An Inquisitor's Desperation

Re: An Inquisitor's Desperation

Postby Glenn » Fri Sep 13, 2013 2:00 pm

"The lessons are the lessons," he groaned. There was no time for this. "Information is information, you little fool, and when I say little fool, it is your decisions that make you a little fool, not your potential, or capabilities, or talent." The words were sharp, one after the next like slaps against her face. "Everything I told you has been good and useful, and eve if not, then potent enough to lead you to a better place, yes? There is no one in this world who knows a damn thing that you can trust in the end. That's what knowing damn things is all about." He didn't spit at her, not in his office, even if it might not be such for long, but it was oddly tempting. "Betraying people to do what you must. There is a saying: ignorance is bliss. Well, knowledge is ..." He didn't have time for this. "I was going to tell you to stay, Wynsee. And why? Why, you ask? If you had sense you'd ask."

He advanced on her again. Maybe she'd stab him and this would be all over, but of course, she wouldn't and it wouldn't. Spit? Perhaps choke again. That felt good. "Sense or not, you have a brain. Most people here don't. If I am gone, then someone needs to, ah, you understand? Now though," he could just choke the life out of her and never be bothered by her again. He and no one else. His hand twitched. "Now I realize you'll just make things worse." He didn't have time. There was no time.

She was exactly what they needed. "There's no time for this.

Follow or don't.

I don't care,

but I leave now."
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Re: An Inquisitor's Desperation

Postby Rance » Fri Sep 13, 2013 5:22 pm

His insults were individual trowels, digging down through her dark skin and into the bone beneath. She never flinched or turned her focus elsewhere -- this was her agreement, her acquiescence. Gloria Wynsee was all those titles he gave her and more; she wore them, sewed them to her flesh with her mind, this is what I am, this is what I am.

A little fool who danced between reckless decisions. A Myrkener.

"Whatever you would say to me to convince me to stay, I don't wish to hear it. Years of inevitabilities, Black Man. Years of surprises. Isn't that what you told me? You've preached your lessons time and time again. I've listened. I've paid attention."

Betrayal, she had done. It was a poor medium for a seamstress who worked far more efficiently at needles than with lies and secrets. Out of desperation, she had tried her hand at subterfuge and misdirection, but had been as gifted with those arts as a rusted blade was with meat. A girl was dead. The intent had been pure, but the path to the apex had been littered with mistakes and blood. She'd stammered and weaved untruths with soft-fingered misguidance.

Now I realize you'll just make things worse.

When she swallowed, there were grains of sand in her saliva that scraped against the back of her throat. Her blood tasted like dirty metal. Follow or not, he said. The girl's stomach tangled into waxy knots. Months ago she'd begged for shillings on the streets trying to sell little poque bags. Her greatest worry had been whether or not she would eat. Now, though, the world had changed so much that she scarcely knew who that child had been.

Follow or not.

Would Cherny ever know she'd gone?

Follow or not.

Or would Catch tell him how she'd encouraged Elliot to kill Niall -- Your silly, stupid star, it offers me nothing -- and they would remember her as a blister, a good-riddance artifact who left behind a stitch-sampler and a young boy's life misshapen and mangled along the edge of a sword?

Follow or not, the Black Man said.

She knew nothing of Golben except for its name, an ugly series of consonants that lumped like syrup and moss on her tongue. Golben. Hard sounds and letters trilled like from the sluggish lips of a half-dumb rat'vak. Golben. With mirror-shard knife at her satchel's side and blood still gleaming in red maple runnels in the cleft beneath her nose, Gloria Wynsee turned her chin to expose the length of her grimy neck as if answering the deft dance of Giuseppe's powerful hand -- she was his, an object to be guided or crushed as he decided, a wordless obedience that was less a function of her position in the Inquisitory and more a necessary admission of her insignificance.

She was a maggot, after all. A maggot who knew that the divots and canyons she chewed into the muscle of Myrken Wood had gone rotten. Like him. Like the Black Man.

"You leave now," said the Junior Inquisitor, "and so do I."
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Re: An Inquisitor's Desperation

Postby Glenn » Sat Sep 14, 2013 12:54 am

Necessity drove the Man in White. Pragmatism drove him. Or so that was how it looked. Why else would he move with such haste? Why else would he allow her to accompany him? Why else if there was no choice? She had all the clues to know better, to have a window into what truly drove him. Necessity was only just a part of it. The dark man had a heart, and like he had told Cherny in far, far more words: nothing drove one to ruin more quickly here in Myrken Wood than a heart.

He was, however, no fool. When she had decided, when she had made it clear that he would not be able to stop her, there was no longer a point to trying, save perhaps the point of Pantha's unholy dagger. Perhaps more tempting than spitting at her but there was that heart again. For her it was a small, barely beating thing, but that was enough. It was also never so black and white. In giving her what she wanted, he would do worse than spit or stab. Golben was no place for a seamstress.

"I have no change of clothes for you. Genny had a need. As always, you make a barely adequate second place." He was to the door now, a medium sized pack over his shoulder, it's hue closer to a faded brown. To look at it, though, would to increasingly see it as white. "Follow, then."
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Re: An Inquisitor's Desperation

Postby Rance » Sat Sep 14, 2013 6:57 am

She needed no other clothes -- she'd worn the Storyteller's skirt until the threads had faded from red to brown and the patches had lost their vibrant hues. The garment had become a peasant's piece, all tattered rags and frayed hems. All mud and stains from tarsweat palms. All blood. The blouse dangled from her shoulders like a white banner, half-untucked and missing two of its bone buttons.

She withdrew her crushed bonnet from her satchel, stretched it between her hands, drew it on over her wiry hair, and twisted the ribbon beneath her chin until the fabric strained against the finger-smudge bruises he'd left at the hinge of her neck and jaw.

He had his gray, gray heart and his white loadpack; she had her threads and needles, a leather bladder half-filled with water, a fist of salted bread, and a palm-sized tin of minted preserves. A Junior Inquisitor's lunch. Scarcely a few days' worth of sustenance if stretched to its barest limits.

Golben was no place for a seamstress; Myrken Wood was no place for her, either. He never received a response from her. She followed him like a silent shadow, the mirror-shard knife clapping against her thigh with every step they took out of the Inquisitory and into the dusty streets of Myrken Wood.

A barely adequate second place.

The road etched its way through the fields beyond Myrkentown and matured into the lonely skeleton of North Passage Down. Carriages had ground long, winding creases into the mud and lumps of horseshit stood like little temples in the way of their feet. Myrkentown faded as an orange glow of collective candlelight behind them, a sprawl of houses like jagged teeth. The buildings and streets shrunk smaller and smaller still until they were lonely specks and then nothing at all. The midnight landscape was a lightless sea. Come morning, Myrken Wood would awaken, but the High Inquisitor and his unlikely companion would be elsewhere.

A few days, she told herself. That was all.
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