knows enough of those plans and enough of you to see that they're not compatible." Exploring the idea, laying out the different possibilities, counting them off on slender fingers.

"So: The Governor has plans, and you don't feature in them at all. You've been absent for a time, are not thought to be on the board at all, which means he hasn't accounted for whatever you may do. Your actions may disrupt things. You're an unpredictable element. The Governor's man is tasked with keeping things predictable.

"Or: The Governor has plans, and his man agrees with their methods but knows that you will not. So rather than see the Governor swayed to your less expedient methods - he knows that the Governor, your student, will listen to you - he seeks to turn you aside or end you entirely.

"Or: The Governor has plans, but they rely on your deliberate exclusion. He knows that you won't stand for whatever he has in mind, and will work against him. His man knows this too, and carries out his master's will even if not directly ordered to meet you a half-mile from Myrken's border." Three options, each with a different set of assumptions, each unpleasant to a different degree.

"In the first instance, you might approach the Governor and seek a place for yourself in his plans. In the second, you might approach the Governor and endeavour to sway him. In the third, you must oppose him."

His hand curls around the wine cup again, taking a slow sip, time enough for the swordswoman to consider the options.

"Or the Governor's man lies. Perhaps he is a wicked, selfish man who finds benefit in being so close to the Governor; he does what he feels best to secure his position, and Burnie is an unsuspecting saint. The assassin knows that your return means his wickedness will soon be exposed, so he seeks to end you for entirely self-serving reasons." See? A perfectly reasonable explanation, one which requires no fear of treachery or betrayal! A lone actor, a single villain, and his defeat means a Happy Ending for all concerned.

"How was he when you left him?"

[Carnath-Emory]

"When last I saw that man, they were fetching him to the Rememdium lawn - with a note pinned to his shirt and breathing far easier than I."

A resentful tone at that last, from a woman who shrugs one-shouldered and drinks from a mug of bitter, numbing tea because she must. Still... "He's suffered some about the ribs, I think; perhaps his spine. Not enough to cripple, but he went right through a table like - " BAM! slaps her hand down onto the bench "- like that." Oh, this small, sharp smile. "And then - I think the table had caught fire, or else the floor; everything burned - I think by then he meant to kill us both - "

And she'll pause on that indrawn breath; concludes this very brief account with a shake of her head. "So. Better for him than I, mn? But on this I mean to question D'Rael; I'm to the Rememdium soon enough, unless your sera Cambree has some holistic for burns." The tone rather hopes. An eagerness for that surgeon wars with a reluctance to ride at all. There are other reluctances as well: Calomel has bent his mind to analysing the problems of an assassin's unknowable motives, and rightly so - but to approach this is to return to territory through which she stumbles, clumsy and ill-suited. Oh, a woman must really want for company like Feuls', in moments like this; the sort that appreciates terrible pleasure of matching steel with a man of that assassin's skill, the pure satisfaction of a body hitting the ground, of blood and iron and fire...

Ah. A sip of this bitter anesthetic in salute to your memory, Jons. You bastard.

"If he lies, then - he lies, and we benefit nothing from speculating on it. Yes? If I murder him tomorrow then I have done my student a service; if he lives for months? Those months will be long enough to unravel his deceits - and then he dies." It's not difficult to speak like this about a person for whom she holds some particular regard. Not when she doesn't quite believe a word of it. "So. He tells me that I will turn his applecart. Do you understand this? for I surely do not. But the rest...

"It argues with what you say. He tells me that he does not share all of the Governor's goals - but that they become his because he is the Governor's man. You know how this is?" He must. He'd employed an entire Constabulary. "He says that to - do Myrken, to manage Myrken, there must - "

Suddenly, this precipice. She is flung onto a cusp of decision so abruptly that it's stolen the breath right out of her throat.
There is no time to think. No time to do anything but act.

" - be some cost. A fourth thing to consider: this is the Governor's man, his good and faithful servant. Steadfast, when everyone else had abandoned. This good, devoted man, he has nursed his Governor back from the very edge of madness. He has comforted and soothed and now his Governor is capable to manage Myrken - a task that few have ever dared, mn? And fewer yet with any success. This time, though." Fingertips loose upon the mug, eyes engaged. "This one time, it look like there might be some chance. This time, the Governor - he is done things which work. But he is fragile. Yes? As Lenore was, when we wrested her back to us. As Helstone was," and in a sudden, swift scrawl, his name is added to her page. "And this faithful servant, he will not risk Myrken's prosperness and his employer's fragile mind by allowing ... intrusions. Old memories. Reminders of what he has suffered. For if his Governor can do this for Myrken alone, without the likes of me at all -

Then Cinnabar, I am simply an unnecessary risk."

[Cinnabar]

Brows lift in some surprise at the description of that fight - or perhaps only at mention of how her foe was left at the Rememdium afterwards, presumably after she'd hauled him halfway across Myrken.

"D'rael's no longer doctor at the Rememdium, not for some while. They've a new man in, I hear." Or so the nurse had mentioned while applying salves to his bruises. "I'll ask Cam what she can do, though. Burns, a wounded shoulder - anything else? A little something here, perhaps?" A flick of fingers to the sides of his face, mirroring where her own is hidden by carefully-combed hair.

"Upset the applecart. He likens Burnie's plan for Myrken to a grocer's wagon carefully piled with fruit - and thinks you'd tip it over to make a damnable mess." He nods, though, at how a loyal servant's aims must come to match those of his master. Again that matter of cost, unspecified but dreadful enough that the Governor's man could see no way the swordswoman would tolerate it.

And now a new possibility, that of a Governor still recovering, still brittle. Could that in some way explain their stilted meeting? That conversation, so desperately short of - not simply warmth, for hot fury or chill resentment might also have been expected - short of passion of any sort? Only that clear gaze and efficient demeanour, like trying to find purchase on a wall of glass. Could that be it? A barrier to protect still-tender wounds? Considering it carefully, wine tasted more to buy room for thought than out of any real thirst, his gaze meeting hers but also looking through her for a time.

"If that was so, wouldn't any figure from his past pose a similar threat? What makes you such a risk?" And now it comes to a difficult juncture, questions he entirely expects her to refuse, but asks anyway.

"What sort of memories? What suffering? Specifically."

[Carnath-Emory]

D'Rael no longer staffs the Rememdium? This is a blow. This is a real and unexpected loss: an ache low in the gut, a dimming of colourless eyes. And what can she say but nothing at all? With some helpless flick of the fingers, some tepid dismissal of it all as she nods her assent. "Is he skilled? I'll - I didn't know what to do for the burns," except for the bandages he's already seen, which might themselves have been inadvisable. "They're not so much. The shoulder is trouble. It's - an excellent cut, fine and clean, but it went right through, and - " Some tilt to the lips; for a swordsman like Calomel, the implications are clear. "I can't best this man one-armed. He's ... really quite good. And he knows not to close on me now, he won't try that a second time."

But his hand is shaping an unmistakable gesture. They come to that now. A flick of his fingers. A lift of her chin -

Someone's sewn it closed for her. Clearly, else they wouldn't be having this conversation now. It begins just inside the hairline, draws a coarse trajectory down over the cheekbone and deeply into the corner of her mouth. Someone's really laboured over that sewing, and the best that can be said of it is that the swordswoman doesn't have to hold her face closed anymore.

"A little something," she echoes; the eyes are steady, are level upon his own - which can see why her accent's been particularly troublesome today, why her best attempts at smiling have been so markedly lopsided. One side of her mouth doesn't move at all, doesn't or can't, even when the other makes for some tiny, wry grin. He is allowed a good, long look, this once-Constable - and then two fingertips will gently curve the long hair back into its place. Even monsters can be merciful sometimes.

"I always make a mess, Cinnabar. He knew that, too. Did Glenn Burnie ever tell you how he bought his lessons? He must have. A man was missing. I did not know where to begin to look - but I knew a man who could map anything." The hand upon this mug, how it trembles; outright shakes, until she's tightened her fingers to crushing point. Good ceramic does not yield. "He named his price: the thing I'd always denied him, the thing I'd vowed never to do again. Young Glenn Burnie...." the tone is fierce with its affection, warm and grim and grieving. "He knew there was no price I would not pay."

The wine is really very necessary, even though this first sip does not banish ghosts.

"One hour. Every morning. For three months and then perhaps for longer. A condition: his discretion. Another: that hour has room for swords and nothing else." Some soft, humourless sound. "We'd broken that condition within the month. What he told me was everything - or nearly so. Things. Himself. There were things I would not ask. There was nothing he would not ask - or very little, and sometimes I even answered him." Sometimes. Often. And throughout this whole conversations the implications of this have shaken her. "Every day, Cinnabar. Sometimes for an hour, sometimes for several. Every day, Cinnabar, for years."

[Cinnabar]

"A fine surgeon, from what I've been told. The Governor's man is in good hands." A small smile for that, though it's quickly lost as she describes being run through; that damage done to her face, though, is rewarded with a hissed breath between bared teeth. Worse than he'd expected, which is probably a credit to her resolve. To his credit he doesn't look away.

"I'll ask Cambree to bring some things." Something for burns, something for a deep wound, and and for a shallower cut that will stuff leave an impressive scar. Perhaps less so, with the proper salves. All that need be said on the matter, in any case; no need to dwell overmuch on those hurts, as they've both spent time enough dealing with them.

"I know some of his life - in broad strokes. A very particular map, hm?" A particularly strange map. "Constantly finding himself in damned places, and fleeing them. Myrken being the first where he chose to stay." The only place, in fact. Brows lift slightly - does this agree with what she knows of the young man? Certainly it's the barest outline, but he suspects that's more than the Governor's shared with most.

"So. It's fair to say that there's very little you don't know about him, and he knows more than most about you." Histories. Motivations. Victories. Failures. Strengths. Flaws. "So if you found his methods wanting you'd know how best to appeal to him - what points to push upon to be sure that he'd listen." Where his wounds linger deepest, where old scars guard still-aching hurts.

"And that's why the assassin sought you out, hm? His master is still fragile, brittle. And he fears that you know precisely where to strike to make him break." A steady gaze for the woman, though one that grows gradually more distant, more calculating; a pause that stretches out as he considers, weighing up what he knows of her, what they've discussed here and at other times; a silent and dispassionate evaluation. A slow frown, eyes narrowing as the moments crawl past, until at last he must shake his head.

"I can't tell."

[Carnath-Emory]

That she is here at all is a credit to her resolve - or an unspoken indication of how deeply that encounter had unsettled her. Guards at Darkenhold's gates. A knife at her belt. And no sword at all, but the telltale glint of metal at her wrist that suggests one could be fetched - very quickly indeed. And a woman not without some sense of vanity; the curve of her dark hair, the way in which her face will be smothered for a time when she lifts the mug again. That hiss of his breath, after all... But this, too, will not last.

"This - was good fortune. Really," and this helpless chuckle, lopsided but not without real amusement. "He'd intended it for my throat. Or he'd intended it to reposition me, but I'd already begun to advance - at speed, and - as you said. A mess." Oh, old soldiers and their endless tales of war; Calomel is surely familiar with such habits, can surely forgive this misplaced laughter. In any case, his words have a sobering effect. His analysis clearly does: this is a heavy silence which hangs between them, the consequence of difficult words and a woman's discretions.

"Myrken has... kept him. Yes. It needn't have, but he chose - mm. As you say." Which is nothing more than an echo of Calomel's own description, but this is nothing which she can embellish, nothing which she can add to at all. Mutual discretion had made everything possible, and it is nothing that she will violate now. Especially not now. What had the man said? A defiling of sacred urns?

This one is hers.

"If I found his methods wanting," she's confirmed at some point, and: "If it were right to interfere at all. I am not government, Cinnabar. I do not intend to be." That, but only that - because these are difficult words which he speaks, words which she would soon hear turned towards cultists and madmen than her student. Than Glenn Burnie, with his serious eyes and his eager determination. And in their wake she is a silent thing again, but one which has fallen beneath a scrutiny with which she has some familiarity. Renne's silent, scorching examinations. An architect's gentler eyes. This, now - from which she does not flinch; which she weathers with intermittent sips from the one mug, and a chin slightly lifted as if in mute defiance of all a man's considerations. And when he shakes his head, when he speaks this fragment of sound:

"What. Say the words."

[Cinnabar]

"Whether you would." The moment has passed, so he shrugs slowly as if to loosen stiff shoulders, sitting back from the table a little. "Break him, I mean. Not that you couldn't, not that you don't have the ability, if you chose to wield it."

I would kill that dog."But I cannot say whether you would wield it."

Here is a line I will not cross.He reaches for the bottle, refilling his glass carefully before speaking again. Attention for that task, though there is the occasional glance for the swordswoman's features, something like a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"I can guess. I can imagine ways it'd play out, in that moment. I can see you making that choice, a few words that turn him to wreckage. But I can equally see you not. And I'd not be willing to stake a wager on either." A sip of wine, one finger uncurling from around the cup towards her, almost admonishing. "That's unusual."

And is that not, in part, why he so enjoys these conversations? As grim as they invariably become.

"It's also dangerous, given what he knows. If he's as his man claims, willing to do whatever's necessary for Myrken Wood; and if you found his methods absolutely wanting, to the point where you would interfere; if he realises you are an obstacle to his plans, then he will not hesitate.

"As you taught him: he must win."

[Carnath-Emory]

How unusual. How unlikely, this deft analysis of a swordswoman who has strived to make herself unknowable. There's something startled in the sometime blink of her eyes, something uncertain in the set of her mouth. But in time it has resolved into some set of wry, wry amusement, into a press of the lips that permits her no words at all. It must be something else entirely, instead: her hand having at that quill, a dip of ink; for a time, Cinnabar's words sound against a backdrop of scratched paper.

"That's - "

She is a writer impatient with her own meagre skills; he'll know this almost immediately. Haphazard vowels, uneven structure, and clearly there's so little inclination to remedy either of these things; haste makes it impossible.

"That's quite - good."

As he approaches a conclusion, a lift of her head fixing the clear-eyed gaze back upon him, plainly considering. The mouth begins to shape something cutting; considers that as well, and condemns it to silence. How wrong, after all, how terribly and utterly wrong to invite the man to her home and invite precisely such speculations - only to respond with an attack when he speculates too near to the truth? Wrong. And, in this company, unnecessary, so that she has schooled the hostility from her lips and turned this page around to face him instead.

"Thank you." That, instead. "I didn't think you'd say ... that," and her smile is sudden, is helpless; is fierce and already lost, for she's turning now to unwind herself from that bench. A sunlit window is her destination, and hers is a cautious little journey. Anaesthetics only do so much. But the spirit yearns for sunlight, golden and warm and kind, and she will have it in ample supply when she reaches the windowsill; sunlight to banish what had infused her nerves as Calomel shaped his conclusions, as she, too, caught some glimpse of how this really might be resolved. A subtle thread of panic ....

"You're right. But you're kinder than I - " No. "Myrken has taught me to hesitate. This is good for Bea Kanaya, mn? Not so good when it's something - less harmless. But he knows this, Cinnabar. Don't forget that." In the days, the months ahead. "He knows that I will hesitate."

A measure of quietness. The view here demands it, the moment does. Glass and sparkling water and everywhere the world's become bright and green... "I don't know the names for what we grow here now. Some of them are 'ferns'; they've told me that much. Some of them may be fruits, but who'd dare try one until we're quite sure? Some are grasses, but their colour is strange. But what are their names? How do we make them to live? No-one knows. I suspect I'll drown them, trying.

"We won't speculate any further. Not as regards how my student may be managed, not as regards my student at all. It is too soon. Too soon by far. I live by that caution." That. There, before him.

I estimate the mind to be capable of such traps, that it is prone to such thoughts and movements as sometimes lead a one into misfortune.

[Cinnabar]

Quite good. And he's pleased with that reaction, cup lifted in jaunty salute, in thanks. Grey eyes for her features rather than the scratching quill, instead reading that thoughtful look and words left unsaid.

Only when the paper's turned for him to read does his gaze drop, scanning painfully-scribed letters in silence; then again, but slower, taking in not just words but meaning. Then he can only smile, rueful, head turning to follow her careful journey to the windowsill. Absently noting the difficulties of each step, how this part is spared more movement than necessarily, how that part is held as if anxious of further discomfort.

"What did you expect I'd say? That you do what is necessary? That you'd destroy your student - with whom you've shared so much - without a qualm, without a doubt?" He can only shake his head, fingertips straightening the piece of paper with its warning. So free of her usual idiosyncracies of spelling, that have at times required her letters to be read aloud before they can be understood. Something of especial meaning to the swordswoman, of considerable weight; something that has been deliberately remembered, diligently learned. And now shared.

Conversation turns to those plants, and he rises from the table, leaving the paper where it is for now. Leaving that cup as well, hands instead folding loosely behind his back.

"I'm sure Cambree can point out the ones she knows; perhaps books for the rest?" A kinder topic, and the glass-filtered sunshine is welcome. Warming, soothing, pressing back the shade of the room, the conversation. "Mostly I suspect it's a matter of making them feel at home. And paying attention to them, day to day."

Silence shared for a time, listening; faint sounds from outside, faint birdsong from out in the gardens. Finally, a nod towards the table, the paper, the note. So used to Myrken Wood, in which so few things are as they first seem; so easy to see harm in every shadow, a monster behind every face. And, having learned this to be so often true, it becomes easy to lash out in fear, to strike first because he who hesitates is lost.

But sometimes a shadow is merely a shadow; behind a face, a person.

"Thank you for that."

[Carnath-Emory]

"Yes." Glancing lightly back across her shoulder, with no malice at all; with simple certainty. "That is what I expected. Haven't I done as much before - " but with a flick of the hand sets that aside, moves it beyond consideration. He doesn't know, after all; who could? How a swordswoman had broken a cultist, how in the grip of utter vulnerability she'd left Michael Renne screaming, taught him to fear more than just his god. "I do ... what is necessary. When there's no other thing left, when all of the better choices are gone. Yes?" Yes. "Atrocities. Mine are seldom bloodless."

Hah. That for your portents of doom, black-clad assassin.

"There is one other thing, Cinnabar." It's possible to sit on this broad windowsill, and she's done that now, hoisting herself onto the smooth, dark stone so that the leg may hang unburned. It eases; leaves the woman with her face upturned into sunlight, eyes closed against the bright of it. "If it goes very badly - if that man is right and I have brought this ruin upon every thing - there is a place for you here." A sidelong glance, eyes slightly squinting. "Cambree. The children." A significant concession. "These walls are sound. We are not easily breached - if it should come to that. And I do not think there will be such - disaster."

Excepting for in the respect that it has always been her role to consider the very worst; to anticipate cataclysm.

"I would like that. If she would inspect these things for me, and when there is some time for it, mn? But Cinnabar, I confine fairy tales to our library. Ask young 'Nela Kaczmarek, who's been here already to fetch some," and this is sudden amusement; this is a small smile, crooked and delighted. "These plants, they are plants. Planted things. They do not care on attention unless it fetches them drink and good soil and - whatever else it may be that plants require.

"You will have care out there. Mn?" And her eyes are for that distant fountain; silver water, years-old recollections. "Although you know this, that I cannot imagine any much thing that might do you real harm." Pauses; turns a particular glance back towards that bruised face; the smile confesses that oversight, and: "Lasting harm," she amends. "And yet. Care. Yes?"

[Cinnabar]

"I'm not sure they should be counted as atrocity. Atrocities are by their nature needless - horror for its own sake, hm? You enact bloody necessities." As befits a weapon, as befits one who has seen so much of what Myrken has to offer. He steps closer to the window - not sitting on the windowsill, though, as that'd turn him from the window's warm light, or prove an inappropriate intimacy. Instead standing a few paces distant, relaxed, eyes undazzled by the sun.

That offer, though; it takes a moment's thought, a pause to consider what might drive things to such desperation. Some calculation, weighing what he knows, what he imagines. Offsetting for pride, giving weight to simple practicality. "He designed our hall as well, you know. Not to such a scale," Smiling, looking out upon gardens, fountain, courtyard, walls and towers. "but every bit as sound. It's home." A small fortress amid farmland, something that on a noble's estate might not even class as a folly. Inestimably precious to him.

But there are things - people who are vastly more so.

"Thank you."

On to talk of plants, gardening, more pleasant prospects by far, though that news of 'Nela's visit is interesting. A curious stroke of timing. And, well, yes. Fairy tales, and a deliberately deadpan glance for the swordswoman.

"Perhaps you've not been listening closely enough." Head tilted, hand cupped to his ear as if to heed the delicate strains of a garden so sorely mistreated. But no, he has to grin a moment after, and wave that hand to indicate the greenery beyond the window. "They've ways of showing. They wilt, or they fade, or they rot at the root, or any of a hundred things. Pay attention to that and they'll reward you. Eventually."

Calomel nods at that advice, though, following her gaze; perhaps, if the window were a magic looking-glass as in her library's fairy stories, they might see two similar figures out there; similar, younger, locked in a quite different conversation. Instead there's only memory, and the perspective of years.

"I do, every day. I can imagine some such things very easily indeed." Very real harm, very lasting. A glance, sidelong and touched with mischief.

"Maybe tomorrow you'll see why, hm?"

[Carnath-Emory]

"Bloody necessities." And see the care with which she shapes these words, that the phrase clearly pleases. "Perhaps. You know this word better than I do, mn? Its meaning, its - " A tiny shake of the head. "Perhaps one day you learn the northern tongue, and then we speak more easily, yes?" It's possible to laugh, then, as if their subject were something other than outrage and massacre. "I think it is not always so simple, so clean. Kill all those dogs to save that child, after all. Perhaps atrocities are by their nature needless - but that sometimes they are yet useful. I burn covens, Cinnabar. I maim cultists and I desecrate their corpses. Is this needless? May be there were some other way, some gentler way. Something that was not massacre.

"But no-one will ever suggest that my way was not effective."

But here arrives a moment in which the once-Governor demurs from the offer she'd once sworn never to make - long ago, when their circumstances were much different. This is not unexpected. It is not even entirely unwelcome. "I do know. There is a looking-glass which allows a glimpse of it, even from here; did you know? A little of the land, the colour of your roofs." Emerald glass, heavy brass; a cherished memento of terrible times. "Sturdy. You do as you must, mn? I do not doubt your capacity. 'Scale' - is for size? Hah! I tell you this thing, Cinnabar: that Darkenhold is too large for me. But for that I am too small for my sister's ambitions. You see? No, I suspect its scale is what it ought to be, even if today it serves most for turning coin into things, and things into a greater excess of coin - Farsiris," as if this should explain it all, "is really very good."

There'd been some talk of trade, these last two days.
She'd comprehended perhaps one word in three.

She can wave away his thanks, now - or perhaps his suggestions regarding the fine art of agriculture. "I fumble my way through your Common, and you' would have me learn this as well? This speaking with - no. No, I am not for things which are delicate and which must grow. Perhaps I must steal your Cambree away so often: each week, for she excels with what is young and fragile, I think. But - " a sobering glance, quiet and plain. "Do not mistake me. I consider you beyond harm; you. I know what you risk."

Who you risk.

[Cinnabar]

"Are you offering lessons?" A sidelong glance, only half-joking. No, not even that - interest piqued at the scent of a project. At the very least he might learn how to curse. "But a gentler way? For cultists? I'm not sure."

Thinking on the matter for a time, weighing the options - or perhaps simply recalling how he'd done so in the past.

"You can put them to the sword - quickly, perhaps with a flourish to discourage their brethren - and that is an end to their wickedness. Otherwise, what options exist to keep them from causing harm? You might imprison them until they expire - costly, and not without risks. Or you might seek a way to break their faith, rob them of whatever gives them hope or strength - time-consuming, unpleasant and unreliable." He shrugs, frowns, the idea vaguely distasteful. "Will they be of use to anyone afterwards? I very much doubt it.

"Your method works. The greatest good, the smallest cost." And that, apparently, is justification enough.

That offer of sanctuary is not entirely declined, she will note; while his home is precious, he is perfectly capable of being realistic, of putting necessity above sentiment, above pride. Calomel Hall was not built to the same specifications as Darkenhold - a comfortable manor house, sturdy and secure. Not an impregnable redoubt like Darkenhold. The looking-glass is news, however.

"Large, yes; you could make a town of it. Perhaps you'd do better to claim a smaller part, an Ariane-sized place? A tower or such. A refuge within a refuge." A place where one might escape the echoing emptiness of the stronghold, the vast halls and high ceilings. Beautiful, but somehow empty. Thinking back to that invitation, his tone is quiet when he next speaks. "If you find yourself in need, though - for any reason - you're every bit as welcome in our home. Even if the need is only for words, hm?" While they couldn't offer safety comparable to that within Darkenhold's walls, perhaps they might offer something else. Succour. Support. Warmth in a cold world.

"I'll be sure to tell Cam you said that. And I don't think she'd object to such visits, either. She's every bit as good with the hurt and weary."

Talk of his wife and her skills can't help but bring a light to his eyes, a lift to battered features of which he might not even be aware; he can only nod gently, quietly delighted by the swordswoman's words. Even the last, which prompts a firmer nod and fiercer grin.

"You know what I fight for."

[Carnath-Emory]

Lessons. A twinge; the tiniest thing. And something else, as well; a thing for which she has no word. Why hadn't she questioned Syl Duquesne on this years ago? On the way in which a thing will seem to happen over and again, so clearly and so potently that a woman begins to fear that she sees patterns where there is only coincidence. There ought to be a word for that. A word that is not, for instance, 'madness'.

But...

"Do you want - " she's begun, eyes for his eyes and for a moment not quite certain of him. Thinking to hear laughter in those words, the mouth had tightened into some wry amusement - but it relinquishes something now; it reconsiders. "Perhaps," she concedes then - slowly, now, eyes casual upon the landscape. "If you're mm - stern of courage. 'Doughty', my sister would say. For it's a dangerous pursuit, you know? The way we make our words. A man's likely to lose his tongue - " and her throat produces some morbid, ridiculous little gulp of sound; the grin is sudden. "Or so Syl would sometimes say, but then his language is so gentler. Aruthreddau," she murmurs, then, lilting and quiet. "Hanwylyd, - you see? Even the terrible things sound like music. Still," a glance. "If you like to suffer...."

And that is how there comes to be laughter between them, even when they must turn to darker things.

"Do you find this strange, Cinnabar? That you argue in favour of these things - "

a woman's thigh cracks like dry wood beneath the axe
the crossbow bolt, drilled through the corpse's gaping mouth, splintering vertebrae

" - for which, two years ago, I was begging a Governor's pardon. No, it's as you say: I could not have done differently. There was ever one other way, only one: that we had ended that Baie before he had begun to truly prey upon these people. Back at Townsedge. And even further: if we'd heeded O'Cynen, if we'd begun to hunt - but do you know, Cinnabar? That I say this thing, knowing that our Governor - as he is described to me - would surely agree with the immediate pursuit of a threat. A pursuit without limits. Cinnabar -

I don't know what will come of this."

This is not a woman much given to making confessions. Calomel knows this already, and he will find the proof of what it costs her in the exhalation which follows this one. In the lean of her head back against the glass, and the moment in which her eyes fall closed and stay that way. A heartbeat's measure and more must pass before she stirs herself at all.

"No. We do not dwell on phantoms, on imaginings, mn?" A tilt of her chin back towards the page she'd left upon the tabletop. "That is its warnings. We do not dwell on things which we do not know, but only imagine - lest they grow larger than we, escape our imaginings, stir us into action and thought that is contrary to what is warranted; that the real matters might never have warranted at all. No. You, Cinnabar Calomel - " sudden amusement " - you do not have worrying for me. Yes? I have a place here; it is small and it is mine, and a training-room besides, mn? It suits. For do you know? My needs - are very few."

[Cinnabar]

Doughty, she says, and his raised brows might inquire as to whether she took a blow to the head in her fight with the Governor's man, for her memory to be so poor. Still, her grin is readily mirrored, and his shrug is theatrically nonchalant.

"You'd advise some training in advance, then? Perhaps scrub my tongue with gravel to make it tougher. Swill jenever to build callouses in my throat. That's what it's for, hm?" Suddenly the vile beverage makes sense!

As to her question, he can only answer after some thought, and even then obliquely.

"Had the Governor known what you knew, had Myrken a militia worth the name, perhaps you'd've received a medal rather than a pardon. But given the way of things at the time - those with the knowledge hadn't the means, and those with the means hadn't the knowledge." And each mistrusting the other. "In any case, hindsight would be a splendid thing if it didn't arrive so late." Things are different now, in some ways. News flows more clearly to the ears of those in a place to act upon it, and they have capable tools ready to hand. He'd done his best to make sure of that, during his time as Governor, opening channels to draw knowledge and power to that office, and mechanisms by which both might be properly applied.

And now there is the fear that those mechanisms might be improperly used. Abused.

But perhaps it is only a fear, and not even justified. He nods slowly at the swordswoman's caution, taking a deep breath taken that is slowly exhaled as a wry smile tugs at his lips.

"So. Proper understanding before action. I think we can manage that much, at least."