Broken Words

[Glenn]

Elliot Brown had an insurance policy against nightmares. As it turned out, he had one against bodily harm as well. Unfortunately, neither of these were entirely pleasant or without cost. It made for a long night. If Nova had been looking for him for their nightly excursion, she would not find him. Niall healed him, but he had slept restlessly off and on through the night. There were no fever dreams, but he had managed to say very little, just that she should not go after Gloria yet as had been her voiced intention, and that he meant to write her a note.

Come morning, he, still a little weak from the events of the night, managed to do just that.

Glorea

this is to tell you that there will be no reterburetero retro re veng because i moved and even though you did what you did you didn't do what they say you did and i know that and i will make sure they know that and will listen to me. it does not change nothing though because every thing i said was true and right and the truth and i mean it and you got to listen to it and stop letting that dumb place you are from tell you who you are because this is MYRKEN and here you get to deside who you are and you can hit me fourever and i do not care because i am going to think that fourever and say it and if you are too dumb to know better i will make you because i am Elliot Brown and i take things that need taking and give them to who i want and what needs taking most of all is your freedome and i will take it and give it to you weather you like it or not.

you half have a day

[Rance]

Start being a human being.

That was what Elliot had said to her as he lay on the ground, palms smearing in the mud, his mouth bleeding –- a bitten tongue? A tooth-pierced lip? –- and she could not help but wonder why.

Why had he moved into the line of her strike? Why had he let her hit him—

You can’t have a lazy stroke, mother sempstress said. you have to give it to him like you mean it.

but what did it do wrong, the seamstress said.

It did not bring us new bobbins; it did not turn its eyes away from miz’ah as she walked by it; it did everything wrong, and will always do everything wrong.

so if it hit it –- if I hit the slave with this –- it will make it better?

yes, glour’eya, said mother sempstress as she put the thorny branch with its leather-thong handle in the seamstress’ fist, it’ll make it all better. you are a very good jerno.

She had not been alone in the night. She had spent it with Cherny and Catch. Cherny, she could not stop watching, as if she were afraid that the quiet blankness on his face might break him -– Khalika had known the boy’s wound, and yet she had been so careless with her arrows, with her violence –- and Catch, after the incident with the deer, seemed inconsolable, unhinged, and worst of all, unhappy, broken out of the vole-reverie. Using the glass words had been a poor choice, but she had to, did she not? To keep his peace, to keep his sense.

D-d-did you sing songs as you beat him? Catch had asked.

First, Elliot. Then, Khalika’s deer.

It had been a violent night. She did not like those nights.

Before the sun’s first rays, after Cherny had found sleep and Catch had been lost in the silence and discordance of a blank-fugue, the seamstress returned to the Broken Dagger with caution and care. What was left of the vomit had dried on her dress; the tears had stopped stinging her eyes so badly. She slipped in, up the stairs, and to her room, where she found the note stuck between the door and its jamb. It shook in her hands as she read it.

I will make sure they know that and will listen to me…Here you get to deside who you are…

And she paused only long enough in her room at the Broken Dagger, satchel full of necessaries, to put charcoal to parchment-sliver and write a short response. When she closed the door and locked it behind her, she folded her retort and put it where the other letter had been, hoping it might be found, elliot brown only scrawled on the front.

Inside, simple words. Being complex, thinking too much, it would sully the clarity.

You half have a day.

One day would never be enough.

please i wish to take it back elliot,

i want to be a myrkener

[Glenn]

The note would be taken away as quickly and quietly as it had come.

Another would arrive the next day.

glorea

i wont do any thing til we can talk but don't you go exaggg

e

[Rance]

She had come for a mug of broth -- an addiction, almost, with its single sugar-cube -- because it cleared the clutter in her mind. She wore her bonnet strung tightly, and came at the times when she remembered Niall would be out on a hunt. Even then, she remained in her rented room only long enough to gather two tapers and a specific bobbin of navy thread.

And find the note.

A response left, but this one scrawled on the same sheet as his second note: a simple response, charcoal shaking, its dust still clinging to the page.

tomorow please

if you can, or anoather day iwill not
hafe a [a word in a chiseled, angular script, not Standard] with me, and wil not tuch one agen, myrkeners do not use them,

gloria

[Glenn]

The letter would be slow to come, but it would come, not til morning however

Glorea,

there is a stuhmp and i think we know it and i will be sitting on it at noon

e

[Rance]

She could not stay in a shack for long, no matter the good and comforting company of Many-Fights -- no, for again, in the wary deference of what little she knew of Niall's hunting schedule, the girl slipped out to the Broken Dagger. There, with cup of broth in a gloved fist, she found the note. with the bleary winter sun over a shoulder the girl made her way to Catch's woodpile.

She had sullied the philosophy of the place, she thought. She had shattered the calm of the addled man's wooded workplace by beating a boy near that stump.

With hands clasped around a willowy treebranch, half-obscured in the underbrush -- but wholly visible, for her sense of camouflage was flawed -- the seamstress waited for him to arrive. She had Elliot's note tucked up inside the wrist-hem of a dirty sleeve.

[Glenn]

The teenage rogueling was extremely good at sitting where he ought not sit. The bar, upon the porch railing, the rafters, and yes, upon this stump, the very stump where she had whipped at him just a few days before. Brazen boy. His hood was up as he approached, but there was little question it was him. By now she knew his gait, knew his look, knew his size and shape. Of course, last time she had seen him it had been crawling upon all fours.

So it was that he walked right past her, unlooking, uncaring perhaps. He said he would meet her at this stump and that was what he would do. This situation was on his terms. He'd only look at her, finally, when he had sat down upon it. The hood obscured his eyes, his face. There would be no clues for her there. His voice, however, was even enough as he spoke. "You speak first."

[Rance]

She watched him pass and wondered -- for she could not help but wonder -- is there pain when he walks, or have I broken his insides, or where is--

The spearwielder. A bonnet did not offer much peripheral vision, she was an owl with her tilting head and pivoting neck. She clutched to her skirts and filthy apron -- why an apron, she did not ever work with foodstuff -- and took a reticent step from crunching underbrush to the cold, muddy circle of dirt stamped into the ground around the stump.

When he sat, she crushed her hands together in front of her stomach, nervously twining and untwining fingers gloved and bare. She wished, in retrospect, that she might have asked Master Cherny to come, or Catch, for she knew Elliot and his love for blades, but she could have done no such thing. This was not their conversation to have. This was wholly, inexorably hers, for things inexcusably done.

But his letter had not been the thing of violent hands.

You speak first.

"I meant only to show you that -- that maybe I am not the most fine person," she said, with care. "That maybe if I bear a shame it is because I deserve it, and will sleep each night knowing it is deserved. I regret what it is I have done many times at the workhouse; I regret what it is that happened to you, when I thought only to scare you.

"Your back. Is it -- is it well?"

[Glenn]

His face was a bit paler than usual, but just a bit. It might have been the light, the shadows, the hood. His movements were slow, measured, but no, he walked with little difficulty. His voice did not contain pain. No more blood exited his lips. There was not the frenetic energy that she was perhaps used to with him, however.

She spoke and he listened. "I scared you." Simple words. A simple sentence. Not how he wrote to her. "You wished to scare me back." The turn of his head was focused upon her.

You are good at striking girls. The exact words were lost to him in the flash of pain and adrenaline and Niall's appearance before him. An angel. In the moment, however, as he moved his back into her strike, he had thought she was speaking about him. Now, though, he had reason to doubt.

"Again." For a moment, it seemed as if he was about to kneel back down once more. There was a sway of his legs forward, but he caught them upon the ground, planted them, stared. "Make me understand. This time use words. What did you do? Why did you do it?"

[Rance]

To both his observations -- I scared you; you wished to scare me back -- an immediate nod, a step forward. There was not the same challenge in her eyes that she had regularly leveled at the boy, that sprightly, good-natured willingness to banter with him, sometimes argue, and clash. No, she wanted nothing more in that moment than not to strike horns together. She never looked fully at him, which was unlike the foreign girl -- her gaze was often hard and locked, but not now. Not in this moment, with the hooded Elliot.

"I could beat up any girl," she whispered, before balling her bare fist tightly in front of her breast. "When you are fatter and larger than the other girls, that is how you must be. You see? Else, they will walk on you--" an unpracticed figure of Standard speech, "--and say they are better.

"But they were not," the seamstress said, with a moment's quiver of pride in her voice. "So I would swing my fists and break their teeth, or kick them in their stomach until they were sick. And so the Mother Sempstress, she said, you have a mean streak, Glour'eya, and she said, a slave should be struck now and then, and broken.

"So you did it. That is what you did, for Jernoah."

The explanation was simple, direct, tangled with little sparks of memory, sometimes awkward, sometimes quickly-spoken. There were no tears in her eyes, no lines on her face that threatened a sob, no softness in her cheeks. "In the temples, do you know what they say? They say hands carry out our bad and good work always.

"I did -- did not mean at all to carry out bad work on you, Elliot Brown," the girl said. "If I could go back two whole days I would."

[Glenn]

Was she looking for forgiveness? That's not what he was here for. He'd offered her three things: the initial words that he had moved, a letter that told her that he would stand in the way of others' revenge, and the admission that she wished to scare him as he did her. She was not getting more than that. She does not get to go back two days.

He was here for another reason entirely. He listened and yes, he continued to stare even if she wouldn't or couldn't meet his gaze.

"For Jernoah." Two words, finally, and then one more. "Cherny."

And silence once again, for truly, what did Cherny have to do with any of this. An admission was forcing itself out and these things took time. "Cherny is better than either of us. Now. I can imagine it though. A small child. Teased, beaten on, hurt, because he can't talk. Because he's different. So he gets hard and strong and fights back. He's more stubborn than them. And a person he respects comes to him and tells him that this is a good thing, that he should use it for his people, to punish others, to do what is best for his home. Someone older, someone in charge. Does Cherny do as you did?" No accusation. His voice was soft, even a little hard to hear, perhaps.

[Rance]

Cherny.

The subject changed, and she was grateful for it: in that moment, she had told Elliot more than she wished to, for he had already wrestled from her a secret that had not been his to have. The seamstress' posture seemed to change; she gave more credence to one hip, her stance relaxed, the edge of her filthy skirt leaving sidewinder-trails in the patch of snow under her.

Cherny is better than either of us. A matter they could both agree on.

"I think that--" she started to say, and then swallowed the words, for she knew the millworking boy better than that. She knew him, as well as a newcomer to Myrken might ever know a soul, for Myrkeners were steely folk, entrenched in the wildness of their world, often broken beyond repair.

Human.

But Cherny was better than either of them. Any of them, she thought. Her dearest friend.

"I think that Master Cherny, he would -- he would do no such a thing," she said, wringing her ink-stained apron in her hands. "I think he would think of it, as all boys would, yes? But I think that in the moment, he would know there were better choices; he would listen to his beautiful brain, Elliot. That is what Master Cherny would do."

Then, she raised her chin, and from beneath the bill of her burgundy-ribboned bonnet -- a yool bonnet, a coveted gift -- she watched Elliot closely, with softness. Her eyes never left him.

"Are you scared for Master Cherny, too?"

[Glenn]

How sweet. Precious really.

Gloria thought the subject changed. She thought them moved on. You scared me. I scared you. You regret it. What more is there to say? "Do you know what I think, Gloria?" One hand pushed the hood back finally. There was Elliot Brown, staring at her still. A bit paler than he ought to be, but otherwise whole and hale. "I think that if Cherny was a Jernoite, he'd do it. I think he'd do it in a heartbeat. Our little Cherny, with his big sense of right and wrong. He wouldn't have that if he was from there. So he'd whip those slaves, just like you did. To him, right would be whipping those slaves." His words were becoming increasingly heated. "And yeah, maybe he'd be confused about it, maybe even feel bad, but he'd do it. He never would have had a chance."

Just like you never had a chance.

He continued, not letting up now. "Or imagine a kid. A good kid from a hard place, one that runs away from home during a drought so that there's less mouths to feed, so that his family has more of a chance. Imagine him running off to join knights, so he can grow up brave and strong and help people, just like the stories. They all die though, because the world isn't like stories, and he has to watch them die. He has to burn them so that their bodies aren't defiled. Imagine him finding.." Then, his voice faded off, his eyes shut. Too far afield. "It doesn't matter. What matters Gloria is this.

"You never had a chance. Now you do. You came here. You made a choice to try to be better, your first choice because back then, you didn't have one. But if you make that choice out of shame, if you make that choice because you feel bad for what you did, how is that any different than choosing to whip slaves out of shame and spite and because you're told to. You're reacting. You're letting the past tell you who you are. Decide who you want to be. Decide who you are and take pride in that."

He was thrown, not much, but enough. There was a message. There were words, stories, that he had rehearsed, but he hadn't quite understood what she did and why she did it and he was never good at making his words piece together right. He came close but came short as well. You could take someone to water, but he didn't even do that. He'd pushed her though, pushed her in that direction. And now, he ignored that feeling of frustration, of not being able to express himself like he had to and he just stared once more.

[Rance]

She saw Cherny, but not-Cherny. Skin as dark as a burned sweetroll. Windlash scars from tiny bits of sand-grain pockmarking his cheeks. In his fist, an a'algaszh, a thorny branch, the kind of braided thing that beat and broke--

Saliva welled in her mouth. Her jaw became tight under her skin. For a moment, a moment alone, she thought she would vomit again, puke, spray her disgust all over Elliot's shoes, all over Catch's stump, all over everything.

Then, another image: a worldly boy, darting from his home, proud of knight-stories, weaned on the natural draws of Good Deeds and Brave Doings, and then the stink of hot-burning flesh, corpses turned into charcoal, bones brown under sloughing skin, burn the dead, keep them pure, to the hells with shovels--

They both had Cherny's face. But one was her, just past eleven and scarcely able to keep her bedthings dry, breaking men's ribs with a tool meant for the task. And the other, the body-burning boy? His words were too real, too applicable; his consistency was surreal; the boy was--

Decide who you want to be. Decide who you are and take pride in that.

"I want to be a Myrkener, Elliot Brown," the seamstress said. "I am trying. It is what I am doing, and--"

She thought of his trickery that one day in the Broken Dagger with the wine, abrasive and self-assured. She thought of the way he had turned to lock the door in the tavern, to kill a potion-maker so no other eyes would see, the way he told Cherny turn around and leave, the way he defended her that one evening. Giving her now this redemption, this moment to see beyond the shame in her guts. His slight lean two nights ago near the stump. His forgiveness-without-forgiveness. Elliot Brown, arrogant and incorrigible boy, with an honor to him.

Some seamstresses knew how to knock a man just right across his spine when given the right tool.

Some rogues knew how to turn a soul in on itself when given the right words.

"Reacting," Gloria Wynsee said, ever-softly, her words barely more than a breath, for they could be no more in that moment. "And what are you doing, Elliot Brown?

"Have you decided," she said. "The way you wish so greatly for me to do?"

[Glenn]

There were two stories. The second one? The second one was about a Myrkenite. That was the point. "All..." This was hard, too hard. He hadn't reached the point in his story yet where it paid off and now it was too late to go back.

To Elliot, Gloria was clever. Maybe other people saw her as a fool, but she valued learning and had that poetry. She had stories and seemed to draw some value from where she was from even in the midst of its morass of repression. Elliot Brown wasn't clever. His words weren't the right ones. He might have been crafty, but that was different. It was an animal thing. Gloria was more than that. People worked with him and he was growing but at best, he might reach a point of starting for her, something she'd far surpassed, and there were signs, in her expression,in her body language, in her words, that she had taken what he had bungled in the speaking and gone the rest of the way with it.

Good. Myrken was a land of the blind and Gloria had at least one eye half open. It meant something.

He managed to double back, to continue. "All that being a Myrkenite means is that you have a new chance. That at some point in your life, you get to have a choice, because you demand it, because you work for it. Some of us work all our lives to have it, and sometimes it's not so good, and others.. others leave everything behind to come here, and and what it earns them is a new start. They choose to come and then they get to choose who they can be." Kyra and Niall, Nova, but also the Governor and the Marshall, Cinnabar Calomel. Not all of them chose to come here specifically, but they all had that choice when they arrived. They all got to decide who they wanted to be, just as Elliot did.

"You get that choice, and if you do things because of shame of what happened back there in Jernotown, then you're giving it up. You're letting your life make the choice for you, just like you were forced to do back then, back when you didn't really have a choice. Now you do, though. It's like this," he spoke softly, staring at her still, trying to find those right words. "None of that is your fault, because it wasn't you. It was some girl who was a victim, just like the slaves. Some girl. Some poor, stupid girl who had been raised to be a poor, stupid victim, who couldn't know better because no one had ever told her. That's not you, Gloria. You're a woman who is smart enough to make a decision for your own life. You can remember that girl but you can't let what she did decide who you are."

She'd asked a question, though, and after so many words from him about her, she deserved an answer. "Me, Gloria? Me, I choose to be free. I don't think that's a choice for you."