For the Marshall, a Martial Matter

[Rance]

A handwritten missive, written with the care of one desperately forcing herself to learn the way the Standard should look. It was not as formal as previous letters, but sometimes, formality needed to be eschewed for immediacy. The note was not a dictated thing; it was a product of the thinker's hand.

The letter was on a page of printed poetry and darkened by palms of nervous tarsweat. At times the charcoal’s lines had been so exact, so studiously perfect, that the coal had been broken. Conviction. Starbursts of coal littered the words where points had shattered mid-character.

marshal emery,

many pepole think I am an arogent or uptite girl who mingels in things she shood not. But it is not like a jerno too say what she dose not think as it comes in mind

if I may I wood like to meat with you in person, there is a situation of dire importants we must discuse, an innosint friend of mine has had her life thretened, this is no light accusement and there are witnesses to the act, my [a word whose letters are unrecognizable – angular, foreign, and written with confidence] Master C_____, as well as Counsalor Tradewel amung them

threts have not stopped, you are the only strong enough person to tell them to stop it, the potion-maker is a good lady I have spent a night in the woods with her to be sure

if we may meat a day after the delivery of this letter near the time of sunsleep, maybe at the meating house where meatings should be done I wood be in your dett, please

so I do not waist your presous time just retern this letter to the courier if you cannot meat; if I hear no word I will come to you

your loyel unaformiss,

gloria

also, I will bring you a warm tea which will be vary nice

A town boy -- one to whom she had promised a pinch of coltsfoot from her clay pipe if he was swift and light of step -- brought the letter to the Meetinghouse, and shouted promptly for a one "Marshall Emory, Marshall Emory!" before the great doors had even been answered.

[Carnath-Emory]

An unusual fact: Myrken's semi-literate Marshall has made a years-long practice of surrounding herself with academics. Unconsciously, for the most part, and very occasionally as a matter of preference, but the consequence of it all has been a swordswoman who expects that anything she might read will prove far superior to anything she could write.

Four lines in, Gloria Wynsee's plea has her questioning her own spelling.

The errand boy is sent on his way with a penny for his troubles and no letter at all. A penny, because he'd raised a racket on arriving here - but in accordance with tradition: earlier this morning it had been "Marshall Emory! Marshall Emory!" from several voices, all far deeper and quite grown, and only because someone had broken a 'pole and none of them wanted to pay for it. Perhaps if she were to just arbitrarily assign blame - but not me, they added hastily, certainly not me, and for a time her doorway was crowded with jostling shoulders and some really choice epithets.

Two notes, that time. The one was a requisition for the Governor's office; the other, a jotting-down of the more interesting curses.

***

It's not difficult to stretch the morning's work out well into the evening. There is equipment which requires assembly, and it will be her own hands which do this; there is equipment which requires repair, and that in turn requires paperwork. One short letter and then another, to be sketched out by her hand tonight and perfected by Radeorin's in the morning. And all of it with the shutters flung far back, so that the setting sun will fill the small room with the fierce, golden light that the Marshall has quietly come to cherish.

The seamstress will have no difficulty at all in finding her.

[Rance]

Sunsleep. A time when the blistering heat of day –- which often turned sand to molten slag in Jernoah –- began to give way to the freezing night. In the night, sand became cloudy glass. Newborn children often died with the daily plummet in temperature because their infant bodies could not handle the drastic shift. That was part of being a Jerno; that was part of Jernoah. Work hard at the setting sun, went an old Jernoan good-song, to make you sweat when day is done. No other people in the world had sweat like crude oil; no other people were so naturally inclined to the movement of scalding day to cracking night simply because their perspiration could both cool and insulate.

In Myrken Wood, warmth came by other means entirely.

The guard at the door let her in –- “I have a meeting with the Marshall, you see; your collar embroidery needs work, it is pulling out, and you look less as dashing as you could” –- and directed her to the sun-soaked room. The girl felt miniscule in the heart of the Meetinghouse, and imagined what great things happened within its walls. Perhaps Messa Duquesne’s teachings at Darkenhold -- had he considered taking her on as a student, she constantly wondered – would train her for a life that could give her voice suitable enough for politics, for the Meetinghouse.

But until then, there were matters of greater importance.

She was let into the Marshall’s office without pretense. The young woman, with bonnet turned low and cheeks red from the winter’s bite, stood before the Marshall’s bureau. She bent her knees and dipped into a reverent bow, one so great that it might be asked what talent she was still able to hold two stoneware mugs aloft at all.

After, she offered a mug to the Marshall, the cheesecloth covering draped over it keeping in the steam, the warmth. “I do not write untruths,” she said, with a smile missing a lower tooth.

In Myrken Wood, warmth came by other means entirely: tea. Tea, given liberal applications of brandy, but not enough to cause a seamstress to act inappropriately –- Mister Catch, would you set me down, I think I have drank too much, entirely too much, and maybe I will make a game of it, I will have a pee right between these three stones, and hit them one, by one, by one! -– for one time had been far too many.

But standing before the Marshall, in a sweat-ringed dress given to her by a wellsmith, in a cloak purchased off a dead man’s body, in a bonnet given to her on yool, she was proper, so very proper, and did not drink her tea before her better.

”Thank you for meeting with me, Marshall Emory. I have many things to say. But first, I am relieved that you have the time at all for me, and for the life of my friend, the potion-maker.

”I do not want her to die,” she said. “And a law must be upheld. That is how it is. That is how it should be. And of matters of law, I know no better confidant than you."

[Carnath-Emory]

They've spoken on the matter of Gloria Wynsee, she and Ser Duquesne. In largely admiring terms, as it happens, and had the Marshall thought to mention the woman by name -

Well, who knows what might have come of that?

But those conversations were casual, and as prone to mishap as casual conversations ordinarily tend to be. Had revolved largely around a matter of uncommon fabrics and excellent tailoring, and the development of a most unlikely insignia. Had become, as conversations between the two generally do, involved in other matters entirely - a puzzle, a riddle, an unfathomable warning; in the end, she'd never spoken the girl's name at all.

This, though, is a very different sort of conversation.

"Glour’eya," and the smile's already become something else altogether; a hasty wave of the hand, and: "No. Please. There is no need for that; we are casual here when we can be. Sit - if you will. And," a wry twist of a smile, "if the seat's not too filthy." Which remains a distinct possibility, for her business is largely the Militia and they come into this room directly from the fields, from the arena, not much improved from when they'd left it.

Peeling back the mug's loose covering looses a rush of warm steam; it bathes her cheeks, leaves her ruddy and smiling for the simple warmth of it.

"Ochen vkusna; this is perfect, thank you. Please. Say everything that you wish to say."

[Rance]

One did as an authority –- a Marshall –- asked, so the seat could never be too dirty. With tea in hand, she planted herself in the chair, knees pushed firmly together beneath sprig-patterned skirts, wooden-soled shoes pressed against one another at the heel.

She sipped her tea after the Marshall had her own. It was thankfully bland. Ever since a situation with a certain goat and a pile of delectable sweets –- good Mister Catch, he had pushed her out of the kitchen, had protected her from the sight of maggots and bubbling boils of blood –- she had not taken sugar in her tea. Just in her broth. Just to get used to the sweetness again.

"Oshen vakuzny," she repeated. "What does it mean -- is it like slonshall, or like something else?"

But language could be discussed later. The Marshall had such an inspiring way of speaking, that made the seamstress wish to know what it was like to wear an armored bracer, or have that stiffness to shoulders and coolness of mind to reduce all things of complexity into military simplicity.

"I wish to say," she said, with care, "that there is a potion-maker in town. Her name is Raia, and she is a simple and endearing sort, like a lost girl with a good nature to her humor. She is kind, and considerate, but peculiar –- and that is where the problem lies.

"Menna Niall and Messa Elliot, they threatened to kill her. It was a terrible sight," she said, breathing into the surface of the hot tea. "They made to lock the doors to the Dagger with the intent to cut her to pieces. And might have succeeded, had they chosen to consider that patrons were still upstairs. But we saw –- I saw -- and the moment was paused. Blades were out."

She put her tea upon the bureau. Her cracked lips were still damp. The seamstress kneaded at her skirts with her fists, digging knuckles into her knees.

"They are afraid her potions are harmful, Marshall, but they are not. They are as harmful as my seamwork; they are as harmful as Master Cherny’s tasks at the mill, or Mister Catch’s fine woodcutting. This I can prove. Wish to prove.

"A girl should not fear being cut down in public for her talent. No? It was premeditated," said the seamstress, with weight, with reason. "Had they succeeded then, there would have been innocent blood. And yet, there still may be."

[Carnath-Emory]

"Oshen vakuzny. It is for - mm. A thing which has good taste. Drinks. Meals. Not," she adds after a moment, "people."

Good taste. It's a pun.
Sometimes it's interesting to try out the Governor's idea of humour on people other than the Governor.

A seat for each of them, then, and the slightest clench of the Marshall's lips as Gloria settles herself upon what's thinly layered with a fine sheen of dirt and hours-old sweat. It's possible to be more careful with the seamstress' innate deference, she imagines; possible to word things such a way Gloria will be guided smoothly from one safe action to the next. Dusting grimy chairs before she sits upon them - or else avoiding them entirely . Exchanging chin-scraping curtsies for a prompt nod of the head and a swift declaration of needs and concerns. Enforcing a rigid schedule upon her days, every minute accounted for, all founded on the notion that she cannot be trusted to account for them herself.

All quite possible, although it would require the sort of verbal acrobatics at which the Marshall does not excel. Possible nonetheless, and it would transform her into precisely the sort of authority which had first kindled the girl's crippling obeisance.

Intolerable. And perhaps there is no better indication of what has befallen Glenn Burnie than that he finds the whole matter rather welcome -

"Have they explained themselves to you, Glour’eya? Perhaps it is a specific potion which troubles them?"

Elliot Brown. It always comes back to him, and from the moment Radeorin petitioned her on the subject of marbles, she'd come to understand that it probably always would. Elliot. If it were only him, she might have discounted the whole matter as so much juvenile idiocy. Niall's involvement, however, makes this something very different indeed.

"How do you intend to make this 'proof'?"

[Rance]

“The explanation I was given was regrettably short, and from Niall, even less, by having me put against the wall, you see, and being told—“ she wore her finest spearwielder imitation, complete with rigid spine and wiggling head, as if these were signs of authority, “—‘I do not wish to kill you,’ or something of the sort, a threat-that-is-not-a-threat.

”I had only told her that she should stop it, that Menna Raia was not a danger. A Jerno does not hold her tongue when a truth should be said,” the seamstress added.

She reached for the tea, her eyes flicking up and almost asking for permission to drink –- but she knew more than blind obedience in the Marshall’s presence. She knew something like equality, that she was a paid servant, a shor’vak -– not a rat’vak, not a stal’vak, but in-between, far better than a slave and much lesser than a landowner. A person to be paid for goods rendered.

“I have tried to speak of them both, but I am a—“ a wave of the hand, trying to grasp the right words from the air, “—a fart in the wind to them, Marshall; I am a stupid girl, and that is all I am.

”As for proof?” The seamstress brought her side-slung satchel to her front, rested it against her chest, and sifted through the contents. She withdrew a thin bottle, which she balanced on the bureau. “A potion. Menna Raia gave it to me. We ventured together into the woods, to gather ingredients. She has quite a way with talking to trees, and the kindest disposition to even the most violent wolves.

”It is a potion meant to help me flee if I am in danger. Simply dash it upon the ground, and—“ hands threw themselves high, as if displaying a great show of imaginary lights and smoke, “—poof, you are feet away, ready to flee. I do not know the science behind it, but it is a thing of good intent. Have her questioned; have her courted by Myrken’s finest magical inquisitors, and they will find my heart has not misled me, Marshall. Menna Raia is harmless.”

She spoke what she felt was too much. She always spoke too much, but the Marshall had instructed her to do so, and she poured out the facts as she knew them. Her knee bounced underneath her dress, her wooden shoe-bottom tapping, tapping on the floor.

”In Jernoah, murder -- or the premeditation of it -– is punishable by death. The head is lopped off, the blood runs into the gutter, and the bones are picked clean by the blowing sands. But oshen vakuzny,” the words mutilated, mispronounced with mastery. “Myrken has good taste, of drinks and meals and law, and not the blood of innocents."

She ended it with a smile, wide on her bonnet-framed face, her youth shining through the hard streaks of dirt.

”Have I used it the right way, Marshal Emory,” the girl asked. “Or is it an idiom.”

[Carnath-Emory]

The Marshall had requested a recitation, and the obliging seamstress will discover quickly that she is in turn an attentive listener. Straight-backed in her seat, sipping only sparingly from the tea; with some thin frown creasing her brow, and now and again a hand that curls close against her lips. Niall, after all. Niall, bustling this girl up against the wall. The seamstress is an able mimic, but even if she weren't, the image would have been so very clear in her mind.

"A brave Jerno, at that." A murmur interjected quietly into the midst of it, and immediately fingertips waving for Gloria to continue.

But what a glance she's turned upon that dainty flask. Cool-eyed and spare, deeply unremarkable until the seamstress embarks upon an explanation of the potion's singular virtues.

"I'm not certain that science is the source of - " a jerk of her chin towards its sparkle " - that."

Difficult, this. Difficult, in that she imagines such decisions ought to take longer than this one does. The swordswoman has her opinions on such marvels; has every intention of cooling prejudice so that it will not hinder thought - and if it weren't for Niall's involvement in this, it all might have gone exactly that way -

There is something wry in the set of her lips. Really, she'd have preferred the violent wolves.

"May I have this?" Finally. With the narrow body eased back in its seat, and a flick of her fingertips towards the pretty vial. "If it is precious to you, say No; this is only for convenience. For we are agreed on Myrken's taste for justice; I would not have your potion-maker finding 'justice' at the hands of Niall and Elliot Brown; I do not want - heads lopped off."

Not yet.

[Rance]

Eyes were imperative tools in conversation for the seamstress. She never hesitated to stare upon the Marshall, not unlike the way a curious child stared at an adult across the market or bazaar. Her eyes often went unblinking, sometimes snapping from the Marshall's own gaze to her lips, constantly analyzing words, absorbing, listening with an intensity that rivaled the Marshall's. Hinged on every word. Determined to have her meaning be known, to know meaning. To let no barrier of language mire the discussion.

Yet, when the Marshall called her a brave Jerno, she softened. The words were a praise, a salve to overtense muscles, a thing that brought a pleased smile to her.

She settled in that seat dusted by the sweat and dirt of Militia-men. Her fingers had less complaints on her skirt-fabric; her hands more commonly, more easily, went for the tea. She admired the Marshall, if for that diplomacy and business had been softened to conversation, among so many other qualities.

"Yes," the girl said, after some consideration. "Yes." Again. "It was a gift, for as you and I have discussed, I will run, but it could do no greater good than in your hands, Marshall, if it may help prove Menna's good nature.

"I will say this," she added, cradling her tea against the edge of her lips. "My Jernoah is a placed shunned by many for its often brutal conditioning of boys and girls and people in general. Yet, three types of people commit murder in the streets, and two of them are given religious and political right to: the stahl's men, called the Ap'olatsi, and the Jernosta -- soldiers, all.

"The third," she held up her index and middle finger, and thrust out her thumb to indicate this final member of the trifecta, "are criminals. Criminals. Who are -- who are then punished for not adhering to the laws of the country. There, Niall and Elliot, they would be run through with blades, strung to hang from a tavern awning, or -- or worst, staked naked in the sand and given to the Glass Sun for as long as it takes to turn their innards to stew.

"Those," she said, with a rare quietness to her voice, "are the worst kind of screams, when the saliva boils after days, and the acid in their bellies, it cooks them from within as if they have become a pot of stew, and you would not -- you would not like the pop they make as they burst."

Beneath that off-white bonnet, with its burgundy ribbon that had been woven together in a happy world where sun-bloated bodies and hot-burst stomachs did not exist, her eyes were distant, seeing no tea. Just seeing old things.

Yet, she refocused on the Marshall, and she'd a smile again, faint, but honest, the black gap between unruly teeth only slightly visible.

"Myrken is better than this. You see? For if even a place as conservative as Jernoah has order, then spearwielders and young blowhards in Myrken should not have right to threaten and maim as they desire. I trust the goodness of your law, Marshall Emory -- it is why I am at your service."

[Carnath-Emory]

"It may prove her - good nature."

It may not.

"This is returned to you after, mn? When it has been examined. I do not know the process: not what it requires, nor whether it will consume your potion in whole or even in part. It is possible that none will remain. What does, is yours to keep." Quiet, even disclosure; an opportunity for the seamstress to retract her offer, for when the Marshall takes this small vial into her hand - and gingerly so, a manner better befitting fine crystal than simple glass - it is only to place it onto the desk at a point midway between them both. With but a reach of her hand, Gloria may make it her own again.

But what a listener she has made of the Marshall, meantime; what a quietness she has written into the other woman's eyes with each word and then the terrible next. A count of three: Ap'olatsi and Jernosta; her lips barely move as they test the shape of these new words, and there comes no sound at all. Later, for that. Later, in the warm corridors of her home, where there will be no-one to notice her mistakes and she can decide at her leisure whether to keep these new ideas or not.

"What is the stahls?" Gloria has not intended to give the Marshall a brief lesson upon the most brutal basics of Jernoan culture; the question is not even remotely related to their business here. But there it is all the same, and after some slow moments she adds: "You would recognise Northern Dauntless, I think - even though it is all ice and cold rock. The law is the law, mn? As written by those hands that hold power today; as re-written by the House that comes into supremacy the next month, the next year. Who would question the law, or the willingness of its makers to act upon it? No-one but a man who wished to die for the asking," and it is the tiniest smile; it is a thin, cold thing.

She'd left that place behind her long ago, after all. She had never returned. And there were so many reasons for this, but the most immediate revolve around the supremacy of the ruling Houses, and the memory of a husband's blood upon her hands -

The smile has quietly softened, has resolved into a simpler thing.

"You're right. I would not like this sound, I would not like any part of this at all."

Although - given certain circumstances -

"It is not our way, and it will not become our way; as you say, Myrken is better than this. Although," and it's laughter then, "I think you will find some who would object to that statement. Perhaps we do better to say that Myrken is simply different. Just years ago, we might not have had the means to properly manage potions and their makers. Its government then might have said: Well, if these things might prove to be a threat, best we best we leave Niall and the young pravonarushitel' to solve the matter for us. At the cost of a single life we might spare ourselves so much worse.

Today," and she has bent a moment, has retrieved paper and quill, "this is not necessary."

[Rance]

What the Marshall required, the Marshall would always receive. The seamstress' blind reverence was a rivet in her bones, a natural part of her, beaten into her by hot sand and years without clothes, as inseparable from her as her faith, her expertise with a bone needle, and her dark and stinking sweat.

"What you must use it for, Marshall, you may -- if to prove that my judgment is correct. I do not make bad friends. You see? Master Cherny is the dearest, most intelligent boy I have ever met; Ser Catch, while others may find him frightening or intimidating, is a fragile but loving soul. People speak of his blackness, and while I have seen a fraction of it, I know him--" A break in the words -- she knew Catch, more than she could illustrate, and this explanation of the right friends had become tangential. Raia had not been mentioned, but was the impetus. Raia, too, was a friend of the finest sort. And then--

"Catch has asked me, Marshall, to use glass words to keep the Wolf away. Is that odd? He speaks with such poetry that I wish I could capture in a book. Perhaps I will have Master Cherny help me, and we will write an epic poem of our friend."

The conversation was delightful. The seamstress, who was scarcely more than a child, had a patience to her words that likely only the Marshall could understand, for like one another, they strove for overt perfection over their Standard. And so, it was inviting when the Marshall spoke of Northern Dauntless, of a place that seemed the temperate negative of Jernoah, but so much alike -- its Houses embroiled in political conflict, its people suffering the underlying infection. Who would question the laws? No one. Not a good Dauntlessian, if that was the word; not a good Jerno; not a Good Citizen, like Catch, or a proper Myrkener; not a seamstress, either.

"Your Dauntless -- it is a very fitting name for a place, that breeds one as unable to be daunted as you -- sounds like it might be too greatly Jernoah's equal. They might meet and have tea like we are having."

But the subject became to greatly severed from what was once the focus, and the seamstress with the clothes that looked like ragged tatters leaned forward and drummed her fingertip on the table.

"A stahl is like a -- like a Governor Burnie, of a small hamlet or city. This matter of laws and purpose of supremacy changing, though, is not so much a problem in Jernoah. There is no greater achievement in Jernoah, than to be deemed a representative of people in the eyes of the Nameless. And when they are done, they die," the girl said, with a simple smile.

"I do like talking to you," she admitted, with ease. "I am confident, though, that you will find the solution to this problem. Yes? But I would hope we remember the fairness of the thing: that Raia is not the one in question, and that Niall and Elliot's actions were misguided, compulsive, and wrong despite any discovered justification. I have hopes for Elliot as something more than a stupid boy, and Niall -- well, she is Niall, and I do not like her, but wish her no harm.

"I want them to learn the error of their ways, and for Menna Raia to be left in peace. But until they do, my friend's life is in danger. It should never be necessary. I have faith in Myrken Wood; I have faith in you, Marshall."

There was no manipulation in her words. What might have been manipulation was loyalty and blissful trust in authority.

She leaned back in her chair and sipped at bland tea as the Marshall wrote. And under her breath, she whispered, "Pravorarristail. Pardonaristel," trying to learn the word, and stumbling meekly over it.

[Carnath-Emory]

One day, one fine and terrible day, Gloria will describe the manner in which she'd earned her clothes; that for so long she'd been forbidden any at all. And in that hour she will discover a Marshall gripped by the most drastic loss of self-control -

This is a quieter moment.

"It will prove what it proves," she murmurs after a time - largely involved in the coaxing of ink towards the quill, and the troublesome application of both to the page before her. This does not come easily to her, this writing; certainly it does not come naturally. A lack of experience interferes. A deep and abiding distaste certainly does. Still, a first uneven word begins to take form, and when it has reached its unsteady end, she lifts a glance towards the other woman. "I will not mislead you on this; I will not promise you false. It will prove what it proves, which might be nothing at all. If it is something ill, if it something dangerous - then we do what we must. Which is not," she adds carefully, "a body staked upon sands. Not that. But a thing which the Constabulary must heed."

A cynical soul might consider this a crippling degree of honesty.

"It is not your judgement I question. What I do, I do because - Myrken has taught us certain cautions." It is that. And it is considerably more than that. There are things which we do not explain, not even to the finest seamstresses, not even to sweetest and most solemn dispositions. Not when it is an acquaintance of mere weeks, and by preference not ever at all. "You have already seen something of this, I think. Ringwalls, burned corpses," and it is almost a dismissive shift of the hand. "The things we do because we must."

It will not always be this way, the Governor had promised her. It will not have to be this way.
And she had accepted those words much as an architect had described years before: never as a guarantee, but simply as a statement of intent. In that sense only, his promise had worth; had broad, inestimable worth. A promise like a confession of the -

"Are the Nameless your - mm. Your gods?" To keep the distaste from her tone requires some small effort. Spend time enough in Myrken and one hears a thousand different litanies recited in the Faith's name; spend time amongst the r'Chyr'laud and one will hear quieter things revolving around spirit and instinct. Spend a day in Northern Dauntless and one understands immediately why they have no gods at all. "I wonder if the Jerno way is kinder. Our Councilors," and it's a sudden grin, "also tend to die when they are done. But generally because someone has murdered them."

Forgive a sellsword her grim humour. Perhaps it's possible to, on discovering how it brightens features which otherwise tend towards a certain coldness.

"Mm. Catch is - as you say, I think. Frightening. Fragile. And deeply loving. I think that he might like your poem very much, if it were written for him. I think that it might charm. Will you tell me," and the scratch-scratch of quill on rough paper pauses, "of these 'glass words'?"

[Rance]

It will prove what it proves, which might be nothing at all.

The Marshall's words were something that stuck to her, like wet sand in the ears. The seamstress watched her for some time, not with displeasure, but as if she did not wholly understand that the situation was more complex than it seemed.

She had finished her tea by that point, and had placed the empty mug on the corner of the bureau. Her words were not meant as a criticism, but as a caution -- though who was she to question the standards of the Marshall? "Things we do because we must," she repeated, the ribbon fastening the bonnet under her chin shifting a little as her jaw hardened. "I do hope that a challenge of Niall and Elliot's wanton desire to hurt without reason is one of these musts. You see?"

And the Marshall inquired about things the seamstress knew much better: the Nameless, and Jerno ways, and when she spoke it was with more comfort, more animation, smiles and reflections in her eyes that made her almost feel the warmth of the Glass Sun on her cheeks. "We praise the Nameless in all things. I am a girl of faith, Marshall, but I believe that faith does not cloud me to human reasoning. I ask for Their guidance, and consider Their unspoken signs. But I would never kill in Their name, or be blind to compassion because -- because They have deemed it so.

"Without Them, I would be lost -- and without Them, I might still be in Jernoah."

But nothing else was said on that subject.

The Marshall had a way of lulling the girl and making the seamstress trust that, in the protection of this room, no other ears would hear their words. Did Ariane know that the seamstress was fascinated with her, infatuated, a heroic figure to this girl who knew a place where women had no purpose, and that was why she had serenaded in the Broken Dagger in the Marshall's newly-hemmed trousers?--

"I speak things to Ser Catch, and he -- he listens. I do not know if he listens, but there is a change in him, the slightest and most minute kind, when I speak to him in Jernoan. Once, he frightened the urchin child, Cat -- who would name a boy that -- and went to hold him tight, and the child was afraid. I said to Catch stop, hoping he might do as I ask.

"He did," she said, chin lowering, her fingers once again kneading the hips of her dress as if she were trying to nervously worry the wrinkles out of it, but only succeeded in giving it more. "He did as I told him, and it hurt me greatly, but maybe that is just how he is made. But sometimes this deeply loving Ser Catch must be spoken to like he is a child, and as his friend, there is no worse feeling than sensing, feeling, knowing he might do as I tell him. And he asked me to -- to talk away this Wolf with Jernoan, with glass words--

"It is as terrible a feeling as raising a thorny branch, as giving a slave a strike for whatever they have done."

She wished she had more tea. She wished she had not drank it all so fast. The seamstress looked up to the Marshall once again.

"Will you tell me more of your Northern Dauntless. Of your Councilors. Please?"

[Carnath-Emory]

The situation is complex; is, in the same moment, not complicated at all.

When the one page has received its few necessary words it is set aside to dry, replaced promptly with another. For a time yet, there is nothing but the scratch of rough quill upon rougher paper, its only interruption a sip from the cup, an occasional half-hissed curse -

Perhaps she ought to have had Radeorin attend this meeting, to make these notes himself. Hah! No. Take a step down that path and soon you find that you have people for your people; that you've a someone to fetch your wine and another to drink it for you, someone to write your notes and a hand to draw your sword so that your own needn't be troubled by the imposition. You become a miniature lordling, a king in everything but name, wealth and standing; you find yourself becoming increasingly removed from everything that actually matters, remote and idle. There is no part of her that does not recoil from the idea of it.

None of this makes scratching out clumsy words any more satisfying.

"I understand," she murmurs after a time. "I do not intend to have either of them preying upon - " Magickers, she'd been about to say, and bites that back; substitutes some little wave of the hand instead. It might yet be science, after all. Not unlike Alastir's salves, or the spy-master's vicious poisons: things so marvelous that they're easily mistaken for magicking by the unprepared mind. "But - Glour’eya, Niall does not do this thing idly." Elliot's reasons are perhaps best left unexplored. "It is better we say to her: young Sera, you are mistaken; here is what we know so that you will see it is all quite harmless. Do you see?"

It's possible that she does not - and with good reason.
It is every bit as likely that there are limits to a Marshall's willingness to explain herself.
This much, though. This much she can permit, and after it:

"I am glad that you do not forget - compassion," and if she smiles perhaps it's only because the other woman did; perhaps it is only because such talk as they've stumbled upon - the Nameless, the Glass Words - have made something lively of her eyes, of her soft features. "Although I think that this, I knew before you said the words," and the smile can brighten by some tiny increment. "Do they actually give to you - signs?" It is possible to discuss 'gods' in purely hypothetical terms. It is also, she's swiftly discovering, both distasteful and interesting at once. "Things which you see," with a fingertip touched to the corner of her own eye, "or things which you - see?" And to her temple then, the mouth already uncertain of its own question. And - "

This Wolf.
The Glass Words. Like sand burned to shining beneath some furious sun, thin and delicate and mercilessly sharp -

It is the tiniest frisson of coldness the length of her spine.

"Northern Dauntless," she murmurs; dour, mundane words to counter the chill of exotic cruelties. "Did you know that is a question which no-one asks? And only because there's no answer worth hearing." A sudden smile around the rim of her cup. "Travel north as the eye can see, and then further still. Until the ground's gone cold beneath your feet and you can see little but endless ice and hostile faces. It is not worth visiting. It is not worth finding upon a map. It is good for one thing only," and how the smile has grown, cold and hard.

"Leaving."

[Rance]

"Perhaps you will have Niall listen to reason; I have not managed it to this point. She is as stubborn as stone. But I cannot abide terrors done, and terrors done without purpose."

Then, presumptuous, but not without that constant ringing of respect in her voice, that it was always quieter than the Marshall's, and spoken more to her hands than across the table.

"I hope you do not put too great a trust in her as a woman of logic; Niall is an ember waiting to burst, and I have met it first-hand. It was by her grace alone that I was not killed, simply because I questioned her."

And, like the waxing and waning of a moon's cycle, their conversation shifted from one active thread to another, as if they were both conversational spiders doing acrobatics from matters of law to matters of personal cultural acquaintance. "Their signs are not obvious, you see? It is not so much that the Nameless will reach down and move the pieces in such a way to benefit you, or that you would ever know. That is not Their place.

"Their faces are not meant for our eyes. Their deeds are not meant for dissection by human logic," she said, with a quieter series of words that were spoken with a miniscule morsel of shame in her voice. She turned the mug that once held tea by pushing her finger against its handle. The litany she spoke was hard, unfeeling, and did not carry the insignia of loudly-spoken pride or proselytizing passion that other men or ladies of faith might. "Skin your knees and eat your sand, hope for swift delivery from these things that make us what we are, for in Pursuit, we are given purpose.

"No, Marshall," the girl said, her lips twitching under the bonnet, trying to find a humor amid the old liturgies. "Maybe it is foolish to put your faith in gods that cannot be seen, that cannot be heard or touched, but we all do it. You see? It is like hope."

Dauntless, in her mind, was a place of long-reaching ice-fingers, glaciers that sprouted from cold-steaming seas like noses thrust up from beneath the blankets of the world itself. She followed the Marshall's words with attention. It is not worth visiting. It is not worth finding upon a map.

Disdain for one's home often came from horrors in the memories of that place. For the seamstress, it was the same with Jernoah. And so, like a friend ought to, she responded not with whole agreeance, but with a supportive angle on the Marshall's dissent:

"If, Marshall, you were to ever find it important to return," she said, and patted her hand on the desk, "You would not do it alone. I would come.

"We would make it an adventure."