Of Updated Deliverables and Immediate Plans

[Glenn]

Elliot Brown's life had begun to come apart at the seams. Niall was suggesting the most extreme communal desires, ones that went against his own mindset. Nova was expressing concern about his doting, about his behavior around her. Solena was still away. And all of that, would be manageable, all of it, if Nova and Niall hadn't been in the same room at the same time the other night! Thankfully, his cunning intervention and Galacia's help meant that they hadn't actually interacted (to the best of his knowledge), but still, it had been the first crack in the facade of his perfect little life. Obviously now he had to regroup and figure out how best to deal with these things, how best to make everything work smoothly.

Or he could veer off in another completely ridiculous direction to take his mind off things.

Ariane Emry,

many months ago we met at DARKENHOLD and we made an aggrement and it is time to tell you that i have completed my side of our aggrement and i have worked for free with black smithes and learned every thing that i could learn and know i now a lot about locks and how to make them and how to open them not that i would need to know how to open them at DARKENHOLD but it is use full to know all sides of something and i am now going to take you up on your offer of having a room at DARKENHOLD so that i can do work there and help with stopping people like me but much less trust full than me from getting in and going through your cloths. pre pare a room and i will come with my things in the next few days

Elliot Brown

[Carnath-Emory]

It can't be Radeorin. It really just can't, which means that it has to be a highly skeptical 'Siris instead, and all because the Marshall doesn't care for this boy to know that her spelling's as bad as his.

Elliot Brown

We are subject to changing circumstances.
Bring your self. Bring a sample if you have one prepared. Do not bring your things.

- Marshall Carnath-Emory

[Glenn]

Changing Circumstances.

Upon returning home to pack, the young thief found the letter. He read it three times before finally putting it down. There was a temptation to toss the bag he had been packing against a wall, to rage and storm. He had started out in a bad position to begin with after the events of the last few days. That's why he was pushing for this now. Anyone with sense would know what this meant, would cut his losses.

Elliot Brown, however, 'borrowed' himself a horse and found his way to Darkenhold. Would the gates be barred to him? If so, he'd stay outside. If so, he would make no attempt to breach them. They both knew he could do that. Otherwise, he'd wait outside for the lady of the fortress.

Another few hours and he would have been there in another capacity.

[Carnath-Emory]

The gates of Darkenhold are not barred to Elliot Brown - not when his arrival's expected. The gates are not barred, and he is at liberty to wander the grounds, they'll advise: the gardens being much improved by the first thaws and fit for a pleasant walk, if one isn't sensitive to a bit of mushy sod beneath the boots. He'll realise, of course - young rogue that he is - that it's not possible to move very far at all without attracting eyes, unobtrusive but diligent. Not possible unless he is particularly intent upon repeating the antics of his last visit -

And clearly no-one expects that he actually will.

It's not a long wait; he had been expected, after all. She is a shape rounding one of the stronghold's corners, a paler silhouette against the subtle glitter of lack stone; she is a lifted hand, a wordless beckons. She is a narrow thing on the edge of motion, filthy at the boot-heels and soiled at the knees of her trousers, and after a time they will fall into step together, treading a narrow paved pathway that leads them between damp ground and winter-grey shrubbery.

"Only a short walk, and with some work to be finished at the end of it. You - " and she'll spare him this sidelong glance as they walk; this casual up-and-down which resolves into something like a smile. "Are you as well as you seem? I've hoped."

[Glenn]

It was very possible that he would repeat all those antics and more before the day was done. If that was the case then it was on Ariane's head for inviting this upon those that she cared for. Her letter was exact. Precise. There was no room for question or doubt, or even hope. Not in Myrken. Not for a farmboy. Even before he could read, he'd recognize a letter like that if it was told to him. It was an unholy thing crafted to kindly lighten the burden of firm, unyielding disappointment.

Once upon a time, he would have appreciated it for what it was, because it could have been sent with no kindness at all, with nothing but disdain and distaste, with the unique swatting motion reserved for those who have nothing requesting something from those who have something. Elliot Brown no longer had nothing. He no longer needed nor desired such kindnesses. "Yeah, okay. Smalltalk. Sure. I'm better than I seem in every way cept for one. You're like always including the need to bathe. The weather is great, except for it's still too wintery and not springy enough, which wouldn't bother you much at all since you're a Dauntle-ass and this is positively paradise weather compared to there. So all that said," and her letter brandished like a weapon. "Just what are you trying to pull here, huh?"

Oh what a difference half a year made.

[Carnath-Emory]

The letter was exact. Precise. Between Ariane's sparse phrasing and Farsiris' deft, small hand, the two women have mastered the not-much-sought-after art of conveying chilly sentiments in thirty words or less.

The letter was also incomplete. But how was he to know that? She'd mentioned samples, after all, and carries with her the reputation of being precisely the sort of woman who'd summon a prospective rogue an hour's ride away just to deliver some locks.

"Begin with small-talk. Very quickly, the other person will suggest a thing they'd actually like to discuss."

A flicker of cool smile is their accompaniment, as they round the building's corner. Here she makes small adjustments to their trajectory, solely so that they may step outside of the wall's long shadow and into the pale winter sunlight. Doing this removes them a few inches from the paving, however, and the Elliot may wish to cling to the shadows after all, just for the sake of his shoes.

"And if they don't? Well." A small motion about the lips; some ambiguous shift of her hand. Far overhead, clouds gently shift, as they have throughout the day, and some chance convergence strikes a flash of brilliant reflection from distant glass. Not so distant, as they continue on. "Bathe? Mm?" A blank glance, but she's smiling for true a moment after it. "Winter is winter. Of course I've known worse. But do you know, the longer I spend amongst real summers, the more I despise the snow - have you been speaking with the Chairman? It sounds like you have."

There had been a pair of gloves tucked loosely into her belt, rugged and filthy. One of them's in her hands now, the worse of the dried dirt slapped off against one hip, even as he brandishes that page like a livid accusation. She can't have failed to notice it. Even so -

"'Pull'. No."

- her eyes are not for the letter but for him.

"Circumstances - change. You've grown here in Myrken, haven't you? So you know this. Look at your self and tell me you don't know this. So." A flex of the hand inside that glove sheds a few more flakes of something unappealing; with a faint moue of the lips, she abandons her attempts at Better, and sets about seeing to the other hand instead. "The work is yours, if you're fit for it - and we'll speak of that when you're ready to. A room here; that is less straightforward."

The glasshouse. They've drawn near enough to catch a glimpse of delicate greenery, wavery and uncertain behind the doors; to catch an echo, more distant, of hammers upon stone.

[Glenn]

"I don't talk to her." A mutter about Agneiszka Kaczmarek. "She's a worse teacher than Olwak," and who called Rhaena Olwak by her last name?

Circumstances change. "You let in so many people here, Ariane." Bold where he hadn't been before. Circumstances had changed and if he had the freedom to just accept an offer months ago, perhaps they would have changed differently. "Yet you stop at me? I'm where you draw the line? Really? I understand you saying no to all my other demands. I do. I'm not an idiot, okay? Those are about other people. This is about me. Work for you. Do this, and I get a room. Nice and simple. But you tell me circumstances have changed? I'm the person that you turn back? Those doors are open for everyone and I'm the one who doesn't get in?"

Aghast would be a good word for it. Incredulous too. "You have nothing else you can offer me." With a thud, one piece of metal was thrown down by her feet. "That's a lock just like yours in your room. I could have switched mine for yours. Made you kick down your door. I could have shown you just how good I was that way, but I'm here in good faith." He tossed another one by her feet. "That's one of mine. Take it to anyone and see the difference." He meant to make her pick them up, though, even his own work that he toiled over. He withdrew four papers. With the locks there had barely been anything to see. One second they weren't in his hand, the next they were. The papers he took out more carefully. They were folded once. He threw them and they soared through the air with such precision, drifting until they sat upon the locks, landing almost perfectly. "Letters of introduction from the blacksmiths I've been working with." Ones they were happy enough to give. He'd been offering free labor after all. More than that. He paid them for the right to learn under them.

"Maybe circumstances change, but I did everything right, and these circumstances don't change." That was a threat, in case she wasn't sure by his tone, which, of course, was the sort of thing that made it absolutely sure.

[Carnath-Emory]

Two people call Rhaena Olwak by her last name.
Nobody who's spent more than two minutes in Elliot Brown's company would fail to assume he's one of them.

She's content to let him speak. She's always been content to let him speak, until they reach a moment in which it begins to become a hindrance - but that doesn't happen when he flings the fruits of his study down onto the paving stones, and it doesn't begin to even when he casts all those pages out into the air between them. But oh, how a swordswoman's eyes watch their gentle descent. Precision. It's a credit to his -

Oh, but here lies the thing of which they do not speak.

"Mm." Some mild little sound, when he's reached the last of his words and the punctuation he'd wanted to end on. "Tell me - does this work for you?" As she turns narrowly back towards the young rogue, a jerk of the chin indicating what he'd thrown down between them: variations on a familiar theme; complications of simpler locks; to look for two moments is to know she hasn't a hope of understanding their mechanisms unless she can find a better mind to explain them to her. But for now it is only his eyes, and the steady gaze of her own.

"Really. Throwing everything you've done down there onto the dirt. Do you ever find that this actually convinces anybody - of anything? Ever?" The curiosity is genuine; the smile is a little dubious. "Come. Bring those with you; they deserve better than dirt, and I would like to read those things. I would give you a proper answer to all of this as well, but the middle of the path's no good for that. Mm?" And she's turning there upon her low boot-heels, resuming her approach towards glasshouse doors.

[Glenn]

"No." One word and he would speak it to the back of her head. He would speak it and he would hold his ground.

When did Elliot Brown convince anyone of anything? When did he bend hearts and minds with reason and logic? Here was Ariane Emory who once had a fine student with good learning and better ideas, who still had an architect who knew more than most of the province combined. This was Ariane Emory who played chess with the most inquisitive man in the land. Turned away now was Ariane Emory who had grown to cherish the value of the finer instruments in life.

And here was Elliot Brown talking at her. "They're papers is what they are. And the lock is a lock, unless it's going to be a key, and all that gunk you're saying? Makes me think it won't." Some slight hesitation from the teenager there. Had that been clever? Had it made any sense? Something about Ariane made him want to push as far as he possibly could. In that, she was like Agnieskza. It was just that he seemed to use a different part of himself to push with her.

"We're talking about locks, right? Ok. This is how they work. Either the key turns or it doesn't. Either. Or. Either I'm welcome in there, or I'm not. You let me in now and I'm welcome. You let me in now, and I damn well promise you that you won't be able to get me out if I don't want to go and you won't be able to make me want to go no matter what you do, ok?" His foot kicked against the dirt, back and forth, making a line, even though that wasn't really his intent. He just meant to kick at the dirt. "So maybe we should do our talking here at least until you say what you got to say."

[Carnath-Emory]

"Gunk."

He'd paused her with a word.
It's just a shame that it had to be that one.

"What's 'gunk'?"

She had, almost immediately, considered handing him to the architect. You've a talent for unraveling the impossible: here, this is yours. The cowardice of doing such a thing could never have restrained her, not if the results were certain to benefit. But it had seemed somehow to do a disservice to all three of them, and even if it didn't, the fact remained that that this was flatly impossible, that -

Changing circumstances.

"We do admit - so many people." He'd paused her with a word, but when she turns now, it's with several of her own. "People with a specific need: refugees, the Ashfiend's - " a discarding tilt of the hand; the rest of that needn't be spoken, not between two people already so familiar with that piece of Myrken's history. "People employed for their specific talent. Others - " a shift of the shoulder marks the rest as irrelevant. "We admit these people. We turn very few aside.

"But not all of them stay."

Dropping into a loose-limbed crouch here upon the dirt, the swordswoman turns her hand towards well-worked metal. Light fingertips upon hard edges and tiny mechanisms; almost absently she pins a page that had begun to drift beneath the worn toe of her boot.

"Tell me a thing, Elliot: these people you named for me, the last time; these friends. Is there any one of them towards which you feel particularly responsible? Not," a thin smile, "Niall, I imagine. But perhaps one of the others. No need to speak a name." And here she lifts some pale glance to the boy, the young rogue. "Yes or No will do."

[Glenn]

She was the wind and it was nothing that he had expected, even with some experience with her. He expected something solid: a wall perhaps, an obelisk of stone; maybe, maybe something more fluid but still congealed: the tide. Those are things he had braced himself for, but instead, he found himself facing something he could not grab hold of, something that he could not swat away or slam his fist against. She was the wind and his feet were coming off the ground. She was the wind and capriciously, she threatened to shift his bearing with each and every word.

"Gunk is.. it's like, sticky stuff in your ear? Or that stuff you hack up when you're sick. Look, it's not important!" He stood his ground behind his unconsciously drawn line, but standing his ground in less tangible ways was harder. "Why build a fortress for people who aren't going to stay?" There were things he could wrap his mind around, many and far more than but a few years ago, but a fortress in the heart of Myrken? An estate, that he understood. Lothbury with all of its protections. that he understood. This? Did she hear what she was saying? "The Dagger is where people go when they are not going to stay." Three sisters with a room to themselves. Just look at what two of them had wrought.

"Yes Niall." The words were quick. She was the wind and she meant to blow him this way and that. He could stand against her but only by shouting, and while he was terrible at convincing anyone at anything, any Myrken boy knew what you got when you shouted into the wind. It was all he could do to move in another direction, any other direction. "You don't understand why, though, do you? Am I going to explain or are we going to get to the point?"

[Carnath-Emory]

It was never just one of them.

Quincy would have built a fortress and filled it with doughty warriors, and that would have been good.
Ariane would have built nothing at all, and that would have been good, too - for her.
Syl Duquesne would have rebuilt Aithne, a miles-away structure of pale and gentle beauty, and that would have been good - for everyone else.

The honest answer would have been that Darkenhold is a contradiction wrought in stone because it has been left in the hands of the person least qualified for its ownership. But what she tells him is:

"Why turn away people who've lost everything, when we've the means to shelter them safely?"

Because that's the honest answer, too.

"The Broken Dagger is where they go that have some means. It's where they go that are suited to it. But those men from Derry? The most of them are here because what frightens them more than Myrken is what's driven them to its borders. There've been others. Lanessians. The Ashfiend's - "

A moment's glance. There's no need to speak the words.

"Niall, then." And this time the smile can linger a moment, her hands pause on the pages they'd begun to fold. This smile, with its intrigued edge; something unlike what she'd worn when the boy explained gunk. "The other can wait. I'd like to hear this."

[Glenn]

"There's not room for me, in there?" Because of the refugees. That's could have been what she was saying. It could have absolutely been what she was saying and this would be easy. Elliot Brown was a lot of things but none of them was a monster, despite what some people might think. "If that's the case, I'll put up a family in town, ok? One family that's not too tied together with the others. And I'll see what I can do about finding them work too. I know people." And how did someone like this young rogue get to know people? And what sort of people could they possibly be. "And they'll get something better." He had more money than he wanted. What he wanted, right now, this very moment, was on the other side of that wall, and he wanted it all the more because she was keeping it from him. "If it's something else, though..."

Some means. No. If they have some means, they don't go to the Broken Dagger. They go somewhere where they may not die because they dared to walk downstairs. "Dulcie let a crazy possessed girl stay for free the other day. She didn't have anywhere else to go. She's letting her work it off." Then, as a rather frustrated afterthought. "She's really possessed too. And she has grabby hands."

Oh, he seemed to be adrift. He'd started his response out so well too. "Niall." Niall did not have grabby hands. Nor was she possessed. He didn't want to tell her this. He didn't want to voice it. It wasn't one of those things that got voiced. "She's alone. More alone than you will ever be in your entire life, even if you live to a hundred, which you won't, because you're you and we're here. She's more alone than you can even imagine being, and you're Ariane Emory, right?" And you can hide behind an armor that no one could ever take off of you. "She's more alone than I can even imagine and I can imagine it better than almost anyone, because I know. She's alone and she's in a place that makes no sense to her, and you can't understand that, because the difference between up north and here isn't so much. Little things. Some big things. But they're all still things, got it? What she's used to? Where she's from? They don't have things. They have something else. And she's here. And I'm what she has. And she's what I have. So she's my responsibility. And that's the best thing I will ever do in my entire life. Even if I had become a knight, I would never do anything better than that. And you're not going to keep me out because of that."

Not her. Not here. Not that. He took a step over his line, just to show her how sure he was.

[Carnath-Emory]

He knows people.
He knows people, and she can guess exactly what sort, too -

Except that when he begins to explain about Niall, she very suddenly wants to do nothing at all but listen.

Is it disconcerting, the closeness with which she attends to his words? But it couldn't be: not for Elliot Brown, who has survived the Ashfiend and the Shepherd Knights; who survives the unique talents of his teacher on each and every day of his new life. All the same, he is for a time the center of a swordswoman's singular focus, and remains so until, with a tiny tilt of the head, she averts her features behind a spill of curtaining hair.

There was no guessing what he'd have made of her smile.
There was absolutely no way to restrain it, all the same.

"There's room." He substitutes motion for words, when he's reached the last of those; she answers him with nothing but her voice and a lift of her eyes, when she's schooled the smile from her features and can reckon her face reliable again. "And you're right: I'm not going to keep you out because of Niall." Orderly papers, when her hands are done with them. Corners aligned, bits of soil sifted back down to the ground where they belong. There are a hundred things which she might say, on the subject of Niall's grave solitude and a rogue's responsibilities; a hundred things she might have said at any point during -

Is this a confrontation? A conversation? Sometimes it feels like what began as the one could become the other.
She has managed her expectations as carefully as she did her smile.

"These people, they do not come here because Myrken is what they want - but because it is all that they have. For some it is a place on the way to something else." To Better Days. "For others, a replacement for what they've lost, for things to which they cannot return. Some of them will stay. Many will not. Some of them will even stay here," and a tilt of her narrow chin indicates the dark glitter of the stronghold's nearby walls. "They've come to us with their needs and their fear and sometimes even their families, and we have told them that This Is Safe, and Elliot - these people, that Safety, is my responsibility.

"So."

Hands to her bent knees, the woman straightens to her feet, papers tweezed delicately between the fingers all the same as she stands. The locks have particular value, but there was no easy way to stand with them both and, forced to choose, her hand's preference is for written things under almost any circumstances at all. He is affixed with a quiet watch of her eyes now, all mild grays and as solemn as she's been at any point through this -

Ordeal? Negotiation? There mightn't be a word made for something like this, and that'll be a question written upon a page of her own, this evening.
Niall, though. It'd been worth almost anything to hear that. Niall and responsibility, like winter sunshine through stormclouds -

"You come to us this first day and you bring three kinds of havoc with you. A demonstration; I know. A demonstration is fine." Orderly corners. A downwards glance and she can read - one word of every three. Perhaps that much. His eyes again, now. "You thieve: a demonstration. Alright. From my room. Alright." A thin smile. "I can weather that. It was only once, and you fixed it. But you close that evening with as many threats as promises: it could have been worse, it might have been deadly, there's little you can do, but I might do anything at all. Mm? And you come to me today with fewer promises and more threats - towards a place, Elliot, which is filled with people for whom I am responsible.

"That is why it is not so simple as - You work for me and in return there's a place for you here. Derry. Lanesse. Rahl Dur. Those are my changing circumstances." And an architect whose own circumstances are transformative, a matter which is far beyond being anything like this young man's business. "I have children here; I don't want them, but here they are all the same, for every other alternative's worse than spending a few weeks in a - " some flick of a hand towards dark walls " - stronghold.

"I don't know who you're working for." Someone, he'd said. Someone has to say it's okay. "I don't know what you might decide - tomorrow, say; a week from now; a month - that you intend to do here. I want you here. And I want you doing this work. But what I need you to understand is that these people, they would be your responsibility, too: yours to treat well. What I need to know for absolute certain is that I'm not bringing trouble to them.

"Because Elliot, they have already had enough."

[Glenn]

It was amazing what could go through one's mind in a moment of a obfuscated smile, of just how quickly a young man's mind might move under the tumult of a swordswoman's honest admittance.

Elliot Brown's Ultimate Threat, being a brilliantly foolhardy thing which cannot be averted. stopped or even vaguely managed:

It's like this, right? You can't do a damn thing to me. I know how far you'll go. You can yell at me. You can follow me around. You can try to bar your doors. You can give me to the Constabulary. You can take my ring off and give me to Rhaena Olwak herself. You can beat me, maim me, try to imprison me. None of it will matter.

I won't listen. I'll lose you when you blink. I'll slip past your doors. I'll escape from the Constables. I'll be too strong for Olwak. I'll get up from your beating. Niall will heal my maimed limbs. And i will escape if you try to imprison me. A thousand times.

All you can do is kill me, and you won't. So i am going in and I am claiming what's mine. This is Myrken Wood. If we don't take what we want, someone else will. If we don't do whatever it takes to get it, someone else will. That's not just Myrken, it's life. I'll do whatever it takes to get in there. You won't do whatever it takes to stop me. I win, ok? I win.

And that's great for you, because if I didn't take what I wanted here, someone else would, and that person wouldn't be nearly as special as me. And that person wouldn't be nearly as worthwhile as me, but they would have been just as much trouble.

Elliot Brown's Solemn Promise, being a heartfelt admittance of certain failings in reality and young rogues

You're wrong. This isn't safe. You can't make it safe. Not here. This is a target. The whole province is, right? But this place? It's stands out. Maybe that's good for everyone else elsewhere, but here, it just means you get attacked. These people are looking for safety? They're wrong.

Safety doesn't exist. Safe doesn't exist. It's not real. You could be surrounded by a thousand pillows and still suffocate because of them. Nothing is safe in this world. You're letting in people without a home, with nothing to lose. You're letting in dangerous people who you don't know, just because they have nowhere else. You're letting in people shattered by war, with jagged edges and sharp...

Elliot Brown's Second Attempt at a Solemn Promise, being a more heartfelt admittance of certain failings in reality and young rogues

Look, Emory. I have what I want. Whatever I want, more than I ever thought I'd have, but the days go by and maybe i'm a little lost too. Maybe I don't want to work for you, but maybe working for this place, working for a place that I have a stake in, maybe that's something, right? Myrken's too big. I don't even like most of it anymore. I don't know when that happened, but I don't, but it's home. But it's home, not Home, right? And maybe i need that Hhhh. Maybe...

The things that went through a teenager's mind in the matter of a few very long seconds. The honest truth was that Elliot Brown was not capable of dealing with the ideas she had put forth. No one had pushed that level of responsibility anywhere near him in years, and when it had been in his general vicinity, it had been a idealized, storybook thing. This was anything but and he had fallen so far since then.

What Elliot Brown actually said:

"Look, I don't work for anyone, ok? My masters, all of them," a nod to the papers, and for the one that was not there, "decided that I am free to make whatever decisions I want. And the people here, right? You know as well as I do that they're going to have more one way or another. We have and have and have until we can't have no more. Then maybe we do something about it if we can. If we don't, we die. Now that they're here, they get to have more too. That's life and it's life here." His arms were crossed in front of him as if he was cold; it was everything he could do to try to twist it into a look of defiance. "You can't know. I don't know. They don't know. All we know is this. Bad things are going to come to them. Bad things are going to come to you. Bad things WILL come here, ok? At least, maybe, I'm a bad thing that can do some good for you and for them. Worst case, I'm the bad thing that you know is coming and that still makes me better than mostly everything else you're going to come across."