Inevitable

Re: Inevitable

Postby Carnath-Emory » Mon Jan 13, 2014 12:56 pm

This was what he was. This was what she had always done. This is a single principle, approached from two distinct perspectives, producing wildly disparate results. What he'd sacrificed was almost everything. What she had sacrificed -

"I sever the part of me which must no longer be mine," and it was not the swordswoman who'd whispered those words, but the Lady that
once was. There they sat in a sea of sunlit wildflowers, and amidst all that abundant colour she'd addressed a history half-remembered,
a history that was little but cold. "It is a farewell, " she'd whispered to a Lanessian agent - who for five years had been her dread; who in
recent days had come to slowly fascinate with his steadfast gentleness. "It is also a gift: I sacrifice the unacceptable to buy the impossible.
Amputation," she'd breathed, and gentle was the shadow that word cast across his eyes.

"We shall," the swordswoman answers, of Point the First - and spares the man an education on just how backwards that phrase seems to her ears. "And I'm glad. That - " But there's no future in this statement. Everything she's already said has killed that sentiment well short of ever being spoken. A shake of her head banishes its remnants; a clench of her lips demands a moment's wait.

"Of course it's arrogant. So am I; what of it? 'Arrogant' is the least important thing you've ever said to me," and this time it's her hand which lifts to forestall a protest; this time her mouth's sketched something like a grin, and what moves in her eyes is not quite levity and nothing like tears, but perhaps just an appreciation for the worth of remembering. This - oh, this is the moment she would prolong. Were it possible not to conclude this instant with the shake of her head which heralds disagreement; were it in her power to stretch a moment out into forever -

She does not lower her eyes. Watches his own now, as she shakes her head.

"I'm not certain any of them might be called constructive. Oh, Helstone tried; we'll never know what he might have accomplished, if he hadn't - " The words hesitate; evaporate in a thin shake of her head. " - lost his way. No." A correction, almost immediately; a hardening something at the corners of her mouth. Helstone, who'd been a hazard in every meaning of the word; who'd been her salvation before that, and something like a friend, long after. "Not 'lost'. Dragged. He was dragged from it. But even in his lowest moments, he was no more malicious than Bromn," the other madman at the Governor's seat. A hasty caveat accompanies, for: "Not that - Okulari thing which he became, not that child-murdering merzost' - " Anyone could have anticipated the point at which her words would pause, the moment which she would require before speaking again; even so, her conclusion cannot be much better than dismissive. "Well-intentioned, he might have been. But constructive..."

A moment's quiet is her opinion on that point.

"There's hardly the man born that commits harm without reason. Be it greed, be it - expedience," and this is a word quite newly-acquired. "Fear. If you would see malice amidst a governorship that was nothing like constructive, consider Governor Phuri. Yes? Corrupt - in very nearly every sense of the word. Murderous, if you've some regard for the lives of political prisoners; of any prisoners at all, near the end of that bezumstvo pursuit. And inarguably sane, and Myrken in general did not particular suffer under his hand. Neither did it prosper - but then, no-one expected it ever might. Those prisoners, though..."

That urn, she might as easily have said.

"You reckon not one of your Councilors would have raised a hand against your intentions? At any point, at any extreme? Agnieszka; Berdini, perhaps," and he will understand the fleeting hardness which cooled her gaze. "Calomel, had he come to realise. Even Phuri met his reckoning, in the end. But then, you never practised such excess."
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Re: Inevitable

Postby Glenn » Tue Jan 14, 2014 2:26 am

There were lines. Oh, there were lines. They were drawn. They were immutable. They were impassable. They were the boundaries that defined lives, more than just unspoken rules that let people exist in a society, more than just the norms or ethos that one lived one's life by. There were lines, small and large. They left things unsaid. They left actions undone. They left roads never traveled.

The last time they met like this, the lines had formed a castle, walls that could not be sieged, hallways that seemed to stretch on forever in their arcane twists and turns, stairways to nowhere and a dungeon as far as the eye could see.

A great storm had come, one of suffering and madness, one of pain and starvation, one of death, the truest, most meaningful death of the heart and of the spirit, and even more than those metaphysical concerns, death of the flesh. Every interaction between Ariane Emory and Glenn Burnie had been defined by these lines. So much was left unsaid. Some of it was unnecessary. Some of it was the most necessary of all. Here and now, the self-made boundaries between them, the holy shrines of discretion and respectful restraint seemed parodies of themselves.

How much could have been solved if they had just been open? How much could have been prevented if they had just left the comfort and familiarity of those lines behind? But then, how could they have known? How do you weigh everything you are against everything you possess? How do you weigh the rules you live by against the value in that life itself?

Now, after the storm had washed away all that was Glenn Burnie's life, he, at least, found that the lines had been washed away as well. The governor knew that they would be redrawn, new lines in new formations, to accommodate a new life, shaped by what had happened, informed by what had been.

For now, though? Frankly, he had nothing to lose.

"The difference between myself and them is that I came up from below. I had every reason to respect Myrken Wood and all that it represents before I took the position. It made me learn from the past and try to act, not just react, accordingly." Somewhere in this conversation, somewhere in her frank words and the necessary shifts of her gaze, he had begun to gain strength. This was not the Glenn Burnie of weeks ago. This was a Glenn Burnie better suited for this discussion. "Myrken Wood is this. Myrken Wood is that. These are our words. My words, at least. It lives, it breathes, it represses and exalts. Have you ever heard anyone say that Heath does this or that? The Northern New Dauntless winter is this or that, maybe, but Dauntless itself? I wage war against the very thing I hope to better. I wage war against lines on a map, against clumps of trees, a faulty crop, some hills a few miles north of us, ugly buildings with leaky roofs, a frankly terrible library, and generations of wretched history. Maybe a few gods too. Myrken. I knew it coming in. They sat in a chair, tried to bat away some drow, got kidnapped a few times, and apparently murdered some political prisoners. They tried to govern. You can't govern this. It's more primal than that. You have to rebalance the world."

There was strength and there was that. Did she see though? He had tried shift the scales and it all went wildly out of control. He pushed and pushed and pushed all of his weight, all of the power he could muster, pressing down on the one side that had been forced up for so long. Then, almost gleefully, Myrken let off its pressure and pushed down with its Governor. The scales unbalanced the other way and Myrken was lost in a new chaos the like of which it hadn't seen in years.

"That's not even the arrogant part," and yes, he did smile here, despite it all, because who else could explain all of what he did and follow it with that particular sentence. "We know ourselves through stories and lore, through tales and what we see. We understand the world through histories and religion and fables. We pull pieces of those things, of every story we've ever heard or known, and we understand ourselves through them. Whatever I was, and this is the arrogant part, in case that wasn't clear, whatever I've been the last few years, it's nothing I've ever encountered. There's hardly the man who commits harm without reason, but some do. People kill because they can't not kill. People kill without excuses, without explanation, without remorse, without hesitation, again and again. You hear of that. Killing, harming, violating. At least that makes some sense. We've seen it before. Unchecked, unremorseful civic and societal betterment, though, even the sort that paid heed to people's feelings for good or ill? I look back and I can't make the least bit of sense of what I was." Here, finally, the weight of all he said and more so, all he had done, swept down upon him. He did not slump but there was pain in his voice once again, perhaps, only, because he had pushed it so far or perhaps for reasons innumerable. "If you can't make sense of the road behind you, there's no way of knowing a damn thing about the road ahead."
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Re: Inevitable

Postby Carnath-Emory » Tue Jan 14, 2014 8:41 am

Only Myrken's immediate need could have kept her, newly-woken, from making that journey to Golben.

Only Glenn Burnie's tangible agony could have kept her, just returned, from his life for so long.

Had he - even as he is now, had he imagined it might be otherwise? Even Cherny - the boy he'd sent to her, the boy who owns two mornings of her every week - had remarked upon one of the contradictions between the Lady who was and the Marshall who is. Fond of making things, he'd said; of creating something from nothing, he'd said - to a weapon restored, to a woman whose unique talent was for ruin, and she'd nearly laughed at the strange, sweet sting of it all. Might have, if his words hadn't stolen the breath from her.

Of course she'd kept from him - her former student, this very young Governor. Being keenly aware of her ignorance regarding the state of a Glenn Burnie returned to Myrken from a long and sustained suffering, from ritual gone horribly awry; it had been the gentlest gift she could give to him. Knowing very well, after that first - that only - confrontation the sheer extent of what even a well-intentioned word could do to the man. What he needs, she'd said to her architect one difficult night, might be anything at all; anything at all but me. Ask her a month from now. Ask her then of What If and Might Have, for it was only a day ago that she'd thought that this very conversation was nothing that they could safely attempt.

"Of course you were nothing like them. Your whole history allowed you to approach Myrken with something other than contempt. You'd known worse, mn?" A simplistic way to approach an entire history; not entirely untrue, for all that. And it was everything she'd tried to explain days ago to an uncertain Gloria Wynsee, and that she'd failed is a testament to the woman's inability communicate with words on a page - even when those words are orderly, even when they're nothing but lists.

" - the prisoners murdered each other," she adds, a moment after. Being some casual lean against the chair's sturdy back, and with a slightly helpless shift of her shoulder. "The Governor just arranged the fights, and tallied the coins wagered upon their outcomes, until one of those men broke free and took his vengeance as Phuri slept. Have you seen the governor's chambers?" A tilt of her head towards the ceiling and its upstairs room. "Phuri's the reason its floor seems newer than the rest." And this wry smile is the very grim humour of a woman who'd liked the work she did for that man; who reckoned all the same that he'd earned every moment of his difficult death. "Pick any well-born man in Myrken; nevermind the name. The chances are even, either way, that he wagered coin once on one or two of those fights. Near the end of it, Phuri was not - discriminate with his invitations.

"You, though..." She'd never quite seated herself. The chair served better as a prop than a seat; as an occupation for restless, gripping hands. Even now, these moments in which her gaze is set even upon his own and gone solemn with frowning thought.

"You were creating a foundation in order to battle a belief." The one is an unfortunate word, in light of Rhaena Olwak's endeavours, spoken by a woman with no better substitute; the other, though.. Oh, that is clearly deliberate. He knows very well the weight of that word. "That structure of thoughts, that way of being which produces an existence; that. It was - ungovernable. Phuri succeeded because he was neck-deep in it himself; he fostered that belief and blunted the worst of its excesses. If - each day - more lived than died, more ate than starved - then he reckoned that day a success and moved on to the next. His Council - that bzdenok Avarante and all the rest - had little interest past the, the sustaining of their own means; they were glad to support a man who guaranteed exactly that, whose proposals were never - unconventional; I saw more than a few of them at those evening matches," and she's laughing then; wholly laughing. Remembering such a thing, what else is one to do?

"'Fables'." And that is when she scoffs, a choke of soft laughter that's nothing like pleased. "I can't think in terms of fables; I won't. She was all stories, by the end of it - did you know that? A marvelous new fairytale at every turn. Wishes and wolves and villainry..." A shake of the head stirs the woman from her brief distance. "There aren't stories written of what you were. Your guard had a way of putting it: That ours were to be the bones used to build a tower, so that humanity might flourish. Towers again, mn?" A narrow grin. "Still: an elegant way of putting it. All the moreso, considering the source. As for myself, I might say of what you were: expediency. The most direct route taken through each problem, to reach its solution; not the swiftest," she cautions then. "But - measured. Uncluttered -

Except by the occasional indulgence."

"... May I keep her?"
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Re: Inevitable

Postby Glenn » Wed Jan 15, 2014 2:11 am

So long ago now, a man in black, one of a frayed code and a tattered history met a woman of iron and steel and mercy and deliverance in a tavern just within the Myrken border. The Governor was a hollow man, a man of unstoppable intention. Giuseppe later claimed that what he did was a mercy, a carefully weighed and measured thing meant to prevent heartache through either finality or, failing that, sufficient damage to ensure extreme consideration, a deterrence where the cost of moving forward would be seen as far, far too high.

Look at where all this mercy had led.

"I had known worse," he admitted, his physical stamina an ebb and a flow. He did not talk of the time after his earliest childhood but before Myrken Wood. "Never, though, did I care like I do here. That was the difference. Helstone cared about words on paper. Bromn cared about the idea of caring. They had homes to return to and," not towers, "castles to build elsewhere. I..." Sometimes the words just flowed. Sometimes he could barely stop them. Now, in the midst of his fatigue and weakness, the words were an effort and not a necessity and he paused with a smile that was not quite embarrassed but certainly aware, perhaps vaguely apologetic. "You know this." Even the bits that would have once been uncomfortable, too close, too personal, she knew well enough now.

"I honestly didn't know. All my years here and I didn't know." Better then to move on to what was not so well known between them. Exasperation accompanied his gaze as he listened to her explain Phuri's folly. There was time enough soon to discuss his own. "It never ceases to amaze me how knowledge can come to Myrken Wood and decide that this is, in fact, a wonderful place to wither up and die. The instability, the influx of new people with nowhere else to go and the death and flight of the old. Meetinghouses burn. Councilors go mad. People flee cults and horrors and the dead rising, and those that remain, in their inevitable Myrken way, look ahead to the next crisis and make sure never to refer to the last." Especially their role in it. In a few years, no one would mention this last summer. References would be wiped from the record. Gloria Wynsee shouted about the truth, but she did it surrounded by liars, in a house built upon lie after lie. Myrken deserved its people. Its people deserved it. The cycle continued, even as he tried so desperately to break it. "That crowd out there? It's like they don't know me anymore, like they don't know each other."

Was he much better? Was Ariane? After three years of being unable to feel the pressure of those questions, for a moment, a lone, scant moment, they threatened to overwhelm him.

It was a moment answered by her words, her barely unfortunate and carefully chosen words. "What I know that they did not," he finally said, sober in the face of her laughing, because he was not of Northern New Dauntless and in Myrken, you did not always laugh; sometimes, but not always. Sometimes, crying was okay too. "was..." and here words failed him. She knew. He knew she knew. There was no reason to say it. Yet he had to say something. Even with her, especially with her, even and especially when they were speaking directly in a way that they had not in years, that they had not, in fact, since negotiating over a map in the distant past; even so, there was pride. "It has to mean something. That meaning has to be something we decide. No one else can do it for us, no book, nothing. We can't just survive. We can't be animals. We can't be sacks of flesh and blood and meat. To do anything for the sake of itself is madness. It's a waste. It's the only sin worth noting in this world, an empty laziness that squanders the mind and the spirit and the soul. I gave up so much down there, Ariane, but I didn't give it up just to survive. I gave it up to escape, to get back to the things I love. I gave it up to get revenge. I gave it up because, frankly, I was an idiot and I was hungry and lost in the dark and had no idea what I was doing at the very end, but before that I did and when I sacrificed it, I sacrificed it for wonderful and terrible reasons, not just to continue to draw breath so that I could continue to draw breath tomorrow." Years of pain thundered down upon him. He had sacrificed so much and what did he have to show for it? Everything he fought for had slipped through his fingers. Everything he sacrificed for he had lost save for one thing. The principle remained true. He didn't just draw breath. No, Glenn Burnie lived. And the pain? The pain was the proof of it. "We have to be better than that or else nothing means anything. It's our choice not to find meaning in this world but to create it. Even after everything, I believe that, Ariane. If I didn't, then I'd go away with Agnie and just be done of this. If I didn't, I would have died with my wife when I felt the pull come to drag me down."

Humanity must flourish, she says. Words coming from her mouth. Dissonance. His guard, she says. Just what had Giuseppe done? How far had he gone? What had it all meant? He almost didn't want to know.

"You're too kind to me, Ariane." Finally, "I was a beautiful monster, just like Myrken." Because while it forgot and while it suffered and while it showed weakness, it also continued to fight, continued to crawl not just forward, but upward, back to its feet. It's people stood and walked like men into the wind and fire and darkness. They lived and they took their joy and sadness and loss and triumph and made it their meaning. He had to believe that, because if he believed it hard enough, it may well be true. If he gave up, it could never be.

"At my worst, I ill treated people, magical and otherwise, as resources because I saw it necessary. I made compromises with those I shouldn't have, because I saw it necessary. I created Golben, because I saw it necessary. The indulgences, at the end, helped relieve the pressure. They pushed the madness back. One lapse, one constructive lapse, to buy more time of clarity. At the beginning though? They were the norm. We work with what we have and we do whatever works. This is what I said. I would have printed the damn thing on flags if I thought it wouldn't give too much away. By the end, I had indulgences. In the beginning, I was indulgence." Wounds laid out on the table, arms open before her. He was a fell thing, the bastard child of this place and another, yet the father of its future. Hard love had led to fire, but she knew better than anyone: fire could burn and fire could forge.
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Re: Inevitable

Postby Carnath-Emory » Sat Jan 25, 2014 12:11 pm

"I never told you why I came back." Or why she'd left at all, but that is a complexity that she's described to no-one whatsoever. Oh, Giuseppe - inquisitor, assassin, eventual corpse - had once unraveled a piece of that complication with crushing accuracy, but it was only a piece, and for that fact she'd later grown silently grateful. "You describe that crowd out there as if its resentment astonishes you - but think a moment on Haberdasher's. Think on - that crowd out there - "

Glenn Burnie is made for speeches. Sometimes the words flow; sometime there's no stopping them, and often - almost always - she does not even want to. Glenn Burnie is made for this, and the Marshall - former teacher, occasional mercenary - is very much not; her attempt has aborted in an untimely pause, a jarring silence into which she frowns, searches -

"I heard 'Governor Burnie', and I was back within the week." That, ultimately. That's what she chooses, and she speaks the words on an escaping breath; looses them like a confession. "Across oceans and land, and - none of that matters now." A shake of the head dismisses that distraction. "What matters - is that Myrken eats its governors whole. It swallows them down and it spits out a wreckage. Did you know that they never found Phuri's murderer? Because they never troubled to look; another Governor was dead, less useless than some and more corrupt than most, and why should they care? Oh,think on what's become of every one of Myrken's governors. Helstone, Bromn; even Calomel: corpses and madmen and exiles, all. The men that came before Calomel have taught Myrken what a governor is, and it has learned to resent them, to distrust; it has learned to accuse, justly or no. That crowd out there? The - 'differences' between you and those that came before you did nothing to forestall that. It's - "

And she's to his desk after all; a single swift stride closes that narrow space, and places her within reach of an ink-pot and a quill, and she positions the two at odds with each other, as surely as if they were playing-pieces upon a checkers board.

"There, a government. And - here, a Myrken. This is what you were, you and they: just titles, just - ideas." A quick glance, to see does he follow a thing which she far from fit to explain. "This was not Glenn Burnie upon his stage; it was not - oh, Fenny Rowntree in that crowd; it wasn't Bryce and Henry Derwint, that wasn't Matty Sherwin shouting 'witch' and 'bastards'. A wounded Myrken threw all its hurt at its Governor, because not once has a Governor carried them safely through the hurt and this has learned them that hurt and anger and loss is all that it will ever be. You care - in a way that no-one's ever tried to, you study them in a way that no-one's ever bothered to, and I know this; I knew that then. But that crowd was born the moment you took the governor's seat, and I came back, Glenn Burnie, because that was what was aiming itself at you - sure as an arrow on a bowstring - across the distance of years."

This is too much. Entirely too much, saying it like this; saying anything at all. A hand that wants very much for wine by the cupful settles upon that inkpot governor instead; troubles the poor, glass thing around and about again in clumsy, spinning circles -

"I know - that this sounds like - inevitabilities." When she's caught her breath again; when restless motion has smoothed some raw edge of her nerves. "It's not. If you cared - less, they'd have torn you apart. I won't hear - 'monster'," and she struggles with the word, with a word that is hers and has been for years, "but if yours had been a different kind of 'worst' - "

The words might have fallen away completely, were the moment less demanding, for they skirt the edges of a thing which she does not wish to contemplate - a fact which by its existence implies that she must do just that. It is a indistinct shape at the back of her thoughts; it is hazardous edges and she swallows dry-throated against the weight of its presence.

"Your speech was never going to be enough. What, and you'd give them words? They've had those. From everyone who came before you; drag some fool's god down from its heavens and have it pen you a script: still it would not have been enough, not for you and not for her." Agnieszka. Agnieszka, who in the end had been entrusted back to new guards. "You give them words and they assume a deceit; they wait impatiently through what they've learned will be empty promises. They wait for you to leave, because everyone - always - has. And yet here you are, and with every day, with every action - every time that they spit their anger and you still carry them - you, you erode at that cycle; you contradict that belief."

She does not precisely collapse into her seat - but a week ago, she might have, flattened less by the exhaustion of her own words than the weight of his. Bromn, he'd said, words that shouldn't have a sting to them after so many years; you know, he'd said, and she'd nearly laughed. Smiled, instead; smiled like some helplessly aching thing, and while she does not precisely collapse into that seat there is wordless gratitude in the motion nonetheless. The things he'd said; it would be something to just sit here a time and sort through those words in perfect, simple silence. It would be a rare, fine luxury.

"I was - exactly what you describe." An empty laziness; a soul-squandering subsistence. Her mouth is a small, wry smile. "You know this already. But -- What is it, do you think, to serve such a man as Phuri? You follow at his back to the appointed place; you watch, as they - negotiate. And when things go sour, he says: Hurt him, Ariane." Silent things tremor in the tight contours of her smile. "And you do. And then there's something extra at the end of the week, and you rather hope it all goes the same way again the next. If - "

A slow breath; her eyes for his.

"He was hardly the first of that sort which I've known; you know this. I recognise them very easily, having been just that myself. We spoke of this once I returned, he and I." Not Phuri, clearly. "Not exactly - discreet, I know." The slim smile is a very silent apology; almost is. "But you understand, I think, that my need was - vast. Desperate. What do I know of politics? Of government, of statecraft?" Not Calomel then, either. "I needed - advice; I needed consequences, contingencies. Because if you'd been that; if you'd been nothing but empty, purposeless hungers -

It would never have come to this. To here. I'd have put an end to it before that could happen."
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Re: Inevitable

Postby Glenn » Mon Jan 27, 2014 1:25 am

Ariane Emory was not one for speeches. The Governor, still young, but not nearly as much so as he had once been, knew her well, but he did not know her to be direct. That was likely more a reflection upon himself than upon her. The combination of those two understandings, however, led to attentiveness. For every single thing she said, four, five comments came to mind. He valued what she offered him here, but it still took effort to keep them from escaping his lips. It would result in some mild agitation but not the wellspring of pressure of the year before. In short, she spoke. He listened. When she was done, he brought the end back to the beginning.

"Even at the worst of it, I was no fool. Especially at the worst of it, I cared because I was one of them. That's the difference. Even Cinnabar, he tried to be so, at first, in the middle, and then he chose what mattered to him, what he valued in life. In doing so, I think he grasped that semblance of humanity he'd been missing. Trying to fit in so thoroughly, he sacrificed identity for acceptance." It hadn't meant that he was one of them, though. "At the very worst of it, I was no fool at all. I avoided the position. I used his absence as a shield," for if any man was meant to be a shield, it was Cinnabar Calomel. "I served as Inquisitor, a lapse in nomenclature if nothing else." Tomorrow, he might send a little note with that word so she could hack at it at her leisure. For now, it was simply sent out into the world, a four-syllable gift of the most peculiar sort. "The last thing I wanted to be was Governor. That's the other bit, Ariane. For the most part, I know better." They'd get back to the least of the part in a moment. "The crown forced my hand. Have you met Kostroma? I assembled my Council, the only one that would do given the time and the need. I bartered for Agnieszka, because that is what one does for family (don't tell her I said that). I became Governor knowing that it was the beginning of the end." And then? And then, he did the unkindest thing of all. Her eyes met his. His eyes met hers once more.

"I had meant to create a world where you needen't be a weapon, and then, a moment after telling you this, I put your sword at my throat to enable an ending had it been necessary." He would ask her which of the two was more cruel, but they both knew that answer. In the end, it was the wrong neck but perhaps the right sword.

That's why, in the face of the cruelty and the tragedy and the well-meaning horror, perhaps anyone but this woman of so much more than just iron might be surprised at the youth and honest hurt that shined through. "So I knew, Ariane. I knew what being Governor would mean, for me, for them. I know what a mob is. I know what a depersonalized people is. I was raised to manipulate such things and I push against that every day, because they are so much more. I know. I knew. I see the difference." Burnie had suffered such loss in the last three months. His love. His other half. His health. His vision. In some ways, this hurt the most. "I survived it. When has survival ever been the goal?"
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Re: Inevitable

Postby Carnath-Emory » Mon Jan 27, 2014 7:59 am

The issue had been one of protocol, and it was begun in the moment that a brilliant young boy had the audacity to purchase a thing she'd sworn was not his to have. They had negotiated, these two, in that unprincipled tavern upon Myrkentown's very edge. There being a man unacceptably imprisoned in a land that was largely uncharted; there being a swordswoman who meant to see this remedied and a boy whose talent was for plotting the path between Here and some unfathomable There -

Of course he'd demanded the lessons she'd been so unwilling to give. Of course it was a demand which she was in no position to refuse - and really, wasn't it a small price to pay? what was a single, stubborn principle worth when a man's life was at stake? She was seldom direct - not after that - unless the question at hand were one of steel or of footwork, or some particularly lethal combination of the two; in the moment that he presented himself to those training-rooms, the dynamic of Student and Teacher was written in steel until the day she left Myrken entirely, abandoning her student to his fall. It had limited; it had shielded. It had made distinct demands upon them both.

"Is that where he discovers what he values?" What exists between them now is more frank an exchange than has ever been. It is also the direct antithesis of the letter-writing which had followed their first reunion. "With the family that he's built for himself? It still feels - like exile," but a shake of her head dismisses that for what it is: intuition as tainted by her complete inability to make that assessment impersonally. Calomel, after all. Whose friendship is difficult and priceless and - "You didn't want the title," she murmurs after a time; something almost like humour moves at her mouth's corner. "But I think - you'd already filled the position. Long before, and whether in name or no; hells with Kostroma," and she's almost laughing, when she says it. Almost, until he speaks the words which erase the possibility of anything like laughter at all.

It is a thin wash of colour rushed high through her cheeks.
It is bloodless lips tense upon the verge of quick, hot rebuttal -

"Not - so literal an end."

There'd been value in allowing him to believe otherwise. Him and everyone else who'd asked or supposed or simply assumed - not unreasonably - that she might put an end to a former student's life, were that student to prove something more than a Governor and something very much less than humane. There is value in being a presence of unfettered capacities, a creature which might do anything, every thing, even and especially the worst. Pragmatism demands that this continue. Practical caution does.

But since the moment she came to his room he has been nothing but giving. It was worth it, once, to drink an assassin's wine; to touch her brow to the forehead of a man who gripped his pen like a knife; to weather Catch's trembling rage and a cultist's complicated sorrow - and this, now. Which he warrants; which the hour does. And it is as a moment in which the spirit recalls how to breathe -

"Do you really think that it could have been? Truly?" There is no restraining her small, small smile; no answering, either, when the lift of her hand makes that quite impossible. "I'd have put an end to your Governorship - yes. To this," a broad wave of her hand. "yes. But not to you. It was a part of what I asked him, mn? If it were possible that ending the one would murder the other: I needed to know what I risked; I needed to know if what I risked was you. If there were a chance that I'd mistaken what I saw in you; if there were a chance you did not understand your self," and she's laughing then, at this sudden list of words; after a moment confesses: "It was a - long conversation."

It was a conversation marked by shattered glass and wounded outrage, and even then she had not allowed it to stop -

The subtle shake of her head does not dislodge old ghosts. But it allows her to continue; to redirect from what had become a considerable divergence. It allows for - "You knew this things? Good. You survived this; also good. But the surviving part is done, and what you have now is - opportunity. None of the others had that. Not one of them weathered the brunt of that first blow. The surviving is done."
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Re: Inevitable

Postby Glenn » Mon Jan 27, 2014 9:12 am

"He came for me, Ariane, and that leaves me in a unique position." It was not said for guilting purposes. He came for him. She did not. They were not being passive or aggressive here. She explained that if she could have she would have. He knew this. Moreover, she had come for him before, in so many ways. Rescuing him from a labyrinth would be the simplest thing she had done, although it presented its own challenges. "I could respect his wishes and hope, quite simply, that this is him honestly finding peace and not just another attempt to mimic humanity because it is what he feels he is supposed to do. Alternatively, I could be emboldened to challenge his truth as false for the sake of his spirit. I'm going to choose the former and not rescue him from happiness, genuine or fabricated." She could do otherwise. Perhaps, if she felt strongly enough on the matter, she could convince him to provide assistance. Somehow, he did not think she would differ from him much in this. Perhaps another day when current challenges were behind them. "Maybe there's happiness in exile so long as you've picked the right companionship for it? We should toast to that, since we're not going to ever truly know. I'll have my secretary make a note to that effect and we can just do it later." He hadn't offered her anything to drink, after all.

As for the rest? He would have made a half smile, had he the chance. He would have explained to her that he didn't already fulfill the position, but instead, he had created a position of his own, bending the rules, both legal and symbolic, living between the lines. He had gamed the system right until he reached the very end of his rope.

Her lips are bloodless. Her words are hard. His half smile is stillborn.

It is supplanted by a full one. It is attached, through cartilage and bone and sinew and ligament, to a finger, far, far away, all the way down his arm. That waggles at her. "The arrogance of my teacher. It was endearing when I was younger. I suppose it still is now. It's easy enough for you to stop someone, but to stop them with such conditions? I am no Dhrin. I am no Zayken or Fiend. Certainly no Phuri. Not even a Rhaena Olwak. You forged my sharpness, Ariane. You could have stopped me, but only with finality." In the midst of all that they said, this was so very pointless. Sword-waggling. She had been so serious and he returned it with bravado. It was the damnedest, most defiant and insufferable thing he could do.

Never let it be said that he did not give her anything.

"I've survived for a reason," are the words he finally decides upon. "I've survived, so what is next? We've endured. Now there is opportunity." He repeats her words, more or less. "So it is like this then: I have been told by a very wise young lady that I should not halt. I should keep stepping over lines. I should simply no longer do it alone. So, let us say I do that. Hand in hand in hand in hand. Those that care. Those that can be trusted. We walk together. Our steps have more weight behind them. It is harder to turn us back. We weave in a direction that is no longer straight, and thus only with more deliberated movement, do we cross lines." He held out a hand, a duelist's hand, a scribe's hand, a mapmaker's hand, an Inquisitor's hand, Glenn Burnie's hand. "Do you walk with me, Ariane? I promise that you won't like it, but you will like it more than where I might walk alone."
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Re: Inevitable

Postby Carnath-Emory » Mon Jan 27, 2014 4:41 pm

"Obligation shouldn't serve as your guide through a decision like that."

She'd made such a point of not interrupting. As had he, in his way, and perhaps sometimes they even shared some reasons in common; this time, though, the words had slipped right past her guard. Of all things, this: far from inconsequential and just as far from being relevant. "I wondered. That's all. Not - at what you might choose, not at what you might decide; at your opinion of him, of what he has found for himself. We've spoken, you know - two, three times, after all those years. About almost anything at all but him."

It is not precisely a confession. It is not exactly the sort of divergence against which he'd lifted his hand and his very insistent will, a half hour earlier. Perhaps in the end it's only an oversight: a moment's wholly earnest curiosity crept from beneath the weight of necessity and the wildfire of unfettered exchange. Whatever the case might be, the swordswoman's reclining back in her seat before he's begun to speak again, and perhaps that is confession enough. Confession and apology both, and the short wave of her hand dismisses any consideration of secretaries and toasts; if there was some humour hidden there amongst those words, she's missed it entirely. When had he expected otherwise?

Endearing, though. Endearing. It startles - the words, the chiding smile. Coming as it does into the midst of everything this conversation has been, a riposte that smooths her features into quiet reserve, that has her eyes sinking closed -

"You might consider the implication."
- and finding their focus, a moment after, upon a Governor's offered hand. He weights this moment - doesn't he? For all that he'd once described Berdini as the stage magician, her onetime student weights this moment with all a showman's flare for drama; he lacks only for lights and an audience willing to gasp. The Lady she'd once been would have startled breathless, unable to resist the moment's heatwave resonance.

"I'm gladder, though, if you don't."

The brief madness which was that Lady could not have withstood such a beckons, could not have left her hands folded and inert upon her knees for so long. Her gaze, when it eases free of that offered hand, is the solemn half-frown that he's known for years; her expression has not quite managed to yield to his moment's demands, has not begun to.

"Two things." Her acceptance ought to have been wordless and immediate. Anyone present to observe this would have known that; the Lady Marshall would sooner have bitten her lips bloody than sully such a moment with caveats. I hear her sometimes, she'd confided days ago - far from here, and to different ears. Or imagine that I do; moving on the edges of my thoughts, like a half-remembered song... But even if that presence is something more than the conjuration of an exhausted mind, something more than the afterimage of a thing very much dead, it has no voice here; it has no influence at all. For:

"I've five militiamen who find themselves at odds with the - events that your speech described. By the end of it, understand, she was flaying men to the bone out there upon the streets; those five were in a position to see it, for they were accompanying me when I came upon her, and they knew exactly what I intended to do once she was put aside. They ask the questions that men who've seen that will ask; I give them Perhaps and Maybe - " A shift of the shoulder. "It's not enough. You've said this thing. Yes? And if you've said it false, you've made all of us in that deception - "

Too many words, increasingly heavy in the back of her throat. They cost; a shift of her shoulder fills the space that comes when it is necessary that she pause.

"Syl reckons it managable. He - "

She'd come here, in part, to repeat those words for these ears. As if that were a necessity so obvious as to be beyond question, and what does it say of he or she that after all of that her words have paused? Perhaps that circumstances change more rapidly than her mind's ever been able to properly track; perhaps nothing more than that her judgement was questionable long before now.

"The second's just a question. Genevieve - Inquisitor Tolleson, yes? - exerted some - influence upon that crowd; upon a portion of it." A glance; a lifted brow. "At your request? Your suggestion at all?"
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Re: Inevitable

Postby Glenn » Tue Jan 28, 2014 1:48 am

"When one is young," and this is an aside and perhaps the last word on the matter, " and smart and spirited, hypocrisy is the ultimate enemy. For someone..." and he began to spin it out. Words upon words. Extrapolation, probably unnecessary. It was a rare thing indeed, but the governor would show restraint and get to the point. "Five years ago, I would have been a burr in my good friend Cinnabar Calomel's large toe. I would have questioned his actions and his happiness and I would not have rested until he was miserable, one way or the other. I'm still a little bit tempted. I can't quite see his peace as a victory, but maybe as solace, for now at least?"

Solace. There'd be little of that, it seemed. Hand was extended and it was left hanging out there. Two terse statements were made and passed by. On another day in another year, there would be the luxury to examine how far she might have gone and what the cost might have been. Today was not the day.

Questions were asked. His hand remained outstretched until slowly, definitively, he slammed it down against his desk, once, twice, thrice. It was a vaguely hollow noise. He knew this wood as well as most people knew their own bodies. What else was he to do with that hand? A stark openness was well and good right until the point they hit difficult questions. His smile was bemused as he held his hand back up to look at it, flexing his fingers. "It seemed like the thing to do. Sorry. I meant it. We're in a hole. I don't see a way out that doesn't involve digging down deeper, unless it's not you taking the hand but Burel or Chewdry. I do it alone and there'll be no breaking of any cycles."

The questions, then. "There's a difference between hypocrisy and deception." It all rests on who you're lying to. He had told her that she probably didn't want to be there. "It was one last unilateral action. I needed time. I stood up there, Ariane, having lost her, starved, suffering, pale, weak. That was my mob, yes, but I faced it down with a certain amount of leverage due to what I'd just suffered. I chose to use that leverage to shield Agnieszka. They were still a mob. Whatever I chose to do had to be relatively small. Relatively." There'd be no saving of the world in that speech. There would be survival, but even on that day, survival wasn't enough. "Eventually, another truth may come out, but no matter the evidence, no matter what that truth is, there will always be some people that believe what they heard. It's a good story. I don't think a better one will arise. Therefore, the doubt will always exist, and that will act as a shroud and a shield around her. I bought back her life two years ago and then saw it squandered by my lover. Now she has another chance. I could do nothing less. Rhaena already paid the price. Whatever else we pay cannot be worth more than that. I needed to take something from it. I chose protecting someone dear to me that had suffered far too much because of me. Regardless, it's done. One last unilateral action," he repeated. "so long as I have others to help me moving forward."

There was a second question, though, and to that he had no dramatic hand gestures. Instead, a shrug. "I was staring down Catch." The mob did not end him. Catch did not end Myrken. These were the terms of success. "What she did in the midst of that I am not entirely sure of. We haven't spoken of it yet." Then, with a resigned sigh. "We'll have to. I don't know how she ended up different than she was. I don't like it. It takes away from her worth. With Rhaena, it was part and parcel with who she was, from birth. Even then, it was not what was best about her. It perhaps, did not take away from that. With Genevieve, this power hinders what makes her worthwhile and special. It's dangerous. It's a temptation. It is the wrong time, the worst time. I have not once spoken to her about it." He could not stay resigned here. The words were now a shield, and he found himself hiding behind them. That would not do today, not at all. "I think I am afraid of it. I need her for every reason but that. I need that least of all."
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Re: Inevitable

Postby Carnath-Emory » Tue Jan 28, 2014 8:34 am

Two terse statements, in the wake of a confession she should never have made; that she'd voiced as if it were possible to wrap the most reckless sort of vulnerability up into words and offer it like gift. An hour from now, she will regret the impulse, will know a sudden, fierce gratitude that it hadn't become more than it is. Now, though; now is for a duelist's hand and a governor's desk. Once, and she flinches - the tiniest start of motion at the edge of her eyes. A second, but by then it's all old news. By the third her mouth's given over to a slow draw of breath, a skeptic's eyes fixed wordless upon that hand, silently watching even as he flexes some feeling back into the fingers -

"There is no - doing this alone. Not for anyone, but least of all for you. What else do I mean when I say you make us complicit?" She could diagram it for him. Easy as breathing: hunch over this table with all its inks and quills and vulnerable wooden surfaces; chart this for him, a map of her own making as inspired by an Inquisitor and detailed by a Royal Architect: an infinitely recursive theory of human convergence. He'd add some details of his own, perhaps; straighten some lines and adjust some numbers, and they'd laugh over it when it was done and ultimately admit that really, really, what she'd described there in ink and pattern and numbers was nothing that he didn't already know; was something that everyone already knows. And which had taken her years to understand all the same, and in moments like this one a woman comes to feel the sluggish weight of her own ignorance...

"The decision were unilateral; its consequences aren't. That matter's mine to manage now, as much as it is yours. Agnieszka's. Sera Tolleson's - and consider what it means in Myrken, today, when they say that she's left a person swained. Make no mistake," and she does not even lean to lend the moment some emphasis, but only frowns her way from hand to eyes and back again. "I understand what she did. I despise it," which hardly needed be said at all, "but there is sense in it. What, and was she to know that crowd could be managed without her - influence?" The word is cool ash upon her lips; a shake of her head banishes it. "No. She saw wildfire. Her reflex was to smother it. A good reflex. An inappropriate means. And you - " a breath of something like laughter. "No. I understand. You told me your intention, mn? You as good as told me."

A fist, he'd written, needs something to hit.
"What I needed was everything else." Everything that he'd said - the last, he'd insisted - over and again. Genevieve's power, he'd explained, to a woman whose experience of the inquisitor was both vast and undetailed; he'd answered questions she would never have known to ask, hinted at a premise which she never suspected might exist. "And if you had seen what I was these last months, this useless and un-sane - thing, you would know why I could not just - take your hand; why I could not even want to just blindly believe." Now, though. Now, the hand unfolds from its knee -

"Why did you reckon Golben necessary?"
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Re: Inevitable

Postby Glenn » Tue Jan 28, 2014 8:57 am

In this world, there is an unseen distance between every two human beings. Friends, enemies, lovers, twins. There is no exception save one. Burnie had known an unnatural closeness, a connection unlike any other that could ever exist. He had gained it and lost it and gained it again. Now it was gone forever.

It was not this.

This was directness, frankness, honesty.

And yet, even here, even in the midst of this singular occasion, there were lines that one did not cross.

An open hand came at a very distinct time. Hours from now, would she wonder at that?

A burst of violence followed it. Of that, there should be no wonder at all.

And then? Openness once more. Too much so.

An admittance that she could not use.

Instead. "I make Myrken complicit. I'm the Governor. I sold iron to Thessilane. I offered promises to Kostroma. I played both sides against the middle. That's what we do." Governors. "The difference is that I did it for them, not for me, except for I am part of the them, so I suppose I did it for us." It wasn't really a smile, but then you couldn't have an upturned frown. "This is different. It's also done. My wrong thing." For Agnieszka. His. "Genevieve's. It's hard, letting other people in to make mistakes that aren't mine." That wasn't the point though. "You don't keep burn victims at bay with more fire."

Her hand moved. His stopped. "On the one hand, excess. On the other, to fill a hole that man did not make with an emptiness that it did. That's preferable. Poetry and hubris aside, Golben was necessary because I tried everything else."
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