The Flesh is Weak

[Niabh]

The raven shuffled his feet to turn and twist along as Glenn moved about the room, having never quite grasped the concept of human privacy or modesty. In his mind, their natural state was unclothed, and clothing merely an apparatus they piled upon themselves to display their significance. The raven was used to people who changed their whole face to reflect their social status, and Glenn, with his muted earthtones and dull dark hair, seemed woefully unarmed to challenge the Court.

“I don’t know what you want from me in this,” he blurted out, frustrated. “I can’t give you any advice because all you ever do is come up with some reason why it doesn’t apply to you. So what do you want? Someone to bounce ideas off of? Helpful cultural advice? A spy? A translator? A worrywart? Because I’m not interested in constantly tryin’ to point you in the right direction and you just turn around and start trammeling through the thornbushes.”

It came out more blunt and brutal than he intended. Even to him, it felt like a final, desperate, and ill-formed notion, something Glenn could easily talk him out of because he wasn’t entirely married to the opinion. Not anymore. When had things changed? It would be better, wouldn’t it? A Queen’s place was with her people. The clan was safe with its Queen, and the Queen, though one would be hard-pressed to find anyone to say it in so many words, was safer with her clan. A vulnerable Queen weakened the whole clan. At least part of the clan erecting its maze around her reflected that truth.

“If you’re gonner do this, you’re going to have to put on your Court manners and you’re going to hate it and I can’t teach you all the rules because I only know my rules and even if I did try to tell you what to do, you wouldn’t do it.”

Morosely, he nibbled at his tailfeathers, following them all the way to their pointed tips. One long black feather seesawed lazily to the floor. “Great. I’m stress-molting. That was a primary, too. I’m gonner to be bald as a hatchling before this is over.”

Briefly he mourned his lopsided tail, while peeking sidelong at Glenn for a glimmer of sympathy.

“Look, before you go out and do anything, will you please talk with Meg and see if she thinks you’re ready? Because I don’t know if you know this, but right now Meg’s the only person in camp who’s mostly on your side. She stood up for you and she’s right in your house. There’s your first resource. Meg’s in a good position: she’s close to the lady but the lady don’t exactly order Meg around. When Meg’s in charge of something, she does things her own way, and she’s no fan of Court, either. And unlike me at present, the lady actually allows Meg to approach her.”

[Glenn]

Glenn was not the most modest of men. He valued practicality when it came to almost any manner not of the mind or spirit. He understood the nature of creature comforts and studied how and why others enjoyed them to the point of being able to fabricate such an experience if need be. With Rhaena he could share in her enjoyment through their connection. With Ariane, something more honest and earnest occurred. Such things were many years ago now, however. Now expediency was in ascendance. He did all this while the bird groused.

"There are many directions and only one is right. Away is right. We both know that. I'll freely admit it. Extricating myself from this situation is the only wise choice. It's likely best if I don't even stay in Myrken," and there was no sign at all that Myrken wanted him to stay there in the first place. The land and its people had passed him by. Benedict was skilled enough to hear a smile but maybe not discern the exact shape of it. It was now the point where clothing had to be placed over one's head and a head through a hole and Burnie chose that particular moment to say this next bit. "There's the possibility of anything out there for me, but I'm too far gone for the possibility of anything. It's too late for that for me." Ah, there was his head, but the smile hadn't seemed to last. "So it's about finding the best decision that isn't me walking away.

"That doesn't answer your question, though. What I will gladly accept, if you continue to offer it, is friendship. And friendship is a damned difficult burden because it has none of the clear lines of those things that you mentioned." He was closer to the end of this sartorial ordeal than when he had begun but his body was stiff, his legs especially, and now the strain was beginning to show. "We're difficult, you, me, every person worth a damn. It's either part of what makes us interested or the consequence of those things." He neither looked nor sounded sorry for any of it. "A squire would be nice right now though," a mumble as one pantleg was providing difficult, "but I won't hold that particularly inability against you."

Practicalities. Back to practicalities and not grousing of his own. "Whatever is left of me can't meet the court head on. I can manage small bursts of disruption. If nothing else, that might buy time. It's premature. It's all premature until I can make a deal with her," and he'd tried to stress that enough but it didn't seem to be getting through. "Meg then, right? I'll put it by Meg and see what she thinks, about me, about it. We'll go from there." See? He was listening to the raven. Probably. Maybe. One could make the argument, though it probably wouldn't be very compelling.

[Niabh]

The raven scooted from bedpost to blanket, which was a mistake; immediately he was wading through a sand dune, and had to kick a talon loose. At the edge of the bed, his neck drooped in resignation. “Away would be right, aye. For you. For me, my away is toward. Everything I know tells me that my place is with the Court, with the clan. But since there’s an itty-bitty bit of me still says it might be nice to see next spring, I don’t listen to it.” His voice hitched, dropping to a husky, dusty mutter. “But it’s tough. It’s the toughest thing in the world. Coz…that’s my clan. That’s my Queen. Everyone in the clan has a part to play. And if it’s my part now to die for something I done, maybe the right thing is to go and do that. That is fucked up. I got nothing to lose.”

He shuddered, then raised his head and fixed an eye on Glenn. His delicate crepey grey lids twitching and blinking constantly in counterpoint to the twitching of his head. “But my point is, I know the Court. You don’t. It’s gonner be a lot easier on you if you know Court. Not even so you won’t get yourself into trouble—you’re gonner do that anyway. But this path would be a lot easier to navigate if you understood what they was doin’ and why they’re doin’ it.”



To him, it was a pretty reasonable plan. Meg had access they lacked, and she was uneasy enough about the entire situation that she might lend a willing ear to an alternative position—unlike the guard, who were hidebound in their loyalty, or the bard, who was both powerful and self-sufficient enough to stay her course, or His Lordship, who would stand in their way for the sheer pleasure of showing that he could. Meg would do what she thought right, which, on the downside, might exclude Glenn entirely. On the upside, it would definitely exclude His Lordship and possibly even the Queen’s own will, if Meg found it important enough.

None of this coalesced into so many words, but the raven felt secure enough in his grasp of Court dynamics that he instinctively arranged the pieces into something resembling a chessboard. On one side, the Queen stood within a protective circle of her clan, each one possessing certain roles and skills they would utilize to stand between Glenn and the Queen. Within that playing field, internal alliances and rivalries complicated or facilitated access, depending on how much favor they were trying to curry or how true their loyalties. On the other side lay Glenn and a dwindling number of advantages. And if it came right down to it, he would like to see next spring.

He had caught Glenn’s previous small stresses and responded to this one, finally, with a small scoff. “You don’t understand: if you’re dealin’ with herself, you’re dealing with Court. They’re like bees. Like they’re a whole bunch of people with one brain and that brain is her. Well, not exactly like that. But it’s gonner be a whole different game. If I tell you anything, or tell you not to do something, or suggest anything, it’s not because I don’t trust your methods but because I want you to win, got it?”

[Glenn]

"What's winning in this situation, Benedict?" He had always been one for practicality instead of social graces, though sometimes social graces were most practical. Rarely, however, was that was when he was alone in a room with a friend. Now that he had somehow found himself fully clothed, it was on to testing the limits of his body. That meant shifting his weight in a hopping motion from one foot to the other. It was labored but he didn't fully fall over. Still, less than idea, and he frowned accordingly. His tone was independent from his expression, not amused but a little light. "Prosperity for my people? Maintaining a friendly correspondence with her? Gloria not murdered? The avoidance of war? An exciting few decades at Court?"

No, it had been too much, too soon and he had to put both hands upon the bed to steady himself. Light gave way to light-headed. "The Court would eat me alive. I'm not what I was. I can't joust anymore, not like that, not with the numbers against me. There's too big a hole inside of me to deal with an entity that spends its every existent moment offering to fill such gaps." Best to just linger and catch one's breath for a moment, metaphorically at least as he had no intention of ceasing his prattling. "Simple goals then, relatively. A small negotiation to ensure my indefinite inaction and Gloria's continued well-being." He had the urge to raise fingers but the room was spinning just a tad. So, instead: "That's one. Reassurance to our combined satisfaction that she, being the Queen, is alright considering how thoroughly damaged and disassociated she was by the night and the fire and the Catch. That's two. And a reopening of communication between she and I moving forward. Something casual. A part of herself that she has to herself. That's three."

Having had enough of staring at his own sheets, Burnie pushed himself back up. It was too soon. It was all too soon, but when had that ever stopped him before. "You think the third will be the most difficult, but I think it the second. She was changed by her time here and she will not fit perfectly into the grooves from which she was detached. Moreover, she was not well, not in the least, and being back at the heart of her power might only exacerbate that issue. I worry that without us, those who had been here at the eye of the storm, to help center her once more, her people, instead of restoring her, may be swept under and warped unrecognizably in her wake. You've heard what I want, but I fear that may be our challenge." She had been untethered from time, space, and sanity. If she was truly the central driving impetus of their ever-connected society, then she could soon enough infect them all with madness and Myrken might pay the steepest price.

[Niabh]

He was afraid of losing him. He was afraid this was his last shot of impressing upon Glenn what lay outside the door. He was afraid of that as soon as the wheels started turning, he would find himself reduced to an instrument, rather than a collaborator. This was tempered by the fact that, well, he didn’t exactly have a plan, and Glenn always seemed to have so many, and his confidence in his plans was so persuasive that the raven, in his self-doubt, found himself tempted to be borne aloft by it for the most primal of reasons: namely, if the plan failed, it wouldn’t be his fault. He recognized none of this, not in so many words. The knowledge manifested disjointed anxiety, the way he felt when he looked into a tultharian mirror, unable to tell which side he was standing on.

“Let’s set a baseline that ‘nobody dying’ is winning and go from there.” Watching Glenn hop from one foot to the other, the raven developed an unconscious mimicry of shifting his own weight from foot to foot, weaving side to side like a prizefighter seeking an opening. “You alright? You need to sit back down or something?” In automatic anticipation, he scooted himself to one side to make more room on the bed’s edge.

Now he must scrape through his knowledge of protocol, which he was surprised to realize was much more extensive than he thought. As a raven, he was partially excluded from Court manner, but he’d watched enough people perform it enough to describe it. “So I think the first thing might lead to the third thing. Start with that proposal. That’s another good thing to know about the Courts: making the opening gambit is a power play no matter how the Court responds to it. Even if they ignore it, they’re ignoring it deliberately, to undermine whatever perceived status you might be trying to claim. Everything in Court is a matter of status. In your case, you’re tultharian, you’re a man, you’re clanless, horses have more status than you. Your only real status is your claim on the Queen. Proximity to the Queen bestows status. Based on the past few winters of interaction between you two, if you were Court, you’d be pretty well-off. I figgered you realized that when His Lordship took an interest.”

Belatedly, he recognized His Lordship’s appearance as an attempt to prevent Glenn from making the critical first move, and he felt a little thrill of cleverness for noticing. Then he immediately went blank. “What was I talkin’ about? Oh yeah, the second thing. That’s gonner be where the bard comes in. She might know what exactly’s wrong with the Queen. At least she can’t not know something’s wrong by now.”

A faint guilty twinge like a plucked harp string, sour and out of tune, made him shiver. One did not suggest that anything was wrong with the Queen, even when there clearly was. The High Queen swatted down her rivals like so many flies, torturing, humiliating, undermining, and no one suggested anything was wrong with her. Mabhe ni Niall’s unyielding ambition had nearly driven the clan to extinction, and no one said boo to it. Maybe they thought it, sure, but it was not a thing one said aloud.

But the Queen wasn’t murdering anyone, nor was she commanding imaginary armies. She was simply no longer the impish, teasing girl to whom the raven had become devoted. Was that loss enough to move a Court? If she could still perform all the rituals and issue the edicts, did it matter if she never laughed, never loved, never cracked one of her silly schemes, never wrinkled her nose in gentle mockery again? It mattered to him, and to Glenn most certainly, and perhaps it would matter to Meg, who despite everything still saw the Queen as her daughter. A part of herself that she has to herself. What a strange notion to connect with a Queen, yet somehow, it made sense.

“I didn’t think of that,” he admitted. “Not that, y’know, she might infect the rest of them with whatever she’s got. The bard will have thought of it, though. I know you and the bard ain’t great, but if that’s where your interests lie, that’s where you want to go.”

In the course of his final sentence, he became conscious of a stillness just outside the door, too deliberate to be a mere absence. Glenn might feel it too, the shivery, invisible outline of a glam, the sort that effaced rather than enhanced. Meg had a habit of quietly erasing herself so that she could work without interrupting, and the quietness seeped out like a mist spreading across a morning. The raven could almost smell it, the way you smell a chill in the air before a snow. He wondered if she was eavesdropping on purpose or if she was waiting outside for a break in the conversation into which she could enter.

[Glenn]

"Were I younger," how much younger? How old was he? How long had he been in Myrken? What of his time in Golben? The ritual underground? Even one of the scant few days he spent with Her. How much younger? "ten years, shall we say? I'd note my disadvantages and disrupt for the sake of disrupting. When you can do nothing else, you disrupt to create chaos for in chaos there is room to move, opportunity. To subvert expectations serves a thousand short-term expectations. I'm not so young or so foolish," or even so desperate, not really. There could well be desperation to come but it would follow failures yet to be realized.

There was no more shifting, just a nice steady stand. Part of finding one's limits was to test them. Part of testing's one's limits was to know just how far to poke and prod. He'd done quite enough of that for now. "What I must do now is something more surgical, something which takes the appearance of such a thing, but is actually controlled and focus, a glamourie of my own in some ways." Yes, something was amiss but he couldn't possibly discern what. Better to follow Benedict's instincts. "It'll be about balance. I have to be brazen and matter-of-fact as a Queen's favorite might be, but not overstep so far that I become a threat to be eliminated or an insult that cannot be endured." He had gone rather quickly from stating that he couldn't do this to suggesting exactly how he might.

"What about letters though? They're not in use at court." They had been quite alien to Fionn, even unsettling for their rigidity and permeance. "I lead with a flurry of them: introductions, inquiries, and yes, the proposal as well. I let the written word speak for me, with you doing much of the rest of the talking as an emissary who but can hope to know what I, strange and mysterious tulthurian that I am, might be thinking at any point."

[Niabh]

The letters would also allow Glenn to keep his distance, a plan the raven preferred. “Can you write the bard as well? That might be a point of entry.”

Court was the raven’s talisman, his touchstone. The world he knew organized itself into concentric circles. In the center was the most vulnerable person, which meant Acorn. Meg and the bard would be someone where nearby but after her, and he didn’t know if there were any others. Since it was a rading Court, there was doubtless a lorgaire with her own status in the lot, probably with a few people working with and for her—people who would need protecting for the sake of the rade’s success, but also more capable of standing their own ground than Meg or the bard. His Lordship’s position was uncertain, but that was mostly because the raven couldn’t imagine what purpose he served, since frankly, he still didn’t understand how His Lordship hadn’t gotten himself quietly bumped off years ago. The guard would make up the outer ring, the most accessible but also the most impenetrable. He’d seen old Bruidda in camp, making her the outermost defense. The Queen’s status was such that she held symbiotic position, being both center and circumference. The guard would rally around her but also depend on her to tell them where to go.

A favorite, though…a declared favorite. That would be directly under the Queen’s wing: hers to command, hers to protect. Her responsibility and her puppet. The very thought made the raven dismiss a tentative plan to worm Glenn in the position of favorite. He’d balk as soon as he realized what it involved. Not to mention Glenn wasn’t the sort to curry favor. If anything, his position was simply Being Glenn, free to participate exactly as much as it suited—and his interest was extensive—and likewise free to disregard any strictures he disapproved of.

Getting him in as favorite would instantly grant him the sort of limitless access he could take advantage of, but the possibility was curtailed by virtue of Glenn being Glenn. If the raven had teeth, he’d be gritting them.

The thought annoyed him enough that he took himself to the top of a table, where he immediately nudged a row of books. The books began to slide into one another, each bumping the next along until the one at the end shoved aside a wooden bookend, which in turn tipped over and fell off the table’s edge onto Glenn’s bedside table, where struck the edge of the luncheon tray, flipped it over, and sent both tray and refuse flying. A bowl shattered with a hollow clang like an earthenware gong. Backing away from the disaster didn’t absolve him of culpability, considering that Glenn could not have failed to see him do it.

“Shit,” he muttered, after a minute, and with a guilty glance at Glenn. “Sorry. So I guess we can—”

Then he startled again, nearly stepping off the table's edge himself. Somehow, with no memory of the door opening and no indication how long she had been there, Meg stood quietly against the wall, leaning on a broom. Her blue-grey eyes were solemn, her knuckles clenched pale around the broom’s handle.

[Glenn]

Could he write the bard? He had such high hopes for the bard at one point. "I can write the bard. I'll have another bard to write to as well, but that may have to wait a bit." He offered no explanation there. At the time, it had been feasible, reasonable, explicable to assume the bard had struck him down for his own arrogance and impertinence. He was used to that, even as he had gotten older. Instead, it was likely at the Queen's behest, an act to protect her interests so comfortably couched in the trappings of caring benevolence; the glamouries, magic or otherwise, that the fae put upon themselves.

He had no sense of the court's size but almost certainly thought it larger than it was. Benedict did not tell. He did not ask. That point of clarification would also be for another time.

There was little time between the raven's disastrous clattering and its immediate aftereffect, two individuals suddenly becoming three. His smile for the newcomer was not a wide or vibrant thing but it was a smile nonetheless. "Welcome, good neighbor. Would you rather the joke about ravens and thumbs or the one about the broken dish not being nearly as bad a clatter as the conversation he and I have been taking part in?"

[Niabh]

Meg heard things, many of them unspoken. She did not need to hear direct reference to the Queen to know she was being discussed, though one hardly needed the Sight for that knowledge. The Queen was on every tongue; every conversation led, directly or indirectly, to her.

Meg’s perception extended from the watery murmurings of the unspoken to the inaudible frequencies of emotional currency. She knew what she had interrupted—had inserted herself into, rather—and had chosen her moment to appear. Disruption and good timing were among the few weapons she possessed against all of Court—that, and the ability to silently insinuate herself. She was both too necessary to dismiss and unobtrusive enough to be overlooked. People said things around her that they perhaps should not. It was only Meg, after all. The advantage made up for a lack of cleverness and the hopeless self-doubt that for all her defenses, the Court merely indulged her, letting her believe she was slipping below their sight when in truth, they found her painfully, embarrassingly obvious, but too lowly to pose a threat.

She could not read Glenn. People whose emotions were closed to her tended to be those who did not feel in ways she understood. The very, very ill were capable of being rational and resolved, she knew, which made them more dangerous. The melancholic, the wrathful, the deranged, the mad—these were unpredictable but could be overpowered by one possessed of facilities enough to counteract their madness. But the cold ones, the cunning ones…these were like the sionnach whose name the Queen had given her tultharian. These could be mad but continue to scheme, and they were clever enough to conceal their plans.

She regarded Glenn silently, her eyes possessing all the depth of a painted wall, her broom gripped tight to her shoulder like a polearm. She understood him perfectly well in terms of vocabulary, but couldn’t tell if he was making mock of her with his jocular inclusion, nor was she quite sure if she should respond: would she be walking right into a prank at her own expense, or did he really expect an answer?

She put off the moment she must decide about that by silently slipping around him, with only a furtive glance and a murmured “good neighbor” in passing before she knelt to pick up the shards.

“’Tis well thou’rt back to thy feet.” Her eyes remained lowered to her work, but her tone was approving, possessed of the quiet confidence of a prophecy come to pass. “Did see thee catch thy balance. Any trouble there? No black spots before thine eye when tha stand, hm?”

For once, her stilted speech helped her keep her composure: she had to think twice on every word just to be certain she made sense, which exercise forced her true feelings to the back of her throat.

The raven perked up, dancing at her approach. “Oi, who’s lorgaire at camp right now, Meg?” he asked.

Meg’s face swiveled toward him, carefully blank. “Tristan of Bridelea.”

The raven twisted his head all but upside down in confusion. “Why is Brideslea here?”

Meg raised a blank face as she dropped the last large fragment onto the tray. “They are betrothed.”

“To the Queen?” This was new.

She shrugged a shoulder, then propped her hand upon the table and hoisted herself back to her feet, the tray balanced on the palm of her other hand. “’Tis no secret. They were betrothed ere the lady left Cnoch-na-Niall.”

“He’s not here hopin’ for a wedding?” the raven asked anxiously.

Meg smiled wistfully at the thought. A wedding would be a much merrier task than the one before them. Then she shook her head. “Nay, only for the rade. He was adept, and the clan lorgaire is needed with the clan.”

The shards on the tray shivered and chattered as she slid it upon the table, then she straightened, regarding Glenn critically, though not without kindness. “Well, then. It may be that it is time to leave thee. Tha’ll be plenty grateful for that, I’m sure.” So would she, for that matter. This house felt like a cage, salted with enough iron to make even walking down a hallway perilous. That she’d kept Acorn from burning herself this long was a miracle.

She pressed her lips tight, rubbing them together in hesitation. “How much of what I have heard should the lady also hear, Sionnach?”

[Glenn]

Why did one lie to one's physician? Distrust? That was a fair notion in general. There were quacks and charlatans and fools. There was primarily one way to test new treatments and it was not a pretty or safe path. On top of that, many maladies in Myrken had magical undertones to them and entirely mundane cures. Even worse was when mystical solutions were offered for mundane illnesses. Very often the cure was worse than the disease. More often though, it was pride. One's own self-image required the illusion of strength; for Burnie especially, there was the need for control. If he did not guide the direction of his life, he was barely alive at all. Still, he was reasonable about some things. The mind was its own vessel, sailing strong and refusing to sink no matter the storms around it. His body was a purely mechanical tool and such things could break down and required care.

Which wasn't to say he trusted her, not completely. Her intentions were more benign than others he would meet at Court, of that he felt certain. In this case, it was the very matter of what was good or best that could be put to question.

All that led, then, to an answer. "No to spots. Yes to dizziness. A weakness that stemmed from the knees and drove upwards like a carriage ride over alternating mud and jagged stone. Too much, too soon, I'm sure."

That was an admission to her first and himself second but it prompted him to sit down upon the bed once more. His body wasn't about to argue against his own words, at least not in that direction; sometimes with more (in a losing effort) but rarely with less. He'd let the two speak between themselves. When Tristan was named, he did not react, except for clenching his eyes shut. The name was unfamiliar. Tristan. Brideslea. Nothing came to mind from his correspondences with her or talks with Benedict.

Then it was business, no matter her somehow both serious and placid manner. He could mimic the seriousness at least. "Not the bit about her infecting others. That's for the bard. As well as her mental state being detached from reality due to what happened, and the dependency and Fascination, capital F, with Catch. You should look for the remnants of burns. I can't see through her glamourie to tell if Catch undid that damage or not. You'll be able to." Two tasks for two people and her question unanswered. "For her, then: that we can use correspondence as a wedge as it is alien to those around her and endlessly familiar to ourselves; that I am torn and wish to offer her a deal to constrain my voice so that she may constrain her hand in the name of peace between our people and continued friendship between she and I." Direct, mature things: intrigue and diplomacy. They gave way to a wry little smile. "That Benedict and I both miss her dearly, that we are bereft without our usual contact with her, and that we wonder if she might not feel the same way, even surrounded by home once more, though of course we do not admit it to each other or ourselves." He'd look over to the bird, expecting puffed up feathers, or ruffled feathers, or something out of sorts with them after that last statement. "Did I miss anything?"

[Niabh]

Meg took in his explanation, then replied with a laconic shrug. Carefully she maintained an outward impression of near indifference—no symptom he might describe could possibly stir her to alarm—but her bright eyes betrayed her: the pupils shrank to pinpoints, seeming both to illuminate him with their fierce spotlight while pinning him to the spot. Her own vision wavered. Then the uncertain outline upon the air shifted to him, and she could see the dizziness and weakness mapped out as clearly as if he had circled the affected areas of his body in a luminous paint. In all her years, she had never gotten quite done at marveling over how simple it was to spot such things, nor of wondering how those who could not see it ever managed to accomplish anything.

“Can give thee summat for the dizziness.” Saying this aloud was followed by an intrinsic weariness. Simple to offer, ridiculously complex in practice. “Thy folk are hard to treat. Must temper medicine for you or ’t’will leave you worse off than without it.” The thought occurred that she might send him along to a tultharian doctor who might be better equipped to handle human foibles, but the little she had seen of tultharian healers led her to believe they were little better than hedge witches brewing dusty herbs in ditchwater. Even the medicines they did have seemed made of weaker stock than she was used to, as if even the plants in this place were too dispirited to render up a potent brew. She pushed the last of the trash onto the tray and set it aside for disposal. “I shall do this before I go.”

Go. Leave. A message to him as much as an assurance to herself: soon she would leave, and they would both be spared the other’s company. Surely he’d be glad of the lack of intrusion, just as she would be grateful to be out of these four walls and back in camp, where she knew where she fit in.

Resentment rose that she should find herself in this predicament. She should not have to have any knowledge the Queen should know. She was a healer, not a courtier—as everyone made a point of telling her: don’t worry your pretty head about it, Lady Meg; let the Court deal with the Court. But everything was Court; she walked into it as though it were a sticky spiderweb hanging invisible between two tree trunks, and no amount of brushing or plucking could free her of its tendrils. By rights, she would be dealing with a docile, humble patient who obeyed her instructions, improved in due course, and who would be as glad to see the back of her as she would be to leave. Finally she sighed in frustration.

“Tha need not worry about the Lady. There’s a whole camp concerned about the Lady, myself included, and the bard.” She touched her forehead with the back of her hand, sighed again, and brushed her heavy braid back over her shoulder in a gesture not dissimilar to the Queen’s, save she did it as if the braid weighed as much as a millstone. “I do wish I’d come a little earlier for the burns. Herself did her best on her own, so the scars won’t hinder her, but they’re none too pretty. A shame.” She hesitated, pressing her lips tight. “There are other scars. Living in this place…it does leave its mark.”

Once more her luminous eyes fixed upon him, so that she seemed to be viewing all the scars it had left on him as well. Then she clucked her tongue and gave another indifferent shrug.

“What comes between thyself and the Queen is thy own affair. Tha takes thine own risks with it. An she will have thee, she’ll speak. An she will not, there is no power of thine nor mine own that can sway her different.” Another hesitation, with the sense that perhaps she should not speak for the Lady, that she should not offer hope. “What I will say is that if there be any time the lass could use a friend—a true friend, not one who will take advantage of her melancholy to sway her to his own ends—” and she cut him a sharp look “—that time is now.”

She leaned her hips against the table’s edge, unconsciously making herself a barricade between Glenn’s seat on the bed and the room’s exit, and folded her fingers together before her waist. “Speak me true, Sionnach: what does tha want of my lady sister?”

[Glenn]

Savoy, the tinctures, Catch. The beginning, the middle, the end. Savoy had been his first true friend in Myrken, the man into whose role he stepped. He had a gift, well-hidden, that was more temporal than medicinal. Rejuvenation instead of restoration. The tinctures were purchased from another well-meaning friend. By then, Savoy's mind had been torn asunder and Burnie's was starting to show its own fraying. Morning maimings with Jirai led to evenings of enforced and unnatural mending. If Savoy's gift took one back, this pushed one forward, weeks in the span of minutes. Then there was Catch, during his madness, long after. Purification, except for the fact that purity was relative. To call it such only showed a dearth of imagination and a narrow understanding of the world. There was a perfect symmetry to the human body, maybe even to the human mind. Forcing a man back into that position years after he had strayed from it only exposed vulnerability and brittleness.

And yet here he was, past the end of the story in a home that was his but currently did not seem it at all, stared down by a woman that he should have never encountered, that should have never made that list. "I will take what you provide, with care." Of the two options, being pulled back or being pushed forward (on the understanding that the third; being 'refined' was unlikely in this situation), her solutions seemed more the latter. He had lived long enough without Ariane to have developed his own opinions on this matter, shaped by his own life experiences and the consequences of so, so many decisions, most but not all poor. Moving forward was natural. Moving back was not. Rarely did it matter to him if something was natural or not, but when it came to the state of his own body, it was best to have some boundaries. For now, such boundaries did not include avoiding eye contact. She was staring him down and he would meet that stare.

"The burns draw a map to the damage within. Hopefully the bard is following it. It's a path I cannot walk alone." This was in return for her sigh and through the opportunity of her hesitation. The Queen would have hated it but he knew to capitalize on such moments. They were fleeting. There had been so many letters, years of them and they seemed like they might last forever; now this had all happened so quickly though not without a boulder's worth of slowly building momentum to power it.

He was going nowhere, not yet. They had just established that. Medicine might help but it wasn't prepared yet, only discussed. The exit she was barring then was her own. Maybe that was the point. "You and yours tell stories, no? That's part of the power of your bards. History and custom and parable. If I have any sort of universal theory of all of you it's that your longevity shapes your outlook, that and the glamourie as a means of communication. Our lives are short. Most of us don't live long enough to see ourselves as anything but the center of our own story. Mine had a beginning, a middle, an immediate and dramatic end, and then little better than a quiet enduring. It's paradoxical, but then what isn't with you lot, but even though I know that I will have but the tiniest impact on her over the span of centuries, I still find a spark of life, perhaps my last, in being part of her tale." If there was inherent sadness in how miniscule he represented himself, even any single human, in that explanation, then it wasn't in his voice or his eyes. "I enjoy her company. Correspondence with her is both a means and an end. I would not go back to my story's end once more when there is still much to be said and done and disagreed upon between she and I. So it is both selfish and selfless and you'll simply have to accept that or not."

[Niabh]

To the Tuatha, the path was sacred. It was a rare one whose first memory was not Moving Day, standing around in the grey morning mist, rubbing the sand out of one’s eyes while the grown-ups rolled up the hides and bundled the posts that barely an hour before sheltered a sleeping child from the sky. Mounting Day was a landmark on the level of one’s first season or losing the first tooth: the first migration when one was given a pony to ride alone, and the delicious air of adulthood that came along with it. The end of the path was the end of the world, and the world could have no ending; therefore they rode, and life lay in stations along the way: some they would pass twice a year for thousands of years until they were as familiar as the faces of friends, some a brief acquaintance that would never be repeated, and which glowed like a gem for the preciousness of its novelty, a thing seen once in a lifetime that would span a hundred human lives.

Now here she was, farther than her wildest imaginings, standing before a man who could not be but thirty mortal winters with air in his lungs and a tongue in his head to tell her that he’d reached his ending long ago. She gave a soft, short hoot, then hastily cut short the laugh with her hand, looking embarrassed—but not so embarrassed that her smile was not a little saucy when her hand lowered. “Is that so? An I’d known tha were under the hills already, would not have made so much trouble to bring thee to life, sir.”

The bridge of her nose wrinkled in amusement, like a rabbit, then her face smoothed, though the smile remained. She brushed down her skirts with a dismissive hand. “Ach, man, I’ve had the keeping of the lass since the first strand of hair was on her head, and if there be a thing I know as fact, it’s that she’ll be the one who decides what is a means and what is an end, sir, not thee. How long hast tha known her, if tha know’st not that?”

As she spoke, she puttered, efficiently. It was hard to tell just what her small hands were doing, but whenever she stepped away from a spot, everything was folded smooth, stacked in tiers, or arranged in a phalanx with their chests thrust outward. Glamourie wafted lazily in a rich perfume, settling like the dust of incense upon the common, spartan dressings Glenn had chosen, with the converse result of making them seem brighter, newer, with a certain importance that certainly had not been there when he selected them. In a curious way, the room had come to resemble him, his tastes and preferences reflect as if through a mirror onto his surroundings, giving the somewhat unsettling impression that it had been remade by someone who knew him better than he knew himself, which was always the dangerous, subtle undercurrent of glamourie—the tiny theft of self that gave back the illusion of magnanimity.

The raven became magnetized by the transformation and crept out to a precarious balance on the bed’s edge, his neck craned so far that Meg giggled and gave his head a playful push in passing. “Stretch thy neck so far, someone’s apt to have thy head.”

He withdrew into a slump. “Aye, I know. His Lordship rubbed that in pretty good.”

Her eyes narrowed primly, her mouth pressed tight. “That one will not set foot in any place I’ve claimed, and I’ve claimed this one. Leastwise ’til that one’s ready for it.”

She jerked her chin toward Sionnach, then looked him over curiously. Odd, odd young man. Were all tultharian so odd, so dispassionate? Lonely indeed must the Queen have been to be drawn to him, but mayhap they were different together. Hadn’t she tamed wild Deirdre, who was said to grow a set of fangs when she waxed wroth? But mayhap the Lady was more adept at handling fire than frost.

That reminded her of the Queen’s tight-closed eyes and flinty resignation the instant before she dropped her glam and revealed the scars on her cheek, which only sobered Meg further. She ceased her puttering—and it was interesting, in the moment she stopped, to watch the glam fall apart like a tower of cards, all the things that had been in the midst of transforming withering back into their common forms—and turned back to him, taking a few steps nearer before visibly forcing herself to hold back. Meg had a habit of hovering whenever someone was hurt. She didn’t think he’d appreciate it. The Sight made the room elongate. Her voice echoed in the stone corridors of her own ears.

“She is ours, Sionnach,” she said, in the kindest way she knew how, while struggling to voice such a concept at all. “The time will come when your paths will part. Thy story will not end with your parting. It will only end an thy chooses not to tell it. Tha knows this.” Even in the clutches of the Sight, that information came as a surprise. “There were a time…tha wrote thyself a story of thyself. Tha chose it. Tha would not see thy own self ended while there were yet still words in thee. And then she came to you.”

The room’s proportions receded toward normal, and she was glad of it. She let out her breath in a whoosh, as though narrowly ducking catastrophe. But one thought lingered. “The story is thine, sir. It has always been.”

And then it was gone, leaving her, as always, both less and more of herself. She’d never quite understood why anyone called it the Sight. It filled her up like a billowing sail, a gust that compelled and controlled, then the sudden relief of slackening when the wind died.

She propped her back against the bureau, which towered over her tiny head, making her look nearly childlike. “That does not yet mean I trust thee, mind, nor that I like thee. I scarce know thee.”

“You won’t like ’im when you get to know him either,” the raven said helpfully, which made Meg burst out laughing.

She swatted a hand at the raven, her eyes twinkling at Glenn. “This is how thy friends recommend thee?”

[Glenn]

Prophecy was one thing. He chafed against it. The very notion of fate, that things were foretold, that there was a future not yet written, was as much his enemy as any particular notion could be. It was a street that only went one way. There was no personification of it, figments from dreams notwithstanding. If he did not have the autonomy to live his life and make his choices, good or bad, then he had nothing at all. Sometimes one would make a poor chose just to prove one could. It wasn't particularly wise but the search for sensation never was; at best it might be considered necessary like air or water or warmth. When he made choices that were less than wise, that was often why. Possibilities? Probabilities? That was something else. Prophecy might have just been that, some mystical way to pull all knowable information together and form a conclusion. The Prophet might not understand the process, only the outcome. That, in and of itself, lessened the utility of the whole endeavor.

Some sort of True Sight was not all that different. You could flip a book to the last page and find out how it ended, but it wouldn't necessarily elucidate anything at all. The right answer derived through the wrong method predicted something of its own: faulty implementation. There was value in the legwork. So if it was meant to be some great gift from her to him, it was met with that same dispassionate but attentive stare. That he had moved just a little closer to her, that he shifted to be at the end of his bed instead of beside it, well, she might take that however she would or however she wouldn't. Almost certainly that had less to do with her words and more to do with her deeds. Glamourie had given way to Sight and by that point he had already committed.

Now, the comment to the raven?

At that, he finally smiled, but she would only have a glimpse of it, for his mouth was moving. "But they do recommend me. And they are my friends. Him." He was dizzy. It didn't matter for this. His eyes shut. The smile remained. He fell backwards upon the bed, legs dangling to the ground off the end of it. "Her. Tell her what you will based on what we've said and what more you've heard. But she should await a letter." His hand jutted up theatrically, pointed to the ceiling briefly before fall vaguely in the direction of the raven. "And he will deliver it. She should await him."

[Niabh]

Glenn draped himself across the bed, and Meg, instantly on alert, stepped away from the bureau and started toward him, one hand already lifting for action. The raven hastily wobbled to intervene. “It’s all right, he’s fine. He does this sometimes.”

“Oh.” The hand went down, but only a fraction. His dizziness refracted with the sharp, jagged stab of light passing through a fractured crystal. Her hand drifted to the base of her throat as she swallowed back a touch of borrowed nausea. “Soothly?”

“Yeah, usually he lies on the floor when things get overwhelming. It’s how he resets, or something.” Still stuck navigating the difficult lumps of bed, he made his way toward the top of Glenn’s head and peered down at one closed eye, then the other, the shining black beak as sharp as a dagger and just a fraction from Glenn’s nose. “I mean, I think. You alright, wanker?”

Meg’s anxious, eager-to-help expression faded, her eyes darkening with suspicion. His ailment glowed a noxious, virulent pink so hostile that it took all her effort to leave it alone, the way one might be compelled to poke one’s tongue at a sore tooth. Slantlong, she could make out a glimmer of what must draw this one to the Queen: both of them were stubborn arses.

Considering him a moment longer, at last she tucked her hands behind her back and shrugged. “I’ll do it.”

The raven glanced at her. “Do what?”

“I shall take thy letter.” She looked as though this were obvious. “Must go to camp this even in any case. A letter will be no burden. And in exchange, I shall tell Herself everything.”

“Meg!”

“What?” Her face was a bit too guileless for true innocence. “He has spoke his intentions. An he speaks true, where’s the harm that the Lady knows them? A letter is no threat to a Queen. She will answer or she will not.” She gave a sly grin to the raven. “Would be a shame for thee to risk thy head for foolishness when ’tis all the same for me. And mayhap this Sionnach can put into the letter that ’twould be all the simpler to allow thee back to camp, rather than make me his messenger. In fact, I’ll insist upon it. ’Tis not my job to play messenger but I’ll play it once to buy my way out of it for good.”