Seamstress Seems to See unSightly Things.

[BetaFlame]

He flickers his eyes between them, and there is a judging a weighing of matters there. A careful consideration of the matters at hand. This girl was clearly in over her head. She thought herself more than she was, and it was obvious in the way she carried herself. Over confidence to hide fear, uncertainty. The man? He just didn't care. He was there simply as a weapon. He was her sword, but he was not wielded by her. No, the hand that held him was somewhere else.

Then she asks a most amusing question, and it draws a peel of laughter from Mikael. Hunt Aleksei? No. Help him? Again no. He shakes his head slowly and meets the girls eyes steadily. "No, again no." He speaks more fluidly already. The spell is working, though perhaps they will think he simply remembers. "Aleksei.. he would not need... uhm help from me. Warn him, only. He and I.. shared the same master, you understand?" There is a little smile and a shrug then. "But he will not believe you. He thinks... he killed me."

[Rance]

A mere week of schooling -- hours spent on the Standard alphabet, on proper posture for projection, on understanding the lawful use of punctuation and the ways it should not be molested -- had left her feeling quite capable, but wholly unprepared. No, she knew nothing. She could work diplomacy with her fists and had been raised in a republic of the back-stitch and the bone needle, but working it with words?

She had years to go.

"He will not have to believe me," the girl assured him, wiping a wetness from her eye with her knuckle -- a seeping eye, an allergy, a sign of coming spring, "because -- because it will not be me who tells him you are here. That is not my place. But regardless of who it is who tells him, I imagine he will be intensely surprised."

She motioned to him with her bare hand, the fingertips bloody and scabbed from hours of recent needlework.

"Give your sword to Messa Woger. You will get it back. He quite loves his own blade too much to want to be disloyal to her with another mistress. This is a formality for safety. Do this, accompany us peacefully, and we might escort you to someone who can do something better with your message."

The girl looked up to Woger, raising her black eyebrows. "To the Marshall, then? Or perhaps this is a matter for -- what do they call it -- that Constabulary."

[Duquesne]

"The Constabulary?" he repeats, sniffing somewhat against the cold and the presence of snot born of these very temperatures, as if sinuses possessed a special reservoir of liquid that only leaked when the frosts came, and he offers Rain a dubious gaze. He may not possess the sharpest wit but he did know a few things and one of them was that people generally did not care to tangle with local law, particularly if they were outsiders. "Prolly not 'is first choice, eh? Law an' all."

The man bears up under his layers and squints when he glances about, buying himself a moment to tap into rusted mental faculties. And he shudders from a thrill of cold, or perhaps a thrill of brief acuity, then settles slowly into his former posture. "Who else?" he asks Gloria, looking down from his bored war-mount, "Marshall Em'ry mayhap; who else knows 'im, this Aleksei? Whate'er, we ought t'be movin'. Light'll be gone afore long."

[BetaFlame]

At Gloria's request, the sword is taken up by the scabbard. He takes a moment to unwrap a cord from around the scabbard and run it up through a slot on its circular crossguard, then around the hilt several times, back through a matching slot on the otherside and down to tie around the scabbard. Effectively tying the sword in place. He offers the weapon hilt first to Woger, takeing a few slow steps forward so that he may. "Its served me for.. years. I do not like handing it over, but I will." Truly he knew he didn't need the weapon.

"I will follow. I do not mind questions. I do not want to be trapped? Imprisoned?" He was clearly unsure which he meant, but either could apply in this case. So he would wait on the smelly woman (why did he have to be down wind?) to decide what she wanted to do. There was a faint hint of amusement in his eyes at the idea of this girl of limited ability being the one with his fate for the moment. But in due course, he could change his own winds of fortune.

[Rance]

She did not know who he should have directed him to, if to any at all. It would not be on her conscience if he happened to be the harbinger of some terrible thing -- a Calamity all on his own -- and she certainly did not have the tools, nor did Woger, to make an informed suggestion.

"The Marshall, then," she said to the swordsman, "or Regent Burnie, though I imagine that this will be a matter delegated to someone else. I am trying," she admitted to Woger, of this diplomacy. Underneath her, Caliir was beginning to get impatient, wrenching at a few exposed weeds with his gums, occasionally blurting out his displeasure. "I am very new at this.

"Messa Rain," the girl said, with a fabricated confidence in her voice, "it is my hope that -- that you understand my concern; my words are all that I have, and while I am young and foolish, I cannot just trust any blade. You see? I, like you, am relatively new to Myrken Wood. It would be presumptuous for me to -- to expect that I should know how this is done."

When the blade was surrendered, she smiled, and calmly drummed her hand between Caliir's shoulderblades.

"You will get it back very soon," she assured the newcomer. "Not having a blade in this place -- or being afraid of them -- is a sentence of death."

And as Woger had said, because light was getting more scarce, she spurred Caliir into a stiff gait and motioned Rain along with her. She set the beast to a slow canter, one that might have put Woger's greater steed to boredom, but running was no option when the man they accompanied was on foot.

"Where are you from, Messa Rain, where they cast people out in flashes of light?"

[Duquesne]

The soldier will lean to accept the weapon from Mister Rain, will look him in the eye that moment when both their hands grasp that sheathed blade. "I'll not wit'hold 'er," he says in promise, nodding somewhat, "One way 'r anoth'r." There were rules among swordsmen, at least there were rules where Woger came from and he would continue to honor them.

He cradles the weapon in one arm, there beneath a fold or two of cloak, and nods to Rain. And then his dull attention lowers toward his charge, who very nearly seems to scold him in a moment--the man is accustomed to such treatment from women, having several in his household who, like a rogue wave, descend on him the moment he opens the front door. He offers Gloria a kindly sort of grunt, which is the most understanding noise he can make.

Spur and rein are lightly applied to the horse's flank and neck, and they come around to plod in after the student and the mystery-beast Caliir. And thus they were moving again, much to relief of Woger who had concerns for darker hours--the wood was no place for decent folk to tarry.