A Missive Received at Calomel Hall.

[Cinnabar]

An attempt to convince her, to persuade her, and yet he had then so deliberately sabotaged his own efforts. So much that even this weapon could see it, could know it as deliberate.

"There are lies men tell themselves. They wish to think well of themselves, to believe that they are just, and reasonable, and civilised. Here is a man who believes he must stop your return if he is to save Glenn Burnie's Myrken Wood." A hero, then. A martyr. "He knows that he may well have to do murder to achieve this - indeed, he guarantees it by his words, but in this way can still believe the exact reverse. Because he doesn't want to think poorly of himself. He wishes to believe himself better than a simple thug or assassin. He is a cultured man. Before, he perhaps contented himself by believing his work was justifiable, an unpleasant necessity; now he must believe it is also unavoidable. He had no choice, hm?"

A former-assassin who strives to be better, but cannot entirely distance himself from those murderous methods. So responsibility is deflected, passed onto those who find themselves at the end of his blade.

"He offers what is to him a reasonable solution - you go, don't return, and no blood need be shed. But he also adds some small, seemingly-trivial thing which he knows will resolve you to stay. So now it is you who have brought things to this end, who have forced him to draw steel by refusing the reasonable path he presented. And though he is the one who has set the board and made bloodshed inevitable, to his mind - and perhaps your own - you are made the villain in his place. Even though it was he who attacked you."

It's a dizzying piece of footwork, of feints and misdirection, the assassin placing Ariane Emory exactly where he needed her to keep his own conscience clean. Had it succeeded?

A small frown as she compares him to his predecessor as Governor, and a hand lifted in apology as she explains why.

"I'm sorry, I mis-speak: you have learned to listen to your pity. And don't for a moment think I hold that as a weakness. It's a virtue, and it costs us." There. A small but important distinction made. And then another rearrangement of pieces, the same scene played out again but with a slight difference. Puzzled, grey eyes lift to hers, and his finger reaches out to touch the guardian pawn that hovers so close. Just as those knights had watched over the other pawn while it made its slow advance across the board.

"Who is this?"

[Carnath-Emory]

There are lies men tell themselves.

Heroes.

Martyrs.

He presents a more acceptable alternative - which is to say an alternative that she can accept at all. It does not grate across the raw edges of her; it does not offend by slighting the man who'd cut half her face away not two weeks earlier. As if it were essential that they condemn a villain for only the crimes he has actually committed...

"Do you see, then, why I wished him to live? If this is his thinking, Cinnabar, then he's right by halves: the man is no simple thug. I've known - some few of these." Considerably more than a few, the slight tilt of her mouth confesses. "Small minds. Simple, brutish ambitions. Sometimes their company is worth something." Sometimes it is a balm. "But their selves? There is so little to them. Like a drawing upon paper," and she has lifted a hand, has mimed blowing that page from her palm. "Like that. So thinly-made. If he that sort, it might have been finished so easily. Look again at what you describe. Tell me that it has no worth.

"But make no mistake, Cinnabar: I know very well what I am. And to play the villain that night? Mm." A tiny shake of her head, the mouth a wry line. "If I'd butchered him. Perhaps then, yes. But to break him, this man who set to burning the floor beneath our very feet? No. He may think what he thinks. I have no regrets."

It's almost laughter, then. Very nearly so. But it has taken all these words to restore some colour to features that had wholly blanched minutes earlier. It has taken the once-Governor's very particular explanations to make of her something other than a taut-strung ghost, and even so she'd kept a hand half-hidden throughout this and only because it had begun to shake. It is the beginnings of a cautious ease.

"No. One, I think. Perhaps you will answer this for me as well: if I should have kept him from the Rememdium, brought him to 'Siris here. No-one knew his purpose that night. No-one would have known what became of him. The Governor would not be, mm. Forewarned." And her features are clearly undecided. "Perhaps when you visit him," when, "you ask this man - does he reckon himself villainous." And this time it's a smile for true. "Satisfy your theory. And our curiosity - ah, I don't know."

So that she's halfway to laughter by the time that Calomel speaks again, and already leaning back towards the board when he says a thing which startles the hand to stillness.

"You agree, then." A dart of swallowed-back panic; it does not reach her voice. "The steep cost of virtue. The things which Myrken cannot endure, for that it already endures so much else. Do you know - I asked Glenn Burnie, once, of what it was to spar against you. Not only you, of course, for he was hungry to test his skills and so we sorted through names, but - you, particularly. I suggest to him that you are not the best choice - for a training partner, and this he already knew. But we agree that still you offer him a singular sort of challenge: your strength of course, your ability to mm - improvise." Which her student had dubbed 'cheating'. It doesn't bear mentioning. "He said to me, that day, the most interesting thing: that one day he would accept that challenge, and that he would hold back nothing in his assault; he would try this improvising himself, mn? Spare nothing. He said it would be as to - sitting down to this game of chess with you, yes? And then knocking the pieces all over the room and seeing what you would do next."

Fingertips upon black and white squares; her eyes have lifted, though, curious.

"But what I told him is that your sort of swordplay? You are the one who tips the board, tumbles the pieces, and we must decide after: what shall we do? You have. Just this very moment."

[Cinnabar]

Some vague shrug as she speaks of paper-thin brutes, men of no substance. Perhaps you ought to look closer, he almost says, but it would be a distraction. A digression.

"He has worth. He'd not find himself in Glenn Burnie's employ if he didn't. But yes - he's an artist, certainly. He knows his craft, knows his tools and how best to wield them - blades and words both, hm? So it's understandable for one to hold him in the highest respect." For all that he'd tried to work a murder upon her flesh, for all that he'd come close. A great deal of skill, wielded consciously or not. On the matter of regrets he must think for a time, weighing the options, the cases for or against.

"He might've recovered well here, and you might've learned much more about him - and about the man he serves, the ideals he protects. About his customs and culture." He can't help but grin at that, the thought of swordswoman and assassin discussing charming traditions and the quality of fine wine.

"I suspect I know the answer he'll give. Well, one of two - either no, I serve a noble cause, or yes, but." Always that but, that attempt to rationalise, to explain. "No man acts without a reason, even if it is false, or shallow, or mistaken. The interest comes in learning whether the reason he claims - the reason he believes - is his true motivation, or a more palatable justification."

There are lies men tell themselves, and they are not always even aware of it. He sobers for a moment, voice quiet, cautioning.

"Be most vigilant against the man whose sole reason is because I can, or because no one can stop me. He is a beast, and no atrocity is beyond him."

He nods in agreement on the point of virtue, of how it costs; far easier to relent, to yield, to accede to whatever base impulses or fears might drive you.

"We pay for our virtue with blood and tears. Every day." The alternative, the price of not paying, is unthinkable.

Then there is an account of the conversations, alluded to before and now elaborated upon; talk of sparring, of challenge, of improvisation and cheating. His features grow more intent when she describes that goal, that vow, and he nods slowly.

"He told me the same thing. Recently, when I raised the idea of sparring with the idea of perhaps rebuilding that friendship, hm? He said I must promise not to hold back either; he'd hate to hurt me." Thoughtful, eyes downcast as if to survey the board. "I've not mentioned the idea again."

Overturning the game board, though. A small frown, gaze turning aside as he considers their conversation so far, of the last few moments in particular. Finally he looks up, with the air of one who, after racking his brains over a riddle, must grudgingly admit defeat and seek its solution.

"Explain."

[Carnath-Emory]

Perhaps she ought to look closer. Perhaps if she weren't - despite the influence of three very strange years - a particularly limited thinker, she might have done so already. But she is only herself, and instead that very simple self is bending a moment to reclaim its boots.

"'An artist'," she echoes in the middle of it, with a glance for that ink-stained table, for the things which so many scattered colours will do to russet wood. And with some small motion about the mouth, with a shake of the head: "Tell me. What worth you think such a man might hold for Governor Burnie; what particular qualities might hold his interest." It is a question which spreads its interests in so many different directions, which is to say that it's her favourite sort of all.

Boots. Battered old suede, gone dusty around the toes and uneven at the heels, but the fabric's worn down to thin softness and the flesh can tolerate the touch of it now. There is care with this nonetheless, and a quiet awareness of the liberty that it is to not be rushed.

"Mm. He might have. He might have died to infection and imbalance and my knife on some ugly whim," and this is said with laughter and then not at all. "No. I am glad that his master knows. That we begin with this understanding, he and I. And what harm is one more understanding, when there are so many already between us?" And yet, the eyes confess. And yet even that is not enough...

"No. No, I think we do not put that question to him. It is not a question at all, but a conversation, mn? No." Not today. Not as he lies in some ghastly Rememdium cot. Not this day but perhaps the next. "But I think that a man who makes large actions with small reasons, sole reasons, as you say it - I think that those are such thugs. Empty spaces. What is their worth? That their hand grips a sword so that it might kill. Nothing more than that. I would sooner examine the sword than its accessory," and she can straighten now, fingers deft with threadbare laces. Old motions, blindly done. "Myrken pays for my virtue. As he would have it."

But that way lies danger, and she will turn from it now. With a nod back towards the board, and almost casually adding: "Do you think that you will? Make a second attempt? I cannot imagine that he might harm you for true, but this is my error; it is too easy to forget that you are yet a man - one stronger than most and proof to flame, but still..."

And this is where she leans again, to touch fingertips to that guardian pawn. Because - yet a man, she'd said; yet a man but different despite, and it has relevance to the question he'd put to her. So this touch of her fingertip, as: "He is educated, this man in black. On the subject that is me." A glance; her eyes are almost laughing. "So he knows some things. This - is Darkenhold; impregnable. By reaching Darkenhold I place myself beyond his reach. As he knows." A sidelong motion of the pawn demonstrates; a motion retraced when she returns the piece to the square she'd first assigned it. "And it is this," as mercurial silver leaks from that fingertip, thin filaments stretching across the pawn's glossy curves. "This armour. Which repels his blades; which obliges him to wield enormous force or a very quick flame. He carried the means for neither. Not in the quantity required.

"His advantages are two: he is forewarned, and his reach is superior. He is tremendously skilled but he knows what is weighted against him; that this piece is felled in a single move, Cinnabar, or else it is not felled at all. The solution to these three pieces is so obvious that even I can see it. And you?" Surely. Unless there is something which she does not understand at all, and this is far from being impossible.

[Cinnabar]

"He is the sort of man who one keeps close, because they allow things to run smoothly. He sees a problem, he addresses quietly, efficiently, before even his master is aware. Sometimes that's for the best, as his master would not always condone his methods - or must not be seen to condone them." Men of power often find such agents supremely useful; a discreet distance between the public figure and certain distasteful necessities.

"His master would likely know of your return anyway, before too long, even if you'd kept him here, even if he'd vanished here. There'll be other watchers, other spies - not looking for you specifically, but attentive for things of interest. He'd be a fool not to." And Glenn Burnie, whatever else he might be, was no fool. "Word would have reached him soon enough. Even from here behind Darkenhold's gates."

He must think for a time on the question of sparring, of facing Glenn Burnie with a sword in hand. Not an easy matter, and not an easy answer.

"Steel will still cut me, if I let it close enough. And I have plenty of reasons not to, nowadays. A few years ago I might've more readily made that challenge, and not given a thought to the risk. Today?" He shakes his head firmly, sitting back in his chair. "Not until I know him better, and know what I might be getting into. I have enough scars, and new ones don't just hurt me alone."

We pay for our virtue in blood and tears.

Responsibility, but without resentment. In his own estimation he has gained far more than he has lost, and can't help but be glad of it. Next the swordswoman explains what the assassin knew of her, which is not itself a surprise - like it or not she is a figure in Myrken Wood, so closely embroiled in so many of its horrors. Those who knew of her would almost certainly know that. The surprise is that he had not made allowances for her particular talent.

"So he was unprepared; if deliberately, then he knew it would likely be the end of him. If not then it hints more at haste than carelessness, as he doesn't seem like the sort of man to forget such important details. Desperation, maybe."

She lays a finger upon that pawn and grey eyes note the flow of silver, subtle and controlled.

"Those? Yourself, your murderer, your steel." Easily identified, easily listed, and his tone is close to impatient. He reaches forward to adjust the board, rendering it more correct. The grey pawn and her guardian exchange places, facing that desperate rook. The rook foolishly moves forward to engage, and the two pawns move at once; the guardian blocking the rook's path, while grey steps past. "He cannot best your steel, so let him fight that. That's what it's for, hm? It costs you, as his fire and blades still hurt, just not enough to stop you. It means that he no longer stands between you and your sanctuary."

The flurry of moves were not strictly legal - not even slightly - but were enough to describe the solution she demands. A flick of a finger and the rook topples with a small, hard sound. Done.

"No. Explain how the board has been upset."

[Carnath-Emory]

It's interesting. Assassin's chess. Spies. Watchers. Her associations have lent her some familiarity with these things; Darkenhold was itself built to the design of a man steeped in such endeavours. But it was a very specific sort of familiarity and here Calomel widens the scope of its focus, transplants the whole of it into an entirely new context: neither distant Nnuria nor eastern Thessilane but here, the township that struggles and thrives a half-day's ride from her gates. Despite herself, despite the careful delineation she has always made between such simple thugs as herself, and the brilliant minds who would wield such tools as he names -

It's interesting.

"Watchers. Spies." There's a bottle about here somewhere, an inevitable feature in several of her rooms; these days have been strange beyond reason, difficult beyond measure. It is only a matter of remembering where, and when she speaks again it's with fingers addressing its cork. "You made use of these things yourself, mn? Governor Calomel," and it is almost smiling. "Or is this a thing you read from a book?" And the tone is not mockery; the tone is nothing but a question, and when one speaks with the very young Cinnabar this is the question that's sometimes essential.

"But it is as you say, I think. Days - perhaps - before he was discovered. And what do a few days gain me? Nothing so useful." And might she have spoken further? Perhaps, if he had not then had her witness a sight so new, so strange, so wholly unlikely that it has left in a grave silence. You know what I fight for, Calomel had said - not even an hour ago. And here is the proof of it: this caution, this outright refusal, from a creature which could flatten her. Does he frighten you? And she wants so very much to say the words, knows too well what the saying would accomplish. Leans again instead, but this time to offer a simple cup to his hand and the bottle after it.

"Unprepared, perhaps - but not entirely." A demonstrative tap of the fingertip to the grotesquerie which is her face. "This? His knife, from a seven-foot distance; one of two. I would never have done this. Did I stand in his place, the knives would have been how I began." But there is a lapse back into silence as Calomel performs this trick, this subversion. It's sleight of hand all over again, and the neat elegance of it has her laughing over again, as if the motion didn't make the skin to ache at all; as if the room, mere minutes ago, hadn't been host to a silence which had chilled.

"This. This is very good. This is well-played," and she shapes the word like a pronouncement. "But our unfortunate assassin...

"Cinnabar, the board which you have given upset is not this one, and it is not Myrken. It is only my thinking. You turn it upside and about, and fling its pieces everywhere until I wonder: 'But how did it look when we began?'. It is a crisis."

[Cinnabar]

"Something I read. Something I used, a little. Watchers, yes. People tasked with gathering information, and being sure that it is passed to the right ears that it can be acted on, if needed." Something Glenn Burnie excelled at, when acting under the authority of the Governor's office. Something he no doubt still excels at now that he occupies that office. "Never such men as your assassin, though. I made sure to remain well-apprised of my agents' work."

All too easy for such free reign to be abused, for a Governor to unknowingly have horrors perpetrated in his name. Those carried out in the name of Governor Calomel were always with his knowledge, and his hand tight upon the leash. The cup and bottle are accepted readily, though there is hesitation before he pours that betrays a temptation to do away with the former entirely. Civility finally wins out - the cup generously filled, the bottle set on the desk between them.

"He was skillful and lucky, yes. Enough to make a mess. But not enough to make up for how he gave away his greatest advantage, hm? Rather than taking you unawares he decided to talk, to share wine, to explain himself. As a reasonable, fair, civilised man might. It was no surprise when he finally set upon you, so you had time to prepare. To steel yourself." A small smile at that play on words, soon covered by a sip from his cup. "You took some scratches. You've healed from worse, hm?"

Not to demean her wounds, but to compliment her resilience. He can only shrug for her praise, however, for all that his smile still broadens at it. It had been base cheating, really. Nothing more. But had she not just described his talent for such as if it was a rare and enviable quality? Ha.

Ah. Her thoughts. He nods in understanding, at ease in his seat, in his skin, impatience quickly dismissed by that answer.

"Well, then." Grey eyes gleam attentively over the rim of his cup, watchful and amused. "What will you do next?"

[Carnath-Emory]

Cinnabar's cup is filled, and Cinnabar's bottle is re-acquired, scant moments before he can quite set it down at all. And by a swordswoman who is likewise civil with her adoption of a cup, although much later she might begin to wonder why. Perhaps the southerner had infected her with a little respect for good wine.

She is otherwise a quiet and considerate listener. Is the wine to blame for this? Certainly it's occupied her hands, her throat - but not her eyes, which have turned their attention between chessboard and friend throughout his talk. Now and again the cup's paused en route to her lips, and it has seemed like there might be words to interrupt his own; now and again it has come to nothing but another slow, considering sip of a stuff that Cinnabar will discover to be surprisingly pleasant. Perhaps she is only too aware of the many words she's spoken herself - moments ago, minutes, hours. Perhaps she has recalled that her friend was summoned here not to listen but to educate.

There's a smile of her own, though, when the man speaks of scratches. A wry little thing that pulls the rest of her face into ugly relief, but present nonetheless, and after a moment she offers: "He was lucky. Three years ago, I'd have slai -no." A gaze that reaches far past her friend's shoulder; past doors and walls. "I'd have hamstrung him. Left him for a warning to whoever might come next. An example of just how far luck and some talent will take a man."

Bloodless atrocities for the good of her.

"And do you know? That it was my blade drawn first. I was so angry that it might come to that, that this place demanded that sort of solution to a night of disagreements. As if it's ever cared what anyone actually thought," and she's laughing then; laughing, and so softly, against the cup's edge. "Tell me something. Teach me this. Even if it's only a thing you've read in your books: How does a person recognise one of your Watchers? Can it even be done?"

Teach me this.
Despite your question, play surrogate for just a moment longer yet.

[Cinnabar]

Good wine, clear in the way he carefully savours it. Not the simple Derry red served in taverns, for drinking and getting drunk; this is wine to be enjoyed.

Hamstrung. Thinking on that, and had she expected revulsion? Condemnation? No. He probably wouldn't have taken that option, but he might've considered it. Depending on the circumstances.

She'd drawn first? That lifts his brows in quiet surprise, unexpected given what she'd said of the assassin's words, his manner, how he'd relentlessly, subtly goaded their meeting to end in bared steel and spilled blood.

"Not the place; he demanded it. He would have it no other way, for all his culture and conversation." Firm on that point. "He bears the responsibility for that. Not Myrken Wood, and not you."

Her question has him smiling wider into his drink, though, a return of that mischief in his gaze. Stringing out the moment with a small sip, held to best appreciate the layered scents - bouquet, that was the word for it. Finally, eventually, he swallows and speaks.

"No." First couched as a flat refusal, ever so satisfied at holding a secret that she desires; but then he shakes his head, grinning wider.

"I'm not sure it can be done. There are different methods that these Watchers employ, most of which never have them close enough to be seen. Some blend with a crowd. They don't dress in black, or lurk in cloaks and shadows. They hiding in plain sight by being unremarkable. Some know swordplay or other arts, you might note them for that - but it's no guarantee." Another sip of wine, a light shrug.

"If you do recognise one, it's possible you were meant to. And then, satisfied that you have unmasked the spy, you continue on your way without seeing the others, more subtle, that you didn't notice."

Feints and misdirection, a piece advancing aggressively here to draw attention away from its more discreet brother on the far side of the board.

"Others listen, piece together fragments and shards of overheard conversations. As in your hallway, hm?" He lifts a finger and thumb as if holding some tiny piece. "Each on its own - trivial. But placed together, alongside one another, a picture emerges. A pattern. Glenn Burnie's scribes and clerks do this very well. They listen, the ask innocuous questions, they scour dull records. They use others as their eyes and ears, without them even knowing."

[Carnath-Emory]

Good wine. Foreign in its texture, and in its complexity as exotic as the rich colours that flank this building's tall windows, the gleaming mosaic which here and there lines its floors. So that there have been cups even despite their casual circumstances, and her eyes are sometimes upon the man as he first sips at the stuff, eyes which watch for the moment in which he first realises.

Oh, it satisfies.

"No." And has she surprised him - even now? After all that they've said in this room? It seems so, and it doesn't satisfy quite as the wine had. "The responsibilities is him. It is also Myrken. It is for - the way it is thought of here, the way it is done," and a lift of the fingers demands patience; confesses that the words are not adequate for her thoughts. "Miles, weeks from here it might have gone differently; I have seen this, Cinnabar Calomel, I have done this. The way a thing is sorted with speaking, instead of butchery. Like this - you and I, right here. Do you see? Because we make that our purpose. We task our selves to this. It is like to - duty. Yes? And Cinnabar -

"It is a duty which Myrken most often rejects.

"So. I draw that weapon, yes. To place it upon the tabletop between us so that he must see what he is choosing. And - " A shift of the shoulder abandons that narrative. He's heard the most of it already, and why elaborate on the details of their butchery? It is a thing she would discuss with her sister, with Kerrak: and then the dagger went through here and so naturally I reached for his arm and -

No. For their purposes here it is that evening's least interesting feature.

There's this question, anyway. There's this talk of assassins and of Watchers, and a refusal that lasted for as long as it took for her mouth to tighten.
Her hand does too, afterwards, around that very simple cup. But only because it wants to throw its wine at his smirking face. There is an act of restraint.

"Hiding in plain sight," she's echoed - much later, and there is the shadow of a smile for accompaniment. The phrase is familiar. So is its sentiment. How do we hide an urn? By producing several close copies and setting them upon a windowsill with several others; nothing is hidden, except that it is. The idea had delighted her then. Less-so, now, but this is just a function of their circumstances. She means to speak of this, or something like it - and pauses over again as Calomel elaborates. Thinks to have a method of unraveling such deceit and the lips part - only to seal closed again when he crushes that notion as well. And by the end of it the small frown has returned, and she's taken two swift sips from that cup - only to jab it at him a moment later, as:

"Glenn Burnie does this. Patterns. Puzzles. He is very good with this, with seeing the thing which hides beneath the other things." Ridiculous statement. Another sip; it doesn't matter. "So you tell me this, then. I cannot see a Watcher. And the Watcher which I do see was intended to be seen. And back home it returns to tell its tales, and scribes will commit its tales to record -

"So you tell me. If these things cannot be seen, then what does one do about them?"

[Cinnabar]

"Myrken has its own troubles, yes." Oh, such understatement. "And, yes, they are rarely solved by talking." Consider the Baie, and its cultists; consider the Ashfiend, and the words that had been expended on him. "So... yes, it encourages particular habits, reactions when faced with trouble. Why waste time on fruitless words, hm? Begin with butchery, and it is quicker." Unless those words are a feint, a misdirection. But he shrugs, accepting her point to some extent. The place and the horrors that stalked it were as much to blame for the assassin's insistence on violence.

On the matter of the Governor he can only agree, a nod and another taste of that admirable wine.

"He was excellent at it while I was Governor. I can only imagine he's even better at it now that he's Governor. More resources, more staff. More influence." Dangerously so, even. She asks the obvious question, but it's not an easy one to answer.

"Very little, directly. Well. You could lock yourself in a box and speak to no one." An option, perhaps; Darkenhold is a formidable redoubt, and there's little need for its denizens to venture outside its walls. Self-sufficient, intentionally so. "Or you might engage Watchers of your own to poison the well from which they draw their information - sowing deceit, confusion, misleading rumours seasoned with unhelpful truths. Have your agents act as your opponent's eyes, but so unreliable that when the Watchers report back they must spend vastly more time and effort sifting fact from falsehood. It's a game best played between nations and governments, where the stakes are high enough to warrant the expense."

[Carnath-Emory]

Consider the Baie.
Consider the cultists - but no, let's not.
Consider the Ashfiend, and find a third piece of complexity written into the layers of her thoughts.

Something gleans, when she sets it down upon that chessboard. And what a slender thing that dagger is, sheathed in a silvered black that's echoed in the elegant curve of its grip. It owns a quiet menace, a dormant and predatory beauty. Perhaps to her eyes this is a quality possessed by every weapon she's owned.

"Bloodless atrocities," she's offered meantime - with something like a smile, and the merest tilt of her chin down towards the pretty thing she's set between them. "But really not so bloodless at all. Perhaps there is no other way. Perhaps there is no other better way, more - expedient, yes? I am of two minds. But I think, Cinnabar, that perhaps this year I learn the answer to that question."

But this is a statement that is ugly even to her own ears, and already the hand is dismissing it; already she is favouring wine over the sound of her own voice, and this is like a gift to them both. Better by far to have Calomel speak of these things, better even to be a student to this talk of Watchers and the very difficult matter of flustering their ambitions. If her eyes wander - and they do, towards sparkling windows and the sunlit garden far beyond - it is only because her thoughts attend him so closely; there is no other way to listen like this while remaining just a little detached. But by the time that he has reached his conclusion - nations, governments, staggering expense - she has turned back about on the windowsill and leaned far enough to simply upend the chessboard.

And to think she'd called that his trick.

It's a little noisy: even a gentle slide of playing-pieces onto a tabletop will be noisy, and the dagger doesn't help matters. But the result is a board laid bare upon which she can begin to reassemble the pieces - as necessity dictates. Which is to say that a small number of dark pieces become clustered in one of her corners - the grey nestled amongst them; most of Calomel's pieces are set into crisp, clean lines on his side of the board, much as they'd stood to begin with. A very few of them are scattered loose upon the playing field; several more of her own are, as well, but the majority of them aren't given a place on the board at all. No: the sidelines for them, whether removed from the board already or simply yet to arrive.

"There." When the work is done, and a clear grey gaze lifted back towards his own. "A box. Yes? From which I might summon what - or who - I may require," and her small smile is a confession; isn't that exactly what she'd done to him? "It is a stalemate. Impasse," which is the assassin's word, but she'd liked it so very much. "But it is not very useful, unless I have Watchers of my own and a taste for mn - sowing deceit. Yes? And I neither have these nor care to hide -

"So. Find me a third way."

This small smile. And almost as an aside: "Glenn Burnie. Did he enjoy being your interrogator? Your spy?"

[Cinnabar]

"Atrocity for the sake of expedience is not justifiable in itself; only when delay means something worse. It's easy to forget this, to rush into bloodshed as if haste were itself a virtue." He eyes that blade thoughtfully, noting it as a step above the crude blades used by alley cutthroats and thugs. Quality.

And then the board is tipped, cleared, laid out anew. He catches a couple of pieces at risk of rolling from the edge of the desk, taking a moment to pick up that dagger as well, thumbing an inch of blade clear of its sheath to inspect the metal. Idle curiosity, ended when she declares the board ready, the weapon set down with its blade pointed carefully away from both the swordswoman and her guest.

A quiet moment allows him to consider the board, that unruly clump of black pieces against the regimented rows of white; her claim of impasse is deemed mistaken within the span of a few breaths, the board weighted overwhelmingly in favour of the white - but that's not the point, the board instead serving as a symbol.

"I conducted my own interrogations." A windowless, whitewashed room, carpeted in straw mats. His attention is still on the board, for the most part, his tone slightly distracted as a result. "But I think he found it pleasing to be able to help. To do. To make a difference. He hates being frustrated, being powerless."

A hand reaches to pluck two pieces from the board - the white king, and that grey pawn; both are set in a clear spot in the middle of the board, a single space between them. Two sweeps of his hand brush the other pieces to rattle from the edges of the board, leaving that pair of chessmen standing alone, face to face. His grey gaze lifts to watch her reaction.

"Bypass his spies and Watchers and assassins entirely."

A third way.

"Speak with him directly. Meet with him. Write a letter first, if you are hesitant. Address him as he is - a dear friend who you have not seen in years. See how the Glenn Burnie before you compares with the mapmaker you taught swordplay."

Calomel pushes the chessboard firmly aside, leaning forwards to meet the swordswoman's gaze, demanding her absolute attention.

"Set aside any thoughts of intrigue, of strategy, of cunning. Deal only in truths, as your friend deserves."

[Carnath-Emory]

"Oh, it is sometimes a virtue." This is no challenge at all, no contradiction; it is only a musing thing. "Very sometimes," and the eyes are downcast towards a damaged shoulder; a mute demonstration, and when her eyes returned to his they were lit by brief, morbid amusement. And what has he found, this creature who was sometimes a swordsman and once, just once, a Governor? But a very fine weapon indeed. Quality, he'd reckoned - of clear, excellent steel; the cultists that wore this must surely have intended it for far more than ceremonial use.

"I had wondered at this. At your questionings, and my student; at the role which he might play. I was present for only one of these, mn?" Whitewashed walls; the careful application of pressure to a thing which cannot bend and so must break. A man's very deserved suffering. And how even then she could not smile, for the fury burned so hot behind her eyes that it seemed if she moved at all it might threaten to spill free...

Even now.
Even now, because Glenn Burnie cannot stand to be so powerless, and what had they done but abandoned him to just such -
No. The stomach clenches. The spirit cries enough! And her will is good; she is clean, straight lines and the breath does not strangle in her throat, and the wine is a balm to nerves gone raw all over again. This is not intolerable. This is not beyond her ability to tolerate at all -

There are two pieces set stark upon the center of that battleground and Calomel's meaning is very clear.

"My student," she corrects him - and so softly, the first time, that he cannot have quite heard it at all. Not so, the second, and knowing already that he will object lifts a hand from this cup: "Even though he is not. It changes - everything. No - do not mistake me. Intrigue? Cunning? I play at these things - reluctantly. They are more your game, mm? Yours, his. This," a tilt of her chin towards the chessboard, "this is mine."

It is assent.
And it is clearly conditional.

"I ask you these things because I do not intend to bleed for his streltsy a second time, regardless what face it wear. Because this - " a lift of her cup towards their surrounds " - is also my responsibility and I come to know, very slowly, what may yet come against it." If. Maybe. Perhaps. If not. "But Glenn Burnie - what has he ever had of me, but truths? Never quite all, but far more than most -

"And, as you say, I do not intend to change that now."

It is a quiet thing then, the subtle straightening of her spine, her shoulders; the easy calm into which her features have slipped. And even her voice, when she speaks again, and it is with a nod of her head towards the windows at her back. "Cinnabar. This late hour. Your sera Cambree will worry."

[Cinnabar]

Her student, and she's prescient to raise her hand, to press on; his gaze is stern, lips parting briefly as if dispute her correction, but his protest is grudgingly forestalled.

And he must nod slowly at her explanation, subsiding back into his chair for all that there remains discontent at the title she gives Glenn Burnie. And the one she very deliberately doesn't.

"Meet with him on your terms, then, until you see where he stands. Whatever has happened these last two years... I don't think he's so changed that he'd send assassins for your blood. I won't believe that." There were reasons he might, of course - their trade of secrets and truths, the degree to which she might know him, understand him, and the risk that he might not want anyone to have so great a hold over him. But for Glenn to act upon those reasons in such a way... no.

And then there comes that mention of the time, of his waiting wife, and it's interpreted as the closest a weapon might get to a polite hint.

"Ah, yes." A nod, the last of that wine drained with a quite lamentable haste before he moves to stand, cup set down carefully amid scattered chessmen. "And the children too. I'll ask Cam to bring something." He nods to her shoulder, her calves. "Something holistic. Please, stay; I can find my way from here."

Straightening his clothes, now, retrieving his satchel and generally preparing to depart, grinning as he offers a self-consciously formal farewell.

"As always, Ariane, it's been a pleasure." And isn't that a jest to bring a smile to one's face? For all that it requires a peculiarly Myrken sense of humour. "Or at least, it's been very good to see you again. One of these days we might even use that chessboard for a game, hm?"