* * *
'Sy
* * *
There's someone in my house. I think about it as I continue to play. The piano is, in a way, playing itself by this point. The notes always flow best when I've lost just about all of my cares. Still, I think. The thought sloshes back and forth in my brain, and I swish it back and forth a few times to taste it out. Katherine. Katherine's in my house. She's come home. That must be it, because everyone else has gone out. That's fine. I wanted the house to myself, but having Katherine around is fine. Someone to commiserate with. Someone to share the rest of the wine with.
There may not be a rest of the wine, but there are always more bottles in the kitchen, and if those run out, I can finally be arsed to replace them from the cellar's contents. This house is well-fortified with wine. In the event of a siege or apocalypse, you can damn well better be sure that I will be finely drunk, if not dead out there on some bloody battlefield. The flashes of the battlefield to come: something that's been keenly on my mind in the past day or so, and something I've tried to push back, slowly, one bottle's diameter at a time. Or length. How do you measure drunkenness? Height? I'm a very tall guy. I need several more bottles before I could stack them up and match my height. Obviously I need more. I hear a knock. I stop playing.
That's very strange. Katherine almost never knocks on the door to my study. She never has to. I turn to the door and gesture for her to enter. Then I recall that the door is still closed - my hint for that being that I can see that it's closed. I gesture again, then clear my throat. "Katherine, please come in," I say.
She opens the door, head peeking in timidly. She's so much like a cat. Always has been. She steps in, closing the door behind her. "'Sy? Where's everybody gone?"
"Lyric's at the Poet Hall with Stevane, looking after Elete's sorry ass like a good couple of Poets. Gerude went out with Erynn. Jenny's not been back but I expect she's reacquainting herself with the Armed Hall. Lute's gone off to get himself killed again in Sul, and Gerald's fool enough to go talk to you. Is he dead yet, or did he survive that conversation this time?"
Katherine pouts, looking over me. "No, I didn't hurt him this time. Much. He's gone out too. It's just you and me here." She perches on a nearby stool near the piano, an extra one in the same design of my piano stool, but made for one person. I have several. They're very nice for quiet little socials around the piano. Her legs are crossed at the ankles, her hands, ladylike, folded in her lap. She's a delicate thing, I realize. Like my tea doilies, or like Elete. I wonder why that comparison came into my head, but all the same it twists my anger at Elete into my current thoughts. Everything's so complicated. He makes nothing simple.
Katherine frowns. "I...have a lot to talk about. But what's so wrong, 'Sy? It's dark in your house. And you're..." she frowns, cutting off the observation of 'drinking a lot.'
"I'm just fine. Now. I haven't been fine for much of the day." I turn back to my piano and let a few notes ripple through it. I feel better when my hands are moving. When something's being done, even if I'm sitting still.
"Glumly doting over the piano," Katherine mutters. "'Sy? Honey? How is Elete?" In the next few moments I must make a face, because her eyebrows raise and she bites her lip. "Is he going to be alright through the night? Should I check on him?"
I shake my head. "No. He's staying put, I've seen to it."
"Ah." She studies my face for a bit longer. "Honey? What's wrong?"
I stare down at the keys. I've stopped playing. Even music reminds me of him, even though the music is mine. Should be mine. What's wrong? What isn't wrong? "There's been a slaughter in Audiva Rocale. It's being contained as best as it can. But Elete caused a bloodbath due to his insistence on working himself into exhaustion and delusion. I called him away from his Duty. I'll discuss it with Luciprochoros in the morning." I grimace, keeping my eyes on the keys, my hands drifting to them once again. My music. It sounds so lonely. Elete's accompaniment made for the sweetest duet.
Katherine gasps. "I..." She catches her breath, then continues. "'Sy, I don't know what to say. I... I really can't..." She breathes once again. "Perhaps you should think about it."
"He can't go on like this, Katherine." I'm tired. I'm whispering. "He can't continue to abuse his position like this. Too much is falling apart, and he's letting it fall apart."
"But... 'Sy. Elete is what we need right now! He's... my Father needs help from both the Armed and the Poets."
She goes silent. There's nothing but the sound of the piano. A bitter song, no sweetness at all to it. It must be my face that's quieted her. It must be quite stormy indeed.
"...'Sy?" She clears her throat, nervousness creeping into her voice. "There's a lot I have to say. It's very important. I don't think it can wait, either. Father should last the night, but if he deteriorates any further, who knows what the consequences... actually, you know exactly what consequences there will be." The steel creeps back into her voice as that thought comes to her mind.
"Of course there will be consequences, dear Katherine. They're unavoidable. There is no way to stop this bloody war. Don't you feel it? It's already happening in Sul. There's no way to contain this. Your Father was a failure and a fool, at worst a tool and most likely a willing participant in this sabotage. What good will saving him do?"
Katherine's stood up, and the whole room feels like it's on fire. I look over to her, my hands still stumbling across the keys. My Advocate's eyes are like the sun, burning as golden as my own. There's a chill going through me, like cold water being poured down the back of my shirt collar and flowing down my neck and along my spine. I actually shiver a little. I blink a bit in disbelief. Katherine's eyes haven't shifted completely to the Advocate's, but I have a feeling I'm about to face her down.
"It is my duty that he be saved. Do you truly know the consequences of him dying? Do you? You don't know what I saw in his heart when were were in the Advocate's chambers. You haven't even heard the testimony the Peacekeeper and I acquired today. You don't know the half of what's happened to him."
My brows knit together, my expression collecting itself into a glare as my piano bench scrapes slowly back. I don't so much rise as unfold. She is so tiny, and I so tall. Delicate, though, is perhaps not the proper word for her. When she can burn like she is doing now, I don't think 'delicate' works anymore. "Testimony? I tried to Judge him. You dragged him out of my Court before I could gain proper testimony. You coddled him in your own chambers. And then what did you find out? Nothing!"
She bites her lip, fists clenched at her sides, beginning to tremble with rage. "That's not true. How would you even know that? What help were you with it?"
"You disabled me from doing it in the first place! How can you dare to ask me to do anything after stepping in my way and obstructing the Law?" My voice is climbing to a roar that I barely can hear over the rushing in my own ears.
"You're an obstruction to yourself! Disabling the Poet King after trying to kill off a man before beginning to understand what's happened to him! He's so fucking messed up that Camden and I had to interrogate Cade for answers, 'Sy!"
My eyes narrow to tiny slits. Something's got up the fury in my brain. I'm not really sure what, but it's as if she's put a drop of pure vitriol into my bloodstream. "Fucking Cade, the deceiver, direct servant to Jherent Nul himself, is your key to Ebrellin-i's survival? Could you make your methods sound any more questionable?"
There's a fire in her eyes, a dangerous spark, the kind I recognize. I see it in her eyes right before she says something she shouldn't. I'll have to confess that I usually encourage that sort of outburst to happen to get the upper hand - but isn't that my job? "Do you want to know just how desperate I've been to get any edge at all, to make any advances in this without your help, 'Sy? I think you do. I think you deserve to know that I had to speak Nul-deh'le to Ebrellin-i just to get him to hear me. To advance with him at all without you helping me."
Her accusatory tone is enough to send me over the edge on its own, but then there's the question of Nul-deh'le. The tongue that few know, can even learn to begin with, because it destroys the source of the sound as it is spoken. Even thinking in the language can erase a person's thoughts or drive them to madness. The rare times it's ever been taught to Poets is to prevent them from accidentally reading or speaking it. The fact that Katherine would use that language as a ploy to salvage her worthless, wretched Father is so infuriating to me that I have to remind myself to speak. "I see. You're resorting to madness to work with a madman. Has it driven you insane yet?" I take in a deep breath. "I forbid you to work with him any further, if all you're going to do is destroy yourself and everything else in the process."
Her face is utter confusion now. "You what? Forbid me?" Her mouth opens and closes a few times before she says, "You could never do that. It's not how the balance works and you know it."
"Do you want to try and stop me?" I can't prove it, but that might be the most common set of last words to ever be uttered by anybody.
My head is knocked back, my face whipping sideways. A few moments play back in my mind, and I recall the sensation of the back of her hand smacking across my cheek. I come to that conclusion right before her hands dig into the front of my jacket and pull me downwards to eye level. She bites me.
After that, things lose all sense of coherency. I don't remember visuals. I don't remember anything else that we said. I remember the sound of thick glass breaking - the wine bottle, against my head. The echoes of more delicate, thinner glass breaking in the background. My crystal wine glass set. It flies across the study at the same time that the piano is knocked over. I feel a blaze of heat - Katherine letting loose with some concentration of her aura, but still her Arms are withheld. Fair enough; Diyn absolutely refuses to enter this room right now. My only weapon is one of the legs of the piano. Katherine opts for one of the stools. I hear paper ripping. We must migrate to a corner of the study that has my books. Wetness, the smell of wine. A bottle I didn't quite empty, and now that problem's solved. The sound of panting, then of shouting. I'm not quite sure what either of us say. I see her face, red. I feel warmth trickling down my own face. We're both bleeding, and that's at least the one thing right now that feels right about the world.
Then she leaves, and I promptly black out.
* * *
Katherine
* * *
I'm bloodied. I stalk out of his house and I'm bleeding. I'm stalking out of 'Sy's house, and I'm bleeding. Thank the gods and the heavens and all their servants that we didn't draw real weapons. Arms. Because I would have killed him.
Gevurah has the audacity to whisper that I wouldn't have, and I just tell her to shut up. My heels grind in the gravel leading to the Armed complex. It's not far. We're never far from work, after all. It's the only place to go. I can't stay in that house. Daddy's got a guest, I can tell. I don't want anyone else around if I'm gonna go stalking into his place bleeding and angry. Camden's a good ranting partner, but I can't seem to pinpoint where he is. He's quiet. Probably wants some rest. At least Gerald went out, because I don't want to run into him right now. I'd kill him, and I'm not sure now if I'd enjoy his death this time around. Didn't that first time, that's for sure.
There's Elete, but he's in fucking detention with a Poet-and-a-half watching. Fucking 'Sy. Has to ruin everything that's free and everything that might, just might, give me an upper hand in this fight. And it's not even a fight against him! Or at least it wasn't, up until just now.
I hold my hand against my arm. The office. It'll be empty. I can clean up in the tea room. I can sleep behind my desk. Wouldn't be the first time, though it's a true mark of desperation on my part. Tomorrow... tomorrow I can start doing what I can, no matter if the Judge tries to stop me. I can't let Father die. I can't let Elete lose his footing against Tesynnodai. If anything's to come out of this... damnit, I've just got to keep fighting!
I open the door to my office and stare right into the face of Bronwyn Averseen. My hair is falling into my face, and some of it is bloody. She looks up at me in shock, her quill held mid-air as a strange kitten-thing bats at it over the paperwork. A strand of hair falls in front of her nose, completing our awkward moment.
"Jhe Katherine? Hon? Are you bleeding?" She rises, breaking the moment, the kitten-thing mewling after her. I don't really remember her walking to me, just the feeling of her hands around my shoulders. She pulls me into the office, guides me into the tea room. I perceive this in little slices of moments, perfect portraits held up beside one another.
She's wiping my face when she asks me what happened.
"Nothing. 'Sy and I got into a fight. It's... nothing. He's bleeding more, that's enough." I look at the tiny thing sitting on her shoulder. "Benny, what's that?"
She starts, then looks over her shoulder. "Oh! Precia!" She reaches up and scratches the thing behind the ears. "Here." She hands the winged kitten down to me, and I cup it in my hands, instinctively stroking the fur. It responds with a purr of appreciation and settles into my lap. "Jhe h'Logos's most recent project. It's a shenanigan. Everyone gets to have one, or two, or even three, he said. Except Erynn can't have his battalion. Jhe h'Logos said that was too much trouble for even one Poet." At that, she bites her lip. I feel it too. That wave of depression at the mention of the Poet King.
Then the thing nips me on the finger, and I'm not allowed to think about that anymore.
The rest of the night goes reasonably well. I could say, in fact, that it's a lot of fun. Benny's paperwork wraps up quickly, and we proceed to her home. It's pretty far, since she doesn't live in the city, but I relish the feeling of being outside a ways. Free from all of this chaos. A little quiet, for once.
"I was hiding it from him!" Benny recounts the events in the Poet Hall from her vantage, which apparently she didn't pay much attention to, because most of the time she was trying to hide the fact that she had tucked her shenanigan right down into her ample cleavage. That it stayed quiet the entire time she was with the Judge, and that he actually looked her in the eyes and not in the chest every time she talked to him, is a testament to her skills as a Poet. Nothing else could have possibly gotten him to ignore the presence of an animal that had so humiliated him.
In fact, Benny's recounting of the shenanigans crawling all over 'Sy is so vivid that even as I fall asleep in her bed, I'm still giggling about it.
Characters:
