Fortune, ever-treacherous.

Fortune, ever-treacherous.

Postby Carnath-Emory » Fri Feb 21, 2003 6:39 pm

Death and taxes, they say, are the two eternal constants. She might offer another one for the consideration of 'they': mud. It is thick beneath her boots, threatening to claim them should she choose her footing poorly.

There has been a great deal of poor footing, this last week.

"I shall make short order of this. Tell me what you know."

Indeed, it has been a series of disasters, and too many of them caused by her own hand; a woman who has spent her life shunning ambition and excitement with equal determination has been a fool. Has made a grasp for the first, been greeted with an excess of the second and --

"Let's weigh our options, shall we?"

The recollection of his voice, by turns obsequious and threatening, weighs heavy on her mind. Not all of the week's cataclysms had been averted; the most pressing had found its peak this very night, in words that threatened a hangman's noose, and seemed to constrict her breath as tightly as one.

"Your men are Arrik Singh and Eurykleides of Lycanea..."
"A formidable opponent is he? This Lycanean?"
"It is his..tenacity which may well win him this fight.."
"My darling, how did you assess the value of these...holdings? With whom did you meet?"

Here is where a week of mucking out pens and hauling pails that had stunk like the very bowels of a religious man's hell had found its fulfillment. Here is where a woman might wish for a faith in gods -- simply so that she might curse them, and her own foolishness to boot. The conversation is etched, fire, into her memory.

"Am I to assume that your own money would be put to Signh's history rather than entrusting it to the new, though not exactly weak, Lycanean?"

It would, it would, were she inclined to such madness; coin is best kept for one's own use, coin is best not squandered so freely -- unless one is possessed of a great deal of it. Her employer, undoubtedly, is. Indeed, he had scattered it from his hand to the floorboards of their meetinghouse, and she'd been left darting forward to catch it; scraps for swine, the whole of it, but necessary nonetheless. The outcome of this may well have her fleeing these lands, and damned -- *damned* -- if she would do it penniless.

"Your final word, Ari. Tell me who you honestly believe in. Who will win this game?"

Oh, she had told him; *honestly*, she had told him, if for the sake of her neck, rather than his coin. And was left, finally, to trudge to her mount with head bowed against the rain -- and against a great deal more besides; she had come hooded and cloaked, as shadowed as her very employer. Stealth, caution, was of utmost importance; having under-estimated the man once, she would not freely repeat her mistake by misjudging the gravity of their business.

"Oh, and Ari?" He had smiled, humourlessly; this, above all things, she remembered. "I pray you've done your research."

In this, he was not alone.
I am motion made into a human
I am stardust on stardust on stardust on stardust

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Carnath-Emory
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