Audience with the High Inquisitor

Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Rance » Mon Jul 29, 2013 1:13 am

An early morning's trek to the Inquisitory had her on unsteady feet. She'd not slept in the night, could not, refused to, so when the red-throated roosters rattled their morning greetings, her heels were already crunching through the streets. The girl knew she should have been more awake, more alert. But on the heels of the weariness weighing down her eyes, the nervous insects scrambling around in her stomach seemed less like fear and more like natural aesthetics -- side-effects of merely being.

When she entered the Inquisitory, she did not do so easily. There was a hesitation at the stout front doors, a thought to turn and simply be off -- it was a fool's errand, and she already knew that. She had struck out on so many fool's errands, had made those errands foolish in the first place.

But she was stubborn. Stubborn and swollen with unyielding principles. That was what Noura had said.

What did Noura know, what did she even think she knew--

No more than a seamstress.

"Giuseppe," she said to one of the errant bodies in the Inquisitory, squinting her eyes beneath her bonnet and pausing the figure in passing to ask after the Man in White. When the Inquisitor stopped to ask her what reason she had to see him, she hooked her finger into an edge of parchment sticking from her blouse-sleeve and dragged it out. Giuseppe's letter.

"I am here to see Giuseppe."

The young Inquisitor that led the girl to the High Inquisitor's chambers did not turn back long enough to see her hide, amid her filthy patchwork Storyteller-skirts, a mirror-bladed knife with a hilt fashioned from a tin cup's bottom.
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Re: Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Glenn » Mon Jul 29, 2013 2:37 am

That's how Gloria thought it would go, of course. She had every reason to. it was perfectly logical. She walks in. She gets questioned. She presents her reason for being there. She gets questioned. She presents her evidence. It is accepted. She is brought to the back to see Giuseppe. After that, things can move on. The preliminaries were simplicity itself when it came to a bureaucracy such as this, no?

This is what occurred:

Gloria Wynsee was met at the door by a young man at a desk. It was not Mary Ford today, but someone of about the same age, a bit more wide-eyed, a bit more slack-jawed (but only a middle). He would ask what she wanted, yes, and he would accept her answer. He would accept the letter, though, perhaps make a comment that such things were rare. He would bring her to the back.

All the same with only the slightest deviation, it seemed.

There was one other factor. He would recognize her, first in appearance and then at her name. Did that surprise? He did not do much with that recognition, so perhaps she could chalk it off on being a loudmouth.

The inquisitory was a long, narrow building, a hallway and desks on either side, leading down to the Head Inquisitors office. The desks were occupied. The people were busy working, journeymen scribes and old eccentrics, hard working self-taught farmers and brilliant young men and women who could not find their fortunes elsewhere. She passed the first set of tables and heads turned away from their work. It was a "Hello, Gloria." from the left and a stark "Wynsee." From the right. She passed the second set and was greeted by a "Gloria," from one side and a "Miss Wynsee," from the other. The third pair, hardly in unison simply said "Gloria," and the fourth left her with a nod and a grunt from a short bearded man and a "Good morning, Gloria," from a plain looking older woman seated opposite.

This continued, if she would continue walking, all the way to the Giuseppe's door.
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Re: Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Rance » Mon Jul 29, 2013 5:58 am

Hello, Gloria.

Her head turned. She said, with an unsettled bubble of phlegm cracking in her throat, "Yes? Oh -- oh, hello," before she realized that--

Wynsee.

--someone else said her name, and she quickly darted her chin to the right, pulling aside the ribbon-edge of her bonnet to look upon the second speaker. Her smile was timid and loose, entirely nervous and unsuspecting, but it had barely enough time to develop--

Gloria.

--before again, there was her name--

Miss Wynsee.

--and--

Gloria.

She spun, striking a hip against the desk of the woman who spoke last, her throat clicking and her bare fingers stiffly splayed before her, an atrophied indication of collective surprise and confusion. Trying to hold the world at bay. Pushing back their greetings with a palm. Their recognitions of her. She recoiled between the desks.

Good morning, Gloria.

Why did they all know her; Maxwell had, but he'd been a terribly unsteady type of fellow -- yet, who was she to question station and steadiness as she clutched a glass-shard blade against her hip and stared like a coiled snake in return to pleasant greetings. She and her escort could not have come to the door quickly enough. "Hello," was all she said, loud enough that they could all hear her--

--but then she turned, desperate (later, she would question the validity of that desire) to get out of their prying eyes. She flicked her gaze up to the slack-jawed man who ushered her.

"Open it," she said. "Please."
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Re: Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Glenn » Fri Aug 02, 2013 3:15 am

The door was opened. Gloria Wynsee was allowed entrance.

Giuseppe sat across the table, his piles of paper neat and fairly tall. Burnie had everything everywhere. The Man In White preferred a different sort of order. "Ah, Camello. Welcome. Sit down. Perhaps this will go quickly, easily. You sit down. You tell me that you have reconsidered my kind offer. You take it. I give you a desk out there. Everyone lives happily ever after." Obviously his time with the storyteller had served him well. "If you are unconvinced, the chair is very comfy," the one before him that he nodded to, not the one she'd get at her desk, though such things could probably be negotiated.
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Re: Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Rance » Fri Aug 02, 2013 6:33 am

When the door was closed, she finally looked away from it.

Giuseppe was there, a face framed by various parchments in their ever-orderly stacks. The seamstress put the bulging blades of her shoulders back against the ornate portal, its rough wood reminding her that she did indeed have a recourse, an escape if she must -- she needed only turn, reach for the handle, wrench it open--

Maybe they would say Good day, Gloria and Bye, Gloria when she left; perhaps, if she had to run, they'd say nothing else to her, and she'd live long enough to understand how useless it was to invite herself into the lair of a man, a presence, a creature she despises as greatly as the Man in White.

"I do not care for a desk," she said. "I am not here to accept your offer. If I must say Hello, Giuseppe and Good morning, Giuseppe and stand like a soldier at the attention of every stranger that walks in here -- if I must keep appearances -- then surely you may find another idiot girl to patronize."

His office was sterile, suffocating. A weight on her shoulders, a stuffing of cotton in her throat. At some point, she braved the world away from the office's entrance and took the offered seat. The Storyteller's patchwork skirt was a multicolored flare around knees and ankles. The reflective edge of a mirror-glass knife was a daring fang angled just below her breast, clutched in a wary and trembling fist.

"What did she say to you," the girl asked, edging for simplicity, "when she asked you to kill me?"
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Re: Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Glenn » Fri Aug 02, 2013 7:05 am

She did not run. She sat down. He smiled at her words. "Oh, Gloria Wynsee, there is no idiot girl quite like you. They do not say such things to me. They do not like me. Maybe some of them. Maybe some pity. That's the problem with working with people who know you. It's all the good things you can't live up to or the bad things that they pity you for. Ah well. If they said things like that to you, then you earned it." A small laugh.He did not offer her a drink but he did have a sip of wine. "You see how this is? You have a good mind. You see things. You put them together, but since you are alone in this, it's always just a little wrong. You put together parts. You build a building, but it sinks in the Jerno sand. Ah well."

What did she say to you? It was a tricky question. Some details ought be left out in any case. "So, it is like this. I was near death. She had worn out her welcome. She framed it like a story. A man and his monster. It changed me. By the end of it, she'd made sure that it was 'A Monster and her Monster," yes? Ready to silence a foreign tongue that flapped too much so she cold make her escape. It also saved me, right until I decided not to kill you."
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Re: Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Rance » Fri Aug 02, 2013 8:35 am

"They are not alone in disliking you," she said. "And the proper term is Jernoan. The Jernoan sand. If -- if you wish to be relative, Inquisitor, then you should not be uninformed."

He complimented her as though he'd right to. His praises of her good mind and her ability to see things fell on a stiff and unyielding audience. With her fragile knife cradled in her sweat-slick palms, parts of her felt invulnerable. Not her body, not her bones or skin, but her conscience, and it refused to bend to Giuseppe's newly-amenable personality.

A girl who'd no talent for weapons and scarcely any for words needed find her strength somewhere. Hers existed solely in her principles, her convictions. This Man in White was still a black and burning sin. He was a blasphemy with a smile.

"So now," the girl said, "you are someone else's very pretty monster. You are a rat'vak without the bindings or leathers. Am I supposed to see you as renewed, as -- as changed by a second opportunity? My short experiences with you have proven to me how self-serving you are, how necessary it is for you to look out for your own interests."

A closed room, an intimate conversation -- she spoke comfortably in such a place, as if Duquesne stood there to oversee the flow of her tongue and the dance of her rhetoric. The more the girl talked, the more capable she would be to hide the tremors of her jaw.

"You spared my life because you said you found me interesting. Here, you wear white to hide your black. Do you want me to sympathize with you, because once you were near death?" the seamstress asked. "Would you like it very much if I put my trust in you, to solve the problem that faces us all?"
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Re: Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Glenn » Fri Aug 02, 2013 2:34 pm

"Rat'vak. Rat'vak." He played with the word even as he swished his wine. Finally he laughed, his voice dripping with accent. "Stop using foreign words no one knows while trying to make your arguments. If you are going to be relative, Miss Wynsee, stop being, ah, what is the word? See how I search for it for the sake of accuracy? Ah, yes. Oblique. Isn't that a fine word? Yes? Thank you for calling me pretty though."

She is so scathing in her words and it would be endearing, perhaps, if he wasn't the person she was being scathing to. "We all look out for our own interests in Myrken Wood. Otherwise we are fools or victims. You care about Cherny, for instance, yes? But part of that is what he offers you. It's not something you always think about but it's true nonetheless. It is a circle." He waved his finger in little circle before taking another sip. "It is human. Don't be blind to it though."

"I don't want you to sympathize with me." his voice became a little droll. "Gloria, I am trying here, but you make this very hard. Tell me what I want you to do, how i want you to be. If you do not believe that, at least tell me what you think I would answer. If you can't work this out, then I'm not sure we have much to speak of. I think things might have to go another direction, no matter what. Do your best."
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Re: Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Rance » Sat Aug 03, 2013 9:03 am

"Rat'vak," she said again. "Slave. Witless servant. The Black Man."

She leaned forward in the comfortable chair to stare at him across the surface of his orderly desk, the light reflecting off the mirror-edged knife casting a streak of brightness along the bottom of her cheek, over her nose, and across her left eye.

"I care about Cherny," Gloria said, using his words. "What Cherny offers me is family; What Mister Catch offers me is the same. And while needles may be my only sovereign talent, I -- I will do what I must to protect the two of them. I would gouge my thumbs into the eyes of those who dared to look upon them with -- with the hope of doing them harm; I would kill a man, however I must, to ensure their safety. It would be a deed I'd carry with guilt; I'd suffer faces in my dreams, the repetition of images and doubts in -- in my mind. Gloria Wynsee, a murderer. I -- I would wear that pride."

Years of inevitability. Years of surprises. Those had been his words in the schoolhouse.

She did not play his game; she'd not venture to fill his mouth with words she hoped he might say, or demands he might make of her. Instead, she touched the edge of the broken-mirror blade to the wooden lip of his desk; its point scraped, dragged little gouges through the wood -- but she never stopped looking at him. The girl had come for a reason, after all.

"Do you think Rhaena Olwak is stupid," she asked him. "Do you think your fine white clothes and -- and your Inquisitory will blind her to -- to the fact that you dislike her very pretty tyranny, Giuseppe? Do you think your methods are any less clumsy and desperate than -- than mine?

"I think," Gloria said, "that you are just afraid of the future as I am. Because you are just a little story, one that once belonged to a Storyteller and now rests in the hands of Glenn Burnie's lady. And stories have got to end one day, Black Man."
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Re: Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Glenn » Sat Aug 03, 2013 9:58 am

"I know what it meant, camello," and he smiled because it's what he did in the face of Gloria Wynsee's worst. It was the smile of a bully, but it was also the smile of an uncle, a doting one. Sometimes, they could be the same thing. "You did your argument injustice by using it, though. You are, as ever, your own worst enemy."

He notes the light. He notes her words. Still, he smiles. "Murder. Murder. Murder, Gloria, has consequences. Murder is a fool's task, for it never ends with the stopping of a heart. Everyone is connected, you see, to everyone else, by threads. You know threads, yes? So we will use threads. You cut one thread and everything starts to sag. Every other thread tied to it feels the pull, and it moves things in directions. A murder is never clean because you can never cut all the threads. Eventually, it all comes undone or it all falls down upon you. You protect no one with murder. I was quested to do that to you, but if I did, it would have just raised more questions. That's not why I spared you, but it's something I know and you do not. I say it. You hear it. You know it, yes?" but only if she believed him, which she would not. She wouldn't understand and it made him tsk almost sadly. "The first lesson is always the hardest."

"I think my Lady arrogant. I think her in control. I think her powerful. I think her... blind to views opposite her own. She sees such things as sickness, you see? She has need of me. I do generally what she wants. I also ask questions to her no one else can and thus her plans change. She is no fool. I am no fool. I know my limits. I know how to ... what is the word? Circumvent them, when I need to. She knows I try to do it. She is amused by my efforts. It does not mean that they fail. The more amused she is, perhaps the more they succeed, yes?"

A little black man in a little story, she says. He shakes his head. "For you, my dear child, I tell a secret. I fear victory far more than defeat, Gloria, right up until the end. At that last moment, that moment just before death? That is when i know fear. That is when I act. That is when I make my decisions that are so bad for so many, me most of all. Time and time again. That, dear, dear Gloria is why I cannot do this alone. What I want from you is no less than pragmatism. Grow up. See the world as it is. Do what you can within its confines. Stop running and come home."
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Re: Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Rance » Sat Aug 03, 2013 4:57 pm

"Don't speak to me about threads, Giuseppe. I know about threads. Lives are -- are not as simple as that."

You protect no one with murder, he said, and the phrase gave her pause, enough that the edge of the mirror-fanged blade stopped in its scarring path across the front of his desk. But her eyes -- gray stones, faded of their youthful blue by years scorching in the glare from the Glass Sands -- were firm, unconvinced. Like a good Jerno, they did not lie. They reflected her fright of him, but they refused, refused to be turned away from him. It had been her hand that had requested this meeting with him; it had been her legs that had brought her here.

"I deserve to know why you spared me. Why -- why exactly you betrayed the Storyteller's demands to have me killed."

It should not have been so mundane to discuss. But it could be no other way, even as the point of the knife she did not know how to use drew a long streak across the knotted wood of the finely-chiseled desk.

"I was going to go with her. To the -- the Golben. Because when the Storyteller planted sins and horrors in my mind, I required answers. I needed to know why she chose to tell me the story that showed me deaths and golden cities and missing governors before any of it began to -- to coalesce; it was necessary to know why, so I didn't--" the knife slipped; her knuckles knocked down hard into the desk, crushing her fingers between the wood and the leather-wrapped handle of the blade that Elliot Brown had made for her.

She gritted her teeth. A skinned knuckle left a tattoo of Jerno blood on the desktop.

"It was necessary for me to know why I was burdened with it."

He told her a secret. He bared his Black Man's heart. She rose to her feet. A seamstress stood trembling before him, pushing away from the chair he'd offered to lean over the desk. Her face was a burned sandstone, her whitened knuckles pressing down into the wood.

"You may fear the moment before death, Black Man, but I fear all the other ones. Stop -- stop running and come home?" the girl asked him, her brow hardening, her cheeks run through with little streaks of black-bead sweat. "I am home; I was home, in the only place that has -- has ever been one to me outside of Jernoah until Rhaena Olwak stole the fears out of my skull and set them on a path toward -- toward reality.

"You -- you want pragmatism?" Do you even know what that word means, Glour'eya? You say it like you do; you don't. "I will not act like one of her toys. I will not. Who are you, Black Man, to tell me I must?"
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Re: Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Glenn » Sun Aug 04, 2013 5:50 am

She was edgy, skittish, was outright damaging Burnie's furniture, which would matter to the Man In White far more if he hadn't come into it through entirely dishonest means. Let Burnie complain if he ever got back. For now, a slightly scarred desk fit him as well as anything else. It also showed people sitting in that chair that someone sitting before them had reason to be nervous. It was a useful thing to have and only a man like Giuseppe could really appreciate that.

She asked a question finally, and he sipped at his wine. "Because it was wrong? No, you do not like that. How about this? Because you were special. I said my words when I did my deed, yes? You are special, Gloria Wynsee and Myrken will shape you, like it had shaped the Governor. You ask the questions. You make the mistakes. You suffer and grow and learn. That was worth more than who I was. That was worth more than a parasite storyteller, you see?" He laughed and it was a kindly thing once again. "You think me incapable of such thoughts? Such notions. The world must be a nice little place for you Gloria, if you think that we are all so small as that."

Gloria spoke on and he shook his head. "Oh, Gloria, Gloria, little camello, don't you see? I saved you because you were special. She, though? She didn't care who she told her stories too. She just wanted an audience. You asked questions, wanted to hear more, respected her. That just made you an easier target to tell a longer tale to. She fed off suffering and consequence. Hmm." he paused. "She may have fed off heroism and the rest, too. I did, you see? But when you are as old as she, perhaps that is too much hard work, yes? Tragedy is easier. To her, though, you were not special. I am sorry, I suppose?"

Who was he? "I am the last sane man, Gloria Wynsee. I am the last man with his eyes open to everything. I am the only chance. I am burdened with having my eyes opened to see what is to come. I am the last man of pragmatism. As for you? Your home is just outside this door, little inquisitor. Your home is out there with them. You must know. You said it yourself. Where else would you be?"
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Re: Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Rance » Mon Aug 05, 2013 3:33 am

"You're sane," she said, leaning forward between two tall stacks of flattened parchments. "A man who tosses knives between children and hopes they'll fight to their deaths. Who comes into a schoolhouse to commit acts of violence. Whose only compulsion to hesitate in killing someone is because you believe they are--" Her tongue could not feel more hollow; she scraped the word over her teeth as if trying to dislodge a film from her mouth.

"Special."

She didn't care who she told her stories to, he said. I saved you because you were special, he said. Contradictions and conflicts. He tried to dance circles around her with his explanations and declarations.

"You're vague. You see false futures. You bolster your relevance through fright. Without the Storyteller around, you -- you are scrambling to find some semblance of belonging. Did you find it here, Black Man? In a place where people stand with straight backs and wish you good morning and perform useless tasks? How is my home with them? Your insights are just as insignificant as mine. You are not interested in dislodging your Lady from her station, nor are you concerned with -- protecting others except yourself.

"Because -- because I am loud and unafraid to say what I must, because I express my disgust for Rhaena Olwak's reign, I somehow threaten what it is you hope to achieve. Otherwise," the girl's voice softened, but the knife remained just as rigid in her grip, "why would you care that I keep quiet?"
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Re: Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Glenn » Mon Aug 05, 2013 6:05 am

"You did not start swordsplay with Ariane, yes?" With the Lady Marshall, and did that not chafe in the most wonderful ways. What a thought? What a sensation? And he called himself sane? Ah, he would get back to that in time. First thing first. "No, I do not think you did. If so, it would be all footwork for a time. Learning a sword is tedious business. I am not very good with one, in truth. I never had much time for footwork.

"The point is this," he sipped again, knowing full well how to nurse his drink. "You are not trained, either in argument or in fencing, yes? You lunge at me again and again. You say something, make an accusation. It turns out to be unfounded. You are undaunted. You make another. And another. And another." He waved the glass around dramatically. "Whah ha! Eh La! On Guard! And all that. You make yourself look like a jackass, yes? A very special jackass. It is more like," he jabbed the wine glass forward once, and then again. "Hee haw! Hee Haw! see? Like that. Please stop. Didn't you just hear me? They don't say good morning to me. That was a greeting just for you. A welcome."

"Why would i care? What do I want to achieve? Try to work it out instead of just stumble and make an accusation, Gloria. You're capable of it. Calm down, breathe. It's alright, you're safe here in this moment. This is the safest place you could be." There it was again, that kind tone of some sort of uncle, all for her.
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Re: Audience with the High Inquisitor

Postby Rance » Mon Aug 05, 2013 7:17 am

She did breathe. Hard gusts in through the nose, pushed out like smoke from her mouth. She did this so he could see; she could follow instructions, a rightly obedient girl in the face of his insults, his noises, his assumptions. Her shoulders loosened, her elbows untensed. The point of the knife was still angled toward him between those stacks of papers, and it would remain there -- regardless of his hollow promises of safety, the shard of mirror put a promise of violence between them.

As much a promise as a girl who'd never known a knife could offer.

"Then let me imagine," she began, "that we exist in a world where you have not even considered killing me, where you never took the effort to inspire my friends to murder one another. Your heart and -- and spirit are as immaculate as your clothes, your compulsion to aid me and those who despise Rhaena Olwak are pure and unhindered, and your smiles are genuine.

"What use could I serve here," she said, "where people I don't know speak my name like they are my finest friends and serve, by extension, the necessities of the governor's Lady? We--" she drew back from the desk, thrust out her gloved hand, promptly lifted her smallest finger, and mimicked holding a minute cup of tea, "--can speak just like this, about what it is you -- you wish to see accomplished under Rhaena Olwak's guidance. About how I can possibly hope to make a difference digging my knee into the dirt at her feet like -- like one of her loyals.

"For whatever reason I can't begin to imagine, you offered me a place in -- in the Inquisitory. I cannot be daft enough to think I am ideal for such a position. So convince me.

"Tell me why I should accept this."
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