The Lady from the Lake

[catch]

Catch was quite willing to not look at Maxwell anymore, and so he was easily diverted. "I would like that, Ser Cinnabar," he says, genuinely happy about it. Cinnabar is a friend, after all, and he would not shut Catch in a hole on a whim. Of course, that may be best. Put him down a hole, forget about him, and then - and then - then what? Go look for his soul and his Light, because there would be no one left to remember, and his promises would be empty. Catch takes another pastry, his face reflecting his sudden-sad thoughts.

He is made curious, however, at the thought of things to show him, though there are caveats, there are, perhaps, one or two more questions. Catch was torn, thinking it concern, while another, secret part of him knew that Cinnabar Knew, and this was yet some other play to bring him to heel. Not that he didn't want to go. He wanted to be good, to be human and whole, but the Wormwoman's worms still burned like brands inside him, putting holes in Lamai's healing where there should be none. He was on the verge of madness once more, he knew, and Catch did not want anyone knowing.

"Like a breath of air," is, then, what he answers, cautious. It is not precisely a lie. "The c-c-cold d-d-does good, for hot brains, and I'm n-n-not as lost as I m-m-might be."

[Cinnabar]

It was intriguing to watch the emotions chase one another across the man's not-quite-right features, to try and puzzle out the play of thoughts that prompted them; it was also interesting to note when they did not show, when he chose to close his face up tight, to push the life from his eyes and pretend to be a dull and uncooperative brute. For now, though, he was animated and engaged. All for the good. No gaze to Maxwell this time, happy to let him fade into the background, to become an unnoticed observer as was his role in this meeting.

"Here, the first thing; remember we talked about anchors, and how they keep boats from getting lost?" A carefully-constructed analogy, a comparison that had painted Catch as a ship lost and adrift in a sea of turbulent thoughts. "I've made one for you, to see if it might help."

He held out the hand that had pulled something from his pocket, fingers closed around whatever it is; waiting for the addled man to hold out his own hand to accept the gift before he'd release it into his palm.

"It's small, but may be heavy enough for a breath of air."

[Glenn]

Maxwell watched carefully, scooting every further away, just a little bit at a time. A few inches now, less than that a few moments later. He was just going to scoot into the best possible viewing point so that he could take the most accurate notes. No one notice cunning Maxwell as he sips his tea and slowly scooches back. He is like the shadows themselves! Right up until the point he spills a bit of the tea upon himself due to his intense, focused movements. He had been focused on everything but the drink in his hand. He stifled his yelp and then with a wince seen only in his eyes put on his very best fake shadow in case anyone looked his way.

[catch]

Catch turns his head towards the muffled yelp of the greedy Maxwell, who had tried to take his cakes, but the threat of a present was too great an excitement to ignore, and his hair shifted at the lewd suggestion of an ear, underneath - one twisted towards Maxwell, in case he becomes far, too sneaky. It is with both hands that Catch cups, thrust towards Cinnabar, childlike eagerness and greed clear on his face. Yes, there were emotions - many emotions, too-many, and sometimes they came all at once.

"Oh, yes, Ser, b-b-boats and anchors and squid and all," he agrees - he will agree to anything, just to see the surprise that lingered, hovered, hidden and just out of reach. The addled man drags his tongue across his dry lips. If he had a tail, it would certainly be wagging - though such wishes were dangerous to make. He just might grow one.

[Cinnabar]

"Something to think of, if you start getting too lost. Like the tea leaves, hm?" A glance for Catch's wrist, where he'd once knotted a handkerchief of fragrant leaves as a reminder. Maxwell's hurriedly-smothered exclamation received a sidelong glance and a wry quirk of his lips, but no further comment than that.

The object pressed into Catch's eager palms was small, certainly, and undeniably heavy for its size - cool metal, but muffled by something softer wrapped about it. A little ingot of dark iron, maybe the top inch or so of a stout nail, edges softened by hammer and file, markings cut into the surface to reveal brighter metal beneath. A series of lines on one side, a thin crescent surmounted by a cross-shape on the other - the closest approximation to an anchor Calomel had been able to manage with his forge's tools. The thing is made to be held and touched, all cool heaviness and tactile textures. Strung on a braid of sturdy string in bright colours by a hole drilled through the middle, such that the thing might balance horizontally when allowed to swing free.

"It's cleverer than most anchors, too. Here, hold it up." He lifted his hand, fingers pinched for Catch to imitate. "It knows how to find North. Turn it about, and it'll always settle pointing the same way." He couldn't keep a little pride from his voice at that detail, an idea that'd come to him while shaping the scrap of iron. It'd taken some work to find a way to make it work, but eventually he'd been able to track down an instrument-maker in town who was willing to loan him the use of a lodestone for the purpose, long enough to attune the iron.

"It might help."

[Glenn]

Maxwell hadn't asked about exactly what they were going to be doing with this meeting. He thought, obviously, that it was simple and matter of fact. They'd give him the statue, gauge his reactions, ask some questions while he was vulnerable, and that would be that. Nice and simple and full of truth and insight! Why would it be anything else. Why would he expect anything else? And since he didn't expect it, couldn't fathom it in his knowitall bubble, well, there was no reason to ask. Why look the dunce when the truth is so easy to discern and deduce!

So all of this prelude was coming as a frustrating surprise for poor Maxwell. Why were they taking so long with such a dangerous individual! he could become a tornado of energy tendrils at ANY moment! Why give him toys and knicknacks, and even sensitive instruments that he would be more likely to eat or wear in his hair than to use for their proper purposes! The scholar had been white before, but now he was getting a little red. This was to be expected after all. Cinnabar was hardly an EDUCATED man. He bit at his lip in nervous annoyance just hoping they'd get to the point before the madman sniffed something ill in the wind and destroyed them both!

[catch]

The tea leaves were long, long gone, their threads unwound, dropped free in a moment where Catch had not been paying very much attention. There is not even a pale spot where the cloth had been bound, only a silver, puckering scar, from where Agnie had chopped him with her sword.

It is smooth, cool, this metal, and Catch is absorbed with it, far longer than might be necessary, but this - this was a gift, and it must be studied. He rolls it between his thin fingers, feeling the weight and slickness. He even puts his to his mouth, lipping it, exploring with his tongue as well as his fingers, and the whole of him is rigid in concentration and delight. Obediently, at Cinnabar's urging, Catch holds it up. He observes the movement, but a brief moment of perplexity shows that he does not, yet, entirely understand this aspect of the metal in his hand.

So he only nods, and feels the colorful string, grinning to himself. "Th-that's a smart rock, to know all th-th-that," Catch says. Well, it obviously knows something he doesn't know, this North. Maybe - and this was dangerous - maybe North and his Light were the same, and in that case, Catch was a little frightened at the innocence of the gift. "It's g-g-got m, mm, more brains than me."

He says all this with a coy, side-glance at Maxwell, and the way he says it, so deliberate - of course, because Maxwell did not receive such a grand gift, and Catch did, he found himself gloating, just a little.

[Cinnabar]

"If you face the same way that it points - so over that way, yes? - the sun will rise on your right, and set on your left. It'll always point the same way. Keep it close, hm?" His fingers traced a line around his own throat; the colourful braid, itself textured with knots every couple of inches, was in fact a loop for just such a purpose. "It'll not get lost, so if you hold onto it maybe it'll keep you from getting lost."

Where the young researcher was barely-contained frustration and anxiety, Calomel was a model of patience and calm. He was entirely aware of the risks, which was precisely why he took this careful, unhurried approach, one step at a time with the air of quiet ritual. First the greeting. Then the tea and cakes. Then a gift which, maybe, could serve to keep Catch grounded, or at least encourage him to feel more well-disposed to the pair of them.

"More tea, Catch? Maxwell?" To the latter there was a tone of firm insistence, perhaps hoping that the fragrant blend might soothe him a little. Cups refilled, he sipped at his own tea slowly, thinking for a time.

"You've got plenty of brains, Catch. Actually, the next thing is something we'd like your advice on; something we found, something quite old and mysterious." Clearly beyond their understanding, even that of so-educated Maxwell; certainly Calomel had noted that gloating look, that tension between the addled man and the researcher. Well, maybe it'd serve their purposes, if Maxwell could keep his pride in check.

"We wondered if you might know something about it."

[Glenn]

Less brains? And he was gloating about that. It was all Maxwell could do not to chuckle amused. Of course he had less brains. This was the foolish little wastrel that they fooled with a PUPPET show. He pitied him, of course. All Maxwell had, past his very proper rearing, was his mind. It was all humanity had to set themselves aside from animals and this poor poor wretch barely had that at all. He was more animal than man, and that's why it was their duty to try to help him, to try to bring him into the light. Failing that, and truly only some things were possible despite what the Governor seemed to think, they'd domesticate him and put him to pasture.

Noble work! Godly work! Huzzah. For now, though he was desperately sipping his tea, which, no, was not calming him, and preparing for the key moment. This is why he was here. He would record every little detail in the elaborate machine that was his mind and then transfer it to paper and posterity!

[catch]

For a moment, there is a discernible change to Catch, a tightening of his features. Not pinching, but tightening, as if his muscles had decided, at last, to form the face that they had always wanted to form. It made Catch hard, and cruel, and it brought a Knowing to his eyes that belied the madness and the foolishness. There were years behind those eyes, and it was not Maxwell that brought it about, but Cinnabar. Catch is searching for something, in the man's face, as the metal-stone dripped North, loud as crickets.

Put it on, put it around. Let the stone tighten across his throat - let it drag him North, or wherever Cinnabar pleases? Was it a collar of a different color, one he did not recognize? Was it gold at his throat, silver and flowers in his hair, as it had been in a distant Dream of Golden Towers, that may be Memory? Slowly, deliberately, he slides the noose around his neck. Yet, nothing happens. Yet. It just sits, heavy, unnatural, and strange, a new-weight and an itchiness against his skin. He relaxes, and there - there is Catch again, as empty as before, with a grin to split his face.

"Oh, me, Ser? Wh - what is it?" Apprehensive, there. What could Catch possibly help with, when Ser Glenn has so many intelligent men and women around him?

[Cinnabar]

The shift in his features was noted with some interest, the cold intelligence behind mismatched eyes meeting a grey gaze that was suddenly intrigued.

No sorcery to the thing, not even a whiff of magic; simple iron worked by his own hand, coloured strings likewise braided and knotted. There was that Northward urge, yes, but it was so gentle that it only showed itself when no other touch acted upon it. Certainly not enough to sway one of Catch's strength.

So there was no glint of triumphs as he slipped that braid over his head - to use woven strings rather than a more resilient chain had been an entirely deliberate choice - no gloating smile at a trap springing closed. Only a small nod of approval as the gift was accepted, Calomels main concern being that the addled man might lose the gift somehow, in a moment of distraction.

"A found thing, as I said; Maxwell's been able to find nothing of it in his books, and no one else has an idea of what it might be." He shrugged, as if the idea of asking Catch was just an idle thought. "But you know different things to other people."

He turned to the pack that contained the plaster copy, subtly seeking to meet Maxwell's gaze; to direct him, with a pointed glance, to the treeline and the thread of bright colour tied about one of the trunks there. Be ready.

"Have a look." The object he carefully handed over to Catch was solid, weighty, its shape muffled in a wrapping of coarse burlap. No pressure, no weight of expectation in his tone; this was an incidental matter, mentioned as lightly as the matter of Catch's strings. "Just to see if you know anything about it."

[Glenn]

His books. Maxwell's books were wide and varied. His father's library was terribly impressive and while they weren't his, on the off chance his father, mother, and all of his brothers and sisters would die, well, then he'd get a good chunk that his father didn't donate elsewhere (probably just to spite him). And no, there was nothing SPECIFICALLY about the statue in any of them. But oh, there were potential things about Catch! They'd done so much research but it all had come to naught. he was still there. They were still too far from the truth, but today would be important. He may hide behind Cinnabar, but he certainly wouldn't run! Not at first at least. He was practically drooling as he watched the exchange between the two.

[catch]

Another heaviness in his hands, another gift - no, no, this wasn't his to keep. It was only for his eyes, to see what may be seen. And he was curious - what was it, that everyone else did not know, but that he might? Catch looks between the two men, a cautious peering at Maxwell to be certain the man does not grow two jealous. With uninformed fingers, the addled man draws aside the coarse cloth, alternatively scratching and tickling his palms.

It lay in his lap, settled against the sweet breads, so that his palms did not have to touch the plaster. He did not know why he made such a precaution, only that he did. And he is glad for it. So glad. He could weep, and he does without knowing so, the tears spilling sudden and hot and silver from his eyes, and so, perhaps, they are not tears at all. He says nothing. What could he say? His mind was a trap, a trap gnawed through and through with worms until there was nothing left but the thin vestiges, suggestions, of the walls. Whatever had meant to deal with this was one of those shells. They were looking at him, watching him, he was keen of that. Oh, but how could he lie? How could he lie about this? Heat and cold roiled together behind his teeth, and he was very conscious of the tongue that lay at the bottom of his mouth.

Well, he must say something. His lips part only a little, yet it is enough for the worms to force their way out, for writhing tendrils of oily smoke, both viscous and ethereal, to push their way past, to push out a noise, a pathetic whimper of a bell-sound. No, not yet. This was small, pale. Yet, around them, the very trees seemed to bend their heads in a silent salute, the flowers thrashing like animal-things, their shrieks in tones of fear and loving-thrall. The facsimile was not real, and so it shatters in his quaking hands, torn apart by the silver smoke that lashes from his very pores. He does not remember standing, but he stands before them, now, his head somehow mortal, if over-tall, and yet towering to bump against the subtle curve of a sky gone pale. Another moan, then, and several trees simply shatter, for lack of a better term; they shimmer, and shards break away with the sound of bells.

He thinks he is speaking, telling them that he does not know this thing, though the woman, to him, is pretty, yet can see by the shattering trees and the screaming flowers that it is not so, and he attempts to babble other things. He tries to speak of cats, of apples, of the feel of winter and the soft-silk Lake, of sheep's wings, of anything. There are some words that slip through. Most are meaningless, animal braying. These are the precious gems, for sometimes, he speaks in Song and Bells, and it is those times that the earth roars under him, the flowers crisp to brown, as if a great heat has been held against them, and the trees groan as they explosively flake to bits.

Only when the pressure is gone can he, finally, close his lips against the tide, can stop himself from howling anything else. He will stand there in his smoke and his suggestive form, heaving against the tremble of the ground, his eyes wide and animal and spent, not even noticing the devastation of the grove, the picnic, or even the scattered breads across the burnt ground.

[Cinnabar]

It was a moment that he had secretly feared, for all his easy smiles and upbeat demeanour; a moment in which he had no idea what might happen. He could make some semi-educated guesses, yes, based on what he'd been told and what he'd seen for himself. But when it came down to that moment, the instant in which the rough sackcloth fell away and Catch looked upon the face from the lakebed, he found himself holding his breath, and the instants that followed seemed to flow thick and viscous, trapping slices of time like flies in amber.

He watched closely, intently, grey eyes honed to notice details of posture and expression rapt upon the addled man's features, which is perhaps why he had those few heartbeats in which to act; the subtle coils that seep from his skin, his eyes, those Calomel had seen before and closer than he'd ever wish. He was already lifting a hand, his head turning to address Maxwell though his eyes remained fixed on Catch.

The addled man's lips parted slowly, baleful vibrations bearing the promise of a distant storm drawing rapidly closer. Grey eyes widened and flooded silver, his bones beginning to chime in sympathy with the tolling of Catch's terrible Voice. He turned towards Maxwell, features fearsome in their urgency, reaching to clamp his palms firmly over the researcher's ears, half-rising to set himself between Catch and the pompous young scholar. Behind him the statue was unmade into a pattering cloud of chunks and crumbs and drifting white powder.

"Look at me don't look at him keep your eyes--"

Then Catch rose, dreadful as a thunderhead, and Sang; and the glade melted away around him.

Cinnabar Calomel did all he could, which was to endure; the trees and grass and tea things fled in splinters and fragments, but he put his back to the storm and remained, features locked in a rictus snarl. The cloth of his coat faded and frayed and fell to rags from his back, exposing pale skin stretched tight over a thicker hide of gleaming plates. It pressed out from beneath, across his shoulders and down his spine, along his arms and under the skin of his face, as if to save the flesh and bones and organs beneath - and those of the young man he shielded. Blood slid dark and scalding from his ears and nose and still the Song continued until he could endure no longer...

...Until he realised that the silence was true silence, not the drowning of all sound by Catch's world-breaking Voice. There were smaller sounds, of falling debris and protesting timber, of gasping breaths that were his own.

He turned his head, risking a look over his shoulder, hands loosening from the researcher's skull. He straightened, standing, plates and scales shifting beneath his skin, and faced the thing of silver and smoke more fully.

"Catch." His words were firm, spoken with a deeper resonance than his voice usually held. "Remember you are a man."

[Glenn]

Glenn Burnie kept his friends' secrets. This, for his researchers, was occasionally maddening. See, Burnie had so few friends but they tended to be the ones with the biggest secrets. He would imply things, would ask his staff to trust him. Trust him, for instance, that Cinnabar Calomel could stand to Catch longer than any normal man, that he could UNDERSTAND Catch like none of them could. Strange things, but he never said such things without good reason, without evidence. He just didn't share it with them. They knew when he was bluffing or bullshitting and this just wasn't it.

And yes, young Maxwell was endlessly glad for that, yet terribly confused as well. This was somehow different than the chaos in the Dagger's basement. This was more primal. What had they done? He wasn't able to see Catch past Cinnabar. All he could do was brace himself as... what WAS Cinnabar? None of this made any sense! What if he couldn't stop the madman! What if he fell to him and left the two of them alone! Why didn't he run when he had the chance! Maxwell thought himself sure to lose his lunch, or at least all the liquids he had imbibed today, but he managed to hold it together, shaking and pale, but he was in one piece as Cinnabar Calomel shielded him from the doom that had come to Myrken.