People like you, he said.
"People like me are -- are desperate," she admitted, turning in her chair and abandoning half-eaten sandwich and tea for the prospects of their conversation. She sat with her knees together and her ankles strewn apart, hands crushed thoughtfully against the fabric of her skirt. The seamstress looked at her lap and shook her head. "We make drastic decisions and we respond compulsively; I threatened Rhaena Olwak's life to one of her loyals, not because it was an intelligent choice, but--"
A short-nailed finger scraped at the edge of a patch on her skirt, peeling up green fabric that once heard so many stories when the garment's original owner wore it.
"But because I wanted to see some -- some other feeling in him. I wanted to see him be afraid; I wanted to see him be less than confident. It seemed right to -- to threaten what matters most to him."
But all Elliot Brown had given her was that smile, his pride, his want to help.
The seamstress raised her eyes to the Councilman.
"Where is Glenn Burnie," she asked. "Do you know? I have -- have heard rumors, nothing exact, nothing specific. But enough to know that he is absent. Enough to know that you may wish to be careful, ser. For the Governor is--" I wonder if the governor is dead, "--missing. He was a man of large presence and mind.
"It makes me believe that a man large of body and mind could be just as easily removed if he must be. If Rhaena Olwak thought it necessary."