Parallels: Fallen Sons

[Glenn]

His mind was afflicted.

Rhaena Olwak was dead. He had been assaulted, no, judged, by Golben, He had lost days, weeks of his life, maybe even longer. There were memories of a time immemorial that was neither real nor true, no matter how thoroughly he had tried to make it so, no matter how deeply he had tried to defy the labyrinth of his own creation. He had tried to will Audmathus through the crucible along with him and in the end neither of them had truly made it. In the end, he hadn't even had left the power to end the dreamwitch.

And far, far more than that, Rhaena Olwak was dead. He had felt it. Even in Golben, he had been connected to her. She was lost to madness then, far lost, far hopeless, no longer the woman he had loved except for in the broadest strokes but they were still bound, they were still of one heart and of two minds connected as much so as two arms were to one body. This was a rapport years in the making. This was a love that had survived even the very loss of not one soul but two.

She had died and he had felt it. So few people feel death, know it. It did not break even a weakened and brittle Glenn Burnie, but it did deepen wounds that were already existent. It did bleed out strength that was already trickling away.

His body was afflicted.

Months of starvation did terrible things to even the strong. Add in the other afflictions magical and otherwise presented by Golben and he was a wreck. This was Glenn Burnie though. He could be a wreck and it would matter little. Oh, yes, he could only rise out of the bed that Cinnabar Calomel had half carried him into because he was more stubborn that he was human, but the harder he pushed the more he set back his recovery. Keeping food down was still a problem for a stomach that had almost completely devoured itself and his very life along with it. Even so, he would have been driven enough to make none of this matter, if not for his mind. Even his will power could not fully handle the loss of half of everything he had been, especially when much of the other half was in ruins through his own action.

Still, he was Glenn Burnie and he'd reach out to the man sitting beside his bed, determined.

"What's going on out there, Cinnabar?"

It was the first time he could manage so focused a question since his recovery began.

------
His body was afflicted.

The young knight did not remember the events of the hour any better than most of Myrken. What he did know was that something, perhaps multiple things, all cataclysmic had befallen him. His armor was partially mangled. Part of it had ended up lodged in his ribcage, metal protruding towards organs and cutting through viscera. What had been meant to protect him, to better his life, had only made him suffer. This was a symbol for far more than just the armor and all of his reading and thinking and bettering himself was starting to make him realize that.

The fevers had been terrible. Bits of metal had still remained in him days later. He had been kind to the poor, the unwashed, the unwanted. They lived in hovels, shacks, tenants of harsh landlords and harsher lives. He had been kind to them, both at the beginning and at the very end when Olwak's chosen beared down upon them. It was never Elliot Gahald that did so. Instead, he shielded them. He worked with them. He gave them of himself, and that was why they drew him in now and protected him from those who might string him up as a symbol of the shattered regime of tea and lace. They were not physicians. This was not the remedium.

His mind was afflicted.

Something else had happened during that hour. Memories assaulted him, memories not his own but instead of him. One after the next after the next, they would grab at him, would make him look at a twisted mirror that showed a past that wasn't real. Who was this stranger on the other side looking back at him? No, looking back at someone else but with his image, with a different spirit, a kindness without a code, a pack mentality that was pure Myrken. It wasn't the arrogant thief of the Inscribed Witch but a shepherd with a maligned sheep.

Even then, these were just memories. These were just images, phantoms. He could push past them were it not for the fever, if not for his infection. He was a strong, young man, one who stood for the weak and for his own beliefs. His mind was honed against such doubts and hesitations. Now, though he could barely rise from the bed. He saw hallucinations and toiled in darkness.

When the figure came towards him, when any figure did, he would say the same thing, thinking the same person before him, his heart in the right place but the rest of him more than lost.

"What has befallen Myrken, Cherny?"

[Cinnabar]

It had been a long walk from Golben, a trek across old farmland left untended since the town it served had been swallowed by madness and fire. The girl - Gloria - had left their little group at Newford, had pressed on to Stonebrook as soon as Calomel had found her clothes enough to replace those lost in the Pit. The details were still missing - an unsettling void in his memory, an hour blotted from his recollection, and he could not deny that he found the sensation unsettling, worrying at the gap as one might probe the socket of a missing tooth.

He had distractions enough, however, in the form of the Governor. A letter home to reassure a family worried by an absence longer than he'd warned them to expect, and then the matter of returning Glenn Burnie to something like good health. He found them rooms in Newford at an inn serving travellers on the North Passage Down, and settled in to wait. He became a fixture in the inn's common room, gathering word from those who'd recently visited Myrkentown.

At first the news was of the weeks - weeks - lost to the Pit, followed by more confused accounts of the last few days. So when Glenn stretches out a hand yet weak from privation and worse, Calomel grips it only briefly before waving for his friend to carry on with his meal of thin soup, little more than a vegetable broth; only when he has returned to the arduous task does Calomel respond to his question.

"I'm not sure. Nothing you're in any state to change." The simplest and most truthful answer, but one he knows won't satisfy Glenn Burnie for even a moment. "Agnieszka went mad shortly after getting herself made Vice-Governor, from all accounts. Sumptuary laws, enforcers for sumptuary laws. Beatings in the street, indenture, all sorts." Everything that the woman would normally have reviled and raged against. "So. Compromised, it's fair to guess."

"Ari led the Militia against them - but I'm not yet sure whether that's a good thing. Last I saw Ariane she was Rhaena's creature, though struggling against it. She might've broken free by now - or it might have been a matter of reining in Agnie's excesses. Hard to say."

"Things seem to be calming now, at least. Treadwell's been set up as Acting Governor - likely for want of other candidates - but he's likely to be a steadying influence, at least. Rhaena's... gone." A lingering glance with that news, gauging Glenn's reaction. "No one knows the details of it yet - no one I've spoken with, at least.

"Finish your soup, hm? There's more, if you feel like it."

[Cherny]

Eventually - eventually - he'd learned of the knight's whereabouts from Cat; directions, a street, count along the houses on one side. He's done his best to be discreet about it, to be careful, and the frost crackles beneath his soles as he creeps along the near-empty street with the dawn. Simple wooden houses, whitewashed wattle and daub between simple frames, but homes for those who'd previously been living in tents or sleeping in Myrkentown's streets and alleys. He glances up and down the street before he knocks at the door, a nod for the black birds that hunch against the cold on rooftops and ridgepoles here and there.

He must wait a while for the door to open, at first a crack only wide enough for a tired-looking eye to peer out at him, fearful until its owner notes the boy's face, recognises him despite his Militia coat. He finds himself ushered nervously into the crowded space within, dimly-lit and heavy with the smell of too many people living too closely; they watch the boy quietly, expectantly, this small family - a mother, a daughter around the squire's age, and two younger children only beginning to stir on the straw mattress that is their bed. Cherny is a boy, and yet they look to him for guidance - is he not squire to the knight, the knight champion to the Lady? He represents authority as they've come to know it since arriving in Myrken Wood, an agent of the Foundation that has seen them housed, clothed and fed. He will know what to do.

It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, and a moment longer before a tangle of rough blankets in the corner stirs and in so doing resolves itself into a form. The squire kneels at his knight's side and is met by the stink of sickness and fever-sweat, and when Sir Elliot lifts his eyes in search of the boy's face they are distracted, lost.

His protectors have tended to him as best they can; kept him as clean as they're able, given him their own blankets to ward off the chills, but it's more than clear that they are not physicians.

He cannot stay here. Not if he is to live.

"It, it's alright." The hand Cherny takes up is weak, clammy, and that is enough to have the boy afraid. He's known fever, has spent enough time in the Rememdium to understand how it is something to fear, something to fight. "Y-you need to r-rest." He tugs aimlessly at those blankets, tucking them more closely around the knight where he has kicked them loose in his delirium, and retreats a moment after to share quiet words with the woman who has done her best to care for the knight since his Lady fell. He presses coins into her hand, insisting that she see her family fed, and promises that he will be back soon.

Once outside again he pauses only long enough to scrub a cuff at his eyes before hastening to the town gates.

[Glenn]

Neither answer satisfied Burnie. The soup certainly didn't either, but if that was he price for information, he'd pay it. Moreover, he knew that he had to put pride aside, not completely, not even after what he'd been through but enough to get better. Getting better was everything. This had been his responsibility and he had failed it, utterly. That, more than anything else, was why he needed to know what was going on.

It had been so long since he and Calomel had been close. Burnie was no fool. He knew that when they met months and months ago, when he gave his answers to the former Governor's questions: guilt-driven inquiries, affection-driven inquiries, ones fueled by friendship but not only friendship, that he was being gauged. Not judged. Not reviled. Not even assessed, but gauged. It meant that while much might be said here, there were some things unsaid, things that he had not yet decided upon, a mood, a tone, a flavor and color for all that would come. Perhaps he would come to regret that omission, but then, perhaps it was for the best instead.

Ultimately, what he spoke of instead told volumes and should not have surprised Cinnabar Calomel in the least. "What she did to the Brown boy was perfect. It was the most devious trap I'd ever seen. A perfect life, a perfect prison, using one's own mind to create it and erasing whatever had been there before with something close enough to work in its place." It wasn't that he wasn't affected in speech. No, his words were weak, strained. It took all he had to get that out and then he had to pause. A burst, a recovery. He would continue: "I saw she had used him as a test, a test for Ariane. That's why he ultimately got the best of me. I was too upset, too focused on protecting her. It was a seed, Cinnabar, one that planted and grew, feeding on memories and possibilities. I broke the seed but instead I could have broken Rhaena." This seemed unlikely, but he sounded sure of it. Rhaena was the mentalist. Burnie was just skilled and knowledgeable and damned stubborn. "If I had failed though, we would have lost her forever." The her was, of course, up in the air. "I had to trust her to win the day." Or perhaps, not quite so. "The alternative was even worse than what happened."

Cinnabar gave him the chance to speak of Rhaena's demise, the demise that he was directly bound to, that burned to the backside of his eyelids for all that he could not have seen it. Instead, slowly scooped up another spoonful of tea and shrugged. "How is Agnie, then?"

---
It was a strange Myrken where young Cherny had coins to press. It was in this strange Myrken that Elliot Gahald resided, that he watched his charge with fevered eyes. "What a good lad," he would mumble. "Myrken's best. It's very best." He wanted to say more, more directly to his squire but the boy was already gone. He was a good lad but something of a skittish one. It was the thought upon the tip of his mind as he drifted back to unconscious delirium once more.

[Cinnabar]

Calomel, for his part, seems intent on maintaining the patience that his friend lacks; he works his way through his own simple meal, bread and cheese and a fresh-picked apple, more for the sake of companionship than hunger. Relaxed in his bedside chair, a small knife applied to fruit and cheese in turn.

He listens.

"I've not seen Brown, not for a long while, so I couldn't say. But Ariane's prison was by no means perfect." Quiet for a time, thinking back to that delicate creature of elegant gowns and fastidious manners. "She was broken - flawed, rather - and aware of it, aware of certain contradictions and impossibilities in what she remembered. Enough to fight against it, to try and determine how much of her life was truth."

"She remembered a husband, you know. A soulmate, with whom she went on grand adventures." A sliver of apple carved away from the core, inspected for a moment before he brings it to his mouth on the flat of the blade. "He died, years back. A cautionary tale against persisting in unladylike pursuits, I imagine."

His eyes are cold at the memory of it, voice carefully controlled.

"My suspicion is that Ariane broke free. From what I know of her character that seems the most likely outcome - but I'm not willing to gamble on it, hm?" Glenn understands, of course - caution, for now. What good would it be to escape the Pit, only to march into the arms of something worse? An Ariane still remade in Rhaena Olwak's image, but now free of her controlling influence.

"Agnie lives, from what I've heard. Not much more than that, and from the tone of things most of the blame's being laid on her head - beatings, outrages. It was her name on the proclamations." And after blame comes reckoning. That's the way of things in Myrken Wood.

[Cherny]

The squire returns by mid-morning, another quiet knock on streets grown busier with traffic to and from the town gate; enough, perhaps, that he might not particularly stand out.

He brings with him a collection of slim paper packets labelled in a cursive scrawl, and a jar sealed with a blob of red wax. A morning spent consulting the healers at the Rememdium, dealing in abstracts, hypotheticals, couched as inquiries on his friend Son's behalf - what if his wound were to fester? what if he were to take a fever? what might they give him for that, how might they draw the sickness from the wound? - with an interest in specifics, in healing herbs and their preparation, how to administer them, how much, and when. At first they are indulgent, happy to offer explanations of their craft to so attentive a student; after a time, though, they have work to which they must return, and he is left with those scraps of the healing arts that he has been able to pry from them in the meantime.

The cottage is soon filled with scented steam as medicines stew and steep, dried leaves and powders measured out in accordance with the healers' directions, with occasional hesitation as he struggles with the apothecary's slovenly writing. The woman in whose house Sir Elliot has hidden is no healer, but has nursed her children through fevers before; she has done her best, but good remedies are not cheap.

"S-sir Elliot. Drink th-this." He kneels at the knight's bedside, offering a tin cup of liquid now cooled enough to drink. "It t-tastes' bad but it, it's g-good for you." Something to ease fever, something to keep the youth's brain from boiling in his skull. Other preparations are yet waiting, remedies meant to ease pain or promote a restful and healing sleep.

He has had a little time to think, on the walk to and from the house of healing, to consider his answer. What has befallen Myrken?

"It was t-too much. The, the Vice-G-governor, the Civil C-constables, they got c-cruel. There was f-fighting." Selected truths, carefully chosen, details ommitted for the moment. A cautious, sidelong approach, holding back more than he offers for fear of what damage it might cause.

"What h-happened to you?"

[Glenn]

That was almost always the way of it, save for a few very specific scenarios, like when Calomel tossed him across the Dagger or when Glenn coolly accepted his apology as something that ought to make the former governor feel better for what had not been done. Burnie was a being of passion. Sometimes it was cold. Sometimes it was hot. Cinnabar on the other hand was the portrait of self-control, right up until the point he wasn't.

Here, he went into details about Ariane, and Glenn didn't want to hear a word of it. He withstood it. This was something he had tried to prevent and he had failed. The actual facts of the matter were, of course, not ultimately unimportant, but in this moment, nothing could be done. He had done all that he could and it wasn't hardly enough. Now, Rhaena was dead and Myrken was disrupted. All he would say, softly, was.. "Had the seed not been damaged in it delivery there would have been no Ariane to break free." There would be no helping the Brown boy. "If she remained, I've no doubt that she's broken free. Talk to Sylvius if you can." He would not rush back for the sake of Ariane. Either he did all he could and it was enough to at least let her save herself or it was not enough and then more extreme measures would have to be taken, none of them the least bit acceptable or ... well, they would be a lie and one that he would never be able to take joy or solace in, another Myrken necessity and Ariane deserved more than that. He may had sacrificed everything he worked for just to give her a chance for that. There was no point in explaining it further to Calomel though. It wasn't about him; it never was.

Agnieszka was the pressing point. "Cinnabar, I need to be back up on my feet. There are levels of responsibility, of course, and consequences when you take power, but Rhaena already died for actions not entirely her fault. I won't see Agony follow her fate just for trying to do what she thought was best." IT hurt to speak that, to speak any of it, a pain in the front of his skull and down to the very recesses of his heart. "Delay things for me. I need to make some decisions and I need to get well enough to implement them once I do. I know you've been away from your family or too long as it is and you've gotten far too involved, Cinnabar, but i need more time." And of course, none of that even began to touch upon the bigger questions surrounding Burnie.

-----
Cherny arrived again, and it was at an unfortunate time, for everyone Elliot Gahald had seen over the last many hours had looked like Cherny in his fevered state and he had begun to think that he had a half dozen squires instead of just the one. No one had the way of speaking though, not until this one. It made him feel just a tiny bit clever to make that distinction. He drank the drought. Cherny would not harm him. He would only help.

"I don't know." It was that simple. "They say, the people here, that they don't remember things too." Lucidity came and went but he was stubborn and had a hearty spirit. For Cherny he would manage for a few moments at least. "When I first awoke in Myrken and shook the spell that afflicted me after I entered its borders, I had phantoms of false memories, Cherny, phantoms, right? But these are different. It's like I have memories of someone else looking at the false Elliot. I don't understand it. It sounds bad out there, though. Are you safe? Is Petro..." He paused. Rhaena had shifted him with so little effort or care. It was a whim and it was a whim that faded now that she was gone. "Petronela is fair and civilized. She's bright and tries hard, but I fear my feelings have always been for Noura. I don't understand it, Cherny." And in the midst of the chaos and darkness of what had happened, it was an affair of the heart which tugged upon him.

[Cinnabar]

Control and restraint, a carefully-observed moderation in all things. Until such moderation no longer served his needs.

"I'll send some letters - let them know you still live and intend to return to your post." Some ambivalence in his features there, a flicker of doubt as to the wisdom of such a course; and yet, if not Glenn Burnie then who? Who else would be capable of guiding Myrken Wood out of this near-catastrophe?

He does not volunteer any alternatives.

"Treadwell is capable enough, for the time being. He's unlikely to embark on anything radical, and that sort of predictability is what Myrken needs just now." Something staid, unthreatening, familiar. Aloisius Treadwell is the closest thing to a constant that Myrken Wood has.

"I have some contacts in the Constabulary. I'll send word, ask them to rearrange matters slightly. There's plenty of work to do sorting through the Civil Constabulary's antics before they get to her, hm?" Justice deferred rather than deflected; time enough to get the Governor back in his seat, from which he could attempt to guide things more directly. "Whether or not she was influenced will make little difference to the people her thugs brutalised, mind. They'll want to see something done about her, and if you pardon her or keep her in public office there'll be an uproar."

He understands that, of course; Glenn Burnie is no fool, and even a fool can tell which way the wind is blowing.

"People were beaten in her name. Maimed, terrorised, made to fear. If that's what she thought was best, I don't know that I'd want her in public office."

[Cherny]

"I'm f-fine. I've been s-staying out of the w-way. Just, just w-waiting." He speaks quietly, nodding now and then to that cup of bitter herbs, urging the knight to drink whenever he pauses. The knight explains the confusion that assails him, the false memories, and his squire frowns uncertainly, similarly unsure about what these new phantoms might mean. Talk of Petronela, though, and of Noura, has him quiet for a time, thinking.

Sir Elliot is sweet on Noura. Son is sweet on Noura. Noura thinks Son is brave, a hero, but is sweet on Sir Elliot. He could tell Elliot how the Lady tampered with his affections, made him sweet on Petronela instead. It might be enough to turn Elliot against the Lady, but then Noura would end up with Elliot, and Son wouldn't have a chance.

He hesitates, trying to decide if he dares.

Trying to decide if he should.

"It w-was the Lady." Blurted out at last, even now he'll not speak her name, falling back on what has by now become habit. "She m-made you love P-petronela, because she d-didn't like Noura." Truths, but presented in a specific order. The Marshall has told him of the Militia's barricades, of how they're not walls so much as guides - faced with even a flimsy obstacle, a mob first seeks an easier path. So he sets up his barricades, struggling to use the knight's affection for the wildling to guide him, to steer him.

It feels like manipulation. It feels like betrayal.

He tells himself that it's already too late, that he's just going along with the inevitable - the knight's false infatuation with the teahouse girl is already fading; his true affection for the wildling rising again to the surface.

"It was h-her, all along. The Lady. Sh-she, she was a mind-witch, so she ch-changed you. She changed a, a lot of people. She changed all of M-myrken." It's a gamble, hoping that with Rhaena Olwak gone the knight's blind devotion to her will weaken, fracture. A roll of the dice.

"She h-had Noura whipped and, and p-put in the s-stocks."

[Glenn]

Calomel pushed the point. Glenn, in turn, smiled. It was a sickly thing on one level, but that was mainly his physical state. That was mainly the wistfulness. "Cinnabar. I have a few important decisions to make, and I'll be perfectly honest, you don't want to be a part of them. You don't need to be a part of them. You've done more than anyone asked of you. I know that out of curiosity, out of concern, out of friendship, and frankly, out of protecting your investment in me since you just risked very much for my well-being, you want know what comes next, what I'm thinking of doing, but you'll take no joy in it, not in the near choice or the far choice."

Burnie would pause at that, would shake his head. He was afflicted and it affected even his legendary lung power. "Near or far choice? What does that even mean? I can't bring everything to bear, Cinnabar. I'm tired. There's a hole."

He'd recovered from something similar, similar enough, trauma and loss, though none so dramatic both physically and mentally. "It'll take time and I don't have it. It means I'm going to have to make some decisions I don't want to and pay for some of them now and some of them later." He had just come off paying for his previous decisions and necessities with almost everything he had. What would he do now? What could he do yet? "I need as much time as you can buy me at as small a cost to yourself as possible." He reiterated. Time. Without it, he was helpless.

-----
Cherny said quite a bit. What did he think would happen? He'd seen Elliot face up against even the most direct logic and truth, unassailable truth and his mind adapted to accept it into the narrative that had overtaken him. That was before Rhaena's death though. Now? Now when he was like this, when he was injured and babbling about seeing himself from the outside, what would he do?

You are fifteen years old. The sky blisters with lightning like fire, red and yellow, beautiful and deadly. The rain can burn skin and you are within a cave with Sir Gahald. He tells you of histories and civics. He speaks of the importance of following a hierarchy, of a proper order to all life, of those who know best and how one must always defer to them, even if you cannot see their plan immediately. You say it sounds like the One True God and you wonder about that. He says that faith can be in many things and it was one of the most important tenets of being a knight. You tell him that you have faith in your lady and that no matter what she does, you understand that you...

...are now seventeen,dressed in strange clothes, black with a hood. You are looking at yourself, confident and proud in the knowledge that you've grown strong from a young yipping pup into a...a...a...

The memories crash together as Elliot yelps. His heart starts racing and he flails, dangerously, threatening to reopen his wound, to make everything worse. The fever spikes. The world spins. "Cherny!" He shouts, but this is Elliot Gahald and he is strong and he is brave and he is true. He tries to grip the boy's hand with a determined strength. "N... Noura. Is she alright?"

[Cinnabar]

"When does anything to do with the Governorship bring joy?" Flippant, perhaps, his smile wry as he cuts away another sliver of apple. "Satisfaction occasionally, and most often it requires a fight. A thankless parade of concerns and responsibilities, the rest of the time. I'm well out of it, and grateful for the fact."

He shakes his head, however, to dismiss the motives ascribed to him. Well, most of them, and grey eyes are steady upon the Governor as he explains. "Concern. Which arises from friendship, yes. I want you to do well, and to make decisions you won't regret - or rather, will least regret. People are angry, and that anger is settling on Agnieszka. If you try to keep her in public office it will settle on you, and you'll go down with her. To Myrken's cost."

A wave of his hand to push aside the whole topic, returning to his meal with a sidelong glance for the Governor's bowl.

"No more meddling from me. I'll do what I can to buy you time - let the appropriate people know you're alive and will return soon. But you'll need to build your strength in the meanwhile."

[Cherny]

Perhaps this is progress, of a sort; this spasm which has the squire reaching hurriedly to steady the cup of healing herbs lest his knight add scalds to his already extensive list of injuries. Not long ago he'd've pushed aside that accusation against the Lady with a sincere smile and some heartening words - you're under a spell, but I will save you.

Instead the youth asks after Noura, and his grip has Cherny wincing at its pressure.

"She's f-fine - she, she was h-hurt, but she's h-healing. She's b-being looked after." Striving to sound comforting, to sound calm and reassuring in this ill-lit hut that reeks of fever sweats and boiled herbs. "She'll b-be alright, and so w-will you. But you, you've g-got to rest. Here." The cup lifted for Elliot's lips again, encouraging to finish the draught.

"You can't h-help her when you, you're l-like this."

[Glenn]

"I find it rather satisfying." The smile was askew at best. Burnie was laying down once again. Even exerting himself this much had a cost. It felt like there was a great weight upon him and it weighed upon his mind even more than his body. That he could smile so soon after Rhaena Olwak's death was perhaps chilling, perhaps not. It was not that cold smile of months before. It was more of a wild thing. It was also pure Glenn, a fire inside of him escaping through his bitter lips. "It was good you got out when you did, Cinnabar. Eventually, you reach too high and too far and suddenly you don't feel alive anymore if you're not carrying the world upon your shoulders. Raising children is a noble task, and I imagine your children are more of a handful than normal. I imagine fire and brimstone in all the wrong places." He had to pause, his thoughts momentarily overtaxed just due to a barely clever turn of phrase. "But.. but hm... Well I'm sure it wasn't all that important." The smile perhaps weakened a bit, the fire waning in the face of reality.

With a long breath, he'd continue, though in another direction. "It's not Agnie's position I'm trying to save but her throat. It's capital, Cinnabar, political, social, otherwise. I know what I have to do. Differentiating between people who were acting under their own will and people who were changed and manipulated has to be impossible. This is Myrken, though. They accepted Bromn even after what happened to him. They know of Galacia. Yes, they see that their neighbors terrorized them, that they benefited at their expense and it's hard to see a lack of consent in that, but someone needs to raise the idea of doubt. I need time."

He would go down with her, Calomel said. "I reached too high. I wonder if, after a time, it didn't become about the reaching itself, not what I was reaching for. If I can't save her, then I deserve to go down with her." Her life was something tangible to reach for after all. Her redemption all the more so.

----
"Help her, Cherny." This was something he could ask. The boy had already done much, too much, far too much. He put steel through the very life of a horrible creature, a horrible creature that these false memories of himself had acting more along the lines of unpleasant, a constant companion. It was strange. Were Niall, the Inscribed Witch, to create a false reality for him, it would not look like these strange fever memories he currently possessed, the ones where he could see his body doing wildly different things from the outside in. Instead it would be more like how Cherny had described, or tried to, more how others did. He could not dwell though.

"I need to get better. I can feel it out there, I just know from what you say. They need me. They're lost and they're scared and they need me." It was not arrogance. It was instead an almost religious fervor. "Those poor people. What do you do when everything that was good is snatched from you and twisted to darkness? Even in Myrken. What do you do Cherny? They need me. Help me help them."

[Cinnabar]

"I'm only sorry that the burden fell on your head. Well. Glad for Myrken Wood, but sorry for you. The position exacts a toll, it seems." Upon others. Upon Bromn, upon Helstone and Burnie. Calomel himself has been mostly spared, not least as a result of Glenn taking the mantle from his shoulders. The mention of his children earns the Governor a wry smile, gaze distant for a moment. "I'm in no position to judge - certainly not with any claim of impartiality, hm?"

A lapse, for a moment, as Glenn's thoughts falter and stray, and Cinnabar waits patiently. To Agnieszka and her fate he only nods. "Her throat is the correct priority. The rest I gladly leave to the judiciary - those of them who are not themselves compromised. Committees of inquiry might suffice, in the meantime - enough to show that something is being done, while also leaving time for you to do what you must."

That last, though, has him frowning slightly, attention once more keen upon the young Governor.

"You deserve no such thing. You deserve to persevere, and to mend the damage that's been done. Your first obligation is to Myrken Wood and her people."

[Cherny]

"Sh-she's alright. She's b-being looked after, she wrote me a l-letter." Saying as much as he can, as much as he dares, in an effort to calm the knight; he has few reassurances to offer, but shares what he has.

"You n-need to get better." Nodding in swift agreement to that, reaching to urge the cup to Elliot's lips again, as if that alone would see him healed. "You c-can't help them if y-you're sick. Th-they're angry, though. Things got b-bad and people got h-hurt - the, the Civils, remember? They hurt p-people - they h-hurt Noura - and the Lady l-let them." None of it the knight's work, of course, but the streets still grumbled like a wasp's nest, between hurts recently inflicted and those yet to come with the onset of winter.

"You have to g-get better so I can t-take you to th-the Rememdium. You c-can't travel like th-this and I, I c-can't carry you. You need to f-finish your tea."