An Inquisitor's Desperation

An Inquisitor's Desperation

Postby Rance » Thu Sep 12, 2013 1:19 pm

An hour following her conversation with Ariane and Catch, the seamstress sought out an unlikely associate. But new realizations necessitated an approach more pragmatic than her usual urges often dictated. There was a weight in her guts, a sickness like betrayal -- he should be the last one she'd ever tell, after all.

But all the decisions she believed were right had been marred by failure. Achievements of destruction and little else. Better that she listen to logic. Any except her own.

They had gotten to know her idiosyncrasies in the Inquisitory. Her peers understood, whether by dictation of blood or misplaced conviction, that it was often better to allow the girl her differences. She could certainly be quick of wit and deeply observant; she had made strides forward in her interests, consuming books with rapidity despite how often she stumbled over the words. Her eagerness offset her oak-hard streak of stubbornness; they knew that there was one Junior Inquisitor who would not scoff at mundane matters of delivery or organization--

A positive addition to our fold, some had said. Given, of course, her penchant for youthful impulse.

And this was also why, when she strode through the Inquisitory with skirts in hand and the red flush of exertion on her cheeks, what few Inquisitors remained at that time of night did not stop her, or even offer her something more than a passing grunt or a murmur of her name.

Black sweat danced on her cheeks and stung her eyes as she approached his office door at the far end of the lanky, narrow building. Her blouse dangled like overwet cheesecloth from elbows and hips, and the muscles in her legs burned, throbbed.

Too much running; too many things to say.

A Marshall returned, or so it seemed -- a news that could both startle and surprise; a news that a month ago, she might have embraced with erstwhile, childish glee. But too late. Too late for anything but skepticism and the analogue of sense impounded in her brain by books, books, books--

He was always there; he was a fixture in the Inquisitory, a blinding beacon of hypocrisy that never wanted for a good morning. Not from her. "Giuseppe," Gloria said, blowing out a wheezing breath and hammering the base of her palm against the carved door. Was he there; was he even there? An aroma of burnt wax and simmering oils heavied the air to drive away the ever-pungent odor of ink. Did his candles burn? Did that mean he was there?

"Open this door. Open it," she chimed.

Her voice was devoid of demand, wholly castrated of it. All that was left in her tone was a lilt of confusion and a creak of desperation.
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Re: An Inquisitor's Desperation

Postby Glenn » Thu Sep 12, 2013 1:47 pm

His vision was too perfect. Everything was too perfect. He felt better than he ever had in his life, even as a youth, even before it all went wrong the first time, the first of so many. Everyone looked to Elliot Brown as a symbol of Rhaena Olwak's Myrken, her transformed shining knight who would accept nothing but bullheaded acceptance. The Man in White might have been a better indicator though. Prick his finger and it would heal two times over, skin not just regenerating but threatening to cascade off of his hand entirely. It was endless regeneration, uncurtailed growth, advancement and refinement for the sake of it with no worth and no meaning. It was glorious and terrible and his vision was too damned good.

There were candles, yes, carefully constrained in specially made globes so that a fall would not destroy the better part of three years worth of work. The Southerner appreciated the toils of hard work. It would be a shame to let a conflagration destroy any of it, even the bits about him. There had been no point in editing those. He had access to them, no others. Were anyone else to get their hands upon those files, it would have meant that it was far past the point where they could do him much harm. It would have meant that the entire world would have turned back upon itself once more and that the end was very near indeed.

"Knock." It was his first thought. Wynsee was becoming assimilated well enough. It was inevitable. You give people stability. You give them what they want and they prefer it to what they had. Giuseppe knew that better than anyone. "No, no, knock and then say open up please. The building is not on fire, yes?" The thought sickened him a bit until his body compensated and he could not even feel the bile anymore. "Civility first with your superiors, Wynsee."
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Re: An Inquisitor's Desperation

Postby Rance » Thu Sep 12, 2013 2:58 pm

Ten years from now--

"Open up. Please."

--when I am your superior…

Gloria withdrew her bludgeoning palm and curled her fingers into a fist. She drummed the door with knuckles like bloody rocks.

When I keep my promise--

Each knock split open tender, mealy scabs scraped into her hand from the trees she'd beaten, beaten, beaten until the act had numbed the pain echoing inside her skull. Tattoos of red were left across the ornate wood.

--to end your life, I will not ask for civility.

Blood. Lately, everything had been measured in blood. Her health, her well-being, the solidarity of those she loved. Guarantees and promises. Foolhardly mistakes. Minor successes and extraordinary failures.

"It is important. You know I have no desire to have audience with you unless I must."

The girl nearly put her cheek against the door to speak through the weathered planks, and her voice rang with a nasal quality, as if she'd been struck with a summer cold or a streak of bad air that left her with congestion and blockage. Her rapid breath blasted cones of condensation against the glazed wood that vanished almost as quickly as they appeared.

"I spoke to her. To -- to the Marshall," she said, pressing her forehead to the door. "I spoke to Ariane."
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Re: An Inquisitor's Desperation

Postby Glenn » Thu Sep 12, 2013 3:07 pm

Because, of course, Gloria Wynsee was so very good at predicting what happens tomorrow, let alone ten years from now. Giuseppe is many things. He may or may not be more. None of them, though, was in her dream.

In the here and in the now, though, she said it properly. The Southerner was not one to flaunt authority because usually there was nothing to gain by it in Myrken. Constables could do that. For the Inquisitor to do it would be to admit that he was part of this system, that he was pinned down and trapped like the rest of them. He was, of course, more than most, but it was bad form to admit it. With Gloria, though, with those directly under him, but especially with her, sometimes, it was worth the frustration. No one deserved being ground down more, and maybe, maybe if he did it enough, it would act as a whetstone, smoothing out those edges and creating something truly amazing. That's how it was in Myrken. You came out of the forge either a masterpiece or ashes.

So she is let in. There is a click of a door unlocking but when she opened that door, he would be in his seat, staring at the frame. There was no sign of huffing and puffing. He didn't unlock the door and leap over the desk in order to make an imposing figure to her. He simply was. "The Lady Marshall," He amended. "and if you've tried to vex her again, I may well ah, what is it? I may flay you." They had spoken of this.
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Re: An Inquisitor's Desperation

Postby Rance » Thu Sep 12, 2013 3:33 pm

The moment the mechanism in the door clicked its freedom, she drove her shoulder against the panels, twisted the knob, and strode into his office.

He simply was; she was simply disheveled, her patchwork skirt scoured with spatters of mud and her white blouse peppered down its front with blossoms of red. Perhaps at a quick glance -- and knowing what the seamstress' trade was -- the spots might have been mistaken for an embroidered vine of stylistic crimson flowers tracing the bonework buttons from collar to navel. But her nose spoke the truth: its bridge was swollen, crushed aside, and blood ran in a banner from nostrils to chin, smeared in a streak by a wary hand.

Giuseppe was refinement and precision. He was organization and attention-to-detail. He was everything she was not, with his finely-polished desk and his glass bulbs of candleflame. The girl's eyes bulged, manic and hungry for light, padded with a spiderwork of blackened bruising just below them -- the trauma of a shattered nose.

"As a -- a Junior Inquisitor, it is my responsibility to report my statements with accuracy," said the stumbling young woman as she steadied herself against his desk with her palms, the wood biting at the fabric of her thin glove.

She watched him, all his white, all his ease. She was anything but a reflection of him. Brown teeth, bloody gums, a gap where the bed of a missing incisor gleamed black--

"I did not say Lady, Black Man."
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Re: An Inquisitor's Desperation

Postby Glenn » Thu Sep 12, 2013 3:45 pm

"I see that you've gone undercover," he nodded, voice dry, bullying instinct still intact. She strode in, was itching to talk, or, to look at her, perhaps just itching and he found himself clever, even a little smug. "Hog rustling is a very serious offense after what Catch did a winter back," ruining much of the swine herds around Myrken. Oh, there was no proof it was Catch but it was a near certainty. "He killed any number of pigs and filled them with worms, or maggots or something equally pleasant. Burnie made a pretty penny out of importing some in from up north and then selling it to the aristocrats. He then turned the profits around to help feed the refugees. Our Governor, always thinking, yes? Except for when it came to Golben, but we do not talk about that."

He was drawing this out, babbling on, even tantalizing her with secrets and things she did not know. She thought she had an urgent statement and he would test how urgent that was, or if this was just a trick. She had more to gain by delving into his hints than in any sort of deception. He would see.

"But anyway, you didn't have to go undercover pretending to be a pig and rolling about in filth. I do not think anyone would be so eager to steal you anyway."

Finally, finally she would speak her last words and he would glare quietly. "You should, Wynsee, for she is more the Lady than you shall ever be." there was something strange in his voice; pride, affection, something more and less all at once.
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Re: An Inquisitor's Desperation

Postby Rance » Thu Sep 12, 2013 4:48 pm

"I know maggots," she said. "I know they are not pleasant. I know they consume, and -- and that they grow into things just as pestilent. I am not here to talk about Mister Catch. I am not here to talk about maggots."

There was that word like an overturned scab: Golben, a condemnation, a name that rang from Rhaena Olwak's lips in the dead air of a stifling trial-room. Giuseppe pried at her with his words like chisels, but her skin was hard when it must be -- she was a stonebear when the Sun necessitated it, and his clothes were so white, piss-white, bleached as if those too could somehow apologize for the sins that bubbled under a Black Man's skin.

A droplet of blood bubbled at the corner of her nose, then splattered like red ink across her sleeve cuff. Her heartbeat was quick, bursting, punching like slave-work against the inside of her ribs. "Don't seek to -- to try to break me down with truths of which I'm already fully aware, Giuseppe. I am a disgusting thing; I am no pig, but there's no purpose in comparing me to -- to someone I know full well to be greater than I am.

"Whatever she may be to you, Ariane is my friend. I would trust my -- my very insignificant life to her judgment, whether she wishes to better it or end it.

"I did not say Lady," she repeated again, wholly ignorant to the combination of admiration in his voice for the swordswoman, and the disgust of measuring so different a girl by her--

--and from her satchel, she withdrew something gallant and pleated, pinched between two blood-smeared fingers. It was a torn ribbon, a poorly-shorn strip of skirt-fabric sheared away from a Lady's dress, a Lady Marshall's dress, by way of gleaming glass knife.
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Re: An Inquisitor's Desperation

Postby Glenn » Fri Sep 13, 2013 2:37 am

She had goaded. She had teased. She had played games where she did not even begin to know the rules. Giuseppe, however, had the power. Oh it was leashed power, constrained power, but it was power still and she was very much the powerless. She continued to exist. She continued to brandish her underdeveloped ideological wares to the Myrken population and its luminaries arrogantly and desperately, only the most passive aggressive of false restraint.

If she had done that today, she would be patronized for it. A pat on her head. A reminder to read her books, to learn to be better, to come at him with teeth and not just noise.

What she's gave him instead, probably for the very first time, was truth. Perhaps it was the first real truth she had wielded, exhausted and at her very wits' end, for a good long while.

Of course he would respond in kind. She was not a weightless sprite of a girl. There was heft to her. It seemed, only enough, that there was so little to him now, for he moved with such speed, such abandon. A moment he was behind is desk. The next he was with her and his patience was depleted. Her chances were depleted. The moment she gave him what he claimed to really want from her, a line was crossed.

The Man in White's muscles creaked under her heft, pulsing unnaturally as he lifted her with one hand, throat-first, against the wall. "Tell me. Tell me what you mean. Tell it all. Now."
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Re: An Inquisitor's Desperation

Postby Rance » Fri Sep 13, 2013 2:57 am

He moved like a sleek animal, quick enough that the fluttering flames shining against the glass globes hadn't even time to flutter and protest at his passage.

The webbing between his thumb and forefinger drove against her throat. Fingers dug into her, lifted her as if she were a tattered doll, hammered her against the wall. Trying to hang her like a portrait. Her boots scurried against the air, snapping skirt-fabric in a desperate attempt to find the floorboards. Gloria's cheeks bulged as she tried to suck air in through her clamped throat. A vein throbbed with prominence underneath the skin of her temple.

He was the Black Man no matter how much of him was white. One hand scraped at his wrist while the gloved fingers tried to wedge between his palm and her neck.

Tell me. Tell me what you mean. Tell it all. Now.

"She c-…came to -- came to me. She was as I -- as I remember."

Words sputtered out of her like wheezing air blown through a hole in rubberwood.

Her booted toe scraped for his thigh, wanting a platform to put her weight against. A few strangled tears quivered on the lips of her eyes. She was red and he was white and he could kill her, he could do what he was supposed to have done for the Storyteller -- maybe he already had, maybe he'd already emptied her guts to the floor and there was no more feeling in her, he'd cut her core right out and she'd look down to blood, more blood, the tangled knots of her insides hanging over the waistband of her skirt--

"She came to -- to me," the seamstress explained. "To Mister Catch. Names. Sh-…she wanted names of those she might trust.

"I know what I saw. I know who -- who I saw. She was my friend."

And for all she knew she should have questioned it, denied it?

"She was -- was whole again."
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Re: An Inquisitor's Desperation

Postby Glenn » Fri Sep 13, 2013 4:16 am

One chance to kill him. That was her terms. Did she see now? Did she see how it would have ended? Civility gave way to something more primal. It wasn't that he was the man in black, it was that the man in black was him. It always had been him and for the first time since this entire ordeal began, he had reason to feel, to act, to be engaged, to be alive once more, and staring at her, holding her up, he knew it would be the death of him.

She spoke through the pressure of his choke and truly was that any surprise? This was Gloria Wynsee. It would take far more than fingers upon her windpipe to shut her up for long. She answered and he dropped her in a heap.

"Golben," it was a decision made weeks ago, a decision made on a far off eventuality, a decision that he had made in dread. One could look away from the sun, but it was still there. It could not be denied, not even in Rhaena Olwak's dreamworld. "Tell her," he began, but then there was silence. One second of it, two, and then he would kick, not at her, but at the wall right beside her. He would not scream. He would not yell. But he would kick, three swift, hard kicks, denting, cracking the wood.

When he looked at her again, it was with rancor in his eyes, rancor and a sadness, a darkness, hatred. Gloria Wynsee had others' hate and disdain for her. This was something else entirely; his hatred was not for her, but instead for the world. "You tell her nothing, nothing. But I tell you this. I go to Golben. I end this once and for all. You think you will not get your chance to kill me, Bella, so consider this in the days and weeks to come. By walking through this door today, by telling me what you have, you have done just that."
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Re: An Inquisitor's Desperation

Postby Rance » Fri Sep 13, 2013 5:24 am

Golben.

A name without a concrete meaning, a gibberish word that meant nothing to a girl from Jernoah. Yet, it had been tucked into the cracks in her mind, festered there as the result of something she'd done poorly, an act wrongly performed.

Gloria said, "Spare her life. Refrain from torture, and give that task to her guilt. That will be just. I will not abide blood spilled because scales must be balanced. In the end, there will be so much that it will overflow the rims, and -- and we will not be able to know whose blood belongs to who."

But Rhaena Olwak had already emblazoned her decision on the fabric of the trial. The Storyteller's mouth and tongue were latched inside the steely harness of a rusted bridle, and when the Lady spoke, it was with a smile.

"Take her to Golben," Rhaena Olwak commanded.


But scales must always balance.

When Giuseppe dropped the seamstress to the floor, her legs crumbled beneath her and her palms scraped along the floorboards. Her tongue dangled like a loose flap from her gaping mouth. Fingertips felt the depressions he'd left on her skin, imagining them like tiny medals -- this is what he had given her, and yet, she survived. When his heel cracked against the wood once, twice, three times, the seamstress let out a cry and scuttled back away from him, clapping a hand against her ear as though it might protected her. She sat in a sprawl of dirty skirts and looked up to him, spots of spittle shining like gems on her faded lips.

Tell her, he said. Then moments later, Tell her nothing, nothing.

"Golben is where the Storyteller was sent," the girl said, grasping for understanding. Giuseppe had known her long enough that while she was reckless, as graceless as a cripple with a spade and a battleaxe, she was certainly no fool; Gloria Wynsee was a deliberately destructive young woman, a piercing presence, an unapologetic slave to conviction and logic and emotion.

But she still had a seamstress' mind, a mass too familiar with furtively solving problems of textile and stitch, bringing delicate ribbons and threads together to form a single, solitary whole.

"You're a story," she whispered from the floor. "The Storyteller gave you reason to slit my throat, that I'd tell no one of her penchant for bringing tales to life. You told me as much. You trusted me to know that -- that you'd broken her edicts. A rogue who tore himself straight out of the words of her stories."

By walking through this door today, by telling me what you have, you have done just that. Killed him?

As she crawled to her feet -- she refused to sit anymore, even if the world spun and spun around her for lack of air -- she kneaded her patchwork skirts with her black-wet palms and tried to tenderize all the fables that had sunk into the wool and cotton. Agnieszka Kazmerrik crawled into her mind like an exhumed corpse, bringing memories of whiskey and anger to the girl's tongue. The Vice-Governor's brash accent knocked a rhythm in her memories. Because Rhaena Olwak is not the monster…you have to realize that she may be just as much a victim as the others.

And Maxwell, her fellow Inquisitor -- hadn't he said the same? Of glasses and water filled to the brim, that she was a vessel and they'd fixed her too well, too perfectly.

Gloria Wynsee was at the desk. There were parchments in neat stacks and stout piles. The back of her hand shoved one of them away, a stiff motion that scattered leaflets of paper and Inquisitory minutiae across the age-graying floor.

Blood in her nose. Clogging her throat. Trying to breathe.

Seeing stitches in her mind. Back-stitches. Thumb-needle embroidery.

"Rhaena Olwak is a story too," she said. "Isn't she, Giuseppe?"
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Re: An Inquisitor's Desperation

Postby Glenn » Fri Sep 13, 2013 5:31 am

She was grasping, for breath, for understanding, and yes, for truth as well and as she did, he wrote. Giuseppe hated letters, despised them. They left a trail, but it was always an improper thing, an incomplete thing. Tone mattered. Inflection mattered. One's expression mattered. It was absurd, then, that the words that lasted the longest were the ones without those. Letters were impersonal, like a bit of your soul chipped off of you, blood from your spirit dripped down onto the page. He had no more to spare. Necessity forced otherwise though. Two letters, quick and sharp, penned as she grasped towards all of the mysteries of life.

It meant that she could get all of her words out, every single one of them, before he'd finally look up. "Jernoah, it is, how do I say this? It is a place of faith, yes? Belief. I do not know of it. You have not inspired me to care to learn, and this is when I needed such knowledge as much as you apparently need air. Belief. Black and white. Right and wrong. Day and Night. There is a word for that, the two things, the opposites. Ah, I do not know it." He waved his hand dismissively for this was a waste of time. "The point is this. You cannot think of it that way. We're all stories, yes, but we're larger stories than what She can tell. All she did, Gloria, all she did was she turned the page."

And that was it. His notes were done, signed, sealed. He began to pack his things from the room. The Man in White had spent so much time there lately that most of what he needed, which was not much at all, was within reach.
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Re: An Inquisitor's Desperation

Postby Rance » Fri Sep 13, 2013 7:46 am

"She turned the page," repeated the seamstress, her shoulders rising and falling with shallow breath. Instead of reprimand for her careless scattering of his papers, he went about scribbling notes. The girl never asked where they would go, or to whom they'd be delivered. His words were just slanted lines and scars scraped onto parchment. In this moment of retrospection, she dragged her skirts up with her hands, caring little that there might be view of muddy petticoats or threadbare crinolines. She dabbed at her crushed nose with the hem, rubbing until even the skin was raw and the blood had faded into pink memories along her upper lip.

"I told you of Ariane," Gloria said behind him, "because I must. Because while you and I may hold our -- our animosities for how you've treated my brother, I leave it in your hands to capitalize upon this news of the Marshall how you choose. In her best interests. In this town's. An Inquisitor must report to her betters, after all.

"You and I are black and white. We are contradictions. We are polarized." Were those either of the words he sought? "Both of us need answers, Black Man. Rhaena Olwak denied mine. The Storyteller planted a -- a veritable hell in my mind, an image of what was to come, and never told me why."

We're all stories, yes, but we're larger stories than what she can tell.

"I am a story too," she told him. A hint of pride galvanized with the lead of quiet shame.

He worked in a flurry around the squat office, his image reflected against the reflecting glass of the candle-lit globes. He gathered objects with the frantic impatience of a girl arrived late to her duties at the seamhouse. Gloria, meanwhile, was a stout stature. She looked down to the spattered old lines of blood across the knees and hips of the Storyteller's old skirt. Her own. Niall's. Councilor Treadwell's. She wore the cartography of her poor decisions. The stains rotted between the threads of her clothes, little morsels moldering between thatched wool.

But no matter how much she'd scrubbed with stones and worn-down fingertips, it never came out. A part of her clothes, a part of her, shifting the plates of land beneath her skin, changing her. Sunlight into swamps; deserts into canyons.

"I need to know why she put this Dream in my brain," the seamstress said.

She danced her fingertips along the cold tin of the mug-bottom hilt adorning the makeshift knife at her side. I used to be scared of knives, she thought to say. I used to hate them so very badly; I used to think they were the work of a devil. Instead, she said something else entirely, the sounds numb on her tongue.

"I want to go with you."
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Re: An Inquisitor's Desperation

Postby Glenn » Fri Sep 13, 2013 8:23 am

Why did she put this Dream in your brain, Gloria Wynsee?

Because you were fool enough to listen.

"Just like I was fool enough to choose this unlife instead of a dirty, tepid, festering death." He raised a finger, waggling it a few times towards her. It was the first actual attention he'd given her since trying to choke the life out of her throat. "If you ever have to choose of the two, dirty, tepid, festering death is better than dirty, whatever, whatever, unlife. You may quote me on that."

She told him what he needed. She told him what she needed. She told them, of course, they were the same thing. He had no laughter left today, just need, just impetus. "I want to have my cake and I want to eat it too, yes? That is the saying, you see? Now I get no cake and I get to eat nothing but recrimination. The last thing I want is a side of your sniveling company. There is no more time for lessons, Wynsee. You want a lesson? A last lesson. Here." His tone had gotten terse. He walked right past her, opening the door to deposit the letters on the nearest inquistior's desk before doubling back.

"If you hold on to your ideals, you will never accomplish anything. If you give up your ideals, you will only accomplish the worst things. But," his voice softened as he closed in towards her, practically glowing in his white clothes. "If you manage to find a middle ground, yes? If you manage to balance your ideals with your accomplishments, that, that, you see, is when you will truly destroy everything you love." He turned away from her, quickly, sharply, and went to take what he had gathered. "You are not coming with me. Go die painfully somewhere else."
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Re: An Inquisitor's Desperation

Postby Rance » Fri Sep 13, 2013 9:36 am

"I don't trust you," she told him. "I don't trust your advice, your lessons, or your fine white clothes. And it is fitting, then, that if I look into my reflection in the water or on steel, I hold the same lack of regard for the girl who stares back at me."

Why did she want to go? She hadn't a real, tangible clue. An opportunity to defy Rhaena Olwak's justice, perhaps. But even that reason felt too shallow, too directed. Underneath it twisted a more palpable cancer, an understanding that she could scarcely admit. She hadn't enough awareness of herself to read the mud pumping through her veins like a fortune, because the plea -- the spoken desire to accopmany him -- was a cowardice. She wanted to run; she would have, had she somewhere to go, a scrabbling need to flee

the gleam of a falchion

the condemnation of Black Smoke

all the blood in her hair

the truth of bruises pressed like stamps in another girl's throat--

(and a Darkenhold threat glowed with remarkable scarlet inside her mind:)

I will cut you from crotch to throat and leave you to die.

He distributed the papers as he believed he should. Then he neared her, looming over her with all of his shining knowledge and his phosphorescent skin, as if he was some fresh beacon of light and she a huddled mass beneath him. High Inquisitor looked upon Junior Inquisitor with finality, but she was too blind to know he spoke of finite things: last lessons to guide her conscience in the future, to shape her like clay into something, something she couldn't fathom being--

--for she could scarcely see moments past this one, in the Inquisitory, where the newest member stared back into the eyes of its finest one. She was stubborn, bloody, battered, but she set her heels and leaned forward to challenge his command.

You are not coming with me. Go die painfully somewhere else.


"You will go by foot or by horseback, and I will be just as capable of -- of following you. You chose, for whatever foolish reason you had, to -- to take me into the Inquisitory, to drive me toward asking questions and discovering answers. And yet here you stand putting a wall up between me and -- and the one answer I need.

"If this Dream in my head is real," she said, "or if it's false. If this Dream in my head has a purpose and a nature founded in truth, or -- or if it's just the carpentry of some stupid seamstress's fears. I'll do nothing here but be a bane to progress. If Ariane shook free the spell on her mind" (and she'd done so much reading about spells, absorbed so many books that she thought she might actually know something about them) "then she and Mister Catch will do far greater things than I ever will. Elliot Gahald, for as much as I despise to -- to look upon him, will be a better protector for Cherny and Noura than I ever could be.

"I've no reason to be here, Black Man," she said, consigned and deliberate, speaking with more clarity about the stones lodged in her heart than she ever had before. "I will be an obstacle. I will be Rhaena Olwak's finest asset for as much as I've pushed and shoved and broken the people who -- who make my heart remember how to beat."

She did not stop speaking, never lost breath. The seamstress felt taller than she was, stronger than she realized herself to be -- a Marshall had been her idol once, not long ago, and the seamstress yearned so much to be that scar and the firm, unyielding presence of a Dauntless swordswoman. Gloria Wynsee did not shake or quiver, nor did she produce any more tears or bear a voice of some bleak, stammering child.

She was to be a woman at twelve, Jernoah decreed, with black-sweat babies and a home to make her own. She'd neither of those things in Myrken Wood.

"Golben," said the girl quietly. "It is no secret, is it? There are books enough and maps right here within these four walls. Go without me if you choose. I will saddle my Caliir and go on my own, ideals and accomplishments and advice be damned. The Storyteller owes me answers, Black Man, and you are not enough of a fright to me anymore to keep me from those."
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Rance
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