No, insists Agnieszka, and with a single word completes perhaps the quietest denial that Ariane Emory has ever faced. There is no defying it. Agnieszka, after all, who'd been as a sister to Rhaena Olwak, and she? She'd been a cautioning word spoken by an angry voice. Never more than that, and often far, far worse -
"I was going to kill her."
Knows that, knows it, in ways that having nothing to do with the body laid so demurely at their feet. The hours they'd spent, securing one district after another. The installation of Acting Governor Treadwell; the seizure of each key building in turn, of each tactical landmark and crucial intersection. There was never any question but that it must culminate in this. And still, she echoes the words so quietly.
"You couldn't help but stop me - "
There is an implication. It is written as surely as words into Agnieszka's flesh. Tears in her eyes. A weapon clutched close to her side. And the swordswoman who was once her teacher has slowly shaken her head, but the hair clings damply yet at her temple, her brow. Sticky with more than sweat, and to rake a palm back over the mess of it is to leave her skin smudged dimly red -
This is what you do.
"It is not the time for this. This speculating, this - " This remembering. It was days ago, just days, that little Genny Tolleson had braved the blood and fire of her mind; days, since she was lost in a living dream of Perfect silken beauty. Still, her eyes stray. Still, their gaze wanders towards what lays upon the floor. It is an immediacy. This corpse, its cooling blood. It demands; its very existence cries out for answers -
"Look at you." It is possible to speak the words, even when her eyes do not move at all. Folding the hand behind her back has not begun to still its tremor, but a testing clench of the fingers suggests strength enough to grip leather reins. "Look - " Her throat tightens on the words. After a quieting moment, she begins again. "Constables we can have. Militia - " Hells. "Come. Now." A cautious approach: frayed fabric across her thigh; it bubbles thin red with every step she takes. "You'll ride double with me. I want the Militia stood down. And this -" You. "- seen to, before - "
One corpse cooling upon the floor.
She will not have another join it there.