A Drink with the Vice-Governor

A Drink with the Vice-Governor

Postby Rance » Tue Aug 13, 2013 11:56 am

It was good to have something to celebrate, even after the Glass Sun had long since put its cheek to the pillows of the horizon.

Celebrations in Myrken Wood were often cut dreadfully short -- or that is what the bartender had told her (an unfamiliar fellow; a new hire, a sprightly young buck with one-half smile) when she told him I would like to purchase a bottle of your finest scotch, and he said,What the hell is scotch, won't alcohol flatten out that baby you've got growing in your stomach, and she said, I've got no baby, I've just got quite a belly, and he said, Well, you haven't got a good pair of tits, so no baby indeed, and she said, It is a clear drink that looks like tea and burns like acid when you drink it and gets you very drunk, and he said, Whiskey?

And she said, Fine. It's for a friend. A celebration.

Scotch, then. Whatever in the Pits that its. Three shillings, and another threepence for being a pain in my ass.

Twenty minutes later, a knock on the Vice-Governor's door. Young as she might have been, swollen with diluted logic, she was no fool to assume that the appointed interim representative of all things Myrken Wood would have been so willing to open her door for just anyone. Thus, before the knock, a letter familiar to Agnieszka was slipped like a snake underneath the crack of the front door. A recent note. Agnieszka's own handwriting stood firm along the page. It was the missive she'd sent to the seamstress, a herald to the girl's requested presence--

--and when the door was drawn open, Gloria Wynsee stood like a weary statue, the dark moons under her eyes begging for sleep despite the forced mirth in her smile. Patchwork skirts had been abandoned for a cleaner dress, a drab gray that seemed better suited for broken rocks or flattened granite. With one palm cradling the butt of a wicker-wrapped bottle and her gloved hand latched around the neck, she would thrust out the whiskey and say, with bleary triumph:

"Your first day as -- as Vice-Governor River, my first day as Inquisitor Wynsee. A gift," she said, "for -- for two women who are doing what they need to do."
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Re: A Drink with the Vice-Governor

Postby channe » Tue Aug 20, 2013 5:22 am

And what they need to do now, see, is drink.

Visions of Rhaena with a veil over her face, laughing in a Hollows bar; and Agnieszka hadn't even known what she'd looked like at the time, and it hadn't even mattered --

"Oh, fantastic," she says; and the vice-governor is dressed in a man's shirt and tabard, with work-slacks, like her brother would be dressed if he were going somewhere fancy. "Come on in an' pour it up, Inquisitor Wynsee."
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Re: A Drink with the Vice-Governor

Postby Rance » Tue Aug 20, 2013 6:34 am

Two glasses. She knew where they were. They stood like little sentinels on the table. She poured, carefully cradling the bottle under her arm. For Agnieszka, a taller and more stark dash of whiskey, while for her, she reserved a lesser amount, a veritable pinch -- at least to start.

"I think that I just like Gloria," she said. "Inquisitor sounds very formal. I hope you will not be offended if I choose to call you Agnieszka; I think the name is quite striking, and formalities adhered to behind closed doors make the air too heavy."

With her gloved fingertips around the mouth of the glass, she slid it toward Agnieskza, scraping the bottom across the stained boards of the table.

"You wanted to ask me a question," the girl asked. "About something I said.

"But first--" And she sipped. She had gotten used to the hard and acidic taste, and her tongue no longer curled away in fear. Tastebuds did not exactly yearn for the whiskey, but found it at least marginally agreeable in small and delicate amounts. "I owe you an apology. For my rudeness when we last spoke. My forwardness. Far be it from me to -- to delegate tasks to my betters." Her palms squeaked against the glass. She raised the drink to the height of her shoulder. "Especially tasks such as that one."
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Re: A Drink with the Vice-Governor

Postby channe » Thu Aug 29, 2013 5:35 am

"K, then," she says, curiously, "make it Agnie. That's what people call me what know me. Just in here. Titles outside, yeah?" And then, she tilts her head to the side. "What was that?"
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Re: A Drink with the Vice-Governor

Postby Rance » Thu Aug 29, 2013 6:02 am

"Rhaena," she said, the name itself indicative enough of the task--

(Days later, the idea of killing would be an abhorrence, for while she might have once stated lives are important, she would see a useless debt repaid to its maximum. Blood on her fingers. Working a needle without its thread through the wrinkled lips of a sword-gash, praying she could backpedal through time just a few moments, stop them, interrupt them, anything.)

"I am full of bluster," the girl admitted, leaning on the table with the stout palm of her hand, sipping at the whiskey. "It is easy to want to see things beaten. Blood used as -- as a lubricant for problem-solving. When you are dumb your only reliance is on fists. I have got very big fists."

But the whiskey did not taste right; it was not the scotch, it had not been malted in the same casks, it was cheap and unsatisfactory. Tasted of rotten wood and too much water. The best she could afford.

"Maxwell agrees," she said, "that Rhaena has been tampered with. That there might have been invisible fingers to inspire her invisible fingers. But that makes none of it right. It complicates solutions. We," the girl admitted, "are -- are not complex people."
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