Let's call the whole thing off

Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Glenn » Thu Jul 12, 2018 12:24 am

"You shouldn't slight my affection." There was an element of poise to him now that had been woefully lacking for most of the last day. The raven certainly thought that had come out of the glamour changed. She did as well, to a degree, but he, feeling what he felt, thinking what he thought, knowing what he knew? He was less sure it was as simple as that. Now his eyes sparkled but the rest of him convalesced into something more focused by far. The blue made his usually dull features just that much more striking but the unkempt nature of his garb: the missing ribbon, the dust that she had not entirely removed, added a certain worn-in tint that matched the rest of him quite well.

It wasn't just certainty; it was Belief. Convincing her to feel the same wasn't the dynamic at play. He was already convinced. Now it was just a matter of contorting reality to what he already knew. The glamourie of man. His smile very much resonated with her shoulders. "I've been in places that were beyond my imagination. I know how that feels. I know how it feels to not have the very things that I require to function: light, language, the use of my facilities. There's no shame in that, not even in the carriage. The shame is mine for, last night, the lack of understanding was mine as well." Warmth exploded out from him, no matter how hard he tried to contain it. He moved a bit close. His eyes and his smile were in a tight competition for which could brighten the slightest while meaning the most. "This is what I do, Finn. I figure out what I don't understand, what scares me, troubles me, leaves me at a loss, and I try to understand it. Maybe I don't fully understand tears yet, but much of what we have wrought have rational and reasonable, scientific, underpinnings. I can help you understand them all and feel more secure with them. I can't fix iron but I can help you understand the process through which it is forged and how we make use of it."

That was common ground, or at least it was in his mind. The ghosts, ghouls, and monsters of the unknown he found lurking upon his arrival to Myrken were not so different from the cities and industry that mankind had created in their absence, not if you squinted and looked at it all askew, and no one was better at that than Glenn Burnie. His demeanor had been warm but not wild, and now it receded to some higher level of professionalism once more. "As for the rest, I respectfully feel that you are going about it backwards. First, you can't just start with the king in Razasan. There are endless layers of advisers around him. Whatever deal you might obtain would be unfavorable. Things are too calcified here. They're too used to wringing out every advantage. They also need less and would be more negatively impacted by change."

This was a dance all its own, all his own. It was very much what had been unveiled the night before, what she had helped to set loose upon the world once again. The affection was no less true. He cared. That was half the danger of it all. "Second," his feet were rooted. Occasionally he'd punctuate a point with a hand motion or another (such as making a fist as he mentioned their calcification), but there was no rocking or swaying or fidgeting and even little of such physical punctuation. It was all in his eyes, his tone, his words. "Myrken's ideal for the same reason. They don't have to offer mighty wonders or weapons. They don't have to receive dread magics. It's just the foundation, just the proof that there are things here worth seeing, that people have done good as well as ill with their ingenuity and craft. An arrangement will be easy. You'll likely have the advantage in the negotiation because they'll have no idea the worth of what they're giving you. Moreover, they have much more of a need. There'll be a level of access that you couldn't have here. As you said, there's a large portion of your advantage three months north, no?" Yes, the people were the people, but they were such for a reason. "They're superstitious but it's because they've encountered so much and because so much has tried to hurt them. They understand barter and opportunity though. They'd welcome someone trying to deal with them properly instead of," stealing their children, "trying to raise their late uncle as part of an undead horde."

All of that led to the real kicker, and here, he actually drew back a bit, showing if not deference then a subtle admittance of own ignorance (showing but not saying, because there were limits). "Starting small means that it'll be easier for you to ask for forgiveness instead of permission, right? You're not looking for a grand accord, not yet at least. You're just going to engage in some light trading between friendly parties. The idea is that you come back with something to show the other queens, the other clans, just enough to show them the worth of all of this, proof. By doing so, however," and he couldn't help himself. He stepped back in, a little bit of excitement entering his voice. It'd been so long since he had done any of this, "and to show them that you're the one with the edge now, with this advantage that they don't have. New technology, new goods, new ideas. You have the local knowledge, the cultural mastery, the connections. If they want a piece of it, then they have to agree to your terms. You'll be innocent about it, of course, just bringing it back to show so that broader deliberations can happen, but you'll have the game won from the start."

There it was then: three points for her to get what she wanted. Start small. Start in Myrken. Start without permission. He held his hands out to his side, palms up, exposing his core to her. If he was trying to backstab her, he was being particularly gracious about it.
Glenn
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 3218
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:00 am

Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Niabh » Thu Jul 12, 2018 2:59 pm

Heretofore she had consciously taken the position of trying never to admonish Glenn for showing an interest or expressing a true emotion, since he seemed to feel them so seldom that he deserved a bit of encouragement. At present he was having all sorts of feelings, but he seemed to be having them all at once, all out of order. It was an engaging, attractive development, but at present she wasn’t going to reward him by acknowledging it.

“This is a reminder of how it feels to have one’s affections slighted,” she replied dryly. “Memorize it now so you’ll recognize it if it ever comes up again.”

Here was the trouble. He was speaking her language, the language of stories. He was laying it all out as a story, simple, neat, and effective. It was the sort of bartering that was bred into her bones. One traded the valueless bauble for treasure; one convinced the tultharian that something beyond cost was worthless, shabby, no good for anything but the rubbish heap, and that they were tricking you into taking it off their hands. Just like that, only…honest. And all the more devious and undetectable for its honesty. A way for everyone to win a little. She could see it as he explained, see it the way he himself must envision it. Her face was illuminated, transfigured into something much younger than even Glenn could expect of her. It had been a long time since the young queen had known a bloodless victory. She was hungry for hope.

Then he stopped speaking. The holes in the fabric began to show. The light in her face faded. “No. It won’t work.”

He took a step back, and she bridged the gap between them.

“I’m sorry, but have you been to Myrken? I’ve come to suspect that anything that isn’t human eventually turns up at the Dagger not so much because it’s the only place they’re welcome but because it’s so close to the treeline that they can make a run for it if ever the tultharian should turn on them. Tultharian hang around the porch hoping to get a peek at a monster, like it’s some…oh, dash it all, I don’t know…” She made a roof-like gesture with her hands, fingers meshing like a jailhouse window. “Where people keep animals for looking at.”

“Menagerie,” the raven offered helpfully.

“Aye, that, good neighbor. They’re not superstitious. They’re nasty, hateful, mistrustful people who’ve been devastated once too often and they don’t want it to happen again. Mayhap that is to be expected, but I will not spend the next twenty years convincing a great weltering lump of sorry tultharian that I’m the nice monster just so they’ll be willing to barter their refuse without spitting in my face. I’ve seen how much that earns you. They call on my gentleman when they need a guide through the forest, but the moment someone reports a lamb slaughtered or a child missing, all eyes turn first to him. Poor wee N’vek who’s too timid to harm a fly had me lay glam on him so that he can walk about without that smothering cloak of his in the summertime and people won’t throw stones at him—and it’s worse with him, because they’re doing it because he’s harmless, because they can get away with it; they’re doing it for all the other monsters they weren’t able to beat back. That’s what breaking cover gets my kind in Myrken.”

Her eyes narrowed and her voice hardened. “You keep a King as a kitchen scullion. What chance would a queen have?”
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.
User avatar
Niabh
Member
 
Posts: 922
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2015 4:40 pm

Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Glenn » Fri Jul 13, 2018 12:17 am

One problem with Glenn Burnie is that yes, eventually he would stop speaking. The corollary to that, however, is that eventually, he would start speaking again. There had been one annoyed glance for the raven, for Glenn had been unaware he was even still in this conversation, but other than that, his eyes had been ever focused on Finn and her response.

He inhaled through his nose and, for the briefest of moments, allowed a slight lick of his top lip before he started anew. "Your chance is that you'll have me by your side." Brazen? Maybe, but he wasn't wasting a second there. "That is one difference but not the only one. You have full use of your facilities as well. Power, presence, and purity is not all. It's not even half, lacking the wherewithal to drive it." She could be indignant about it or she could be a queen. He, in this moment, had enough of his facilities not to say the last bit out loud.

"I have been to Myrken, yes." He could be indignant or he could be a leader. It worked both ways. "They've suffered. They've hardened. They've also never seen the likes of you. For this to work, it has to look like an even exchange. They haven't seen that. They've seen someone arrive with riches, offering them for almost nothing. That's a trick and a trap. It always is. They've seen someone arrive with nothing but power yet demanding all they had. That's a call to war. For them to see someone with meager but worthwhile offerings asking for meager but substantial goods in return? They'll recognize the difference. They can't not. It'll be so different from anything they've encountered." All of that was still fooling them to a degree, if only fooling them with the ordinary, with normalcy instead of horror. The problem here was that he cared and he hoped. He breathed and he lived once more. Though he was no longer indignant, he couldn't stop himself, not from this last extra bit. "If treated fairly, they can be better. If someone meets them on their level, they can be better. They accept all sorts of man in a way most places do not. With good faith and results, that bridge can be widened."

That was all though. Back to the practicality, even if it took an odd form. She was closer again but he did not reach out to her save with his gaze. "And anyway, you'll have me. Give me a few months, at most, to finish up things here." Her examples were specific. The nice monster, then? Twenty years? "It won't take twenty years. None of them have twenty years either. Twenty years to us could be a whole lifetime, half a lifetime. You know what just ten years was to me." That wasn't convincing though and he well knew it. "One year. Once I arrive. One year from then to try Myrken. If you've not convinced enough by then, if there's nothing to show, move on to somewhere else, a different province. Derry, Thessilane. Heath. Overseas even. If nothing else, you'll have a better sense of what works." He swallowed and a hint of defiance burst forth from that stare. It still wasn't enough. Not yet. One last enticement then to make it all worth the risk of hope, failure, and danger. "If we cannot make headway in one year, you'll try somewhere else and I'll come with you."
Glenn
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 3218
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:00 am

Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Niabh » Fri Jul 13, 2018 3:16 pm

“Glenn,” she said, in a tone that was all the crueler for the kindness she tried to lend it, “your reputation is shite. Your only advantage is that you’re human and they know you’re human. If that’s all the leverage required then I can look like a human all day long if need be.”

She began to pace, long loping strides with chin tucked down in thought, her hands clasped at the small of her back. The green skirts rippled like the sea in the wake of a small boat. It was a calculated pose, a calculated pause, while she gathered together enough threads to pull together a plan.

First question, most important: why was she contemplating? Was it something she was truly considering, or was it another game—drag him out long enough until he finally begged off? He wouldn’t give up so easily and neither would she. He could afford a game and she couldn’t, not really, but let’s entertain it. First and foremost, Ainrid would have to be consulted. Then, gods spare her, her father. He would object on principle and she could go in prepared to ignore him, as she did on most things, but the choice there was either tell him or let him find out. But…and here she slowed briefly, shaking her head. But what on earth was to be gained? What was there here that they lacked at home? She had become so accustomed to condemning the whole wretched lot of it as ugly and backwards and an affront to all dignity that she had never even looked for anything she wanted. She smoothed her hand down the front of her dress again, uncomfortable.

Figure that out when it came. There was only so long one could hold a pose before it started looking like the stall it was.

She whipped around suddenly and came gliding back along the same path. “Counteroffer: an you think this is such a good idea, you lay me a groundwork. Bestir your narrow arse and rattle some tultharian trees and let them know I’m coming. Tell them that if I’m swindled, or if I come to harm over this, then there is going to be a serious. diplomatic. incident.

Which meant that she would have to arrange for one. The logical solution was to drag Father into this affair, but that might be too much seriousness even for Myrken. Nevertheless, she shot ahead as if she had already prepared for this, as if there really was a pile of hay beneath her narrow rope.

“Item Two: find me a woman liaison. Someone who isn’t cowed, someone who knows the law, someone who knows how to get things done around here. Someone who would accept the offer voluntarily—not someone whose arm you have to twist or for whom you’d have to call in favors. And preferably one without children. I’d prefer to deal with women all down the line but I don’t imagine there’s any hope for that. I am already dreading the moment I must present myself to that loathsome Lord Steward and announce ‘hallo, I am the Queen of Cnoch-na-Niall and I shall be establishing trade in Myrken.’ Particularly since I threatened to cut the man’s nose off if he ever called me ‘dear’ again.”

Another smooth turn, pacing off again, speaking while she went. “Item Three: I want a truce.” Her jaw hardened once more as her chin lifted an imperceptible fraction, just enough to change her expression of anger to one of inflexible authority. “Between Myrken and her monsters. I’m not demanding they stand down and let themselves be overrun should anything actively malignant attack them, but they have outsiders who have lived amongst them for years. I want the same protections for these others that you give your own people. To be honest, I don’t think even that will be sufficient. Some of these live by a different set of rules than do the tultharian, and some of them wouldn’t accept even if you offered it. But it would be a start. Unlike some, I don’t give a toss about changing mortal minds or hearts. That can be your job, an you can find the stones for it. Queens change laws.

“And one thing more. A question.” She paused in her pacing, looking back up to him, her expression suddenly fragile and curious. “Who are you doing this for, Sionnach? For Myrken, for me, or for yourself?”
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.
User avatar
Niabh
Member
 
Posts: 922
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2015 4:40 pm

Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Glenn » Sat Jul 14, 2018 3:19 am

She paced. She preened royal. She finally looked at him with all of her vulnerabilities.

This was not the Glenn Burnie of the previous night. Oh, things had changed. That was undeniable, but when he wanted it, control was still to be found. Throughout all of this, his kept steady eyes upon her, wore stillness far more naturally than that blue coat. In the face of her words, that was perhaps a mercy.

When he finally spoke, his voice was soft and measured. "So far as questions to end a negotiation with, that is unorthodox, I suppose, but it is important. You're right. If I am doing this purely for Myrken, then I would agree to your terms only if I thought the benefit to Myrken would be worth it. If I was doing it primarily for myself, I'd agree to your terms so far as they do not hinder whatever I seek to gain, Mykren be damned. The problem, Finn, is that if I'm doing it for you, you've no leverage over me."

She had stepped closer to him and now he'd do the same, his nose almost to hers (give or take at least a few inches of height of course). "I do not want you to destroy my people. This is a path that might avoid an inevitable war. We both know how that ends. Your weapon, if it is truly strong enough to destroy not just all the people in this city but in a hundred such cities and all the towns and hovels in between, would doom not just my people but yours as well. We've established that." She asked her question. Fine. That was a liberty. So was this. He would reach out gently and place a hand upon her cheek, looking her in the eyes with something of a harsh but earnest regard. "You've a taste of regret. Imagine it two hundred years from now when you are without power, for you've given the High Queen all she wanted, without hope, with only the knowledge that you might have found a different path but failed because you put principle and pride over pragmatism."

Had she not bitten his hand off entirely by then, he'd run it down that cheek, to her chin, where he would tap once and withdraw both it and a step. "You. Primarily you. Some Myrken, some me, but almost primarily you. I'm sorry." He did not look sorry, for whatever he might be sorry about. Instead, he drove forward into business. "As such, intention matters. I would like to engage your terms.

"As for the first? Absolutely not. Whoever I am doing this for, I am not your herald. You'll arrive first. Whether you do something then or not is up to you. When I arrive behind you, we'll do this together as partners and friends. Sometimes that may mean attacking the problem from different angles at the same time," he held out a fist and cupped a palm over it with alacrity, perhaps imagining what Myrken might think if he came in tied at the hip with another woman with mystical abilities, "but we'll do it as equals, if not in position (at least at first) then in attitude." For a long second, he'd shut his eyes, even as he continued. "You're not going to lead with fear and threats and retribution. If that's what you think will work, then this is doomed from the beginning. In truth it has to be something close to an equal exchange, but both sides have to feel like they're getting the better of this." He opened them again, a bit of weariness obvious within. "That means protecting your dignity but that means protecting theirs as well. It's about all they have."

Then there was the second and he couldn't help but frown a bit there. "In truth, Finn, I did more than anyone along those lines. I added women to the Council, and I received my share of grief for that, certainly. In all my travels, everywhere I've been on this continent and others, I've only ever once come across a society run by women. If you'd like to travel underground and compliment Sarayn on her professional handiwork, be my guest, but I doubt that'll solve your problem." She had been a bit too open about that, perhaps. He recovered quickly though. Weariness turned to exasperation. "If I gain some influence once again, and you woefully underrate my ability to do so (they accepted back Bromn as governor and he was a fop and fool), I can try to find someone but you can't expect this world to be something it's not just to make you more comfortable. You don't have that luxury. Your people don't either." That he had just learned what he did about the very best (the only?) candidate didn't help matters at all. "Oh, Finn, I won't have you negotiate with Aloisius regardless, even if he'd be an easy mark for this. We'll find some other way than that."

"As for the third," whatever fondness might have been in there as he tried to shield her from the current wretched being of authority faded as she escalated things further. "If you bring enough of worth to the table in your negotiation, then I will not at all stand in the way of what you asked. Quite the opposite. It'll mean a higher price, I'm sure, and might endanger the whole exercise, but maybe there's no exercise without it. Those are your terms to negotiate. Maybe you'll be negotiating them with me, maybe not, but that comes at the end of this, not the beginning."

His extended his palms out upwards, though close to his body, and shook them a few times as if he was jiggling sacks of truth. "Finn, those terms? You'll have a better shot at them in Myrken than almost anywhere else. People's hearts might be more calcified there but the seat of power is not. The need is greater. People are more used to the outlandish. All of the dangers of the place have also created opportunities for this in specific." She had whittled away some of his resolve for her terms, as she had by forcing him to admit why he had suggested this path. Had he been arguing primarily for himself or for Myrken, it might have been different. Still, his gaze was nothing but honest and save for the brief shutting of eyes, had never once left her. "I think this is the best path or else I wouldn't have suggested it, but it is not an easy one. No path is easy except for the path to ruin, destroying us right here and right now before we say another word."
Glenn
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 3218
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:00 am

Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Niabh » Sun Jul 15, 2018 12:16 pm

“Nonsense,” she said, bright and contemptuous, with a fond smile for his seriousness. “It is not an unorthodox question. It’s the only question that matters. If you were doing it for Myrken, if you truly believe that this could be something that would benefit it or heal it, that would make sense, as you claim to love it and would see it bettered. I’d not be opposed to helping you there—and if it did my people some good in the bargain, or let those who lived there live with more dignity, all the better. If you were doing it for yourself, to feel important or potent or a part of things again, that would at least be honest; I’d not be opposed to helping that, either. But if you’re doing it for me, then we are back to the old sad song of you offering me things I did not ask for and telling me they’re for my own good and that is thoroughly annoying. The problem,” and she rolled out the word like a velvet carpet, long and luxuriant, “is that you’re proposing a solution to a problem that didn’t exist before you invented it, then trying to convince me that it’s the real problem, when we both know that it isn’t. If that isn’t a man who’s desperate for leverage, I don’t know what is.”

She was still getting used to this new lack of reserve, as if he’d only just discovered he had hands, though she had difficulty interpreting it. Nevertheless she was not a woman to deny herself small sensual pleasures. Her eyelids sank shut when the hand slid down her jaw, and she sighed a bit when he took it away.

“Ah, Sionnach,” she breathed, a little wistfully, “We’re not negotiating. I’m setting conditions.”

And she smiled sweetly, almost apologetically, down at him.

“From where I’m standing, it’s your people who can’t afford their comfort. There’s a woman who would who would see them vanquished. There’s another who would rather that not happen. Between those two lies a pack of very loud, quarrelsome, hard-headed, self-interested women who will have to be wooed to one side or the other. I don’t give a toss what status you grant your own women—trade them amongst yourselves like broodmares, for all of me—but if you bargain with the Tuatha, you bargain with women. I believe a clever, well-spoken, mannerly tultharian woman capable of explaining the law would do a great deal to overcoming some initial reservations about establishing trade. But bear in mind always that ‘establishing trade’ is but the euphemism we two are using to very politely gloss over the fact that what you’re really trying to do here is convince all those women to take an interest in the continued existence of your species.”

The lightness dropped out of her voice. She looked at him sharply, directly. “But the real point be this: you don’t know what’s best for my people. I do. When I ask for something, I am not doing it to be difficult, or to start an argument. I’ll accept any advice you would offer for dealing your own folk, but not for mine. And if that is going to be a point of contention, then we might as well call the whole thing off now and spare ourselves a headache.”
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.
User avatar
Niabh
Member
 
Posts: 922
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2015 4:40 pm

Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Glenn » Sun Jul 15, 2018 3:27 pm

When he smiled, it was not bright, nor was it contemptuous. It came with a shake of his head. It came, also, with a grasp and a squeeze of her hand. "Finn, this isn't then. It's morning now, after a very long night. I can see why you'd think otherwise. You're wrong." He brought that hand up to his lips and kissed her knuckles, as one might a proper lady, if not necessarily a queen. He looked up past them straight to her eyes. Then, after a moment of letting it all linger, he was off again, walking, gaze forward. He would let her walk with him if she so desired.

He would continue to speak. So moving, if she tried to stop him, he might pick up his speed. If she stopped entirely, he'd keep walking and talking, for he'd know she could hear him. "Your problems, as I see them. Your people are dying out. You're a queen in name but not in regard by your own people. Some of this is your age. Some of this is your father. Some of this is your past history of naivete, so shaped by the other two but held against you nonetheless. Your high queen is mad. Her plan is mad. You stand between her and it, which is a story I would hear. You've come to realize that her plan would almost certainly doom your people as opposed to what she would like it to do." There was nothing bitter in his tone, nothing hurt. This was business and despite her claims, very much his sort of business. "Unfortunately, you do not have a plan of your own. You have goals: return home, gain autonomy and respect, overthrow the high queen, save your people. Noble goals, rationalized baby snatching aside. You have broad ideas, which change frequently with your moods, but no plan. You'd approach the king in Razasan and ask for what? So on and so forth. I did not create your problems, though maybe, through my regard for myself and through my regard for Myrken, I suggested to you an overly complex plan in solving them. It's still a damn sight better than anything you've floated my way so far so I'm only a little sorry."

All the while, the smile, sad as it was, never faded. Fondness never left his voice, yet still, given the level of detachment, the fact he was managing these words at all, maybe she could imagine what a soulless Glenn Burnie might have been like. "You offered me not conditions, but constraints. In all points but one, I pushed back against your constraints with constraints of my own. If anything is irreconcilable, it is not whether or not I advise you on your own people. I can, and if you didn't need it, you'd be High Queen by now, not in a state actually a bit more embarrassing than exile, or at least you'd have a plan. What may be irreconcilable is the formalities of your people, even with the advantages of trade you'd bring to the table that I suggested, and the current state of Myrken."

Six years ago, before she went mad, Rhaena would have been ideal. Governor's Lady, trader, tall like Finn (had she said it was untypical for her people? He couldn't remember). The thought did not slow him, not a whit, not did it speed up his gait. "If Myrken is simply unsuitable, that does not mean the idea is poor. If you wished to pick a difference province, I'd help to prepare you, to get you information you need. If you wished to try somewhere more matriarchal, and such a place must exist, I suppose, some island somewhere, I will draw you a map there with my own hand." But he would not go with her, not unless she had agreed to his deal, and now that it was clear he had suggested it for her sake as much as anything else, he would not promise the impossible by pushing past both of their constraints.

"From where I am walking, however, your people need my people, unless you have any other thoughts on how to save you and yours? Past what I might be able to offer them, when it comes to this scenario, my people primarily need to be left alone. It doesn't mean what my people have to offer and what your people have to offer one another might not help both in an exchange. Finn," then, finally, a hint of strain entered his voice. "Do not mistake my affection for you and my honest and deep desire to see the end of this in peace, mutual survival and maybe even prosperity, and not fire and iron and blood as me and my people begging you and yours not to use your dread magic against us. We die, you die."

He'd roll his shoulder into a little shrug. "Or not. Maybe I'm wrong, but destroying a whole race that you may well need is a hell of a thing to risk everything on when you can't even see the benefit except for on grounds of morale. I'd exhaust every other choice first, every bit of negotiation first." Then came the smallest imaginable of sighs as he straightened back up. "Differences are differences though, and can be worked over letters with you being comfortable as you can be in our lands as well as they can be here. Let's get you your things. I still intend to be just a few months behind you. We can hash out what real possibilities might exist in the meantime."
Glenn
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 3218
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:00 am

Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Niabh » Mon Jul 16, 2018 10:23 am

“Dear me, but you do enjoy telling people they’re wrong, don’t you? I begin to wonder if you ever found anyone right enough to suit you.” She took back her hand, rolled her knuckles between her fingers, and watched him, amused, as he started off without her. Hand-kissing was one of those gestures to which she had been subjected but had never gotten a proper explanation for.

Even at his pace, she could keep up with him while moving at an easy stroll, though she did have to release her hands from behind her back to keep her stride. Her body made no noise of its own, not her feet upon the pavement, not even her breathing. Only the rustle of skirts.

“The High Queen’s mad, aye. Her plan is quite sensible, though.” Her hand strayed to her throat and rubbed the knob of her collarbone, while she smiled, a bit uncomfortably, at the idea of standing between the queen and her goals. “By her measure, what matters it if we die out back home or die out here? At least if we die here we can spread out and do it in comfort.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she measured if that had any impact on his momentum. It didn’t appear to him—nothing did, when he was talking at a clip—and she sighed reluctantly and let her hand fall away from her throat.

“I don’t particularly want anyone to die either.” Why it felt like such a difficult admission, she couldn’t say. Surely that was the most reasonable thing not to want—the bare minimum expectation. “Not even Herself, really. We’re not supposed to want that. What you’re missing,” she added in a clipped, wry aside, “the full effect, as it were, is that an we were back home, whenever I mentioned Herself, I’d fold my hands—” and she did so, both hands with funereal somberness over her heart “—and say ‘may she never die.’” She shrugged one shoulder and dropped her hands quickly. “Save that we don’t say it anymore. Well. Some still do. I used to. I can’t bring myself to do it anymore, but I still feel odd, every time. As if she might hear me not saying it.”

She was wandering away from the subject, as well as drifting slowly apart from Glenn. Still at his side, but armlength. If it wasn’t for the spiky iron rail almost at her elbow, she might have drifted still further. Instead she hugged her arms across her chest. “Still. We have had enough dying, and it solves nothing. The lines push and pull, back and forth, and there’s always just enough dying to keep things stable, never enough to change anything.” She fiddled gently with her collarbone again, the very spot where her torc should rest, a handspan above the green gown’s décolletage.

“I have plans. We have plans. I’m not supposed to speak of them. Not here. Not with anyone. The last plan was this plan—just getting me out of the way long enough to make her stop coming after me. And it worked. We weren’t certain it would. It’s come to where we near dread planning. If they fail or if she guessed them before we can begin…we only ever have one chance.” Finally she looked back up at him. “My interest in your king was purely martial. To buy of him hirelings, if I could, or arms if I could not. If I can insure an end to this war, if we could be rid of the High Queen for good and all, there would be but one side for yours to deal with: mine. And I am a bit warmer toward the idea of working with your folk than Herself ever would be.”

Her gaze flicked away again, embarrassed, back to the walk. “But that plan seemed much more likely before I knew how many of you there are. I thought…oh, I scarce recall now what I did think. I thought it would be like when people meet me. We don’t have all this great grand web of advisors and audiences and whatnot. I thought I might could sweep in and dazzle him and convince him I was doing him a good turn by warning him about some unknown enemy who wished his people ill. That would certainly make my ears stand up, an one of you should come to me. But there’s too many of you. There’s no reason for you to want to help us. Not when it would be just as easy to solve the problem by coming in and conquering the lot of us and taking whatever you wanted anyway. There are just…so many of you now.”

It made her chest ache to talk about these things with him. It wasn’t her fault she hadn’t known. None of them knew. Or mayhap the High Queen alone had known; maybe that was the reason she had considered wiping them out rather than trying to face them all. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad plan, at that. Maybe it didn’t even have to be all of them. Every other one, or two in every three. Spare the children only. There must be—

And she cut that line of thought short as if snipping it with shears.

A creature of infinite patience, who had seen enough complex negotiation go on in front of him to know when to keep his beak shut, the raven skimmed along above and slightly ahead of them, in a bevy of dips and pauses. He lighted on a wide windowsill two floors above long enough to see the two shapes pass beneath him, then moved ahead to linger again, more leading than following. The instinct that guided him to a message’s recipient also allowed him to predict a pathway, at least in part. He could have skipped it entirely and simply waited on Glenn’s doorstep, but now he felt someone should be keeping an eye on them. Not him, necessarily, but someone.

In one of the raven’s lower swoops before he mounted again, Fionn caught a brief flash of the colors beneath his wings and pressed her lips into a tight smile that was both sweet and painful: sweetness to have that little sliver of familiarity, tying her back to what she was, and sadness that a raven’s wing was all she really had of it.

“I have wondered, betimes,” she said at last to Glenn, “what you would make of the other ravens. I don’t know if you’d befriend them all. I doubt if any of them would befriend you; they are always so sober when they have business. They’re really not meant to speak unless they’re bidden. But this one’s in strange circumstances. I suppose one adapts.”

She smiled down at the sidewalk. “You are still but one man,” she said lightly, “and Myrken is still one step above a bog."
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.
User avatar
Niabh
Member
 
Posts: 922
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2015 4:40 pm

Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Glenn » Tue Jul 17, 2018 12:39 am

There was no response to her quip about who he might or might not have found right enough. She could take that as a sign he was properly admonished if she wanted, but it would probably be more for her sake than that of the truth. He did respond to how sensible or not the high queen's plan might be, even if he did not slow. "You do not doom your own people just so that they may be more comfortable, not when there are other possibilities untested. You only do that when you've tried everything and failed, and then maybe not at so bloody a cost. Even on pragmatic grounds, you don't, just in case there's a judgment based afterlife out there somewhere." If that was a joke, it was a morbid one. Then, finally, just to make all of this even less productive: "I'd not kiss her hand. Never one who either expects it as matter-of-course or wants it too badly," for he had no idea that such symbolic gestures were actually lost upon her.

"You could hire men or purchase arms from someone who is not a king." That was the sound of someone not terribly impressed by her plan, or lack there of. Then, he couldn't help to add with a smile that she might be able to hear instead of see. "I'm fairly certain that if I repeat the fairly obvious notion that you do not, in fact, have a plan, you'll eventually tell me all of your plans. It's worked well for me so far, and in this case, I think what works well for me works well for you."

There were lines one did not cross and things one could not bear. This was an easy truce between them, but it was predicated on the all or nothing nature of her weapon. There was a security, one that he was potentially inflating in his own mind and hers, in the threat of mutual destruction. To kill humanity would be to kill her own people as well. If he knew what she was thinking, there might well be a few very pointed questions punctuated by a pointed blade twisting in her back. Or there might not be. Currently, his lines were blurry at best, no more so than with her.

The Raven was the definition of neutral ground (either that or he was a contested territory). "We'd be far worse off if not for him. I doubt we'd be here together at all. I hope you consider yourself fortunate that you have him with you and not another. I am."

One man and one step above a bog. His smile had lingered for a while now. He did not need to refresh it here. "And you're one queen, who may or may not have a plan, overawed by the sheer horde of humanity you've been thrust into. You'd think that you'd find one man a relief. You can work with one man, isolated from the rest, a human and not humanity. Anyway, if you were to have but one man, I'm not so a bad choice. And in Myrken, there is no grand web of advisers. There's a level of access there you won't find so easily elsewhere. There's also reason and need, experience with such threats but no means to band together to overrun you." He did not outright call her a beggar queen, but then he didn't have to. She had expressed the notion well enough herself.
Glenn
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 3218
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:00 am

Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Niabh » Tue Jul 17, 2018 4:23 am

“I could likewise point out that as long as you’re convinced I have no plans, you’ll go on spilling every last bit of strategy that happens to cross your mind in order to try to woo me to one or the other,” she replied coolly, “but finagling for leverage with someone who is meant to be an ally shows a most disrespectful lack of trust.”

And with that, she simply slipped around him and spend ahead with long, swinging strides, following the raven. A fat lump of despair and frustration swelled in her chest, threatening to burst and make her lose her temper entirely. All of this felt more and more like some marketplace huckster’s pitch for the virtues of Glenn Burnie and his beloved Myrken, less like anything she actually cared about. Be damned if she couldn’t do better for herself. The raven would be a better and less dangerous diplomat—at least people might find a talking bird charming, and she would never have to worry that his interests ran counter to her own. An it came down to it, she could walk right into their Court, laying down guiles and glamour on everyone who crossed her path, until she got what she wanted.

Her teeth gritted at the thought. Why didn’t she? It would be so much simpler. These were her people at stake. Who cared about the rusting tultharian? They would be fine. They already had everything; all she wanted was the one little patch that was hers.
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.
User avatar
Niabh
Member
 
Posts: 922
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2015 4:40 pm

Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Glenn » Tue Jul 17, 2018 5:55 am

There were differences between last night and this afternoon. For one, he was much more prone to energetic bursts the night before. Maybe he did lay down once today, but that was a calculated effort, or if she asked him, he'd claim it as such. Otherwise, there was much more dancing and laughing then. Now, though, he did laugh, and it wasn't derisive in the least, even if it was a bit exasperated. "That's what you're going to get upset about?"

Unquestionably, her legs were longer than his. Unquestionably, given the shape he was in (hidden as it was), he could keep up with her. Staying a step before her, walking backwards, as she charged forward, all without crashing feet over head? That was a bit trickier. Still, he attempted it.

"As of now, you're a friend. Not yet an ally, remember?" There was a logical limit to how long this might last. Burnie had the spacial mind of a mapmaker and had certainly gotten his bearings before engaging in this wild exercise, but there was a limit to all of that. She was moving too fast. "You've not been woo'd. Anyway, if I didn't trust you, I wouldn't be trying to woo you in the first place. Remember the severity of what you've told me." He'd flash her a last smile, though, it was just a bit fatigued. He had gotten rest but it had still been a hard night. Then he whipped about. There were still at least ten steps before he would have crashed into a bucket of something unpleasant looking. He'd been conservative.

Thus turned, he'd fall in beside her. "I told you, Finn. If you want to try Myrken, I'll help you in a few months time, with my initial terms still valid for at least the next few minutes, more the fool I. If you want to try somewhere else, I'll still help you, albeit from afar. Maps and information and advice if you want it. If you don't want to try at all, then I'll assume time is on our side and we'll continue writing." He'd advance towards her forcing a light, disruptive brushing of his shoulder into hers (accounting slightly for the height difference). "Your problem is real. I'm offering to help. Maybe it's to fill some wretched hole inside of me with purpose, as if the impossible betterment of my own people is not enough. Maybe it's to save my people from yours. Maybe it's because I think your heart is a wondrous thing and because it's shared its warmth with my own. Maybe it's all that and more, but." But here was where he was going to tell her why she needed help, again, as if that would make a difference. "No buts. Let's just leave it there."
Glenn
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 3218
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:00 am

Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Niabh » Tue Jul 17, 2018 7:34 am

She spied the slop-bucket from afar and purposefully both sped up and subtly shifted course, hoping to shepherd him straight into it. Just as the target drew near enough that collision seemed assured, and just as she hooked an incisor on her inner lip to keep from smiling and tipping him off, he whipped around on his own and the prank was lost.

Only then—because he would go on trying to walk backwards until he really did crash into something and because he was going to talk at her regardless and because he still had her satchel and the alternative meant breaking into his house—did she come to a halt. A very petulant halt, back slouched, one hip cocked, arms folded across her chest. From high above, the raven let out a small baffled squawk that echoed the question: what’s the hold-up now?

“Aye, that’s what I’ve chosen to get upset about. I only told you about all that business with the High Queen yesternight because I trusted you. I felt wrong keeping it from you. I thought it was something that you…I don’t know, that you needed to know, or that you would want to know, or that at least that you would know I wasn’t the sort of person who would keep something like that from you.” She was starting to feel defeated, which was something she wasn’t used to, and feelings with which she was not familiar only made her default to feeling cross.

He nudged her and she viciously jabbed an elbow back at him, then swung around toward him, glaring.

“I came here to give you back your name. I did not have to, and I did not want to, but I did.” Spoken with a faint note of almost childish pride, as if she expected a pat on the head or a biscuit for it. “Because it was something you needed and you didn’t even realize how badly you needed it, else you would never have given it away to begin with. You were fractured. You are fractured yet. And being without your name would have made it all the worse in time. You did it because you are stupid and stubborn and will not heed the rules even someone cares for you and begs you against it. I am quite well with you doing stupid, stubborn things on your own, if that is what suits you, but when you propose them on my people and will not even heed a word to the contrary—no. If you step over me here at the start, you’ll step over me later when I need you. You’ve proven that a half-dozen times. We are friends, Sionnach, but in this you are a liability I cannot afford.”

She wheeled back and started on again. “Here’s my proposal. You take this year and resolve your business. Reconnect with your own folk again. Make me a detailed plan of what all this entails, because I am going to have to explain to a whole island of people exactly what ‘commerce’ is. Meanwhile I’ll break your proposal to my bard. She can break it to Father, which is going to be another drawn-out battle of wills and be grateful you won’t have to deal with that part. There’ll be logistical matters to work out. And everything is going to depend on how things are going back home. If I get word that they’re in such a state that they can’t afford one more complication, or if may the gods forfend something terrible happen and we lose—”

And that thought, finally, stole the wind out of her. Just shy of his doorstep, she stopped, setting her hand upon a stone rail, and closed her eyes, voice still coming tight and sharp. “Well. That part’s self-evident. You can’t trade with people who aren’t there.”

And the stubborn, ugly burl in her was not that such a thing might happen at all, but that if it did, she wanted to be there for it.

Her head whipped back, eyes raking over him. He was forcing himself along at this point, and she should have noticed sooner. What pity she might have had for him was nearly drowned by her own frustration and exhaustion. She chose to blame it on the city—the heat, the noise, and the stench—rather than anything between them. It was as much generosity as she was capable of.
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.
User avatar
Niabh
Member
 
Posts: 922
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2015 4:40 pm

Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Glenn » Tue Jul 17, 2018 1:44 pm

"Okay, Finn." She had stopped, so he had stopped. She was cross and he was certainly not. He had been overwrought at times after receiving her letters; the raven had said as much. One of her first letters had been a trick of a 'curse,' and it had all but consumed him. Now there was much more of an ease to his movement. His past was still his past. His loss was still his loss, but he was no longer trudging through air that was thick and solid. At least he could move freely, even if the person moving had to live with all he had done and all he still happened to be. "I think, though, that I've lived up to your trust, in as, after you telling me that you and, if I'm not mistaken, you alone have the knowledge of this weapon, I've not stabbed you in a back and left you in a ditch to save my people?"

That was about when he'd playfully nudge and she didn't take that well at all. Instead, she'd go into how she returned his name, how he was fractured, how, ah. The smile faded. "That's fair. Mostly right. You can't afford me being a liability." He rubbed at his temples with one hand, palm covering his face for a moment. It wasn't exactly what she said, but most of the spirit was there.

She started on and he quietly fell in beside her as she listed her terms. "A year's too long," he contested. "A few months here, then to Myrken. It'll be a couple of months more to deal with business there and then you can decide if I'm going to be a liability or not." The choice would be hers. It was Burnie himself who spoke so much of lapses (though not over the last day, not really). He seemed to be respecting her point now. "In half a year, you'll have some sense of whether it'll work from your side, we'll have some sense of whether it'll work in Myrken, and I guess we'll have some sense if I'm an appropriate choice to be any part of it at all."

He didn't know and he couldn't deny it. He wasn't entirely sure how he'd be in a few days, though he certainly had some assumptions given how he was feeling now. "Come on." He forced one more thing, a smile for her. "Shall we head in and get your things?"
Glenn
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 3218
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:00 am

Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Niabh » Tue Jul 17, 2018 3:42 pm

“That is not the same thing and you know it. If you struck me dead, you’d do it knowing that I was never any danger to you or yours.” She maintained her stony expression for a moment longer before a crack seemed to appear at the back of one eye, a slip of moonlight through a black pool of cloud. With careless adolescence, she acknowledged it by dismissing it, a shrug and a half-turn aside to find where the raven was: propped on the roof like a wind-vane. “I hope you know that, anyway. I’d be a fool even to tell you if I meant to do you ill.”

She briefly clasped her wrist, rubbing it, pinning it against her hipbone while watching, calm and detached, as his smile faded away. There. Finally something had gotten through to him. That one word, liability, like violation, became a poisoned dart. He couldn’t contradict her. It was far less satisfying than she thought. “You need time,” she said quietly. “If this…whatever it may be, if it is a good thing for you, if it helps you to move forward, if it changes anything…for your own sake, I hope that it is permanent. Right now it still feels fragile. Were this six months ago, the answer would still be nay and nay again, but now…”

She rubbed her wrist all the harder, realizing she was going to be embarrassed after she said it, realizing she could say nothing else. “Sionnach, I don’t know if you’ve fully realized it yet but you’ve…blossomed. Like a wee spring bud unfolded. You’re opening back to the world, much more than you have been, save for in your lapses, and I do not believe you could quite control those. But now you have been in control of it. Mostly. Control’s important for you. But it’s been a long time. If this is permanent, you’re going to have to get used to it again. Like being weak after being sick abed, and all the strength goes out of your legs. But you were strong enough before. You could be again. Maybe after that’s happened…things will be different between us. Until then, I still need advice. You’re really the only one I have here that I trust for that.”

There, that was out. She couldn’t say she exactly felt better for it but it was out. She let out a long shaky breath, and a small smile. “So…six moons, mayhap?” Her voice curled up at the suggestion, cajoling, teasing. “The usual two seasons? So far that tends to be about how long it takes us to recover from the last time. Perhaps we should start a tradition.”

When he smiled, she finally gave up and released the lock on her arm, letting it moved toward him and rest a moment, light as a butterfly, on his arm. “Aye. Let’s go in. I’ll explain this…thing to you.”

She stood aside from the door and waited for him, cast back into her original role as guest: wilted dress, frizzy hair slowly escaping the edges of its coiled braid, the whole mess. Fortunately—or infuriatingly—what might have been messiness in any other woman managed to be merely dishabille when it came to fairy queens.
Anything can be magic if you're gullible enough.
User avatar
Niabh
Member
 
Posts: 922
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2015 4:40 pm

Re: Let's call the whole thing off

Postby Glenn » Wed Jul 18, 2018 1:27 am

"To be fair," and he hadn't been entirely serious, but then he hadn't been entirely not serious either. There was only so much levity one could bring when it came to murder or genocide, "the way you presented it, and we haven't gotten into specifics certainly, and I wasn't quite myself last night," which was an understatement further compounded by the fact he may not quite be himself today either, "the means might die with you." Of course, if she could find it, someone else could be sent to find it too. "Anyway, we've both likely done foolish things recently. I do both appreciate and share the trust, however. I think I can say that without any dramatic gestures," other than pointing out as a strong positive that he hadn't killed her yet.

Regardless, it was not long before she found a definite chink in his armor. He bit his tongue, though not literally, about the means that allowed this fragile blossoming, whatever it may be, to actually occur. She was right. Control was important and to cede something so meaningful to her magics was just a bit too distasteful for him, even if it meant scoring a point in whatever game they were ever playing. He did cede the pace and direction of the conversation, however. "I don't disagree." It was fair. She was mostly right. He didn't disagree. That phrasing was, perhaps, the very best he could do. "I'm not sure what tomorrow will be like yet. You'll need allies. More than just advice." Unspoken there was the question of just what she had been doing for the last, what, seven years? She was not human. Time did flow differently for her. Some of it was just coping with what she had discovered. He understood all that, but it only increased his growing (if still patronizing) need to do something to help her. "Reliable ones though. On both counts."

Six months. This had been a more gradual change than it might have seemed, though she recognized that as well in her own way. "I'll probably be in Myrken before that and you can examine me yourself. We'll both make progress in the meantime." She had his arm now, and he did not shy from her. Instead, he opened the door and all but pulled her in with him. "Come in. My only regret is that I didn't have time to go through all your things in the night." That was probably a joke but again, it was getting harder and harder to tell.
Glenn
Co-Founder
 
Posts: 3218
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2007 4:00 am

PreviousNext

Return to Other



Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest

cron