Audience with the High Inquisitor

Re: Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Glenn » Tue Aug 06, 2013 2:04 am

"It's a little silly, Gloria," he began. Was he unaware of the knife? Was he uncaring? Could she leap forward and take his heart right now? She knew he had survived an axe from Catch, but that had been before. That had not been her special blade. That had not been here and now. She'd make sure to finish what she started. "We can't pretend all those things didn't happen. I wouldn't want you to. Pretending is what Rhaena does. Imagining is what she makes people do. We have to be better than that. I did what I did. And yet, despite that, you sit in your seat, right there and I sit in my seat and we talk, yes?"

She still didn't understand, and it was fine. She had no context, no way of understanding. "They aren't your friends out there, Gloria. That's not what that was." He had to laugh and some of it was at her, but she had been missing and missing. Now it was time to spell it out. "They respect you, especially the ones that just grunted. That damn dwarf. He grunted, no? Bastard. You, Camello, and this is a bit of a contradiction, but it is okay. You've had a hard," he started counting on his fingers with his free hand. "well, a hard time of things. This is Myrken and Myrken like your Jernoah is not a place to go stomping about asking questions, getting in everyone's business, and reaching above your station. It is a place to keep your head down, to know where you fit into our little society, and to keep quiet. The people who do elsewise? Elsewise? Is this a word? It should be a word," he shrugged, sipping at his wine, this already turning into a longer and more annoying speech than he would like. "Those who see the holes, that try to answer the questions natural in this accursed place, those people get noticed. Many of them end up out in that room. And these people, they notice others who do it. They've noticed you. Those people out there? They are not your friends but they are your fellows. This is a bureaucracy. It serves itself.

"I on the other hand, will die if Rhaena Olwak wishes it. One thought and I am dead. She cannot change what I think, though. Therefore, only I can question her. Some questions are successful. Some are not. Some of the people out there, in that room, are helping me come up with the right questions. Do you start to see yet, or do we go around the circle again?"
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Re: Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Rance » Tue Aug 06, 2013 3:50 am

"I don't want to pretend those things didn't happen. They make me despise you," she admitted. "They make me wish you were dead."

She cannot change what I think, though.

If the Black Man and the seamstress could find commonality, it would be in that sentiment.

The knife eased its tension. It belied her with its jagged tip, promising a truth to which she purposefully blinded herself: she did not know how to use it, would likely hesitate, hated blood for all she had seen it beading in the sands of Bridlespear and boiling in the heat, the sweltering heat, the dry, burning, skin-blacking heat--

They respect you.

Her eyes pried for truth, leered into him with more sharpness than a glass-edged knife ever could. He was a wall, and -- no matter how prideful she wished to be, the false confidence she tried to espouse -- she knew she was nothing in comparison to him. He could have put steel to her tongue in the schoolhouse, could have gouged a razor-edge between her teeth, parted the blue vein, lopped the muscle right out of her. A dead fish.

Some of the people out there, in that room, are helping me come up with the right questions.

"Do you think my dissent is -- is simply a matter of opinion," the seamstress asked, dissolving against the back of the chair and wrapping a gloved hand around the ornate armrest, squeezing it, wishing it were just an egg, a little soft-shelled egg she could bust in her palm. "Don't you believe I have a reason for it, for my loudness, my obvious disgust with the Lady's changes? I may not be as swift of mind as you, as any of those with -- with their fine little desks.

"But don't believe for a moment that I decry her without understanding what may come of it. I am -- am filling a necessary character. Like you.

"And if you wish that I shift my focus, find a new motivation?" Gloria Wynsee settled the mirror-edged blade to her lap, gripped her knees, and pushed her chin forward, never pulling her gaze away from him. "Then maybe you would -- would be willing to strike a bargain with me."

Clayton Thayer's warning, his demand, rattled like a loose coin around and around in her brain.

...never make a deal with someone you truly think might hurt you.
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Re: Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Glenn » Tue Aug 06, 2013 5:28 am

If he was a wall, he was a rather languid one. There was something constantly relaxed about the Southerner mentality. Oh, it was tempered by his last few years and moreover, by whatever it was that Rhaena had done to plug all the holes in his mind and body and soul, but ultimately, he was no wall. He was the ocean and she could stare into it forever without making a dent.

"Ah. Stories. You are playing a role in the tale. Not an actress but a necessity. A... how shall we put this?" The man in white smiled, if a little. "A force for balance? No, a keystone. You hold it all together. So long as you paint a ridiculous target upon yourself, other people will be ignored, yes? Except for this. Rhaena Olwak does not want to hurt people. None of those people have been ignored. They've just been offered other things. Little Cherny was never going to be hurt. You could have stayed at your lessons and he would have been treated exactly the same. The Whelp was always going to be tempted through honest means. Perhaps she did not think her knight would take to her so, but then who knew she could clean up well?"

He placed the glass down, clapped once, slowly, with that same smile. "All you have accomplished is further hurting the victims of Rhaena. You've hurt more the people that she hurt, do you see? You take your own loss out on them. It is low and it is weak and it is selfish. Everything else is a good deal of noise with very little purpose. Anarchy is not the answer to bad government, Gloria Wynsee. Good government is. If that is impossible, then pragmatism." Or assassination, but it was best not to raise that point.

"You need to understand something. I have regard for you. It is limited. I can protect you, to an extent. Come in out of the cold. It may matter in a few months time. You are, however, otherwise, without help, a powerless, small thing. You can strike out in one way and know we will not kill you and make you a martyr. You can strike out in one way, but then realize that I will put you in a sack. I will tie it. And I will send you back to your homeland with no worry about the expense. Then you will have helped no one."

His smile returned, softened. "You'd also never have to worry about any of this again. If that's what you wanted, I'd pay the passage. If that's what you don't want, then you damn well better sign up and start to make something of yourself. This is the bargain I am offering you. If you continue to be a nuisance, my orders are to remove you. If you put your head down and learn how to be something more, I can shield you, here. If so, you will be pragmatic and you will help."
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Re: Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Rance » Tue Aug 06, 2013 6:52 am

"No," she told him.

it was a blanket denial, a shield in the face of what he used to chew apart her meager defenses -- You've hurt more the people that she hurt, do you see? You take your own loss out on them. It is low and it is weak and it is selfish -- and so, she sought to push back, to be the elbows and shoulders that forced him away, bludgeoning the reality of those accusations--

(the truth of them)--

--until she could breathe and cobble together a reasonable retort.

"Rhaena Olwak has no interest in causing pain? She molested people's minds. She slaughtered memories; she -- she planted lies inside of them and destroyed what drove them. Her only kindness was leaving their skin. What she has done to the Marshall is unforgivable. What she committed upon Elliot Brown? These acts are -- are punishable by death. She forces a whole city to reconsider the foundations upon which it stands. You have let yourself become a part of that. You are just a little bit of lace fluttering at her wrists. You empty her chamber pot," Gloria said tilting her chin to the side. "Do you -- do you enjoy digging your palms into the piles of shit she has left behind?

"Whether or not I function as one of your little Inquisitors, I will not stop my tongue. You may frighten me, but your threats and warnings do not."

No matter how her fingertip shook, she drummed its tip against the desk, the period to her sentence.

"I am not -- not yet dead because part of that is what I offer you. It's not something you always think about but it's true nonetheless." They were his very words, and Gloria Wynsee had the mind of a Jerno, a latching, desperate, suctioning muscle that could recall a thousand lines of old war poems she'd heard time and time again as a child. "You aren't simply being kind to me, nor are -- are you giving me forewarning to be considerate. What does a seamstress matter.

"What do I offer you, Giuseppe?"
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Re: Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Glenn » Tue Aug 06, 2013 7:15 am

"Gloria." There were many differences between them. One of those differences is that he had been lying since almost before she was born. To others, to himself. It was an art, his best art, perhaps and he was a man who knew a great many. "Get this through your sweat-covered head. Were it not for me, she would have swept over the entire city by now. There would be nothing left but what she wanted. You can't stab every problem and make it go away. Some things have to be lived with. Some things have to be endured and finessed, yes? Finessed. Are you going to stay a petulant little child or are you going to grow up and realize you can't... what is the word? Ah, that you cannot bludgeon the world when it is scary. Stop your pointless insults and open your eyes. She is a force of nature. You redirect forces of nature. You don't charge at them head on. You don't sit and complain. The storm does not care if you complain about it."
---------
She asks her question and the smile fades. The man in white goes silent. Slowly, he reaches for his wine, drinks the last of it. He stares at her. "We must do this? It is a silly question. Either you don't believe me and we go around in circles or you do believe me and become insufferable. Thus I am pragmatic, no? I temper. Ariane liked that. Tempering," liked. "Did she tell you about it? No matter." He does not smile again. He just stares at her. "This is what it is. It will last for years, perhaps. It will last for months, perhaps. It will, however, leave this place changed, forever. This is not sustainable. Eventually, it will break down. Eventually things will burn. When that happens, this place will have a need, like it did when the Ashfiend reared its head, like it did when it was overrun by the Zaykenmonster, like it did when Calomel withdrew and the threats did not. At that point, it will need someone who is prepared, who is ready, who was trained for it. I think you have a role to fill, Gloria Wynsee." He shuts his eyes and if she is to strike out now with her blade, she might have some success, for they are very shut indeed. "I just don't think that role is for now."
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Re: Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Rance » Tue Aug 06, 2013 7:46 am

He talked. He talked, on and on, the wrapping of ribbons around a maypole of deceit and confusion, a totem of explanations that had no use, that were lost on her, that slipped right over her scalp and rolled off her sweat-covered head.

Ashfiend, he said. Zaykenmonster, he said. The horrors of old Myrken Wood, all Calamities of their own. And yet--

"Do you refuse to answer my question because you are afraid of the answer, Giuseppe," the girl asked him, scraping the point of her mirrored blade across her wrinkled skirt, its tip finding the lips of her makeshift sheath. When the glass slid away, the hard leather squeaked against the reflective blade. She stood, a bit too immediately, a bit too quickly.

"You are -- are not a preventative measure," she said. "You are a thing which should be prevented, Black Man. But I refuse to leave your comfortable little chamber with you believing I cannot learn, cannot accommodate, cannot adapt. I am willing to hinder my tongue, but not my words. I would -- would be willing to help you find the answers to whatever useless questions your Inquisitory decides to follow. If," she said, sucking in a shivering breath, "you offer me this:

"A chance at -- at your life. Whether it be a month from now, or -- or years, or decades. An opportunity when I am ready, when I can stomach the task, to put a knife in your guts. Because you disgust me. Because you are a wicked thing, an insult to life, a breeder of violence amid children. A danger to -- to my friends. A story which should end."

Hot sand on her tongue. A demand no simple seamstress should ask. She had a hip against his desk, and her cheeks were as sallow as those of a waxen sculpture.

"You give me that." Her palm rubbed against her skirt-thigh, wiping away its grime, its blackened moisture. "You promise me that, and I accept your proposition. I will act and comport myself however -- however you think is suitable.

"My tongue," Gloria Wynsee reminded him, "but not my words."
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Re: Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Glenn » Tue Aug 06, 2013 8:04 am

"That is..." Cows. Herding cows. It was like herding cows, not camels. Cows of the desert. Giuseppe took a deep breath. "Gloria, if that is what you want fine. Fine. I will cut off your hand and sew it to your mouth so that you can see what wonderful skill I have in your profession, but you will have every opportunity, every fare opportunity to end me. Yes, good? One further term.

"You will come back in a week's time and we will talk about the beginning of your employment. In the meantime, you are not to call you an inquisitor or in fact, any other agent of Rhaena Olwak's, to anyone," said by someone who knows she was doing just that and now she knows too. "You don't have to make up new lies. In fact, don't make up new lies. There is, also, a book on logic by the front door, on the desk there. It's for you. read it. You come back and see me in a week's time. Don't be an idiot between then and now, yes?"
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Re: Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Rance » Tue Aug 06, 2013 11:16 am

Herding cows. Herding maggots.

She knew it was the wrong choice, the way skin knew the pain of burning steel or how bones vibrated with the echo of choirsong. She'd wanted nothing, nothing to do with the Black Man, and the very thought of angling a blade with intent upon him, upon anyone, turned her guts into a twisting mess. Whether it was tomorrow. A week from then. Twenty years in the future. When she was either fatter than houses or as lean as a striding jah'zoon, whether she was an old and blind and miserable wretch, or a Myrkener with some use, some purpose and sway--

She'd said so many things. Against Rhaena Olwak. Against Giuseppe. Hopes of demise, perpetual agonies, deserved fates. But her hands still shook and the mirror-edged knife was never alive in her grip; it was a sluggish, surreal shackle, a thing that must be had for a thing that must be done.

Like this.

"I'll only need one opportunity," the girl told him. False confidence. But that too could be cultivated.

But Giuseppe's demand -- she'd said so much to Ariane, so many lies, foul deceits, monstrous untruths -- did not deter her; what mattered was that it had set something into motion with the Lady Marshall, left some minute crack in the eggshell of her facade. "A week's time," the seamstress said.

And as she left, she gave a hearty farewell to each and every one of those she passed. She cupped their hands, she laughed with them, she grunted back at the dwarf, she lied with smiles and cork-colored teeth.

Gloria Wynsee took up the book before she left.

And she promised that every day she would be required to suffer the High Inquisitor, she would give him the finest good morning, Giuseppe a young woman could muster.
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