Sense Can Be Said

[Duquesne]

A silver-coin face, that moon. He has raised his eyes to it more than once along this road, here with the rhythm of hoof-clops and hoof-scrapes. For every round of falls from his mare's four, Caliir's dance sometimes causes twice as many sounds... and somehow the combination of these, along with her descriptions of a could-be life for them all, calms a man's spirit into quietness. And his posture is effected by it, drawn into easiness and not the composure it endures when he is agitated.

Her words lure some smile to the mouth, some unburdened pleasure to the look of the eyes. These are fine visions she has detailed, has clearly considered them before. The Marshall would wear her blade, you would wear a long coat. He dares a glance at her in the midst of this, yet the gaze lingers even into her terms for her own self. No more seams. Ever. And he understood her, felt similarly about his own work. Eyes lower, return to some aspect of the road, rise afterward to study the sky and not because he wanted to find it interesting in the moment.

"I don't know," he confesses, shifting the reins into his right hand now and lowering the left to rest on his thigh. "I only imagine more of this, more of the same heartache." They are approaching a landmark and when near it he would lead her off the road -- away from Darkenhold. It was time to establish a secure location where plans could be made, where voices could meet in dangerous discussion without threat of unwanted ears. Darkenhold was not that place, nor the mansion at Aithne, being too obvious. "I like your musings. Very much. But you must add my daughter to the scheme -- perhaps she is Cherny's very pretty lady." And the man produces a small grin, glances at her with eyes at once livened and tired. "If there are no seams for you there, what work would you choose instead?"

[Rance]

The path they took was new. She'd memorized her way to Darkenhold well enough; Ser Woger occasionally offered to escort her still, despite having an increased amount of time to spend with his family now that the girl was capable enough of managing her own beast -- and always, always she accepted; the fellow's wits were always as brash as a hoppy ale sharp enough to make her laugh.

Riding alongside Duquesne was different. More somber, more eloquent; his presence always forced her to think before words hit her tongue -- she spoke more slowly around him, more deliberately, with more thought than in the audience of any others.

If there are no seams for you there, what work would you choose instead?

"Maybe -- maybe I would sing at chapels," she offered. "Or write up missives when I can master proper punctuation that isn't a comma. But other than that..." But the girl had no intended future for herself; she'd thought quite a lot about the progressions of others, but not of her own -- it was natural, it was Jernoan. There, she'd been a fixture, had a purpose, a task, a mode of subsistence--

Suddenly, her heels dug like spears into Caliir's side. The lumbering beast tromped forward, a gallop that was entirely uncharacteristic. When she reared past Duquesne's mare, she tightened her elbow and drew the reins to one side, wheeling the flat-faced beast around to put it in front of the architect's horse, meaning to interrupt his path. And she asked only now, because the words had taken a moment to seep into the creases of her sand-scarred skull.

"You have a -- a little girl?"

[Duquesne]

This elegant mare, all gloss and shadows, all thick and long of mane and tail, she emits a startled squeal from her throat when Caliir is made to stall her action. And because she is young and still green, she lifts off her front two hooves a foot from off the damp ground while turning away from Caliir and when she comes to rest again, she has made her rider need to turn his head sidelong to view Gloria in the midst. A hand had calmly tightened on the rein, but it was the man's body language that brings this creature to stand and to attempt some calm herself.

And the man, who was not surprised by the girl's effort, begins to smile and the look shears away the sobriety that had clung to him -- for they were discussing his child and it lightens his heart. "Adeline. She is will be seven years old her next birthday." His mare cannot seem to obey his request for steady hooves, for she stirs and tongues her bit and a great feathered hoof impatiently roughs the earth beneath it. "She will arrive soon, you know. I would be glad for you to know her."

[Rance]

"Adeline," she said. "Adeline Duquesne."

The seamstress lived a life of halves; thirty, the age a Jerno might hope to achieve before death, fifteen her age at the very moment, and Adeline, Adeline...

"Seven. She's -- she's seven," whispered with a mixture of awe and sudden wonder. Half her age, if a little less -- her next birthday, her next birthday, and a little girl would be seven years old. Caliir silently entrusted his obedience to the unsteady mare, tilting the seamstress back to the other horse's flanks, putting them beside one another again. Her gaze never left Duquesne, watching him against the bleary light of the moon as if seeing him again for the first time.

Wondering if an Adeline would have his eyes, or his stoicism, his intelligence, his relentless patience. She'd never known; she did not need to know, but was told--

...perhaps she is Cherny's very pretty lady.

"You are a par'dak," the seamstress said, her voice unfurling with a bubbling excitement, as if this singular morsel of news could drive away the desolation of Myrken Wood, a phalanx. "You are a father. How is it possible at all that -- that heartache could continue to come when you have got a little one in your life? Myrken Wood and -- and Rhaena Olwak, they are small compared to this, Proctor. She's -- she's coming to you, here?" With her hands tightening in the curls of hair behind Caliir's ragged ears, Gloria continued. "You would trust me to meet her? Do you think that she would like me. Do you think--"

Where is she coming from? Who was her mar'dak? Does she have beautiful hair and bright eyes; does she look at buildings and know if they are made of composite stone or lime? Does she speak very clearly like her father?

"Do you think I could teach her how to sew?"

[Duquesne]

Even in the present, the man is aware of how quickly the mood has changed and must regret his pessimism of earlier. His student was right -- how could he not know the future was bright, solely for the presence of his child? But it is this place that concerns him more. Myrken Wood. The place did not have a reputation as being the place in the world one would want to raise a child... but this is home and as a friend had said many times in the past: it ain't good, it ain't bad, it just is.

The architect actually laughs. He laughs and angles his mare to renew her walking stride, here as Caliir falls in beside once more. He had not expected such animation of the girl, such enthusiasm for the subject, and perhaps he had spent too long among those who did not care for younglings whatever -- folk of importance whose servants raised their young for them. The man did not discuss his family regardless, but he was especially sure not to discuss the matter in such unpleasant company. "She will love you very much, I think. If you help her improve her sewing, she will love you even more -- the governess is not so proficient as you are. I know this, as she once helped me by mending a coat." He winces to suggest the matter was painful in the end.

"I expect them to arrive any day now." He lapses into a natural silence and merely rides, but when he speaks again a shadow has grown in his voice and concern creases his brow. "I have not seen her for three years." He looks sidelong at Gloria and hesitantly adds: "I think she may scold me. Is it peculiar for a grown man to fear his seven year-old daughter?"

[Rance]

Three years. What it must be, to not know a child for so long...

"It is not peculiar at all. It is very fitting," she said. "Likely because she is your princess. I imagine she reigns over you with great tyranny." Her smile and its cork-colored teeth were brighter than the moon. "As she should."

He could have his shadow, but the girl would attack it with haste. Half of an hour before, they misunderstood one another. Now, because he laughed, she did too -- he had a new lightness to him. Something that made his stone have purpose. A father must be all things: teacher, protector, inquisitor, warrior, and god.

Your mother's mind is a fragile thing, mol'etta. You must give her patience and a wide berth.

Will I grow up to be like her?

You will be what the Nameless wish of you, Eya.

I could put together shoes from rubberwood like you.

You have your seams. It is a very good gift. Shoes are not a girl's chore. Mother Sempstress speaks your praises. She says you have a very strong fist and the finest hand with a needle she has seen. With hard enough work and more years of practice, you might embroider for a stahl. A Wynsee couldn't pray for a better honor.

I think I would just like to be Glour'eya.

Caliir had settled into step beside the mare, following its lead, scarcely examining the road with his weary eyes, for -- whether out of animal respect or recognition of hierarchy -- he trotted wherever Duquesne's steed would go. Left if it went left. Right if it went right. A clever creature, a pack-animal whose species had been long forgotten with its usefulness.

"I could teach her how to sew little fish. We -- we could make clothes if she has got dolls. If you have gotten her dolls." The glare she gave to the architect was purely in play. "And you would have to scold me, because I might show her how to stomp in a puddle. We could bake pies out of mud and make the finest imaginary dresses and shawls out of the most expensive tapestries in Darkenhold. Not that I would be implicit in these things. Not me. Not I."

She watched the Proctor for some time, not even daring to hide her new observations of him. Looking at the lines of his shoulders. The set of his spine. Seeking out distance in his gaze. How often did he think about this girl, and how gravely did he fear for her? This Adeline, this secret.

Following a few hundred yards of silence, the seamstress said, "At'chemso, Proctor. For telling me. For trusting me."

[Duquesne]

The man sighs, the sure release of a moment's apprehension. It was appropriate for the girl to scold him and there was no doubt in his mind she would, for she was like her mother in that manner. She was also like him -- she did not forget and yet she could not stay angry either.

He shoots at glance at the girl, lightly defensive in his reply. "I have given her more dolls than she plays with." After a moment of listening, that defensiveness succumbs to a small grin and he gazes forward, imagining all the well-deserved fun the child would have here. He would protect her. The child's mother was dead and there was no other kin except for him, except for the uncles she had never met and her grandmother's tribe, now too far distant in their secret habitation to be visited. One day, though. One day they would go, and a swordswoman would go with them. So he hoped. Perhaps even Gloria might make the journey and visit a desert not her own.

"How am I to scold you for stomping in puddles if I am stomping in them alongside you?" And he laughs at the thought of the drapes coming down, the Lady-Thing's precious new drapes, all being cut up for the sake of imaginations. But he cannot laugh for long at the thought. He might not bear the sight of the woman's disappointment; he never could.

Will a man know his student gazes thus? that she studies him? Perhaps. Will a student know the Proctor could sense and very well besides? And perhaps now she will see what so few do, a thing the swordswoman had wondered of not so long ago -- the pearlescent manner in which his eyes seem to catch and reflect moon-glow. He is navigating their path; he is seeing into the shadows where the silver moon cannot shine.

Up along a meadow now. The road is long gone behind them, abandoned for the sake of discretion. Everywhere, the grasses are high and lend themselves to whispers in a quiet night's air, and the meadow invites these riders into its midst. But the man does not lead her into the open, instead leads her along the edges, there in the shadows of an aged grove where two shapes may be lost to sight. Finally, her voice emerges in the peacefulness of the setting and the architect, whose senses ranged far and whose thoughts did the same, is drawn back by the sound of her gratitude. He turns his head and looks at her, has eyes with the subtlest of glows, the subtlest nocturnal flash for their pupils.

Looking forward again, he replies in a tone far gentler than the one he employed in anger an hour or more ago and speaks openly in rare admission. "I've lived a long time in seclusion. It has been necessary due to the nature of my work. My family is scattered or dead; my good friends, the same; a wife and son, dead; Adeline's mother, dead." A moment's silence for these, to honor them. "I have been separated from Adeline for most of her life, a fact that cannot be helped. But Ariane Emory, she has been my one lasting anchor, the one person in the world who has been steadfast, who has reminded me of the reasons we continue and continue." Another silence, wherein it is but the plod of animal-hooves in the turf and the sometimes-creak of their saddle leathers. "And she is -- " a sudden tension in his throat has the life from whatever he would have said, but new words come in the wake. "It is not good for people to be alone, not always. But I am not alone. I have a friend now. I have you." He glances at her and his quiet smile trims the sorrow from his look. "Of course I trust you. Of course I would trust you with my child, too."

[Rance]

The tall grasses were the rolling tongue of the forest. The meadow danced with little wisps of moonlight, all reflected off the facets of insect-wings. A kingdom of the unseen sprawled around them. Duquesne and Gloria were the unaware ones; they were towers, temples, mountains amid the thousands of locusts, crickets and katydids that darted along the branches and alighted on the night-shaded green.

They kept the darkness of the forest to their right, riding along its rim. She occasionally slapped at her neck or her wrists. Her sweat, for all its sulfur and tar, was sweeter and more exotic to the bloodthirsty tastes of the pek'oret.

How am I to scold you for stomping in puddles if I am stomping in them alongside you?

"I would like to see that. I would give a thousand shillings. I would!" Laughing, trying to stifle the image in her head of father and daughter tromping like beasts through murky puddles. "I would stand on -- on my head to see that."

As on and on they went, his tone became more somber and reflective. The hills dipped, waned toward flatness, then rose toward the moon. She'd never been out this far and would have been lost. The flickering torchlights and guard-lamps of Myrkentown had long-since vanished, leaving nothing but a far-reaching glow ebbing beyond the treeline behind them.

He spoke of family, seclusion, and while he discussed death, Ariane was on his voice, in his mind, and so--

"She is not dead," the seamstress finally reminded him. "She sees the world through a haze. We may very well do ugly things to remedy this her state, but believing it has a solution is essential to having hope. "I am your friend," the girl reminded him, pride resplendent. "And you mine. But she is also ours. And -- and while I regret that you have seen so much death, she is not a corpse to throw on the fires. Your loneliness is temporary, Proctor. You will have back your dearest friend before long."

Even if it meant regret. Desperate decisions. Choices more Jernoan than Myrken. Blood.

Those are burdens she would share for an idol.

Caliir nickered in distress. There was a vast, wide-opened field beyond them bathing in the night, promising a graze and freedom. She steadied the impatient beast with a single foreign word, then asked of Duquesne, "Are we near?"

[Duquesne]

Your loneliness is temporary, Proctor. And a man is silent through this, listening but wordless. Whatever moves in his mind in these moments must stay there, for these were not thoughts suitable for sharing.

Regret, desperate decisions, blood -- an abundance of these for him. It was too much. It had become too much a long while before when his people stood poised on the brink of extinction. It was already too much when he chose to become the distraction for men enthused by suffering. It was more than enough when, in one tremendous push, the Lanessians rose up and took back what was theirs. First, the desperate decisions and then the blood -- how it ran -- and afterward the regret whispered in. And then it no longer whispered, but screamed inside him. Years worth. Years.

He was tired, more tired than words could express, and too tired even to hunt for the words to try.

A slow breath emerges from lungs and mouth by turns, and the architect draws a gloved hand downward from the top of his dark-haired head, down over his face to pinch his mouth in the end. Perhaps he could wipe away the weariness by doing so, but alas such things are not easily loosed. "Yes," he replies, for they are near their destination indeed. Below them and beyond the field all bathed in night, an abandoned farmstead lurks and eerily so in the midst of its disrepair.

The stone house whose thatch has long since rotted and caved is ignored, but the barn beyond it stands and perhaps those who made this place had more thought for their animals and stores than for their own home. Age and neglect effect its cosmetic features only, for the infrastructure is stout and would surely endure for many decades more. He rides to the door, angles his mare up beside it and leans to unlatch it, guiding the horse backward and aside with commands from rein and heel.

"After you," he tells the girl, gesturing with his empty hand. And thus into the shadows they will go, with the man closing the door behind in much the same manner by which he had opened it. Without dismounting, he pauses to strike a flame and uses it to light a lantern hanging from a beam, that his companion might not be spooked by the gloomy shadows of these unfamiliar confines. And thus the interior is revealed, looking abandoned and disinteresting. But there is feed here for their animals and water also from a functional well, and when these matters are tended, he takes the lantern -- for her benefit only -- and leads her to the back.

A discreet panel in the wall is opened, a long stone stairwell leads down. The webs have been swept away, the dust gone from the steps, and a cool earthen smell rises from below. At the bottom of the steps, the lantern floods the chamber and it is easily identified as a cellar, though far larger than those common for the times. Clearly this one was meant for more when it was built, perhaps to endure some harsh circumstances of Myrken's past, for one could keep food and supplies in abundance. "You expressed interest in composing notices for the public to see," he offers, looking at her as he hangs the lantern from a hook on a beam above his head. "I thought you might like the use of one of these." A canvas covering something of size is here before them and he steps close, drags the canvas free to reveal the printing press beneath.

[Rance]

If she knew what it was he suffered beneath his skin, within his mind, the Jerno girl would have listened--

--but as forest became field, as field became farmstead, the skeleton of that which once produced and thrived, she knew nothing but the beauty of his future. That he would have his Adeline, that she would repair him, fix him. He would be more than friend and quarterstaff and rhetoric. He would be a father, gleaming as hot as the Glass Sun.

She would be glad, very glad indeed, to see him happy.

He posted his horse and she Caliir. She thanked the one-toothed animal by taking the time to chew a browned apple and spit it onto the ground in front of the odd beast. His black nose and blacker tongue scoured the grass for the treat. In silence, the girl followed her teacher, even into the darkness.

By lantern-light he led her, old feed crunching beneath her heels. She marshaled her breath and stepped where he did, hesitating only when a distant door slid away at his command. They descended down, down, down into the bowels of the dilapidated home. The air was thick with must and yet no webs, no dust; somewhere, droplets of water from a recent rain crawled through the earth and lapped into the stone foundation through a crack. A liquid timepiece, or so she imagined it--

--counting the moments until their feet were flat in a vaulted cellar, and her elbow was against his to ensure that he was near. The lantern cast faithful light upon the only object, a hunch-backed troll, a mythical cave-giant, a praying ogre -- no, no, none of those things as her mind first wanted to believe, but a stilled artifact beneath a canvas drape. Lifeless, undefined. Until he hung the lantern, bathed them in its circular light, and withdrew the dressings.

First she saw the wooden frame, its rusted bolts and its ironwork. It could have been a device meant to torture a man, to break his bones into grievous splinters with the turn of its winding shaft. But it was too noble, too loyal for that -- it stood tall and proud and wide, a marvel of mechanics she'd only first read about in scribed books. A tool pieced together by careful hands. Tall oaken buttresses, a crankshaft oiled like a glistening pillar. Plates. Panels. Little hints of carved letters, words that the woodblocks deigned to print to an awaiting audience.

You expressed interest in composing notices for the public to see.

Like some foreign barbarian fascinated with an object of power, the girl reached forward to touch the dome of a bolt, fingers shaking as if afraid the whole piece might crumble, shatter, vanish. "It makes -- makes words," Gloria Wynsee whispered, her tongue turned infantile by the realization of what it was that stood before her.

In Jernoah, they had literature reproduced by Brother and Sisters, painstakingly inscribed on rubberwood parchment and committed by hand to the page.

This was an antithesis to those old ways, and it was--

"Beautiful."

[Duquesne]

"It is," he murmurs, a moment before the canvas causes stiff sound as it slumps to the floor after his hand opens to release it. So much more than a weapon, this; so much more might than a sword in capable hands.

Words -- their positive power is immeasurable. As ideas and sentiments, many going unvoiced and unrecorded, emerge from the mind of an individual and are put bravely to paper, change could be excited and knowledge proliferated. In the hands of the worthy, it was so much more than a weapon, its ink so much finer than blood. Words -- their dangerous power, immeasurable also, for behold the effective lure of Olwak's utopia.

The man stares upon the machine's features, caught in a crush of thought -- yet so much of it becomes hindered by deprivation, as sleep has come to him but little these days. In the lantern's limited radiance, it is evident upon his face and the shadows seem to amplify an age that does not match his thirty-some years. He takes steps around this steadfast framework and loosens his gloves, afterward raising a hand to reverently touch, in much the same manner his student has done. A residue of ink darkens his skin and he slows his movement, that he might look on this precious tarnish and smear it slow among fingerpads -- the scent of it is heady and compelling. It reminds him of years past, of younger days when he worked in the oppressive shadows of his native city's universitas scholarium, where a boy might be lost among the aged structures tightly compressed -- they with their mighty windows peering lidless; among the halls heavy with the scent of wood polish and the sight of stone floors and stairs wore down by the passage of thousands of feet over time. An edge of his mind recalls those days as simple... and yet understanding weighs in, reminding him that they were not.

"The mind utilizes reason, common sense, as one of many ways of interpreting the world and its events. This," he lowers his ink-smudged hand -- and perhaps he might bleed ink one day for his lifelong exposure, "is a mere collection of parts, of wood and iron: the result of someone's forward thinking and wisdom. Yet a person can arrange their thoughts here and in a single night spread those thoughts the land over, accomplishing an ease of distribution only governments have enjoyed, they with their many scribes and messengers employed." He looks at her, with a conviction that whispers through the web of cares that bind him. "People rely on common sense and if an idea is proposed with that language, if it makes sense, they cannot help but listen. Imagine inspiring people to think, to look more closely at their circumstances, to begin to talk about what is right and good for themselves and their families, and reminding them the power is ultimately theirs. Those who rule by distraction and fear know not what slumbering beast lies beneath their thumb. Rhaena Olwak undermines the very laws the people nurtured into fruition, and yet they tremble eagerly for a lie, a distortion of Burnie's work -- they are desperate for leisure and know not what they sacrifice to have it." He turns the knuckles of his other hand somewhat against his mouth, head bent. He had not felt well these last few days and a ghost of weakness reminds him he grows agitated again. A slow breath helps to calm.

"You are young. You possess a momentous passion that fuels your mind and heart and spurs you onward. You, and those like you, Cherny and many others, are the roots of -- " how his voice catches on the words, though it recovers solely for tribute " -- Better Days. Adeline may look to you someday, the way you have looked to Ariane.

"My passion for pressing Causes fades, but I will help you however I am able." He nods to the machine. "This, I thought, might be a fair start."

[Rance]

Imagine inspiring people to think, to look more closely at their circumstances, to begin to talk about what is right and good for themselves and their families, and reminding them the power is ultimately theirs.

"People thrive under her appointment," said student to teacher. "She scrapes the ghettos free of their poverty. I see lines of children being ushered to the schoolhouse. Trade flourishes. The candlemaker fattens wicks constantly. The cobbler heels more shoes than he has the nails for. There are smiles abundant on the streets. The other day in the seamhouse," she said, her eyes going distant as if looking upon the creases in the wood of the printing press to find the object of the story she told, "a mother with a coal-smudge on her cheek brought her daughter to be fitted for a dress. A fine new dress. There was -- was such excitement in that little face of hers, as if she'd realized only then she'd been titled a princess, a duchess, a stahl.

"We pulled her out of the sack of a dress she wore. When we put her in the frame of the new one, she laughed and giggled so much. A tiny little ball of sunlight. She spun in circles on her toes. She gave me a kiss on my cheek. And then?"

Her fingers mimicked his own, reaching for the inner beams near the pressing-plates, scraping up a dusky film of black ink. The powder dried her fingertips, smeared them as dark as slivers of coal.

"Then she said, When I get older, Miss Gloria, I am going to be just like Rhaena Olwak."

Not so far away from the printing press, like they were orphan children hiding in its shadow, she found the clay pots of ink. Her palm brushed away their dust. She opened one of them, drew away the cheesecloth covering the mouth of the jug, and drew in a long breath of the metallic aroma.

"I realized I hated that little girl. I despised her for what she said, Proctor. I know it was a baseless disgust. I know she had new hope, a figure of heroism to look upon, an idol." Like Ariane is to me; I want to be her shadow, and does she even know it? "Who puts rapists of the mind on a pedestal? What mother is -- is so numbed by new opportunities and riches that she cannot see that the woman who her daughter yearns to be is a manipulative, wretched monster in a pretty gown?"

Illuminated by the pale lantern-light, she saw her reflection in the murky depths of the black ink. A Jerno's face distorted in liquid obsidian.

"What young woman hates a little girl, Proctor, who doesn't know any better? Tell me we're not wrong," Gloria said. "Tell me that fighting against the apparent prosperity Rhaena Olwak brings, despite the wrongs she's committed, is worthwhile."

Would Ariane have done it, she wondered.

"Is this fair start the right one?"

[Duquesne]

"People always benefit from a change of power," he says, studying the depression her finger had made when she touched the powder. Eyes move now from this and attend her features in a manner of study characteristic of him -- his expression betrays a pursuit of visual detail. "Leaders of state, leaders of religion, leaders of any grand idea carefully build the framework on which their central intentions rest. As in the framework of a house, in which a foundation and wall construction are built solely to support the roof.

"How would you gain the support of hundreds or thousands of people? Hundreds of thousands? By selling an idea. Many are caught in the benefits, the silver lining, and some never emerge but remain faithful no matter what is said to condemn the ideal they adhere to. That is Belief. It is powerful... but Reason is also powerful in uncovering truths beneath the elegant crust and, given time, people will begin to notice the gaps in the framework. No rule is absolute in terms of benefit, not even pleasures can withstand such permanence. And when eyes begin to open to flaws and people question authority, the injustice of power wrongfully seized, the injustice of being overcome against one's will and made a slave inside one's mind, the knowledge of these will spread like fire. We have the right to our minds and bodies, to live as we ourselves determine, and not according to those who rule, be they gods or humans or any other sentient thing.

"There are good ideas and bad ones, right and wrong ways of doing things, but no matter what side of the line you stand on, if you plan to resist, to think differently, then you should have doubts." And when he pauses, a remnant of his voice echoes lightly through the cellar, a moment before it is inaudible even to him. When next he speaks, his voice is quiet. "Doubt is the reflection one needs to assess an action, Gloria. Objectively and rationally discern consequences and predict potential outcomes. When you are done, you will know your course is either right or wrong. I cannot tell you if it is or isn't -- if I did, it would make me no better than those who reach for control and I will not control you in this, nor any other pursuit.

"What I know is what I have seen, and I have seen a great many men and women rise quickly into power. The heart of this issue is not whether Rhaena's changes for Myrken Wood seem fruitful, nor whether folk approve, it is that she put herself above the law. Nothing which comes of her leadership can be truly beneficial over time... because actions birthed beyond the law have consequences that remain with them indefinitely. And the truth always comes out. Perhaps attempts at resistance fail and the truth does not emerge for a hundred years, but deceit is the rust of intelligence -- it will crumble Rhaena's institutions eventually. No one should be above the laws of their people, otherwise we reduce our civilizations to dust and lay our people low. For this will cause war... and another war is the last thing Myrken needs."

[Rance]

An infinitesimal number of doubts.

She circled the great breadth of the printing press as Duquesne spoke, judging the pace of her feet by the cadence of his impromptu lesson. So deep and informed and layered, a connective minuet of thought in which he was the lead and she was the clumsy follower. He outlined futures and inevitability, a collection of logic and mathematics the truth of which was wholly unavoidable.

People always benefit from a change of power.

No rule is absolute in terms of benefit, not even pleasures can withstand such permanence.

He had seen so much, lived through so much, that she felt like a speck of grain beneath the ever-analyzing depths of his eyes. He was a library, a teacher, and spoke words the very order of which decried sloppiness. Sometimes, when around him, she wondered why she didn't contemplate with the same ferocity, why she couldn't speak with the same clarity--

I will not control you in this, nor any other pursuit.

"Will you show me how to use it, Proctor?"

He would not control her, but the choice was wholly her own. Her words had done nothing coming from her tongue; they were often too forced, too brash, too thoughtless. But perhaps a mechanism such as the one standing before her could hone the old bits of Jernoan poetry embellished in her mind into something formidable and useful. She hoped; she hoped, and that was enough.

Her brain felt heavy with his knowledge. But it did not keep her from striding forward and all but throwing herself at him. Arms were unforgiving -- they wrapped around him like a vice, squeezing him with young, labor-hardened muscles. This was no time for conversation. She absorbed his words, his knowledge, his enlightenment as if she were a sponge, a thirsty rag, and had only this to offer him: an embrace. Gratitude for who he was, what he knew.

[Duquesne]

"You asked for my help," he says, recalling the day which she expressed her want to write something of condemnation -- another day of passionate expression. "You asked a thing of me and I have not forgotten my answer. Yes, I will teach you how to use it... and much more beside."

But his last word emerges with less breath than it requires to sound fully formed, for a girl has come to embrace him suddenly and her conviction is strong. And once more, the man feels startled in a way so peculiar to him, as his last years saw the mind and self locked into a rhythm of focus so enduring that its repercussions continue to be felt. It was immersion, a means by which he could guarantee his survival and complete his objective, and he had deployed it so often that the line between his self and his state began to blur. And in this moment in which Gloria, so young that her sentiments still cling to childhood, has not only embraced him but maintained her embrace, the man will begin to accept the act as his stunned thoughts recede and his mind grows somewhat more clear. He completes the effort of half-raised hands and arms, which had hovered in paralysis these last moments, and encloses the girl in his arms, slowly reciprocating the tightness of her own.

All things will settle, says his action. And eyes lower finally from the shadows of the room, and he speaks as much to himself as to her. In a whisper, "You are not alone anymore. Allow yourself some peace."