Of Updated Deliverables and Immediate Plans

[Carnath-Emory]

These are the final moments of the very worst month of the swordswoman's new life.

I have something to ask you, she'd said weeks ago - on two separate occasions, to two good men.
You'll hate it, she'd said, and they'd smiled at that, both of them. They'd smiled, because she was asking permission to ask. And because they were each of them so familiar with this excess of caution. And because really, how bad could it possibly be?


After, when they said Stop, she did not stop the cold work that she'd begun.
Even when it began to hurt, she did not stop - and it did hurt.
It had to, this work, and she persisted all the same - because on both occasions her business was discovery through systematic dismemberment.


She listens now, this swordswoman; this Marshall. With a handful of papers that were his, and with none of the silent joy with which she'd attended his description of Niall. For while that had quietly stunned, what he's giving her now is -

"Elliot Brown." Presently the subject of a swordswoman's rather dubious glance. "Really. What actually is this." For she's stepping around him then, this boy who'd just moments ago made a very pointed statement by crossing a line in the dirt. She's stepping around him, a nudge of the scuffed toe pointing out that very mark. "You stand there drawing lines into the ground, as if you've ever in your life moved in a straight line, as if you ever move directly from one thing to the next. No," and she's smoothing the mark over with the sole of her boot, its toe drawing something else there into the dirt, all crude curves that slowly spiral.

"You ask me my circumstances, and I explain these to you. You make your demands," a lift of the eyes, not unkind, "and I explain to you my requirements. And your answer to those is - this." A spiral. Slightly wobbly; wholly unmistakable. "You start - here," a touch of the toe to some outer point, "and you work your way around, but not very far." A tap of the toe to some point; once, twice. "Here. Here is where you start spiraling off into another direction entirely." And then she's sketching that, too: the way in which furrowed dirt quickens into a chaos. "And at the end you assign the conclusion you'd wanted to make from the beginning, as if you'd actually explained it instead of just giving all of these words -

Do you find that this actually convinces people of anything - ever?"

A backstep allows him some space; her, as well. "I don't know if you believe even one half of what you've just said." The smile's as dubious as her glance had been, more interested than amused. "I wonder if you're just giving me whatever words occur to you, in hopes that some of them might chance to convince."

[Glenn]

She could ask a thousand times and it wouldn't matter. When did Elliot Brown ever convince anyone of anything? He took what he wanted. He did what he wanted. But to move someone to his point of view? It would be a very different world for the rogue if he could manage that. How could someone sway another when he made every effort to avoid even his own point of view. Perhaps she thought she was speaking to Gloria or Cinnabar or the Governor. Perhaps she though she was speaking with anyone else in the world. An architect.

Save for Catch, she could hardly be dealing with someone more different.

He watches her move about him. He watches her draw her spirals. He hears her words and he swallows them down like bitter medicine. She cuts at him with exasperated reason. The dread Ariane Emory, swordswoman, Marshall, murderer, cuts at a teenage boy with words and reason and truth. It hurts, but does it sway him? Does it convince?

"Maybe, maybe they're not the right words, but that doesn't mean they're not true words." His voice has a tremble, his tone more bewildered than defiant.

He did not convince. Neither was he convinced. There was nothing to convince. Elliot Brown died years ago. He died when Galacia Tarin sanctified him with her talon. He died when he leaned into a foreign girl's lashing. He died when Renea Sundance spurned well-meant lies. He died when a beautifully hilted dagger landed beside him, when he picked it up. He died when Niall took the first sip of the cursed chocolate. He died when he burned the bodies of his comrades and mentors upon the field of battle. Elliot Brown died the moment he ran away from home.

Whatever remained here and now, behind a partially scuffed line, behind spirals in the dirt and a retreating woman nearing her wit's end was a changeling of Myrken's making, fairy-touched, cursed and blessed. Elliot Brown had died. What was left was a young man well beyond even sharp reason's ability to compel and convince. What in his life was even close to reasonable? He had no point of reference. What he had instead was whims and urges, needs and pride. What he had was her circumstances and her requirements. What he had was five steady words.

"I agree to your terms."

Just like that, the teenager was turning.

"I'll go fetch my things then."

[Carnath-Emory]

When did Ariane Emory ever convince anyone of anything?

Once. Only once, and under the most fraught circumstances possible. So that even all these years later, should a person question the fact that she is at her best only when everything else is at its worst, that is the moment she will describe: that a man had seated himself at her table and explained to her that it was time for him to die, and that - shocked, furious, desperate - she had aimed her reply like a hammer through glass.

"Of course they're true." The tremor in his tone has not gentled her own; in every way that matter, it hardly needed to. Not when the toe of her boot is scuffing these marks away - spirals and lines of demarcation; not when this halfway-smile tugs at her mouth's corners. Even as he turns, she's bending a moment to fold papers over in the one hand as she collects his locks in the other. It's a little awkward, but what does that matter? He's already turning away, he's already leaving them behind, and she cannot quite stand the sight of them fallen there in the muck. "Of course I agree - with most of it. But Elliot - "

But. Inevitable. Ugly. She'd have found another word for it, if only she knew one.
A question on a page, this evening: five superior alternatives to the word 'but'. Make it sound like something other than a kick to the ba -

"These 'Masters'? These are not my concern. When last we spoke, all of this hinged upon a person's approval. You told me this then, and I'm telling you this now: that if you intend to come into my home as someone else's agent - this is the time to walk away and not return. Trouble for everyone otherwise, mn? For your Someone. For you, for me. For anyone else that it might touch.

"I do not ask you for a name. But consider this well before you return."

[Glenn]

Myrken Wood was chaos, but then so was life itself. So was every gathering of human beings, because human beings were not logical, rational, forward thinking creatures. They were animals yet clever enough to break the usual circular pattern of life. Some people claimed to be able to predict them, all of them, every variant and variation, and those were usually the ones who fell the most spectacularly and the most tragically, yet who no one cared a whit about. They deserved what they got and were hardly mourned.

Myrken was chaos. Life was chaos, and thus systems were developed. Society developed some on its own. Leaders designed others thinking to minimize death in the name of stability and progress. Without them, everything would fall apart and no one would have any direction. No one would have any trust. Without them, human interaction could not expand to a macro level. The apprentice system was one of these systems, both a means of opportunity and nurturing as well as a means of control and repression. In a roundabout way, Elliot Brown was a product of this specific system. Unfortunately, no one had explained it to Solena.

In turn, she had given him the option of outright freedom and there was no apprentice in the world that wouldn't take that in a heartbeat, no matter how well treated he was by his master. He offered her a generous kickback and some level of oversight when it came to what he did NOT do, though far less than what was normally necessary on both counts, and that was that. Shortly thereafter, she went away for a good long while, and thus, with the knowledge of his independence sound, he went about flexing it in every way possible. He would not look back on that.

On this, though, on her? He looked back, turned back to Ariane Emory, yet he continued to walk backwards, slowly drawing further and further away. The look was rather exasperated. "Things change. Isn't that what you said, right? Things change. Well, I changed. That's the problem, right? I might change again. So might everyone else. But look, you're damn scary, you are. You are. I'm man enough to admit it. Everyone knows it. You're as scary as they come without being a monster with fangs or what not, and you couldn't get me to do a tenth of what you wanted, not even close. So, it's like this. If you can't, you think anyone else can either? Not anymore, they can't. Not after what I've seen and done."

In other words, he agrees to your terms, Ariane Emory, because there was no other choice and because they weren't that bad, not really, because in the end he wanted to, but how he chooses to live up to them? Well, maybe you ought to be worrying about that instead of about whose will Elliot Brown might be serving. His own will was dangerous enough, and your will? Just imagine it being executed by this young man gone to get his things.

What was an outright threat in the face of that?

[Carnath-Emory]

A grueling apprenticeship had left Elliot Brown with a singular skill-set and unparalleled freedom. A string of vile acts and a stronghold which was never supposed to be hers had left Ariane Emory restrained by a moral framework of her own inexpert construction and more responsibility than she has ever before experienced. There were a half-dozen points in this exchange at which she'd just wanted to hit, at least as many moments in which she'd longed to shout. As if both of them were children, as if both of them were grown, as if nothing mattered but the moment and what could be done with it -

If Myrken Wood is chaos, it is a chaos of vicious contradictions.

"Change is not the problem," she answers him now - but how she'd smiled, all the same, just a moment ago. You're damn scary, the boy had said, and the words had tugged her mouth's corner into light, sardonic amusement. "Neither are you. You choose what you do with it, mn? All that change, all those bad, bad things. You choose what you do with your self, with each and every moment; even this one, even the next.

"'Siris will show you to your room, when you return. So don't keep her waiting, mn?"

She's spared him no backwards glance at all; he might hear the smile in her voice nonetheless. In this moment though, and even in the next, the swordswoman is turning from the rogue who has become a very unlikely guest - With some samples of his craft tucked under her arm, with a handful of letters half-folded in her hand, and even as she resumes the path which they'd abandoned by unspoken agreement moments earlier, her eyes have strayed back towards the words written there: even at the rate of one word in three, she can recognise praise when she sees it.

It's interesting. Just like this was.
It was troubling, too, but then almost everything about Elliot is troubling. Adding him to her household is almost certainly a mistake, but in every moment of this very strange encounter instinct has screamed through her nerves with two distinctly different voices -

It's no wonder that she returns to her glasshouse, in the end. It's no wonder that she'll settle herself amongst silent, flourishing things, bury her senses for a time in the rich scent of fine soil and exotic greenery. This is a woman who avoids problems, and what a lovely and terrible problem she's given herself now.