A Day at the Office

Re: A Day at the Office

Postby Rance » Tue Jul 23, 2013 1:38 am

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."
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Re: A Day at the Office

Postby Treadwell » Tue Jul 23, 2013 2:58 am

Treadwell sprawls out, worming around on his couch until his bulbous body is perfectly comfy and spread over the purple cushions like a leftover glob of grape jelly that hadn't been smoothed out entirely on its bread.

"I've no idea where the Governor is, my dear, not a one, mmph mmph. Two of our other Councilors are. . . generally absent. A third enjoys every soft thing she shoves down his throat. And me?"

A giggle escapes the overgrown fellow.

"My dearest Gloria, mmph mmph, I have survived sinister intentions and a slit throat and a hacked belly, all since I was five-and-twenty years and playing on a stage, hmm hmm. I have caused the same to others in my station, and worse. Spies and thieves have been in my employment, mmph, and scoundrels and brawlers and ruffians."

Fat fingers of both hands drum atop stomach.

"It takes knowing when to be a blustery arse, and when to be the conniving rogue with honeyed tongue, and when to play the part of kindly buffoon, good at his job and honest and merry. She didn't do a thing to me when I blew up in her face, mmph mmph, and Berdini's, and she hasn't done aught to me since as I've doddled 'round Myrken playing the jolly taxman and toymaker."

A grave frown creases the fleshy lips and rippled jowls.

"I am seen as no special threat, or she would have acted again by trying to make me over in her image, mmph mmph, as she has so many others already. E'en if she did see me as one, darling Gloria, hmm hmm, she would find my will unbreakable, my devotion unchanging. I am beyond her touch, mmph mmph, save by physical assault."

Aloisius nods his head and stree-eeeetches a pudgy arm with purple sleeve, snatching up the last of the sandwiches for the munching.

"I merely need connections. I haven't established them here, in Myrken, since I arrived years ago, and that was my failing, thinking I was past political backstabbing and maneuvering, having left all that in Westenford."

A massive throat is cleared, a jiggling mass of chins and folds hidden politely behind his voluminous cloud of a beard.

"Perhaps I ought to see who, out there, could use a bit of work or could serve information, hmm hmm? Perhaps I could find my missing Fox or another like him. . . ."
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
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Re: A Day at the Office

Postby Rance » Tue Jul 23, 2013 5:14 am

It takes knowing when to be a blustery arse, and when to be the conniving rogue with honeyed tongue, and when to play the part of kindly buffoon, good at his job and honest and merry.

It was a lesson the seamstress could have heeded more thoroughly.

She had been an ogre with Elliot. All that mattered was to be loud, obnoxious, offensive, crude, that he might focus his displeasure upon her and help blind him to Cherny and Noura's clever deceits. With Ariane Emory, she had been a liar. She wove so many falsifications that they'd not even any clear ends to tie up or explain; it had been a deluge of untruth, a wholly fallible mire of contradictions meant to confuse, fracture, and breed mistrust.

Treadwell knew himself -- he knew he could be that blustery arse or that conniving rogue; he, as any fine actor, knew when to play a part. But those subtle nuances were lost upon a seamstress, and she found herself more confused than even those she sought to bewilder--

Too many stories. Too many useless attempts to scramble the new and shining order, as if a fifteen year-old woman could ever hope to dismantle a regime on her own.

"Connections," she said, keeping her voice subdued, tracing her fingertip between the crumbs on the once-occupied sandwich platter. "Those I have got; I am only blustery, and that is the extent of my talent. But in being this way, I know people, whether or not they prefer to know me in return. The Marshall is compromised; Sylvius Duquesne, the architect in Darkenhold, my teacher, and her--" It is not your place to say what you assume, Gloria, "--her friend remains unswayed. Doubtlessly, each of you has got a much larger brain than -- than I, and may be able to formulate something.

"Messa Waldemar, the miller. He -- he is a stoic type of fellow; he might better receive your concerns as a peer. I bet he will be like talking to a stone. Or -- or a scorpion."

The last suggestion made her seek out her tea, sipping at it. Forcing her to wonder how she'd even come to make this suggestion at all:

"Mister Catch," she said. "Your disagreements with him aside, he fears for the loss of his friends' minds wishes for their safety. You -- you may find commonality, ser. It may be for the best."
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Re: A Day at the Office

Postby Treadwell » Tue Jul 23, 2013 12:44 pm

Aloisius here hefts himself back to his feet, rising from his couch in a flow of purple robe and a stoop to his back. Stumbled steps take him back to his desk, where he resituates in his office chair and fishes out a torn scrap of half-inkblot-ruined paper. Pen is taken up and inked, with hasty, sloppy scrawl of names jotted down.

"Good, good. I'll. . . see what I can manage."

Wheezy breaths from his hasty movement back to the desk leave him winded and florid.

"Is there anything. . ." a gasp for breath, "else I can do for you, dearie?"
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
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Re: A Day at the Office

Postby Rance » Tue Jul 23, 2013 5:52 pm

He scrawled down notes as she spoke. She mistook the moment, though, for one in the Proctor's chambers, like he was simply striking down grades, notes, corrections--

But none ever came.

"Yes," she said on a breath when he asked his final question. "There is something you can -- you can do for me." She stood, palms clutching without care at the hips of her skirts, a nervous habit that had left too many garments of hers worn at the waist-seams and the fabric beaded with minute balls of lint.

"Keep me abreast of -- of what you find out. What you discover. I know I am -- I am not an ideal confidant, I know I am sometimes fool-minded, and a newcomer to Myrken Wood. But you know me well enough--" from our interactions in the Rememdium; from the way I threatened your life, "--that if I may protect my friends, I will. However a seamstress must."

If it meant lying. If it meant deceiving. If it meant--

"Should you ever need stitches again, my hands are not averse to the task."

Gloria Wynsee lingered for several long and uneasy moments, standing like a misplaced statue in the center of the taxman's Meetinghouse office. Only when she scoured her guts and found no more things to say did she turn, with all the grace of a hobbled rat'vak, toward the window. She threw it open, straddled the sill with the surety of a sluggish rogue, and managed to slither herself toes-first down to the grass.

The avenues were kind to her. She tucked her chin against her blouse-collar and disappeared, another stain of sweat and mud amid the barking sellers and the confidence-men who passed off dyed balls of glass as precious jewels.
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Re: A Day at the Office

Postby Treadwell » Tue Jul 23, 2013 6:10 pm

A slight smile slips across Treadwell's jowly face as Gloria sees herself out. The window is shut and shuttered soon thereafter, notes are put away safely and locked in a drawer, and work resumes for the rest of the afternoon until Treadwell leaves to go to the Dagger, briefly, before time for bed.
"Looks like a table to me. Do you think it could hold up someone as bulbous as Treadwell?" -- Dr. Brennan, Myrken Wood Rememdium Edificium
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