[Closed] Cadenza [M]

A little get-together at the Pendulum House.

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A large forest in Central Anaxas, the once-thriving mostly human town of Dorhaven is recovering from a bombing in 2719 at its edge.

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Tom Cooke
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Wed Oct 09, 2019 11:21 pm

Beneath Pendulum House Uptown
Late Evening on the 54th of Roalis, 2719
The mark disappeared under Ava’s kerchief, the wall blank as it’d been before they’d come through the first time. Tom thought back to when she’d painted it on, how he’d thought it was hopeful, at best; there was something satisfying about seeing it wiped away, now they’d made it back. Closing the circle, he thought, unbidden. Worse before it gets better, Ava said again, and a soft laugh rasped its way out of Ingo, soft and bitter. Tom cast them a backward glance, lips pursed.

“Oes,” Ingo said, straightening his back up as much as he could. “Wouldn’ be who we are if we couldn’ take a little worse, oes, Silk? Ent so sure about the better.”

His breath caught in his chest; he snorted, strained to hold himself straight. Tom could tell he was taking as much of his own weight as he could, but he didn’t know it’d be enough.

He didn’t know, but he reckoned it’d have to be. Lowering his head, he turned back to the stairs and started up. Again, he felt the twinges in his hip; again, he struggled to find footing, risked slipping on the worn stone in those expensive, useless fucking shoes. Again, it felt like an age, but this time, he was aware of Ava behind him, of the wick’s shuffling and labored breaths. He had to put it out of his head.

Risha, Tom kept thinking, with every careful footfall. Like two notes, rich and deep, rising up through him. It lay warm and heavy in his chest – like a paperweight, holding his soul in place.

At the top of the stairs, he cast a look backward. Even though he’d heard them scuffling behind him, he half-expected to see nothing but the shadows and the twist of the steps down; it was mung, but he couldn’t help the swell of relief when the light licked over the wick’s bowed head, his ragged hair, when it lit the shape of Ava’s face beside. He knew he shouldn’t’ve, but he looked at her face for just a second, and he saw something warm and soft in her eyes as they met his.

Tom wanted to smile back. There wasn’t a thing he wanted more than that; he wanted it so bad, he felt it in his bones, and it hurt. He didn’t think he had a good face for it, and he didn’t know if she’d understand, but the warmth of that name rose up through him, and he wanted to lay it out between them, and he wanted to give her something for what she’d given him. But Ingo lifted his head, his gold eyes glittering, and Tom just nodded and turned back.

Easing the shelf away from the wall, he crept out into the room, eyes adjusting to the thin film of moonlight that trickled from the window. He left the door open behind him, scanned the room, then turned and raised a hand, nodding. He waited for Ava to bring the wick shuffling through; he hesitated. Padding silently through the shadows, flame bowing in the late Roalis breeze, he moved round to each of the grims they’d pulled earlier – eased them back in. Better to be careful, he thought, squinting through the dark for irregularities in the rows of spines.

Being honest, with Ingo’s eyes singing the hairs off the back of his neck, it’d helped to have something to do. As he slid Mantel back into place, he could hear the wick’s breath clawing in and out of his lungs, even over the chatter of the crickets and the rustle of the drapes. When he turned back, Ingo was leaning heavier on Ava, and Tom fought to keep the concern out of his eyes.

He was opening his mouth to suggest a way out – thinking they’d do best to go out the way they’d come in; he could clear each hall, give them the signal, move quick and quiet – when he heard a muffled noise, and his mouth clamped shut. Ingo blinked his eyes, jerked his head toward the shut door, his mouth furrowing deep in his beard.

Footsteps, heavy on carpet. Shuffling. A familiar voice, breathless laughter – a man’s, then a woman’s, twittering. “It came from in here, I think,” he thought he heard, and then another laugh.

Swallowing thickly, Tom turned back to Ava and Ingo. His jaw set; his head felt empty of thoughts. The drapes fluttered in a big gust, playing in the shadows on the carpeting, and he looked toward the window. It was a big window, Tom reckoned, big and tall, just about to the floor. He wasn’t good at making calculations, but he reckoned he’d been big as the wick, once; he reckoned he’d’ve been able to fit through. There was some kind of garden out there, too, it looked like, dotted with greens, thick with shadows.

Worse before it gets better.

Taking a deep breath, he looked Ava in the eye. “I’ll meet you at the carriage.” He held the candlestick, wavering in the air. He felt like his breath was trapped somewhere inside him, but he found it quick enough. “If I don’t come out,” he went on, unhesitating, “the coachman’ll listen to you. I made sure, in case.”

He licked his lips, watching them through the soft, warm light, the cold echoes of the moon and the streetlamp. Then – with a huff of a breath, he blew out the candle. The noises were getting closer and louder.

Tom nodded, brusque-like, setting down the candlestick.
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Ava Weaver
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Thu Oct 10, 2019 11:37 am

Evening, 54th Roalis, 2719
Pendulum House, Uptown
A little laugh had rippled from Ava at Ingo’s comment about better and worse, chasing his own rasping one. Just a breath, just a little one, relief and humor both mingling in it. She didn’t have the strength for more, but they had shared that little moment, and she held it to herself through the long, painful journey up the stairs.

There was nothing in Tom’s face when he looked down at her, nothing she could name. Only Anatole’s tense frown, the furrowing of his brow, but then Ava hadn’t expected anything else, anything more. Risky, she thought; too risky. Perhaps it was for the best.

The little study was even worse than it had been before, even stranger after the stark contrast of the tunnels below. Ava stood, as straight as she could, with Ingo shaking beside her now, trembling so hard she could feel it rattling her bones, resting more of his weight on her arm.

Ava eased a little closer, and a little closer again, so that the wick could rest his weight on her shoulder. She did not look at him as she did it; she didn’t acknowledge it in the least. She just shifted, slowly, until the rich silk fabric of her shoulder just barely brushed the filthy rags of his shirt. She heard Ingo groan, softly, and felt him lean a little against her, the warm, trembling weight of him. And Ava could bear it, because she had no choice, and she did not mind it; it was freely given.

Voices in the hallway, and Ava’s breath caught too, tight in her throat. She glanced at the door, then back at the secret entrance, now shut - back at the bookshelves, trying to remember where the grimoires had been. Between her and Tom, could they -

She shifted to look at Tom, and followed his gaze to the window over her shoulder. Ava met his eyes, and then nodded, and did not waste the time to speak - to thank him - even to ask, with a sudden sharp ache of pain, for him to come back to her, one way or another. It doesn’t matter to me, she wanted to say, what form you take. This one - any one - only come back!

He would, Ava promised herself, and as Tom blew out the candle, as she and Ingo turned and shuffled towards the window, she found that she really did believe it. One way or another, he would come back to her.

They eased through the opening, Ingo contorting his lanky body, and holding outside, resting against the wall. Ava hitched her skirt up, revealing skin-tight silk stockings beneath, black, and stepped over the edge of the window as well, out into the garden. She did not look back; better not to waste the time. Better to be a dark shape outside than the gleam of the whites of eyes.

Ingo rested against her again and they started to the side, along the house, out of the view of the window, slowly shuffling along. They went diagonally out from it, leaving behind the curved walls of the Pendulum house, out into the darkness of the trees and shrubs beyond, far from the distant tinkle of noise, the soft clutter of voices from behind windows, the distant light gleaming through the glass. They eased over thick, spongy grass, the sort that whispered softly rather than crunched even in the late Roalis heat; through winding bushes and beneath tall trees, avoiding the gravel-laid paths lined with smooth stones.

Benea and Osa glittered in the mostly clear sky above, dangerously bright; lighting the way, but also shimmering off of the back of Ava’s dress. She was not sure she ever fully breathed throughout the garden, easing slowly and steadily with too much of Ingo’s weight, steadily heavier against her until – finally – finally – Ava glimpsed the long back drive with its curving benches – the carriage, pulled forward and off to the side, with its human driver leaned against the side, smoking a cigarette.

Ava eased Ingo gently down on one of the benches, pressing a finger to her lips. She stepped forward, and cleared her throat. The driver jumped, half-losing his grasp on the cigarette, cherry-red tobacco scattering.

Ava grinned, faintly. “No worries, friend,” she said, quietly. “Help me get him inside,” she glanced back at Ingo, shuddering on the bench, and back at the carriage driver, and offered no other explanation, no sign on her smooth, smiling face that the request was anything but ordinary. She trusted it all – yet again – to Tom. And he had been right; the driver didn’t ask, but opened the door, and the two of them eased inside, Ava grasping Ingo’s arm, helping him settle on one of the benches.

Ava sat opposite from him, shaking with tiredness, and leaned back slowly against the seat, curls resting softly against the back wall. She took a deep breath, and then another, and eased back forward again, looking at Ingo across the cabin. “Not so bad,” she said, more firmly than she felt, in truth, and didn’t look to the door to check for Tom – didn’t let herself wander too far into wondering what was happening inside.

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Tom Cooke
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Thu Oct 10, 2019 9:22 pm

Beneath Pendulum House Uptown
Late Evening on the 54th of Roalis, 2719
Fintan drifted.

The galdor – the one Silk had called Risha, as if he were one of them – snuffed out the candle, and the room was all full of Benea and Osa, swimming. He felt his hand tighten around Silk’s forearm; his own candle was burning down, and he felt like his feet were stuck in the wax. What little strength he’d prayed from the Ten was leaving him, and he hadn’t more strength to pray.

The window, then.

How long had it been since Fintan Quickley had tasted the fresh air? Not since the brigk took him, he thought. Silk guided him toward the window, and his heart beat so hard against the cage of his ribs that he thought they’d break. Pounding, pounding, ’cause the sky with its spilt stardust was broader and deeper than he’d remembered, like a great rushing river above the stirring treetops, and the wind, Fintan thought, the wind would pluck him up into it and carry him out over the sea. He was a swimmer, was he, Ingo, but he didn’t think he could swim the Tincta Basta.

But the smell of the earth was one he knew, and for all her jent dress and her fine, made-up face, and her jent friend who’d touched him with his laoso field, he was beginning to trust Silk. So he let her urge him through, and he kept his eyes on the earth underneath his feet, else he kept them shut.

The months he’d spent beneath the earth had twisted his back, and he had to twist it more to fit through the window; all of him ached, ached tsuter, torn muscle and warped bone, and he wondered if he’d ever get back what he’d lost to the jent. The pain was fair bad by the time he’d got through, and he had to slump against the cold brick – brick, dry brick, against his skin! – and then Silk was beside him, and he took her strength again, because he had no other choice.

As they left the window, the wind snatched voices out of it. One, he did not recognize; the other was Risha’s, and he was talking, low and fast, and then he was laughing, a low, ugly hum of a laugh, and then they were both laughing. Fintan could make out no words, and soon enough, the voices were gone under the rustle of the leaves and the stirring of the air.

Fintan kept his eyes on the ground. Sometimes he thought of the chasm that gaped above his head, whenever Silk took him too far from a tree or a shrub. Whenever they drifted out into the open, he felt the cool air like sandpaper in his lungs; he felt them work like bellows, never enough air. He clutched close to Silk, now, unashamed, because he was more frightened than he was angry. The grass was soft underfoot, nothing like the damp, rough, filthy floor of the cell and the cell-block and the hall and the Room underground. It was soft against the torn soles of his feet, and that frightened him, too.

He still couldn’t look when he heard the sound of Silk’s voice again, soft over the whickering of horses, the creak of wood. Some natt came near, ’cause he didn’t feel a glamour or a field, only a man close-by, a man’s breathing. There was a sound like a door being opened, then rough hands, then Silk’s hand on his arm, still, and he was stepping up, stepping inside –

Fintan collapsed onto a bench, and he knew there was four solid walls around him. The bench underneath him rocked like a boat, and he laughed, so strange was it, breathless rasping laughter. It stopped rocking, and the door came shut with a muffled thump.

He opened his eyes. All was dark, as if he’d gone blind, except for a thin trickle of pale light that slipped in between the drapes.

The carriage, Risha had said; the coachman.

Fear crawled up through Fintan, tightening around his throat. He snorted it in and out through his nose, and it kindled the fire inside him. Silk was sitting across from him, her face a pale mask in the faint light. Looking like a jent, he thought, in her high-collared dress, though he couldn’t feel a field against his. He stared at her through the dark, stared at her hard.

“Where are ye takin’ me?” he rasped. “I been a maw under the earth. I ent got ne kint, ne fami. All I got is the How.” His breath scraped in and out of his lungs, and he wheezed with a sudden cough, eyes beading with tears. “Where are ye takin’ me?”
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Ava Weaver
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Fri Oct 11, 2019 12:44 am

Evening, 54th Roalis, 2719
Outside Pendulum House, Uptown
I
ngo’s eyes were still squeezed shut when he found the bench in the carriage; Ava was not sure if he had looked around the garden. Ava was not sure how they would get through the long ride back to the Dives, the three of them - and how she hoped it would be three - because there would be no inch in the carriage where he would not feel the raw scrape of Tom’s field against his glamour.

She had known it for fear in the garden, the expression that tightened his face, that wheezed in and out of his too shallow breaths, but she did not know why. His eyes opened slowly, and Ingo looked at her again, and asked where.

“A safehouse,” Ava said. She reached forward and took Ingo’s hands between hers, not squeezing, but finding contact between them again, trying to carry him a little further. “Mine,” she smiled, softly, hoping he would find it reassuring.

Ava felt a deep pang of longing in her heart for Woven Delights just then; for the rows of fabric and the counter, the welcoming back room, the stairs and her own private place up above. The secret safe house that lay beneath, the real purpose of all of this. To have a home to go to, after the horror that was the Pendulum House; it was so precious a gift that she could have wept.

A warm bed, Ava thought, and something to eat and drink. Toast; she had bread, upstairs; there were the sort of rations that kept, tucked away in the little room, but she thought toast would be easier for him. Water, first, then maybe tea. There was whiskey, too, but she would have to be careful with what she gave him; she didn’t know what he could stomach. Cloths to clean himself; disinfectant and bandages for the sorts of injuries that could be treated. As much of it as he could stand, tonight, and then she would leave him the dignity of his own privacy, to weep or rage as he might need.

The gray cat, perhaps, Ava thought. She wondered if Ingo might find him comforting; she had no doubt that if she left it open, he would find his way to the secret room. He always seemed to prefer forbidden spaces.

“In the morning, I’ll send word to the How,” Ava promised. She squeezed his hands gently, and let go, sitting back once more, the wrinkles in her silk dress smoothing away.

A year, Ava thought. A year underground. She knew something of being cooped away; she knew something of being confined. But to be locked in that terrible place a year - she could not fathom it. And he still had his anger, along with all that fear; Ava did not know what could be recovered of a man or woman after such an ordeal, but she let herself hope nonetheless.

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Tom Cooke
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Sat Oct 12, 2019 4:44 pm

Outside Pendulum House Uptown
Late Evening on the 54th of Roalis, 2719
When Silk took Fintan’s hands, he didn’t move.

He stayed still, fair still, because there was a difference between leaning on someone’s arm and the touch of someone’s hands against yours. They were soft hands, thought Fintan, soft against his callouses and scars, against the winding, gnarled shapes of his fingers, shaking against his lap. He looked down at the vague shapes of them. All his muscles were taut.

He looked up.

“A safehouse,” rasped Fintan, staring at Silk through the dark, staring at the glitter of her eyes. The scrape of his breath: in, out, in, out. “A House that’s safe,” he bit off; then his breath hitched with a laugh, and he fell to coughing. “Imagine that.” It was barely above a whisper.

Silk squeezed his hands and let go, and he settled back against the carriage wall, shutting his eyes. At the confirmation she’d send word to the How soon as tomorrow morning, he nodded his head once; he wasn't sure if he had a sense of the morning anymore. He found himself grinding his teeth, that old habit, grinding his teeth and twisting his hands in his lap. It was dark again, he thought. Light, dark, light, dark. But never so bright as it had been then.

And he wondered – where was this safehouse? Was it beneath the earth? Four walls, he kept thinking. There was no such thing as a house that was safe, but then, he supposed, there was no such thing as safety beneath the sun or moon. He remembered, as a boch, sleeping under a kint on the Heshath flatland, with the strong winds ruffling the canvas all around him. There were no walls, then, no borders but the borders between clan and tribe.

Who, he had wondered sometimes in the dark, had drawn all of these lines? Who had decided what to be done with men who crossed them? Who had built the walls that contained him, and who ensured that the doors stayed shut?

His throat was parched and sore. “I’ve much to tell them,” he said after a moment, his eyes still shut. “Much and nothin’. Was the brigk took me, at first, official-like, though now I ent so sure. An’ then I thought they were lettin’ me go, but they took me t’ – these toffins, they ent –”

He felt the words clawing their way up out of him, but he didn’t have the strength to expel them. Fintan’s chest was tight, and his heart was aching in his chest, and he let out another cascade of coughs; this time, it shook him to his bones. So loud was it that he didn’t hear the soft footfalls outside the carriage, not until they were close enough that it was too late. That he could feel the brush of a field, just through the wall.

He heard the coachman say something, soft and rough. He heard another voice, very deep, murmur what sounded like, “The Dives.”

Fintan opened his eyes as the door came open.

It was the man who’d worked with Silk – the galdor, because these weren’t men. He eased his way into the box, grunting with something like weariness or pain, glancing for a moment at either of the empty seats, then settling himself carefully beside Silk. His strange, wild field filled up the dark space, the mona tangling with his glamour. Fintan felt his muscles tighten again, wound such that he thought they might break, if he didn’t know better; if he didn’t know how very much it took for a man to break, how mercilessly much.

Fintan shook with coughs, then clamped his mouth shut. Risha was brushing aside the heavy drapes with a gesture of one manicured hand, peering out with a frown on his face; the box rocked and wobbled as the coachman climbed back on, and then the galdor let the drapes fall back, let himself sit back. He looked at Fintan, first. The meagre light illuminated his face only faintly – the quirk of his lip, a half-sneer.

Fintan stared at him, drawing in sharp breaths through his nose. He smiled right back at the galdor, a challenge of a smile. He looked from Risha to Silk, staring hard at her, too, all of them folded up in the galdor’s laoso field, stared at them both with a look that promised all the violence left in him, if she should let the tsuter come a half-centimeter closer.

Risha turned his faint, twitching smile on Silk. “All’s well,” he said quietly. “If anyone saw you, they’re not making any noise about it. I told them you’d retired to the coach, and that I was shortly to follow. To be safe, we’ll – let you off where we picked you up.” He hesitated, as if he wanted to say more; then, he turned to peek out the drapes again, frowning.

Fintan didn’t trust that hesitation, and he looked suspiciously at the windows, wondered if they were being followed. But the box rattled, jumped, and lurched into motion, and he didn’t see as he had any choice but to let it carry him. He looked across at Silk, frowning deeply into his beard. Trust.

Then he shut his eyes. He put his hand over his heart, knotting his fingers in his shirt. His lips moved, tongue clicking against his teeth with parched little noises. Safe, he thought, and his lips twitched in a mirthless smile. That smile still on his face, he prayed silently. The carriage rattled on.
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Ava Weaver
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Sun Oct 13, 2019 3:19 pm

Evening, 54th Roalis, 2719
Outside Pendulum House, Uptown
T
here were words that Ingo needed to speak, Ava thought, but he did not yet have the strength. She could have taken them; she could have cracked him open and drawn them forth. She did not think it would be too difficult. Not with force; with all the force they could bring against him, she did not think he had broken. No - it would be a gentle touch, not a hard one, but it would break him all the same.

“There will be time,” Ava said instead, gently. Ingo met her with a burst of coughing that wracked his thin, bent frame. The words were not worth the man, not when she could have both. Patience, Ava told herself; patience. Those toffins - they ent what? In time she would know.

Anatole’s voice eased through the edge of the door, and the door came open. Tom looked as weary as she had ever seen him, the moonlight carving a thousand years into his face. He settled onto the bench next to her, and Ava held herself as if the inches between them were feet, sitting straight backed and upright. She met Ingo’s hard look with an unyielding one. He had born so much; could he bear this too?

Ava thought, gratefully, that she didn’t want to know what else Tom had said; she had not listened to Anatole’s low, orator’s voice explaining, to the hum of laughter with the faintest edge to it that had rippled from him to the other galdor. Ava nodded, gently, in response to his explanation, and even if they had been alone she wouldn’t have asked.

But they were not alone, nothing like it, and Ava kept her gaze fixed on Ingo. Tom was playing his part well; she would not throw it all away, not here at the end, not when they were so very close. Did he know? Did he understand? Risha - Tom - sitting in Ishma’s garden, a world away, listening to the oud with a cat in his lap. She felt as if she could picture it, as if she could trace the image of the man he had been in her mind, if she tried hard enough, as if she could see the scar that had cut across his face, and his long dark hair, the easy grace with which he would have held himself. He had understood, Ava promised herself. She thought she could weep for that world a death away, but nothing showed on the smooth mask of her face.

Ingo shut his eyes as the carriage began to move, and there was something on his lips that could almost have been a smile. The carriage rocked through the streets, and Ava kept her gaze fixed on the wick opposite her, and held her breath smooth and steady and strong. She did not look back as they eased off of the long drive; she let the Pendulum House fade behind them, and she focused forward instead, on the slow easing of the ache in Ingo’s face, on the faint lessening of the snarls in Tom’s field against her. Forward, Ava told herself, and she held.

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