On the Rarified Matter of Patronage

[Glenn]

In any city in the world, a few coins could provide proper lubrication to slide letters to their intended destination, no matter who may be sending them, no matter who may receive them.

Lady Follox (Meeda, this being the one thing that I will do that you have asked),

I wonder how best to start this. There are so many different routes we could take. Shall I suggest one? How about that. Let's.

I could seem casual. You could knowingly tease information out of me. You could see this letter in and of itself as a sign of suspicion realized and act accordingly. Leverage. Your whole life is leverage. This looks like leverage. It could be the most lucrative sort. You use it. You build slightly more power, gain slightly more influence, have slightly more money, or it turns out you were wrong and lose a resource and annoy a potential ally. Or you're right and it does not work out well for you anyway, but I scant think you the sort of imagine that sort of scenario.

It's dull and so much effort. It's unimaginative. Rote. Just the way the world works. Do you know why I am so incorruptible? Because I tired of 'just the way the world works.' It's not that I am a highly moral defender of justice. It's not that I'm playing some sort of long game. It's that I'm playing no game at all. If you don't move the pieces, it's not that you can never lose. It's that no one else can ever win. You're just sitting there taking up the board. It's a victory in and of itself, the most irritating victory in the world. That appeals. That's how I've been winning, by not playing games at all.

You like games, though. Games of influence. Games of chance. Games of violence.

I've turned a blind eye up until now. You have not. Yet I am not obviously not blind. Do you ask why? Or do you just think me a fool like so many other fools who underestimate or overexert?

I would let you name the game, save for one rule. Nothing given. Nothing asked for. Nothing borrowed. Nothing owed. Can you even imagine a game rules with such as those? Nothing dull and nothing rote.

Burnie

[Rance]

Letters did not often find Aremeda Follox. This one did. As her nursefellow tended her left arm, she wrote with her right hand; he dissolved, eventually, his duty done, and she was left with the warmth of the poppy crowding her brain and spine.

Burnie,

Consider me confounded by the need for your letter. I must warn you, I write neither long nor well: the penchant that some women have, to stay up nights and ruminate too long over a bit of parchment, is not mine. But if it is indulgence you seek (and it is indeed indulgence you seek), then I shall gladly indulge. I shall begin by agreeing to this point: I do quite like a game. Gambling, they say, addicts itself to our minds. Good that it should, or else I would find myself bored to the bone. It's a poor disease, really, to afflict itself upon the unfortunate man or woman without the purse to support it, but that is not really my concern.

It took me until now to remember, exactly, with whom I was writing, and now I do.

You are a strange man. A fool? No. I will not presume you one. There is this inexplicably poor habit ladies of power often express, and perhaps in your travels you have seen it at work: a woman of power — who has gathered such by the shedding of blood, by the spreading of her legs, by the sovereignty of her own entrepreneurship, or (and this is the worst) the passage of power from parent to daughter — must fill the space around her with reassurances of her power, and so she puffs up her chest and belittles every man she encounters. She considers them crude little boys; she tut-tuts them like a doting grandmother, and makes the presumption that they ought to bend their knee to her because she is a woman of power, and women of power are rare.

Such a woman sharpens the very knives that seek the small of her back.

I do not know why you write to me. Whether or not you realize it, there is a knife in your hand. I don't think that knife is meant for me, but there is one there regardless, even if you haven't yet realized it. You play no games, but you're thirsty enough for power, presence, and proof of your own importance that you'll write aimless letters to matrons in the night. I can see the knife all the way from over here. Can you?

Who will you use it on? Will you ever?

I was right, Mister Burnie: you came back, if not to the fighting pits in the Gruelmaster, then to the idae of them. Why else would you write to me? Write as you do of games and how oh-no-no you do not play them, your interest is clear enough in that you criticize the methods of my success. Will you be an asset to my continued good fortune? A hindrance to it? A challenge?

What is it that I can do for you, Mister Burnie?

[Glenn]

Meeda,

I thank you for indulging me. I placed you in a situation where you had nothing to gain from answering in one manner and nothing to lose from not. As such, I should not have expected you to do otherwise. I would never expect you to act outside of your own interest. Still, I didn't know, and now I do, and we're both better off for that. I offered you nothing but the opportunity to indulge me. As opportunities go, it was a scant one, even for you, who I think is very good at not letting any opportunity slip away. You seized it. Again, my thanks.

For one who claims not make a habit of writing, you do it well. For one who claims to find no enjoyment in it, well, it is not my place to contest that. Consider this a balancing of sorts. You saw me, if ever so briefly (and understandably unmemorably, for I am not much to see), a place of comfort and power to you. Now I see you in one of mine. I am glad to see you here, even if only once. I dare say you'd be glad to see me there at least once more. We all have some pride in what we've built, even if the structure is imaginary at best.

Speaking of imagination, while I applaud your rise to power, I fear that it may have damaged yours. I do not contest that upon their creations, knives were instruments of violence, of hunting, murder, and survival. Though you may not see it in your day to day occupation, we have advanced somewhat past those things as the entirety of our existence. My true indulgence, my deepest one, the one that may make you presume me a fool after all, is that I look forward to a world where the primary use of a knife may be as a tool and not a weapon.

When you look at me from over there, look at me in that light.

Glenn

[Rance]

This time, Aremeda Follox's hand was steadier and more compact.

Burnie,

Let me clarify that I am not in the business of private investment as a matter of imagination. I allow those who work with me to express their creativity as they must. To solve problems. To remedy issues. I, however, have no patience for it, for I have seen that those who express too greatly their "imagination" are the first to fall under the blades and hammers of others who see them as a threat.

I fit into a very specific niche here in Razasan. I satisfy my own needs, and the needs of the law, and the needs of the underground. I do not, as goes the saying, "make waves."

What I believe, though, is that it is unimaginative to consider everything in measurements of power. Must everything be boiled down to push and pull, or slice and parry? "Power" is an unfulfilling intangible to me; it does not, by its very nature, build loyalties out of nothing, nor does it place coin in the purses of women and men. Power cannot fill cups, nor can it determine futures, for it is an immeasurable and inexact value. Power is the beginning of a sentence: a clever opener, a hook to nab the fish between the gills. But the rest of that sentence is money, it is estate.

You strike as a man who is interested in power, or who is enthralled by it, or who is driven to be in the presence of it. You will find no blind presumption of power here, Burnie.

Is it true that you offer yourself up to me as a tool to be used?

What have I to gain through the use of you, Burnie?

What have you to gain through the use of me?

[Glenn]

Meeda,

I applaud your honesty. I think it all more fluid than that though. Money is power. It's the capitalization at the start of the sentence and the period at the end. The words in between are what matters.

I will be here, in Razasan, a time longer, not indefinitely. Eventually, I will no longer be an impediment for anyone here. In the meantime, however, what I offer you is very little: this letter and its two predecessors (you are welcome); one map, freely drawn, to or of anywhere of your choosing, within my adequate (but no more) abilities; my pleasant presence at least one more time at your place of business and a few modest bets and a shared drink to go along with that; and, so far as I can tell you are operating fairly and in good faith with one of your investments who is old enough to make her own mistakes, absolutely nothing else.

Considering that you want nothing from me, I'll assume you find this satisfactory.

Glenn