Golben: 24,531 and Five

Re: Golben: 24,531 and Five

Postby Glenn » Thu Oct 03, 2013 5:55 am

She may have opened the door, but it was he that would take the first step. She may think that she had taken the tenor of this, the pace, the tempo and made it hers through deed and not word, but he would take the first step and she could not easily stop him. The smile on his face was reserved, distant. He walked into the light and was hit by a momentary serenity. Even her squawdling couldn't affect it overmuch. He was walking towards peace, no matter what she thought, no matter what she said. Soon this would all be over. He would be his own judge, his actions his own sentence, with the period at the end being his demise. Everything would finally be tied off. Everything would finally be over.

It would be nice for her, perhaps, if he could have just walked past, walked on to his fate, ignored her, said nothing else. That was not her lot and that was not what she deserved. "You understand more than you did yesterday, Wynsee, more than a day before. More than when you arrived. Once you lose everything you hold dear, then you can understand, then you'll know I was right all along."

He looked back even as his feet took him forward. "How close are you?"
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Re: Golben: 24,531 and Five

Postby Rance » Thu Oct 03, 2013 6:30 am

"Close enough to know that -- that what I've lost and what you've lost are incomparable. Neither less or more important But you," she said, "will give credence to the absence of what meant most to you; I will lament it and refuse to believe it's all gone so swiftly. Without those things, even if they are just lies to comfort me, I am nothing.

"I am stupid," Gloria Wynsee said. "I am stubborn. I have my -- my convictions, but I will never have your patience. And I don't ever want it."

She would let him have the first step -- he needed it, and she needed to be behind him, to be able to shrink into his shadow like the frightened child she forcefully directed herself to believe she wasn't. This was her agency in the wake of Rhaena Olwak's rule: to thrash against truth, against control -- I am a Jerno and no one directs my conscience-- and leaving in the vapors of her humanity the splinters of friendships and trust.

But where he, unknown to her, resigned himself to his end, the girl -- aware, too, that with her Dream would go her breath -- would do what a Jerno did: she would bloody a nose with a brute fist, beat bruises into ribs of Fate even if it overwhelmed her.

A flailing, grasping beast that was too afraid to die.

When her Sun-faded eyes and her sand-scarred skin turned toward the light, she saw the winding hedges sprawled out before them in an endless sea filled with greens and twigs. The great Pit had sides that curved up all around them, casting great shadows across the labyrinthine interior. The soil seemed to suck up all the ambient sounds, and everything was so silent, so serene.

A fumbling hand extracted from her satchel a single bobbin of golden embroidery thread. Blinking away the moisture in her eyes, she carefully affixed the edge of the thread to the handle of the great iron door. When she walked in Giuseppe's tracks, she let the spindle bounce in the cage of her fingers, casting an endless length of flax behind her.

She had hundreds of yards, thousands of yards; Glenn Burnie would be able to follow it to freedom.

The seamstress asked, no amount of inquiry stifling the quiver in her voice, "How do we find the Storyteller?"
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Re: Golben: 24,531 and Five

Postby Glenn » Fri Oct 04, 2013 2:02 am

"You wish to be nothing without them." The words were quick, smooth, the accent wrapped around them like a cool embrace. Sometimes he stumbled with words. Sometimes it was intentional. Sometimes it was honest. This was a man who laid down every word like a stone in a wall. Had he his way, every movement, every action would be of a plan. He was a man of passions, though, some long stifled and some poorly repressed. Life got in the way of each and every one of his plans.

"This is understandable." They walked on and he let her float along in his shadow. Golben could harm him but Golben could kill her. Most things could. She was hard and soft all at once and that dichotomy led to brave, foolish actions with consequences she could not contain or control, with consequences that would sweep her under. Nowhere else in Myrken was she as safe as directly behind him.

"Then they, and nothing else, can define you, yes?" This was a man who sought out death. This was a man who wanted things that Wynsee might claim, that she might pretend at. She had said it, in her own way, that in looking at him, she saw a reality that far overpowered his words. That reality was not as incomparable as she claimed. She could see from his point of view if only she tried. They would not be having this talk otherwise.

"Unfortunately, little sandspit, you are too formidable for that. There is too much to you. You think too much. You feel too much. You care too much. You know too much. You have grown past the point of defining yourself through the other. You want this. You want to make them responsible for who you are. It's too late. You can have ignorance or you can have identity and once you have the latter, there is no going back." He had turned back to her, but now he walked on. "All we can do is move forward."
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Re: Golben: 24,531 and Five

Postby Rance » Fri Oct 04, 2013 2:31 am

Did he know how much she despised these talks, these teachable moments? When she could feel his deft fingers prying under her skin merely through his words; when she endured nausea in her gut because she wanted to be nothing like him, but discovered he knew much too much about her--

All they could do was move forward. Forward, with lefts and rights and angles that cut through the hedges, devoid of control over their direction. At every turn or intersection, she would carefully twist the embroidery string into a knot around the jutting branch of a hedge, starting a new vector for the tension in the thread -- if it went too long without interruption, it would sag, it would snap, and there'd be no lifeline for the Governor, no path toward home.

"If I refuse to -- to define myself through others, then who am I," she asked over a shoulder, turning her cheek against the rolled coverlet worn like a sash from shoulder to hip. "Am I you, Giuseppe? Do -- do I become a black swan who desperately tries to chalk her feathers with -- with the hope that it will bring me purity? Your identity is broken; I have got mine," she countered. "But you? You know too much as well and -- and presume too greatly. Nobody knows who you are, or why you are.

"You're scared," she said. "You're hiding fright behind righteousness. If your story comes undone, will anyone remember you?"

Because that was the nature of stories, was it not? To be remembered, looked upon fondly -- to twist the emotions of the readers well after the final page is turned. Did he, for all his solid self-confirmation and awareness, believe his pages and words would molder after his eyes stopped seeing and his blood ceased to create its own warmth?

With half her spool emptied, the girl turned on her heel and cupped a gloved hand against her cheek, turning away from Giuseppe to shout:

"Governor Burnie!"

Giuseppe, the Black Man, the Man in White, might never come to bear the weight of his own fear. Best that she close the distance. Better that she be the one to muster some imposter of bravery.

"Storyteller," bellowed the girl, her words echoing in the bowl of the vast Golben pit. Should others in Golben not find the thread, she knew there was one way to draw the attention of at least one of them. Of her.

"Storyteller, I wish to hear a tale!"
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Re: Golben: 24,531 and Five

Postby Glenn » Fri Oct 04, 2013 3:21 am

Will anyone remember you?

When a man has lost meaning in his life, when he knows the taste of death, when he knows how fragile it all is, how facile, how fallible, what is left? Once he knows enough to know that no one else can define him, how is he thus defined? What is left? Legacy. History. Making a mark. "Do not tell her this, Wynsee, if you make it out of here alive, if you make it out of here ever, for she would choose to believe otherwise, but I opposed Emory for the sake of my legacy. I opposed her before she could burn it all down. Perhaps If I had died that night, truly, if I had accepted death later on, then perhaps it would have had meaning, that night, to me, you see? As it was, it had meaning but in so many other ways. There is a problem, yes? You help create something and in that moment, you are proud. In that moment, it stands. In that moment, you shine. Then time goes on and all shine fades. If we could but live forever, we would be glorious creatures, Wynsee." He spoke on as they walked, he spoke on as before, but this was one word after the next, accent stumbling over itself, answers presented to her, the answers she sought for him, answers he had refused to tell himself, but would she have enough context to understand. "If we could but die when we were supposed to, we would be remembered forever. We fade though. We fade unto nothing."

She had asked a question before and in response to her futile shouts, he'd answer it. "I know where she is. I can feel her. I could not before. I can now. The old lady I could now feel. The young one, I can. Save your breath. We grow closer, ever closer, but we do not yet approach." Did she not see? He had a way, a key, a connection, everything they needed to find their way to the heart of the labyrinth. He had nothing to see them back out, not even intention.
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Re: Golben: 24,531 and Five

Postby Rance » Fri Oct 04, 2013 6:12 am

Did they hear? Did it matter?

The single filament continued to unspool behind her, tracing several hundred yards through Golben. Had she thought, for a moment, of the futility of her attempts to control her surroundings, she might have simply shed herself of meager equipment, of needles and thread, and let herself starve.

...I opposed Emory for the sake of my legacy. I opposed her before she could burn it all down.

"That," she said as she worked the thread into a knot at the edge of a withering hedge, "is the very reason you cannot live forever, Giuseppe. She is Ariane--" and the word was brandished with unconventional pride, the way one proclaims laws or liturgy, "--and opposing her in any regard is a fool's errand. Perhaps not that she cannot be bested, but that she is too set on her path to be distracted from it. You challenged her. You challenged Mister Catch. Was that wise? Was it necessary?

"We aren't meant to live endlessly. And we're not all meant to -- to sow legacies. Maybe you were carried through this long in your life because -- because you believed you had to be an architect of something. Maybe you lasted this long only because it was essential for you to discover that you have no legacy to leave after all."

The golden, single-strand web continued to spin in her wake. Eventually, the bobbin went bare, and she tied the loose end to a spindle of white thread. Her face was a map of drying blood and wet tarsweat. They could have discussed a thousand other things, but they had settled on this, on something that reminded her of Ariane.

I will cut you from crotch to throat and leave you to die.

A thousand more yards.

The Glass Sun crawled a sluggish pace across the sky until it was right above them.

An endless weave of curves and turnarounds.

"Find her," the girl finally said after irrevocable silence. "This -- this legacy you wish to leave behind you means nothing if you fail us in that."
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Re: Golben: 24,531 and Five

Postby Glenn » Mon Oct 07, 2013 1:19 am

"Meant."

The word felt like ashes in his throat. It was almost a welcome sensation given his current state, the endless healing. He was a man afeared of fire, a man who could not truly burn. Even a hot drink would not scorch his throat for long, yet the word, out from his lips, felt like ashes, like the aftermath of stifling heat.

"You stumble through Myrken, girl, and you don't understand Belief at all."

He walked with a casual purpose, with no desperation now, despite all that he had before in getting to Golben. Now that he was here, there was no need. The Man in White walked with the gait of a man who knew exactly where he was going, whose destination was fixed, or at least relatively so. His quarry could not escape. He had rushed away from life, but that was not the same thing as rushing towards death.

"She is something though," his tone wistful, distant. Of all their supplies, why not wine? Why not? "You were supposed to stay Wynsee. You had seen everything. You had cared. You had been cut by the blade of the last few months again and again. You had cut others with it. There is blood on your hands, some your own, some not. You would have been of use there, to Emory, to Myrken. You would have been a bridge of knowledge people could have walked over. I chose you for a reason but you ever disappoint."
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Re: Golben: 24,531 and Five

Postby Rance » Mon Oct 07, 2013 2:59 am

She said nothing.

Minutes passed. An hour. The Sun kept beating down upon them, a late summer swansong for the heat -- the warmer season's autoelegy. He may have had the taste of ashes in his mouth, but she had the discontent of bile in hers, a nausea that she had to fight back as he apostrophized. She was absent, not in body, but in conscience -- she worked the thread along the branches, tying it when its tension became too great, all the mechanical acts of a girl who thought she was doing some good, some helpful deed.

You were supposed to stay Wynsee. You had seen everything. You had cared.

Sometimes her collarbone still burned with phosphorescent heat when she remembered the brooch -- Rhaena's brooch -- she used to wear. Occasionally she turned her head and looked upon the creases and bends of the labyrinth behind them, wondering if she would see Cherny there, resplendent in ringed mail; sometimes, she spied a glimpse of Catch's striking platinum hair over the hedges, but it was never anything more than an illusion of the Sun, a trick of the mind. Noura was a trampled shadow and Niall's body was a rotten corpse stuffed beneath the tangled gutters beneath the hedgerows.

There is blood on your hands, some your own, some not.

Golben stank -- the leady, prying odor of old gore, the acrid reek of feces. The spoor of the dead. Bodies reduced to their base parts, nothing more than leather and bone. Mildew. Mold. Rot in her nose, calcified just inside her nostrils.

(There was nothing more than hedgerows here, so many of them, planted equal spaces apart and all shaped and cut just so, green soldiers with green shields that would wither and die come the new season and then maybe they could burn it, maybe they could burn this place and Giuseppe in it and watch as the whole pit filled with flame, choking away all the bad memories in a swath of greasy woodsmoke--)

"Stop talking," she stammered -- I chose you for a reason but you ever disappoint -- as the spool of thread slipped from her fingers and she strode forward, not further into Golben but toward the Black Man. His words got louder, clogging her ears and nostrils, blurring her eyes with tears, strangling her. Patchwork skirts flared around her legs and tangled in her piston-knees.

Palms were out, black with sweat and smeared with red from her broken nose.

"Stop talking," she breathed, reaching for him.

The seamstress' digits pried at his sleeves, at his shirt, trying to turn him, a force in her hands that was both desperate and necessary and natural. The girl didn't realize she was screaming, sobbing so hard that her stomach lurched and her throat burned with ashes too--

Cherny was a frozen image, his falchion already falling, the blood suspended in the air like hovering rubies. Niall's spine was an opened fillet, cut too deep, cut too precisely by the boy's blade for life to persevere.

Catch stopped calling her Miss, looked upon her with Black Smoke roiling in his eyes, the lunatick on paper now because what had he to trust in her anymore, no more ganorlesh, no more anything--

"Stop talking. Stop talking. Stop talking!" she bellowed, trying to push Giuseppe against one of the hedges, her lips parted enough that little strings of saliva stretched like ribbons between them. Her gloved fist fell as a hammer, a sloppy strike that wanted to break into his chest and shatter everything, everything, everything.
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Re: Golben: 24,531 and Five

Postby Cinnabar » Mon Oct 07, 2013 11:51 am

He had been offered safe passage, had been given directions, and the once-Governor is not one to turn away aid without good reason; a campfire ember had traced lines and angles in the dirt, and he'd watched closely, committing the route it described to memory. He'd slept briefly, leaning against the trunk of a lone tree in what - elsewhere - might have been considered a scenic spot. As the sun crept over the east rim of the crater, as light had swept down the west walls and swept across the vast bowl of hedgerows and lawns, he'd broken camp and set out in the direction given.

He notes again the strangeness of the place, the sense of disconnection from the world outside; turn this corner, and the spire of twisted rock that should be at his left shoulder is instead ahead of him; pass under a leafy arch, and on emerging into the daylight again the sky is brighter than it should be, the sun hanging over the wrong section of the crater's rim. Direction and duration are notional here, plastic, shifting and stretching under unknown pressures. He hears shouts, raised voices drifting above the hedge-walls but they are distant and distorted, attenuated, echoing strangely from the encircling cliffs.

He's unsure as to what he'll find at the end of his path, though he can guess; he'd spent some time in thought over his breakfast, weighing his options - to trust, or not? Ultimately he'd decided that he would take the voice at its word. Ideally the route would take him to Glenn Burnie himself; a close second would be a trail he could follow the rest of the way to his friend.

What he finds instead, as he emerges from a side-turning some yards ahead of that unlikely pair, is an altercation.

One figure he recognises; the other he does not. He pauses for a span of a heartbeat or so, grey eyes narrowing; a moment later and his pack is slung to the ground with a dull chime of buckles and metalware; a moment after that and he is advancing with paces that do not seem hurried and yet devour the distance between he and they; his hands hang empty at his sides, but remain entirely prepared to fill themselves with a hilt or a Southerner's throat. When he speaks, perhaps six paces away, it is to the girl for all that his attention remains fixed upon the man.

"Can I help you there, miss?"
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Re: Golben: 24,531 and Five

Postby Glenn » Tue Oct 08, 2013 12:46 am

Certainty. Bad men could have the utmost certainty of so many things: their actions, the way the world works, costs and consequences, that things will be exactly as they think. It is only the very good and the very bad who can hoist such certainty onto their shoulders. There were tigers. There were monsters. There was a dark hanging shroud here in Golben. Giuseppe knew of these things. He was certain of them.

And then, there was Cinnabar Calomel.

Were he to give her more advice now, he would say this: When certainty fails, that is the time when you must control your emotions the most. The Man in White's voice was wry. "I appreciate you being a gentleman, yes? Were our places reversed, I would do the same, but i am the one being, how does one say, ah, accosted, here, you see?

"Perhaps it is a time for fraternity and not chivalry." He spoke to Calomel but he stared at Gloria Wynsee and the imminent, if blunted, danger she presented. "This is just a suggestion though."
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Re: Golben: 24,531 and Five

Postby Rance » Tue Oct 08, 2013 2:04 am

She did not stop. Talk, Giusppe; talk, and a frightened girl's knuckles will still try to find their way.

It was not the seamstress' nature to exhibit self-control; Giuseppe could be the image of calm and collection, and she was the furious, dark-skinned opposition to that very image. She did not realize right then that there was an audience, that the Black Man spoke not to her of fraternity and chivalry, but to someone else altogether, a shadow with silver hair in the periphery of her vision. With spittle on her lips and scabs of blood strewn in a damp craterwork underneath her nose, she could have very well been mistaken for a beast. Her oily hair was tossed in wild tangles across her shoulders, clinging to the black sweat on her forehead.

"Who do -- do you think you are," asked the girl, attempting to strike her palms against Giuseppe's chest, wanting to drive him back into the hedges. A cooktin clattered against the sheath and overstuffed satchel at her hip. The girl was all noise and bluster, her brittle teeth bared behind curled lips. "Do -- do you think you're some savior of mine, Giuseppe? Some teacher to -- to guide my mind, some grand hero to solve the problems in Myrken Wood when the times are right?

"You are shit," Gloria seethed, brandishing a shaking finger. "You are shit, full of words and sense, a fat bladder of wisdom too afraid to simply vanish the way he ought to. We came here for a task: to find the Storyteller, to -- to do right as we should. The more you talk, the longer my friends and those I love suffer."

Her fingers splayed, released, and she stumbled back from him, throwing forward her head with considerable force. She spit at the Black Man, a glob of snot and saliva and blood meant for the dirt in front of his boots.

"Find her, and do as you are meant to." Meant -- that had been the word he cared for, wasn't it? "Ariane would. Ariane wouldn't hesitate. Your intellect and advice may be bountiful, but the more you linger, the more you remind me of -- of a scared little boy who doesn't know how to put one foot in front of the other."

Her voice was a rattling instrument, out of tune and strained from screaming. The seamstress turned, leveling her eyes on the other figure there. His kindly words had been lost in the volume of her recriminations. She was a girl, scarcely an image of age that could be confused for a proper woman. She dragged a blouse-sleeve across her nose and mouth, swept her palms against her cheeks to rid them of their moisture.

He could help, whoever he was; he could, by granting great wishes and turning back all the gears of time. He could click in reverse the hours as if they were the hammers in a musical box, wind the fantastic twist-key of a thousand lives to a moment well before all of this, all of Rhaena Olwak's invisible fingers--

"I want to leave this place," Gloria Wynsee told this stranger, swiping her bobbin and thread up from the ground. "I want to -- to find the Storyteller and Glenn Burnie; I want all of this to be finished, I want to be out of this disgusting place, away from him.

"I want to go home."
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Re: Golben: 24,531 and Five

Postby Cinnabar » Tue Oct 08, 2013 3:45 am

There is a balance to this interloper, a certain poise that speaks of quiet readiness. The Southerner protests, and earns himself a brief flash of teeth as if he's made a moderately amusing jest, though the expression entirely fails to reach his eyes. "I dare say you've earned it, sir. I'd wager that you have a great deal yet owed to you, in fact."

The girl - for it is a girl, barely more than a child by Myrken reckoning - continues her assault, haranguing the assassin as she shoves and batters at him, as she vents her outrage; the once-Governor waits, listening to the accusations and abuse heaped upon the man's head, grey eyes flicking alertly from one to the other of them as he evaluates what is said and unsaid. His focus turns to the girl at mention of the Marshall, of the Governor, but the Man in White is never entirely disregarded.

Her tirade eventually slows, grinds down to harsh silence; she swipes at her face with her sleeves, and he takes a few paces nearer as his hand dips to a coat pocket, a folded handkerchief offered to the girl at arm's length a moment later; creased but clean, a square of simple linen.

"I see you have about the measure of him, miss." Quietly-spoken, conversational for all that there is steel in his gaze whenever it returns to the assassin. He inclines his head in polite greeting, meanwhile. "My name is Cinnabar; I'm happy to say that we have a number of interests in common, concern for Governor Burnie foremost among my own. I'll do what I can to assist you in the rest, once we've tended to our business here."

Our business clearly being the foreigner with his spotless clothes and too-young skin, features unmarked by blade or flame. The once-Governor's hands remain empty of weapons, but there is a set to his shoulders, a steadiness to his gaze which promises that this need not remain true for long.

"Chivalry has very little to do with it, sir. Fraternity even less." Their last meeting had been a delicate dance over tea and dainty cakes, a trading of oblique references and veiled threats. This encounter, distanced from Myrken Wood by leagues of winding hedgerows, has no need for such considerations, such precautions. "I shall speak plainly, sir, now that we are able to set pretense aside: you may wish to explain - concisely - why I oughtn't put an end to you this moment.

"This is just a suggestion, of course."
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Re: Golben: 24,531 and Five

Postby Glenn » Tue Oct 08, 2013 3:56 am

Common interests, strange bedfellows. Giuseppe was used to these things, both in the literal and figurative sense. He was used to dancing his dances. He was used to doing what was expedient in order to achieve his goals. He was used to endless compromise of belief and dignity, of ego and purpose. Apparently, he was trapped in a hellish labyrinth with the two most unyielding people imaginable. That didn't even count Burnie and the Storyteller. That didn't even count the tigers.

He let out a long sigh. "When I last saw you, Calomel, you were playing a game, yes? You were pulling out threads to see if the whole tapestry could fall apart. Wynsee did much the same," and look, both of them would have a slight sneer for their problems. "She was desperate, lost. Her back against the wall. An animal caged, starving. I cannot fault her for what she did. You though?" A slow, tsk, one and then two, and then three. "You acted the child. You were curious. You saw your friend afflicted and to cure her, you would have cut her open entirely in order to see what was wrong. The diagnosis was more important than the remedy. It sickened me."

A long sigh. A tsk. Finally an exhale. "Cinnabar Calomel. Meet Gloria Wynsee. Gloria Wynsee. Meet Cinnabar Calomel. Perhaps if I am lucky, we all die here, yes? You're welcome to start with me, creature." This to Calomel and highly ironic considering, "but I am the way we find what we seek." Presuming they were together of course, and knowing Burnie, they would be.
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Re: Golben: 24,531 and Five

Postby Rance » Tue Oct 08, 2013 4:52 am

Tension between the two of them -- the Black Man, this peculiar new entrant, this Cinnabar Calomel -- was tangible, a static in the air that tugged the dark hairs to attention on her arms. She steadied her heels in the hard soil of the Pit, gingerly accepting Cinnabar's handkerchief. At a closer glance, well-enough proffered through the nearness by which to pass fabric from his grip to hers, she was a tattered specimen of a girl ignored by Rhaena Olwak's recent edicts. The whites of her blouse were faded with smudges of dirt and stains of black sweat. There was nothing beyond aesthetics that the kindness of his linen could do to remove the sour odor of her flesh or the streaks of tar along her collar.

She gingerly cradled her nose, though, in a gloved hand, putting the kerchief to use. She leered over both of them as she cleansed her cheeks, the black crescents under her eyes almost swallowing the gleaming gray.

"I have the measure of him," she said. "All too well. All too unwillingly. As it appears you do as well; I am grateful that I'm not the -- the only one who recognizes that something else thrives under those white clothes. It is not a pleasure to meet you, Cinnabar Calomel." Her accent throbbed, her fading words stripped wholly of their emotion. "Not here. Not with him, not in -- in this dreadful place, not on the horizon of the deed he's to do.

"Anywhere else, under any other circumstance, I would be elated. But I am tired."

To Giuseppe, the Jerno tilted her head and said, with comparable softness to her earlier accusations, "We are all desperate, Black Man. We have all got our spines to a corner. I know about threads--" giving the spool a firm jerk of her hand, "--and that you did anything to oppose the Marshall means you too know what it means to unravel them."

The girl turned away from both of them, returning to her original task of weaving the embroidery string along the nearest branches, a vision of her cheek over one shoulder while she listened. Giuseppe and Calomel had a history, a storied one. Diagonoses and remedies. Afflictions and creatures. Those final two syllables caught her attention, however: Giuseppe often had his reasons, ever-chose his language specifically, and that he labeled the once-Governor as something else entirely found the thread tangling uselessly amid her fingers.

"No," Gloria finally said. "Mister Calomel, you -- you aren't allowed to start with him. There's no need. He will be dead soon enough by his own hand."
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Re: Golben: 24,531 and Five

Postby Cinnabar » Wed Oct 09, 2013 3:33 am

Faint flecks of silver in the newcomer's gaze, a sense of anger like the heat of banked furnace fires, for all that his tone is clipped, chill.

"On the subject of sickening, sir: when last I saw you, you were posing as the confidant of a woman you'd done your best to butcher and burn not a few months before. If you think that my efforts could have broken her, you underestimate her quality entirely." He might have said more, might very easily have followed words with long-overdue action, but the girl speaks a moment later and his gaze snaps to her as if only now reminded of her presence. She speaks, and he withdraws a pace or so, violence set aside for the moment.

"Were there any justice in this place he'd die at the Marshall's hand, as he should've when first they met. That he's ended at last will have to be enough." A small motion of his hand, a courtly bow of his head, though the gaze he sets upon the Man in White is anything but civil. "If you are to lead us, pray lead."

He waits for the man to move, to resume his role as guide, before falling into step behind him; a glance for the girl, a nod that invites her to walk at his side, pausing only to stoop and retrieve his pack from where he'd set it down.

"I know why I'm here, Miss Wynsee; would you care to explain what brings you here, and in such unsavoury company?"
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