A Missive Received at Calomel Hall.

[Carnath-Emory]

What is life in Myrken, if one does not intend to break? If one does not intend to bow at all, except that perhaps the swordswoman has; perhaps she has bent herself to some of Myrken's stranger whims, exchanging weapons for quills and swordplay for words. But demanding recompense as well, so that where Myrken suspects that a stronghold has become militarised, the sellsword has seen to it glassy rooms in which exotic and delicate life may flourish. May gently, peacefully thrive...

When Calomel dismisses two years' travel with a flick of his fingers, she bows her head in soundless assent; if there are stories to be told they will find their way onto a page. There remain no ears suited to such things. But when he speaks his words, it's her turn to demure a second time, for: "No," she contradicts the man. "And both we know that. Your wife, those children - " Slim shake of her head. "What is it, to welcome you into my home the one day and condemn you for monstrous the next? I'm not made for kindness - but even I can do better than that. " Perhaps two years' wandering had taught the woman this. But not subtlety, not really. Note how Calomel becomes a student the one moment, a swordsman the next; note the quality of his gaze, and understand this:

That they have been here before.

Four days ago, Ariane Emory shared a table with the Governor's bodyguard, and watched very quietly as murder began to stir in his eyes.
Three years ago, Cinnabar Calomel shared a tavern room with this sellsword, and there they speculated on the efficiency with which he might end her life.

Here - now - is something like convergence.

Because there is no mistaking when something begins to rouse in the grey of this man's eyes. This woman - this weapon - cannot fail to interpret the direction of his gaze, cannot fail to understand the moment in which observation becomes swift calculation. Knows precisely the arithmetic in which this man's quick, clever mind engages: tallying up wounded shoulders - other untold hurts - monstrous strength - armour which would yield - and reaching a single, inevitable conclusion. And how the steel sings in her veins, at that moment when he realises; how it tumbles and churns and in her throat the breath has stilled -

Her palm arrests the table he's shoved.

Which was a motion so short and violent and sudden as to interrupt what had tensed; she can release the breath she'd held, and with no sound at all.

"Thank you," she murmurs - in time. When the moment allows, and with eyes that will not flinch from his own. "But as I said: it is the beginning. For how long would you wait? If ten men died each night, for want of what I would not surrender to you. If their families perished with them, if the Ashfiend were a blight that slaughtered cattle and crops each and every day - for how long would you wait? Cinnabar, you would know how he reckoned I threaten Myrken?" And across the table she slightly leans, towards him and in a manner that will spare her shoulder the worst and ensure that the dark hair clings precisely where it must, as:

"You have answered it for yourself."

[Cinnabar]

Kindness, unkindness. She has her reasons for what she did, invitations and accusations, and trusted him well enough to share them. As a damaged limb finds its movement restricted by scars and ill-healed flesh, so were her reactions constrained by her past wounds. She could scarcely have acted otherwise at the time, not without tearing those old scars apart.

Understood and forgiven.

"I wouldn't wait." A quiet correction, murmured over the lip of his cup. "There's always another way to approach things. Another answer. Maybe not as easy, or quick, or expedient. But more right than that." Another small, vague gesture at the tabletop, brushing away the crumbs of such distasteful talk.

"I'd also have you account for allowing the slaughter to go on. Your compelling reasons not to put an end to it when you could. Those who loved the dead would be keen to hear it from your own lips." Watchful in turn, from swordsman to Constable with a keen eye for how a face might betray the thoughts behind it.

For this is not a hypothetical question, is it? And there, another word for that list, perhaps. It is not whimsy that has her choose this example, this terrible choice to be made night after murderous night, for she's not easily given to such things. And there's understanding of that in his gaze as he speaks again.

"Had this been so, for how many nights would you have lasted?"

[Carnath-Emory]

"Of course you would not wait." Easy, unquestioning assent. "There are means by which a person may be compelled, mn? There is more than just fists and steel." Bloodless atrocities, bella....

And does he mean to watch, this man who was once the Constable? Then he may; the swordswoman will deny him nothing, save for what was hung in shadows long before he reached her gates. His is the liberty to wonder at words her lips might speak - and watch the tiny clench which moves them; watch the way a mouth's corner will slightly tighten, in which lips will become some thin and terribly uneven line. Those who loved the dead, those lips have finally echoed, and soundlessly so - and he will see what the shaping of words pains her and when it does not. He will know the instant that this bleak amusement lights her pale eyes, but - ah. It is already fled.

"How many nights did I last? Do you remember? I don't." There is a count of days to which she pays particular attention. But that involves neither Ashfiends nor urns. "But less than a week. Within a week, I'd decided, you would have the thing from me or have me hanged for it," and this is laughter, but of a particular sort. Does he have eyes for this too? For the look of a woman who well that sometimes she risks everything for - so little, so very much. "That would have gained you nothing. By that time it was far beyond my reach; I could not have told you where to look - " and a wave of her hand dismisses this now as so much pointless reminiscence. It is a retreat from the edge of things which pain; it might even be mistaken for simple impatience.

"We have spoken of this before, you and I. Of how the will might be caged; that it must be. Do you remember?" A fingertip outlines this upon the tabletop. "That here is a line which I will not cross. Here is another; I know it because I have found myself at its edge." He remembers. He must. Bea Kanaya: the leash at a swordswoman's throat, the tool in a Governor's hand - if he wished to wield it; if he felt it necessary. "There are so many, and some we share, some we do not. As to this urn? Not. And if you hesitate a day while we disagree - then I have had you hesitate a day and ten have died for it; I was their doom. And if you hesitate a second day? Or about another matter? So."

A tabletop wiped clean by her palm's edge. Two lines drawn there now, similar but so distant, and:

"Here is the point past which I will not step. And here? The way that Governor Burnie would choose. And this is how his man put it: that Glenn Burnie and I, we differ. Every day. On every choice. Because there is a cost to those choices that I will not abide, a cost which he would accept without hesitation -

if I were not here to interfere."

[Cinnabar]

A snort at the talk of compelling, impatience in bruise-mottled features. "Another path entirely, that did not require the urn. If you would not yield it, and I would not take it from you, then I'd seek another path. And more would die. But what else could be done, other than to make monsters of ourselves?" Bitter refusal there, one of the inviolable lines that she describes only moments later.

A nod at the recall of conversations long past, of events and troubles softened slightly by years apart from things, by respite. A slight smile at that play, that gambit - rendering her hanging futile by putting the urn out of reach of all, some devious combination of self-preservation and spite. Or defiance, to call it by a kinder name.

Quiet again, attentive to the talk of lines and boundaries that form a cage around the will, letting it remain where it will do its work best, keeping it back from places that are dangerous or terrible. He knows some of those that belong to the swordswoman, and has found some of them deeply frustrating, complicating, vexatious. She almost certainly knows many of his boundaries, lines that by necessity weave close bars around a fire that might otherwise devour. And he must wonder if perhaps she's wished at times that they were a little looser, the beast given freedom enough to grant her blade an excuse.

In that he's glad to disappoint her.

There's then a distinction drawn between herself and the new Governor, though he finds it hard to believe in its completeness.

"On every matter? It wasn't always so." Surely not. Things might change, people might change, but for the Governor now to gladly overreach his tutor in every such choice? That would make either a swordswoman into a saint, or a mapmaker into a monster.

"What cost? Specifically."

[Carnath-Emory]

I say that you must do better!, she'd once cried at a man whose eyes were weary wounds. I say that you must live, she'd hissed at this man, who would play martyr to a cause which deserved many things - but not that; never that. And years later hears an echo of those words, but it's Calomel who's speaking them. Another way. A different way. Something better than the atrocities that we will not accept, and in that moment her mouth shapes such a smile - for scant moments. The pain is not worth that impulse. "We've already made monsters of ourselves," she's agreeing then - when she can, when the sting becomes an ache. "Or at least I have. And now we have become selfish instead: we will not save these men's lives at risk of our souls."

Such words should not be spoken so calmly.

"'Souls'. I use the word precariously." Oh, fancy. "I use it for - that thing within a man which compels his heart to say Yes or to say No. Perhaps I use it for his heart, as well; perhaps the two are one thing and I ought not to distinguish. I use it for his self; that self which is distinguish from his thoughts. Do you know? I think you do. I think you know it better than I ever have."

Easily and earnestly said, by a woman who knows somewhat of this man's boundaries, who comprehends some but certainly not all. And which of Calomel's have been crafted by the voice which haunts his dreams, by words upon a page? Which are his; how does one chart out a man's soul? She couldn't say and, outside of those points at which their sensitivities clash, has not much tried to. Discretion, she'd said to her student - once, twice, a hundred times over. There are matters into which one ought not intrude unless clearly, unmistakably invited to.

Except that sometimes, sometimes - and hasn't these been mentioned before, the easy comfort she finds in the company of monsters? Sometimes ... a girl will prod a man to see what burns beneath his facades.

But: "It wasn't always so," she's echoing him now, and with a sip from her mug to punctuate. "But Cinnabar - I have been gone from here for years, and you tell me my student has fallen amongst Drow - " She cannot complete that sentence. Ignorance prohibits. Half-hidden grief surely does. "And I do not even know if this is true, for whose word do I have on this? But a man whose first words to me were that we were fated to disagree. I know not even his name! Perhaps these are all deceits, perhaps the threat to Myrken is his sort and I ought best have killed him dead."

Examine the woman's eyes for even the slightest moment, Cinnabar Calomel, and you will know: what she believes; what she wishes to believe.

"We did not speak of specifics," she's adding after, her mouth some wry thing. "You must understand this, that the questions I could ask were limited by the knife he put through my shoulder."

[Cinnabar]

Precariously, a twitch of brows in small applause for that. But nodding again as she speaks on, understanding and agreeing. And smiling at the clarity in what she describes.

"Conscience." Another word for her list, or perhaps one she knew but hadn't thought to connect with this most metaphysical of subjects. Trace a man's boundaries, the lines he will not, cannot cross, and see the shape of his soul.

"What keeps us human, hm?" And there, there in the gaze that lifts from where his fingertip traces whorls in the table's surface -

Talk of a man's nature, his true self. Accusations made beside a fountain the few dozen yards from here, the sum of glimpses and guesses and deductions and observations, woven into a picture of a truth as terrible as it was unavoidable. And yet he'd still rejected it, denied it, ignored it, pushed it aside as incorrect, impossible, irrelevant.

- a brief spark of amusement at a shared joke, delight at the shivering dissonance between what is said and what they both understand to be true; there, a reflected glimpse of that conversation, flashed across the years like a shard of sunlight from a distant hilltop. He knows, now. He understands. He accepts.

And here, sipping wine, silver of hair and battered of face, ink on his skin and ring on his finger, is who he has chosen to be anyway.

But the moment is past, and the conversation darkening further.

"I have his word on it, though he was very light on the details. He was taken, time passed, he escaped and returned. I can't see a reason he'd claim such a thing if it weren't true." Thinking for a time, eyes unfocused, considering possibilities, motives. "I'm not sure how many people even know of it. Few, I'd guess, or he'd be howled out of office for fear he was bewitched. Drow-swain."

On an impulse he reaches for that sheet of paper, turning it over briskly; taking up the quill, he adds a word to the list with quick, neat strokes, before both paper and pen are returned.

Compromised

[Carnath-Emory]

"Conscience," she echoes - as if it were something new, and what a horrible possibility that is: that the woman might never have had a definition for that simple word until Calomel thought to supply it. But perhaps not so horrid. Sylvius Duquesne had been so inclined to speak on the subject of souls and their suffering, and the swordswoman was such an avid listener...

"This is what keeps us human? Is that how you'd have it? Our conscience? I - " Some tiny frown troubles her brow; some uncertain shake of her head. "I did not leave this place to find my humanity," she begins instead, "but perhaps to - learn its value. Past miles and oceans, so far that even a looking-glass would not show me no familiar thing. This - humanity, this was not what took me from Myrken, not at all. But it was some of what kept me - " Again, the head shakes; this is not for his ears, and these are not words which she'd intended to speak - here, now. "What keeps us human is - "

And this is when her eyes have sought his own, and if there'd been some mute appeal written into her gaze it fled before what she finds lit within his own. Old things, precious and terrible things, and - human, Cinnabar? Really? And it has her blinking, surprised; it has some small cough of laughter caught in the back of her throat, honest laughter and real, grateful relief. There is a measure of peace in the man, and it is the first she's seen of that in whole years.

Not for the first time, the swordswoman must regret that she never brings him pleasant conversation.

"Of course it's true. It's not the stealing of him that I doubt, but the things which this man claims followed it - and I do not know if I should doubt even that. There was a - sincerity to him. He wanted me to understand; I was certain of this. He wanted me to accept his offer," as Calomel turns a page. "He told me all that might come to pass," as he lifts the quill, "and hoped that I would end it all by turning away - "

And her eyes see, widening.

The frown is immediate, as abrupt as the glance shot back at that man, and of a sudden her hand is down hard upon the quill. Has seized it, white-knuckled, to drag two furious lines through that word.

[Cinnabar]

"It's the line drawn between men and beasts. The foundation." The knowledge of what is right and what is not. "It's not the whole of what makes one human, no. But what happens without it?" Murder. Cruelty. The very worst of what the human mind can conceive. Atrocity.

"A man without it is in every way a horror; a monster with it is entirely a person." And will she disagree? Will she dare? For Calomel, it is an article of absolute certainty.

The lines tearing through that word are fierce, but perhaps not surprising; had the nature she'd named for him been written rather than spoken, almost certainly he'd've done something similar.

But she's seen it, and understood it, and the immediate reaction is irrelevant now that the idea has been planted, a thing that cannot be un-thought. It's a possibility they can't, mustn't discount. What price, for each day they spend refusing to consider the possibility? Maybe not a price paid in bloodied corpses, but in souls. Or one soul in particular.

So, quiet in the furious aftermath of that suggestion and its refusal, her gaze met unflinchingly. It's not for nothing that his tone is that of the Constable, level but insistent.

"What exactly did he say, the Governor's man? As best you can recall. And then we can go about seeing whether any of it might be true."

[Carnath-Emory]

A monster with a conscience is entirely a person.

The words are a slow burn through the back of her mind, for all that her eyes are set upon the word her ink had extinguished. Those words, and nevermind that her hand still grips that quill as if it meant the thing to snap. Those words are a horror and a delight, and: "You say this," she's murmured after a time, her mouth a flattened line, her eyes a demand. "You say this, who once questioned my want for warrants. You know it now, then? How I could not give that man to your executioners?" And there is something like arrogance in the set of her jaw, or perhaps it's only anger still, for:

"This, though." A tap of her fingertip beside that word. "This. This is mistaken. You would think him fallen to their sort? To their bl'adstvo games? You think that he would kneel to such filth? Then you do my student a disservice. My student; your friend. You are wrong, and you do not know the half of how wrong this is. I will accept that word when you deliver me theevidence of it. And until then? Cinnabar." Leaning, then, and with a voice that has recalled quiet: "Cinnabar, he would rather die."

Setting down the quill leaves her hand feeling so empty; leaves it wanting for something. The hilt of some brutal thing, perhaps. Or just to bunch into a fist, which thought would have her laughing if laughter were possible at all. Fingertips that had lingered near that ghastly word cast about almost aimlessly now; trace across worn wood in search of - what? He would rather die. Unbearable. The hand finds a moment's work at the nape of her neck, loosening silver things into its palm; finds its new home moments later, wrapping around Calomel's bottle.

No second cup.
See if that matters.

[Cinnabar]

"Conscience alone is not enough absolve. Nor remorse. To regret a deed means nothing if one keeps doing it." Quiet words, coolly spoken. "And there are things for which sorry does not suffice. Perhaps some effort might be made to atone. But if there is no atonement - if they are unwilling, or the crime is so great that they are unable - then there must be a reckoning." He believes in redemption, certainly, or he'd've seen the swordswoman hanged long since. But there are limits, and he is leaning forward to be sure that his is heard, that he is understood, that he is clear.

"And there remain some crimes so great, so unthinkable that no perpetrator can ever again be considered human. Because to have done such a thing they cannot have been human to begin."

Sitting back, gaze dropping to that paper again, that unspeakable word. Those accusations garner a light shrug, bordering almost on the insolent.

"I would assume nothing until I know more. He was taken by them, he returned. Alone. Perhaps he escaped, perhaps he was allowed to escape. Perhaps he is still pure, perhaps he is their pawn - perhaps willingly, perhaps not. Perhaps he is not even aware of it." A flat litany of possibilities, some they might consider more likely than others, some they might only wish to be so. "Certainly he would rather die, but perhaps he was not given the choice." The movements of her hand draw his gaze, watching that restlessness, the hunger for action, distraction. Eventually he meets her eyes again,

"You know the Drow, certainly better than I do. I've read files and accounts, you've fought them. Think of all the things they've done here, and tell me anything I've said is impossible." For years they'd crawled up from the depths, bringing death, dismay and fear. Treating the land and its people as playthings, as a cat treats a mouse. Bitter thoughts that bring grief and despair. And yet. And yet.

"And yet there's hope, hm? Perhaps it is as he said - because he loves to win, because he is a very singular kind of man, he was able to escape the Drow and claw his way back to the light of day. Alone. Unaided. But not unscathed." No. That would be a true impossibility, a miracle far beyond the realm of any god. Certainly any who cast their eye upon Myrken Wood. A sip of wine, fingers lacing around the cup as he lowers it again to the table; and throughout it all, unblinking attention for the weapon he dares consider a friend.

"How might he be wounded? Terribly. In which case, how might he be healed?"

[Carnath-Emory]

"Find a sparring partner." The bottle's tilted to his cup; she'll pour unless he has a hand out to intercept. "So that you needn't settle for Judge, but may play Executioner as well." This is a light glance, for all that her eyes host too many warring impulses; this is almost a smile. The bottle hesitates near her mug, motions as if to add wine to scalding anesthetics - no. It pauses just short. "He - the Governor's man - he said such things of the wine we drank. Histories. Customs." And distantly murmurs: "Arutheddau," as if this were a time for quiet, for contemplation at all.

It's not.

"You don't think a monster can learn his humanity? You don't think that a man can surrender his soul, his conscience, yet wrest it back again after? Or perhaps this is how you would warn me away from Aeryn - a second time. Do you imagine I'd harbour that one, after what he's done? After the months he's spent doing it? But ... I cannot fault you that." A bottle set at rest upon the tabletop; still, her palm lingers upon its curve. "The Ashfiend, after all. Burel, I suppose. All - " a flick of the fingers. "All the rest. Helstone - now that one was 'compromised'. But the influences beneath which he laboured, Cinnabar, the man that he was - there is no likeness between the two."

It's not, and she has the proof of this very quickly indeed. When the man continues at this speculation. When he presses a point which she has spurned twice over, when he leans upon her in this manner, so that she's begun talking long before he's finished at all, words layered over voices layered over words as if she meant to obliterate his insistence as bluntly as she had his word upon her page.

"You do not know him, Cinnabar. You do not know him as I do, you do not know of what he is capable, you do not know what he has survived and how he has done it, you do not know costs paid and costs suffered, you do not know what he did to himself so that when it came to this his triumph was assured." Choices. Pawns. The things they've done. "No-one emerges unscathed; Lenore, Burel, my sister, but neither do they emerge un sane, and I will not have this." Alone. Unaided. A man had rotted in the deep black of Sarff Ffau; another day and they'd have rescued a corpse. "I will not have you accuse this man of falling to what he most despises, of falling to what he has learned to murder. I will not have this talk. I will not have these accusations. I will not have him a pawn to these beasts - " Wounded. Terribly. The world cracks apart beneath your feet and if you're a heartbeat too slow, everything you love slides away between your fingers. " - and you will demonstrate that this is true or you will hold your tongue."

A measured tone has become increasingly loud. It has left her breathless, wide-eyed and pale.

"He said - " Quietly. Deliberately. When she can speak again at all. " - that I would bring nothing but pain. For everyone. For myself most of all. He said - that no good would come of my presence here. Nothing good, nothing best. Nothing necessary.

That was the beginning of what he said."

[Cinnabar]

"I don't wear that role any more." Neither Judge nor Executioner, and no taste for either. The wine is accepted with a small nod, cup held steady until a generous measure has been poured and tasted soon after; at that small dilemma, the temptation to create a mixture to rival her ghastly jenever for bitterness, he shakes his head and passes his cup across. A sharper shake of his head follows at the idea that he's speaking further against Karolinger. Instead a light tone that she will recognise, from past talks of chessboards, or metalworking, or similar lessons.

"You have a dog, say; a fine and loyal Hound who walks at your side and sleeps at your door, keeping you safe from harm. In the past he has seen off robbers or assassins, and bled for your sake. Who could not love such a true companion?" Fingers freed of that cup seek out instead a grape or two from the platter. "One day he forgets himself, and is a Wolf for a time. Long enough to maul your child to death, to leave them a torn and bloody mess of rags." Think on that for a time, imagine the horror of it, the betrayal.

"By the time you discover this he already recalls that he is a Hound. He regrets his lapse and the grief it has caused you; he seeks to sleep at your door, to keep you from harm, to atone. He is twice as loving as before, three times as diligent. He knows what he's done; he is sorry." Set aside what he's said about conscience, for the sake of this example. Make it a simpler story about a Hound, rather than a Duke or a Governor or a Captain or a Fiend.

"Do you trust him again, knowing that he has been capable of such a thing? Can you? " Chewing slowly on the grapes while he watches her reaction, seeds cracked and swallowed with them. "Men are not hounds, no. But you see how there might be limits to redemption? Generally."

His tone does not rise to match hers as she endeavours to blot his words from the air, though there is force put behind them, that they are not simply smothered. But then that exchange is over, is done, and though silver flecks his gaze for a time his breathing remains even, controlled.

A moment, please, as he absently wipes grape pulp from loosening fingers against the table edge.

"No, you're right. I don't know, and I don't understand. So please, set my mind at ease."

The Governor's man's words give him pause, though, a deepened frown. A desire to laugh at such claims, to dismiss them as nonsense. And yet he'd believed them enough to throw himself against such a weapon as this.

"And the rest?"

[Carnath-Emory]

"Really. You discard the role, but you keep its words; is that it?" With some narrow glance, some quiet consideration. "You tell me this then, Cinnabar Calomel: who is to say which crime is beyond forgiveness? Who is to choose that an atonement is sufficient or an atonement is not? You? Me? Some - authority for which I care this much." A snap of her fingers to punctuate the point, but when he speaks again it's as if in anticipation of questions she'd only spoken by halves. And in a tone which is familiar, as if these were simpler times and simpler matters -

Well. And perhaps they ought to be.

It's not difficult to settle back in her seat a little as she listens now. The one leg is easier when she lifts it like so, stretching the limb flat across the bench before her; the posture offers some relief to bandaged burns, and there are the remnants of her tea to dull the raw edges of what's worse. There is wine as well, but although the hand is sometimes tempted, although the fingers sometimes touch - still, they've fallen short. Once and then a second time, until:

"I would kill that dog." As clearly, as thoughtlessly, as if there were no question to it at all, but when her eyes glance back towards his own it's with some slight confession: that of course, it's not nearly that simple. But still: "I would kill that dog, and wish after that I'd slain it before it stole from me. Do I trust him again? That is the wrong question. Here is something better: can I stand the sight of him - knowing what he has done. Can i fetch him food, can I shelter him? Cinnabar, can I reward him with life for slaughtering what I love?

Of course there are limits. To what I will do; to what you will forgive. But Cinnabar, you would have me a saint and a martyr and a monster - each by turns, and all at once."

And how does conversation become argument become obstruction? She does not know, couldn't hope to chart this to her satisfaction. But it has: a fit of words in outright conflict, an excellent demonstration of how determination sounds like anger when it's voice begins to shout. A moment then - for both of them. In which she may catch her breath, and he may wipe away the - oh. Oh. He can't forgive this sudden smile; she's sure of it. But it's small and helpless, and: "Would you fetch me a mug? I really don't want to walk."

She will speak to his back then, if he's willing; if he's not, she'll speak to his face and sip at her tea instead of his wine. But in either case, she begins with the very same words: "This is what you must understand first: that he is the Governor's man, but he was his own agent. Do you know that way of saying it? Governor Burnie did not mean him to murder me; Governor Burnie did not know that I'd neared Myrken, nor even that his man pursued me at all. Perhaps he does not know this even now - but I hope this so much that I think," small, wry smile, "that it cannot be true. Would this man have confessed a failure? A failure come of his own choices? I wish - " Slow breath. "I wish there'd been time for more than - this." A tilt of her chin indicates a shoulder, an arm that clearly doesn't quite function at all.

"What he told me is that Governor Burnie does what is necessary ... in order for Myrken to prosper. He does not hesitate. He does not question it. He does what must be done." This quietness, her eyes set back upon his own. "He kills that dog, Cinnabar. Perhaps he kills it before it can savage his child."

[Cinnabar]

"I keep what I've learned from it." And that question of how these standards are set, how the lines are drawn between forgiveable and abomination. For that he can only touch fingertips to his breast.

Act as your heart advises.

Her request is considered for a short moment, long enough for that smile to eventually find a faint reflection on his own features. Quick to move between fierce and forgiving from moment to moment, since it's easy to recognise the true source of these clashes - a deep and burning concern, a fear, the reason they've met here today. So he stands and moves for the kitchen again, a few moments' search for a suitable mug. That so proud a weapon would even ask for the small favour is itself a gesture of trust, or she'd have stubbornly fetched it for herself.

Listening, and returning in time for the end of it; the mug is set down beside that bitter tea, and his own cup of wine is reclaimed as he sits.

"Then he may as well kill every dog the moment he sees it, as how can he know? Unless he takes an earlier disobedience as forewarning of that coming slaughter of his most beloved child - perhaps the Hound first kills a valued servant. Or a less-valued servant. Or a stranger for whom he cares nothing. Or a neighbour with whom he's quarrelled. Or a rival who's vexed him in the past." Lesser crimes, still terrible, but less personally devastating; some even useful, though impossible to openly condone.

"Or perhaps it's less than that - the Hound hasn't killed them, but left them savaged and scarred. Or maybe bitten them just the once. Or only snapped at them. Or growled. Or glared." The story has changed its focus now, subtly rearranged. Or perhaps not, perhaps only drawing back from that one failed creature to consider Hounds in general.

"At what point does he know that the Hound will surely murder his child? Perhaps he should kill every dog he sees, just in case. That's what a man who feared such a thing would do, hm?" Sipping his wine, watching her over the edge of the cup before it's set down again.

"But Myrken is not yet safe, not yet secure, and so there is still a need for Hounds even if some of them may turn out to be Wolves. So he lets them live, for the time being, watching for the wolfish ones who are too quick to snap or growl. The rest remain until they're no longer required, when the threat they pose is greater than the threat they prevent."

"The question, then, is what the Governor's man knows that made him see a Wolf in you."

[Carnath-Emory]

A deep and burning concern, a fear that is the reason they're even meeting here. An insupportable grief, so that some part of her wants that night over again, some part of her would have that assassin for a convenient body upon which to vent all this incredulous outrage -

Upon the tabletop, a hand curled into some loose fist; worn skin, a torn nail; fingers that slightly tremble. It is a cool, silent inventory that would have her tucking that hand away before Calomel returns, if only the other one were good for anything but a weak-wristed club; stupid. Really just stupid. Outrage would have left that man a corpse and her shoulder whole. What do we learn from this? Really, ser architect, what are we to learn?

That we're not done bleeding. That's all.

"Perhaps he has a good sense for dogs." Calomel's return is accompanied by a very welcome mug, and that will serve well enough to occupy a hand which won't obey. And really, isn't the very fact that he returns at all something to think on? She had half-expected he mightn't; hadn't at all expected that he'd be fetching mugs for her in the first place. Not after that, just now. Not at all, really. It's kind. The moreso when one considers that he has no real understanding of how deep these wounds reach. So that there's a nod for the man as he sits again, because she can't quite think of what words she ought to use - and inevitably, returns to talk of violence instead.

"Perhaps an excellent sense for dogs: he can take in the pack at a glance, sort useful from dangerous. Perhaps he knows the signs, knows the look of a dog that will lick at his boots while it dreams of murder," and there is something in her eyes which approves, which rather values so excellent a hunting-hound. But which anticipates objection, as well, so that the hand's peeled away from that mug already, lifted to forestall. "But this is bad for the dogs, mn? What if he is mistaken? Ill-slept, drunken, addled, fevered; what if his mind is not all that it ought to be? Oh, but this man does not care about dogs; he cares about children. Dogs die that should not - well, what of it? Children are more important than dogs."

But it's interesting, what Calomel proposes. Interesting, until one explores the very furthest reach of its implication - and that is when the breath catches in her throat; the eyes drop because they must. This is not wine-glasses and toasts, after all. She will not have herself read until she has contained this.

Wine for her cup. Necessarily.

"He knows a great much. My name, although he did not like to use it." The set of her mouth: it disapproves and it does not. "He knew the name of my birthplace and of my favourite wine. He knew - " he'll see this; the sudden stir of mercury across the back of her wrist; the delicate sheen which lights her skin. "He knew that. He must have. It came from my skin and he did not flinch, not once until it ate his - "

We needn't speak of this.
We needn't detail it at all.

" - it was difficult. How do you still such a man without slaughtering him? How do you make him stop once you've begun to bleed? He would not accept an impasse, but I wanted - "

These quiet, quiet words, terminated in an abrupt swallow from the mug he'd brought her. A slow breath.

"What he knows, what he believes, is that Governor Burnie has plans - for Myrken. Plans which cost, plans which will ensure that Myrken thrives. Plans for everything." For everyone.

"But not for me."