[The tip of his face is a slight thing made blatant given their proximity (the soft set of Leander's brow). No more intimate, but intent. If there is a kind of consolation in the familiar, then this falls into the same circle with that pitch dark anger knotted in his chest. What creature isn't compelled by seeing something recognizable?
He listens. The angle of how Leander has settled alongside him on the chair arm is too sharp to look him in the eye, so instead Flint studies the fine bones visible in the backs of Leander's hands. The shape of his wrists. Some miscellaneous seam in his clothes which is lit incongruously bright by a happenstantial catch of fire light.
'It happened near the end of Bloomingtide, he'd said.
Flint tilts his head further. Far enough, this time, to look up at Leander with one shadow darkened eye. If there is any humor in it, it's the dark and canny kind—temper and self satisfaction all at once. I thought I recognized you.]
Under similar circumstances, I might have stabbed Byerly Rutyer too.
[Making room, now, so he may be looked upon more directly, and so he himself may do the same. He doesn't go far. (Nor is he fooled into thinking he's been seen. Hundreds of moments—thousands of them—)]
[He gives too, following the natural twist required to study Leander by setting his shoulder against the far arm of the chair. The empty cup is removed from its precarious position or steadied there. His hand stays though, secure where its chosen to settle.
No. Rutyer rarely does.]
I beat Coupe then. Clipped her in the face with a wooden block.
[No laugh this time; that was for the call-out. A moment's thought back, to the list he'd read over and over, to the sound of Matthias's tremulous voice.]
That's right—your friend John Silver was among them. [A pause. His head turns a fraction.] Your friend, or...
[Study fixed, that hand (with its series of rings and worn callouses and small scars) remains in place. Five minutes ago, stripped of any real context, the answer Flint gives him might have meant anything.]
[Something drops, small and silent. Like ink on a blotting page, it's distinct as it lands but doesn't spread far, destined to become just another contextual feature. It doesn't matter. That the loneliness he saw and chased is of a divergent quality, not immediate at all—he isn't alone at all—
Meaningless. This time tomorrow, Leander will be gone.
The flick of a smile that follows is unremarkable.]
[There, from the farthest side allowable by that narrow space of the chair, Flint studies the shape of him. There is a shadow of a thing which lives behind Leander that he thinks he perceives the shadow of. He knows what want looks like, and how it is similar to and distinct from desire.]
I didn't think to doubt it.
[His hand, lighter now, slips from Leander's wrist to his fingers. Touches his thumb. Shifts the silver ring there. If he is patient, he imagines that thing will resolve itself into some visible form. Or he will spy a direct path to lead him to it. Or—]
[No shuttering, no withdrawal. There is no physical or metaphorical widening of the scant gap between their bodies. Leander's presence, that shadow, is at its core as immutable as it is empty of humanity.
Flint turns the ring. His hands have relaxed; they do nothing in response.
[The shift of thumb and forefinger which is quietly turning that silver band by degrees stills.
There is no change in Leander. But in Flint's face, something slides sideways, goes reflexively blank, and then snaps defensively closed by instinct. Like a dog that puts its hackles up upon hearing a familiar, dangerous sound.]
[Not a look he had been hoping to see when he came here, but familiarity is its own comfort.]
You ought to ask him yourself, and trust his answer.
[Eleven paces across the soil, grass between the fingers. Hallways lined in frames. Following his own reflection—an illusion. How childish he's been. How small.
But he went willingly, and there is no shame in a lesson.]
You've secured everything you wanted of me. Was there anything else?
[There is something in Leander's stitched neat denial which clearly catches him aback. It's as a slash from some direction he'd momentarily allowed himself to look beyond. A cut, with that thing that looks like jealousy but is envy (and easily given to resentment) tugging at its seam—
The lightness of his grip comes fully undone. That hand is drawn back.]
I think whatever interest you feel is contingent on my value.
[The cut is faintly satisfying, the way those things are, the extraction of idle fingers not at all. Leander leaves his hands just where they are—the sudden lack radiating there at the joint of his thumb—and remains. He is not gone hollow, nor shut away, only quiet.
(Not a few people have found this infuriating; Ilias was always calmed by it. Called it kindness.)]
You needn't be insulted—I don't believe you've done it on purpose. And I do like you, James. Very much.
[Is brisk and automatic, the stamped bland shape of it meant to conceal some soured edge as he gathers the empty cup and the book from between his thigh and the chair's arm. Is it meant to be a comfort? That he should be a victim to impulse in addition to guilty of the thing.
The chair protests as he moves to lever himself up out of it.]
My contact in Carastes will expect payment for his trouble and you'll need coin for your passage. I've a sum set aside for you in my things. Wait here,
[Without thinking to, Leander frowns: reflexive, dissatisfied. Natural.
Firelight glints on his thumb as his hand lifts, barely hesitates those few inches raised. When he grasps Flint's arm just above the elbow, it's half to see what will happen—an automatic impulse, testing for next time—]
[The response is instant—a half turn which isn't enough to draw free, but is plenty of space to give the offending touch a sharp look which follows promptly along the line of contact to Leander. Flint has a cup in one hand and a book in the other; maybe one of them checks him from personally seeing that hand on him removed. Still. He is very broad and the fire light throws long his shadow.
(Yet it is a half turn back not a half step forward; the difference between a deflecting parry and defending through assault.)]
If we're to give your suspicions credit, I don't see why I should need you to.
[Leander's tongue moves behind his teeth. Shifting subtleties in his face: lips, nostrils, the set of his jaw. The crease of his frown twitching deeper, relaxing. The minuscule flicks of analytic eyes, altogether undeterred by the severity they meet.
Face it or turn away, admire it or cover it, you cannot sunder your own reflection.
After a time, he breathes out, long, and with it comes the settling of his body into itself, ribcage, shoulders, spine, and the weight carries through his hand, which at last comes loose of Flint's sleeve.]
Had I any partner, after those dreams, I'd want to be with them tonight. [Likewise, his gaze slides away.] He's probably waiting for you.
[There is a true thing threatening to pry free. He is aware of it in the same way he is aware of the exact place on his arm that Leander's hand has left and the bolted closed door and heat of the fire. That wind whistling through the fucking window frame. It presses, close and wanting something. And it's possible that were there a way to crack his teeth and let that thing spill free, it might take some useful shape. The correct one. But how much more likely is it that it would turn into a sharp edge set into a waiting hand? I'm trying to be kind to you, is a shape which slips easily between the ribs. He knows this.
And Leander is right. He is waiting. So what difference does it make?]
Stay as you are.
[Both book and cup are set restlessly aside. In the adjoining room there is a sea chest at the end of the bed and a waiting purse inside it. He leaves Leander alone before the fire to fetch it.]
Not just there, but in the room, first looking at the fire—carbon and ash and crawling embers, a place to erase a vow—and then the space around him to retain as much as he can in the brief time that remains. The books and the desk and among them all the smaller signs a person lives and works here. In time, he may have such a room of his own, meant for business. He may never see this one again.
A severed piece is still whole, retains its own name: hand, eye, heart. But this is no amputation; he remains himself, and the piece of him that calls loudest is far away. James Flint isn't even a mage. They can never understand each other. (Except in the ways they have, naturally, unexpectedly, without need for thought. It's the thinking that entangles.)
When the commander reemerges, Leander is standing with his cloak over his arm, wearing the detached patience of a man accustomed to departures.]
[It takes him some minutes to reappear. Not because there is much to shift in the sea chest or because the secret place the letter Leander need carry with him is so hard to access, but because the taut heat that rides high behind the ribs is both useless to him in its current form and requires time to orient. He does it imperfectly, like covering a thing with a tarpaulin on the assumption that when all of this is finished and Leander has gone that he will be able to lay out its parts to better pick and choose which he means to keep.
The chest's interior trays, removed to access its lower most compartment, are left scattered about it on the floor. Save for some purposeful unpinching of the brow, the man who returns to the room isn't markedly different from the one who left it. Upright. An enforced distance that is remote enough not to be rankled by the appearance of Leander's patience.]
When you reach Carastes, go to the Broken Horn—a public house near the harbor's east end. Ask after a man named Procillus and give him this letter. Keep it sealed or he'll suspect its provenance. He will want half this purse but be willing to accept a third.
[The coin is passed over without preamble. The letter—]
Leave your crystal when you go. There is a replacement in that purse paired only to one in my custody.
[The letter is folded behind the cover of Παραπόταμος and given over with the book.]
[These offerings, the secrecy, the threadbare book already warm in his hand, they are achievements for the same covetous part of him that saw a tender patch and immediately pressed it. To be given something that will not be forgotten, not out of obligation, but because it is meaningful—
Leave your crystal when you go, he says. There is a replacement in that purse paired only to one and silence rushes in thick as blood to cover the rest.
Distantly, he wonders if it shows—if, as he stares down at the book and the Nevarran script thereupon, there is some way to identify externally the vignette of haze he perceives around it. There isn't. It doesn't. Only the hastening, shallow breath is significant.
Procillus will see you placed advantageously. At the very least, you may trust him to point you in a suitable direction. From there, I will be relying on your sense of navigation.
[Presumably this all takes the place of some simpler thing. You're welcome, or Be well, their equivalent nicety.
Held in reserve just far enough to play at objective, he finds the shape of all of this uniquely unsatisfying. There is a prickle of something he only knows isn't fear lurking at the edge of this arrangement and dislikes the uncertainty of being unable to pin down exactly what it is. This isn't how he'd intended to see this done, but he can hardly undo it.
Standing in the fire light, all drawn sharp gold edges and empty handed, Flint asks,]
[None, he could say, and leave it there. There is truth in that—what rushes and thumps within him is not a question at all,
paired only to one
it's the marrow-deep knowledge that were Ilias here, they would spend the night together—and that Ilias would be nonetheless relieved to watch him go.
Leander doesn't often speak to anyone without pinning them with his eyes, at length, his feline blinks slow and too far apart; but here his eyes are pinned to the cover.]
Who knows. A formless thing is cinched tighter, pulled in closer by reflex. His hand twitches at his side. Slowly, carefully, with a rasp in the sound that is from the late hour or the distinct lack of sleep preceding the long length of the day, or because he is rigorously measuring his own reply:]
[He's right, of course. Nothing could. Still: vanity rolls over, cracks an eye. Leander huffs through his nose, not quite a laugh. Again, softer, his lips drawn in—not quite a smile.]
That's not what I was asking, [as he turns, moves away—no yielding grasp will stop him—and rearranges the things in his hands so he may turn out his sending crystal, paired to no one in particular. Resolving, once again, into himself.] If you'd gone to him, I'd've stayed.
[The door, he unbolts—then closes his fist around the crystal, watches his own fingers tighten. The light rising between them, first blue, then white.]
Thank you, James, for the reminder. This weakness won't serve you in Carastes—I'll see it hardened before landfall.
[Hold a thing in a tight enough grip and eventually the pressure will strangle it. A fist crushes as well as it holds, and if it spends enough time squeezed shut then eventually opening it again is painful. All agonizing pins and needles.
Flint doesn't make any effort to catch him as Leander draws away. The scrape of the bolt is loud, but bearable. The scrape of the other thing—
He moves quickly when driven by impulse. The distance of a half dozen paces is marginal and then the door, if it has begun to come open, bangs shut again under the sudden presence of his hand. The toe of a boot wedged in tight against the base of the door. He's wrenched bigger men than Leander back from doors like this one and surely might easily do the same here. If he were fast enough, it wouldn't really matter what a mage might do.
But that's the opposite of the point and he makes no effort to touch Leander, only to bar his path.]
Wait. And speak to me. Which part of what I said implied you weak?
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He listens. The angle of how Leander has settled alongside him on the chair arm is too sharp to look him in the eye, so instead Flint studies the fine bones visible in the backs of Leander's hands. The shape of his wrists. Some miscellaneous seam in his clothes which is lit incongruously bright by a happenstantial catch of fire light.
'It happened near the end of Bloomingtide, he'd said.
Flint tilts his head further. Far enough, this time, to look up at Leander with one shadow darkened eye. If there is any humor in it, it's the dark and canny kind—temper and self satisfaction all at once. I thought I recognized you.]
Under similar circumstances, I might have stabbed Byerly Rutyer too.
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[Making room, now, so he may be looked upon more directly, and so he himself may do the same. He doesn't go far. (Nor is he fooled into thinking he's been seen. Hundreds of moments—thousands of them—)]
He didn't know what he was asking, that's all.
[Poor thing.]
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No. Rutyer rarely does.]
I beat Coupe then. Clipped her in the face with a wooden block.
[That empty cup is tipped halfway for emphasis.]
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[No laugh this time; that was for the call-out. A moment's thought back, to the list he'd read over and over, to the sound of Matthias's tremulous voice.]
That's right—your friend John Silver was among them. [A pause. His head turns a fraction.] Your friend, or...
[While they're being honest—more or less.]
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My partner.
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Ah.
[Something drops, small and silent. Like ink on a blotting page, it's distinct as it lands but doesn't spread far, destined to become just another contextual feature. It doesn't matter. That the loneliness he saw and chased is of a divergent quality, not immediate at all—he isn't alone at all—
Meaningless. This time tomorrow, Leander will be gone.
The flick of a smile that follows is unremarkable.]
Well, as ever, you have my discretion.
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I didn't think to doubt it.
[His hand, lighter now, slips from Leander's wrist to his fingers. Touches his thumb. Shifts the silver ring there. If he is patient, he imagines that thing will resolve itself into some visible form. Or he will spy a direct path to lead him to it. Or—]
Does he recognize what you would do for him?
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Flint turns the ring. His hands have relaxed; they do nothing in response.
He stares.
Simply,]
He tried to kill me for it.
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There is no change in Leander. But in Flint's face, something slides sideways, goes reflexively blank, and then snaps defensively closed by instinct. Like a dog that puts its hackles up upon hearing a familiar, dangerous sound.]
His reasoning?
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You ought to ask him yourself, and trust his answer.
[Eleven paces across the soil, grass between the fingers. Hallways lined in frames. Following his own reflection—an illusion. How childish he's been. How small.
But he went willingly, and there is no shame in a lesson.]
You've secured everything you wanted of me. Was there anything else?
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The lightness of his grip comes fully undone. That hand is drawn back.]
You think I've no interest but to use you.
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[The cut is faintly satisfying, the way those things are, the extraction of idle fingers not at all. Leander leaves his hands just where they are—the sudden lack radiating there at the joint of his thumb—and remains. He is not gone hollow, nor shut away, only quiet.
(Not a few people have found this infuriating; Ilias was always calmed by it. Called it kindness.)]
You needn't be insulted—I don't believe you've done it on purpose. And I do like you, James. Very much.
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[Is brisk and automatic, the stamped bland shape of it meant to conceal some soured edge as he gathers the empty cup and the book from between his thigh and the chair's arm. Is it meant to be a comfort? That he should be a victim to impulse in addition to guilty of the thing.
The chair protests as he moves to lever himself up out of it.]
My contact in Carastes will expect payment for his trouble and you'll need coin for your passage. I've a sum set aside for you in my things. Wait here,
[is firm. An intentional severing.]
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Firelight glints on his thumb as his hand lifts, barely hesitates those few inches raised. When he grasps Flint's arm just above the elbow, it's half to see what will happen—an automatic impulse, testing for next time—]
I don't understand what you want.
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(Yet it is a half turn back not a half step forward; the difference between a deflecting parry and defending through assault.)]
If we're to give your suspicions credit, I don't see why I should need you to.
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Face it or turn away, admire it or cover it, you cannot sunder your own reflection.
After a time, he breathes out, long, and with it comes the settling of his body into itself, ribcage, shoulders, spine, and the weight carries through his hand, which at last comes loose of Flint's sleeve.]
Had I any partner, after those dreams, I'd want to be with them tonight. [Likewise, his gaze slides away.] He's probably waiting for you.
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And Leander is right. He is waiting. So what difference does it make?]
Stay as you are.
[Both book and cup are set restlessly aside. In the adjoining room there is a sea chest at the end of the bed and a waiting purse inside it. He leaves Leander alone before the fire to fetch it.]
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Not just there, but in the room, first looking at the fire—carbon and ash and crawling embers, a place to erase a vow—and then the space around him to retain as much as he can in the brief time that remains. The books and the desk and among them all the smaller signs a person lives and works here. In time, he may have such a room of his own, meant for business. He may never see this one again.
A severed piece is still whole, retains its own name: hand, eye, heart. But this is no amputation; he remains himself, and the piece of him that calls loudest is far away. James Flint isn't even a mage. They can never understand each other. (Except in the ways they have, naturally, unexpectedly, without need for thought. It's the thinking that entangles.)
When the commander reemerges, Leander is standing with his cloak over his arm, wearing the detached patience of a man accustomed to departures.]
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The chest's interior trays, removed to access its lower most compartment, are left scattered about it on the floor. Save for some purposeful unpinching of the brow, the man who returns to the room isn't markedly different from the one who left it. Upright. An enforced distance that is remote enough not to be rankled by the appearance of Leander's patience.]
When you reach Carastes, go to the Broken Horn—a public house near the harbor's east end. Ask after a man named Procillus and give him this letter. Keep it sealed or he'll suspect its provenance. He will want half this purse but be willing to accept a third.
[The coin is passed over without preamble. The letter—]
Leave your crystal when you go. There is a replacement in that purse paired only to one in my custody.
[The letter is folded behind the cover of Παραπόταμος and given over with the book.]
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Leave your crystal when you go, he says. There is a replacement in that purse paired only to one and silence rushes in thick as blood to cover the rest.
Distantly, he wonders if it shows—if, as he stares down at the book and the Nevarran script thereupon, there is some way to identify externally the vignette of haze he perceives around it. There isn't. It doesn't. Only the hastening, shallow breath is significant.
And this, his careful, automatic response:]
Yes. Thank you.
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[Presumably this all takes the place of some simpler thing. You're welcome, or Be well, their equivalent nicety.
Held in reserve just far enough to play at objective, he finds the shape of all of this uniquely unsatisfying. There is a prickle of something he only knows isn't fear lurking at the edge of this arrangement and dislikes the uncertainty of being unable to pin down exactly what it is. This isn't how he'd intended to see this done, but he can hardly undo it.
Standing in the fire light, all drawn sharp gold edges and empty handed, Flint asks,]
Do you have any questions?
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paired only to one
it's the marrow-deep knowledge that were Ilias here, they would spend the night together—and that Ilias would be nonetheless relieved to watch him go.
Leander doesn't often speak to anyone without pinning them with his eyes, at length, his feline blinks slow and too far apart; but here his eyes are pinned to the cover.]
You're the only one who knows I'm leaving.
[only to one, only to one, only one
With effort, he tears his gaze from the book.]
May I stay here tonight?
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Who knows. A formless thing is cinched tighter, pulled in closer by reflex. His hand twitches at his side. Slowly, carefully, with a rasp in the sound that is from the late hour or the distinct lack of sleep preceding the long length of the day, or because he is rigorously measuring his own reply:]
I don't think I could satisfy you.
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That's not what I was asking, [as he turns, moves away—no yielding grasp will stop him—and rearranges the things in his hands so he may turn out his sending crystal, paired to no one in particular. Resolving, once again, into himself.] If you'd gone to him, I'd've stayed.
[The door, he unbolts—then closes his fist around the crystal, watches his own fingers tighten. The light rising between them, first blue, then white.]
Thank you, James, for the reminder. This weakness won't serve you in Carastes—I'll see it hardened before landfall.
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Flint doesn't make any effort to catch him as Leander draws away. The scrape of the bolt is loud, but bearable. The scrape of the other thing—
He moves quickly when driven by impulse. The distance of a half dozen paces is marginal and then the door, if it has begun to come open, bangs shut again under the sudden presence of his hand. The toe of a boot wedged in tight against the base of the door. He's wrenched bigger men than Leander back from doors like this one and surely might easily do the same here. If he were fast enough, it wouldn't really matter what a mage might do.
But that's the opposite of the point and he makes no effort to touch Leander, only to bar his path.]
Wait. And speak to me. Which part of what I said implied you weak?
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