albinomilksnake | RP: OPEN POST

She'd tweak his ear, poke his nose, if she could. Now, seeing him without seeing him, she longs for solitude. She can have that later. She won't be driven to distraction by any one person, no matter her personal feelings for them.

(He is so very dear, in his wildness, his rigidity, his snarling refusal to heel.)

"Improving isn't improved," she hisses. "You can natter on at me afterward, if you'll join me."

There is the ceremony to start a the new session of senate hearings, rulings given, orders outlined, and then Judges dismissed in their ugly metal mottle to plan and rest. Whatever will be done with Videreyn may be decided here. Jone is excited for that, as much as she is to see Gabranth later, as little as she is to receive a ribbon or metal or kind word from a dying man.

Gabranth would be the first to remind her she owes much to that dying man— and the longer he lives, the more hardships they are all spared.

But he does indeed join her, after the ceremony and she receives both her medal and the gift of gilded weapons. After Videreyn is first debated, and then decided to be left alone and granted opportunity to prove its newfound loyalty by emperor Gramis’ command. His ruling stern and unquestionable. A balm to some in attendance. A thorn to others.

Gabranth feels relieved to hear it, though it does not show; he bears no resemblance to anyone in Videreyn— thus he cannot be drawn upon in secret to commit treason once more.

Basch had been the exception. The only one. The rest of his battles, for as long as he is called to make them, he would rather be acts of vicious, clear intent.

He requests her presence on one of the upper terraces of the palace's sprawling expanse. A quiet place to eat, yet not so secluded that his intent might be misconstrued, or their faces mapped. Table secluded, sky a faded, muted violet threatening to soon turn into night.

He'd left his armor behind for a change, but the high collar of his clothing and long sleeves mimics the rise of it all the same.

Every day, Jone is brought to view new wonders. She didn't know about this wing of the palace. She didn't know the setting sun could be this color, that night could smell this sweet above a bustling city. She takes a moment to appreciate it, letting soft winds wash over her, before turning to Gabranth.

All lights are fair to him, a man made well in shape and form. If they were different people, would this be courting? If they were different people, would she be dead?

(In her mind, Bede's body will never stop burning.)

Jone's clothing is cut in a stern Arcadian style, or at least that's what the tailors told her. She had only asked for something you could fight in, and green. She likes green. She always has.

"The gilded weapons," she says, expression collected, before letting her head loll to the side, a joker's weapon. "Those are ceremonial, right?"

His mouth twists slightly, the ghost of a grin as he seats himself: rigid even without the span of twisted, dark metal settled tight across his shoulders.

"Do you believe the gold of my own weapons to be purely ceremonial?"

Are you refusing your gift, Jone?

Jone cocks her head to the other side, pretending to think about it. Beneath the table, her soft-soled foot begins to rub against Gabranth's ankle.

"How often d'you have that replaced? Gold's a soft thing." She shagged a smith once. No, don't say that. "Wondering how often I'll have to see the blacksmith."

Jone. Do not.

He carefully pulls his foot away from her brushing focus, fixing her with a glance. He is weak to her attentions, yes, but he’ll not risk notice in public— even if that public happens to also be the privacy of court grounds.

It is taxing, to be so difficult.

“The imperial smiths are not common cut: what they forge will last, though you ought regularly submit your armor and weaponry to their care regardless.” In the gap between sentences wine and water are brought, placed between them, and unlike his decision to drink within the confines of her quarters, he chooses water this time— favoring clarity after a long day.

“I tend to mine each morning and night, and return them to the forge for upkeep at the end of every month, without fail.”

No fun tonight, then. She gives him a swift poke under the table, her shoe hitting his boot, before retreating.

Jone mixes her wine and water again. Archadian wine, she's finding, is too strong for her tastes-- no, that isn't true. If she hadn't a care in the world, she'd drink it happily. But she hates the thought of getting soused on duty, and she is always on duty. She may not take the job as seriously as Gabranth, but she wagers that's because it's not physically possible.

"I do," Jone says, raising a glass to her lips. Admittedly, not every day and night. The stuff doesn't see use that regularly, beyond ceremony. Maybe she should. "Did someone set you to that schedule, or is it of your own make?"

Her habits are peculiar. Cultural differences, or class— or both: the outline of his life as it was before is muted and hazy at best, it is difficult to gauge whether she is the stranger of the two of them.

But if she is, he enjoys her company for it. So there is no insult in that.

“My own.” It carries a hint of pride for a tepid beat before he adds, soberly:

“....and Drace’s.”

It is in her footsteps he follows, as always.

Should I be jealous, Jone wants to joke, but even she can tell what a bad move that would be. Jone has no love for secrecy, but she understands why it is necessary, and has no interest in compromising either of them over jealousy she does not, truly, have. Further, Gabranth's obvious esteem for Drace leaves little room for jokes to begin with; she doesn't truly wish to see Gabranth's temper lost, and that strike may be too close to something Gabranth obviously cannot stand. Dishonor, indignity, things never to be leveled at those Gabranth holds in true esteem.

(If she is jealous, it is in wondering how and if Gabranth would defend her from slander that, in truth, would offend her none to hear. What a foolish creature she is.)

"And now you pass your knowledge onto me." Jone takes her watered wine slowly. "I wonder if my unluckiness is the luckiest in all the world."

He chuckles, a dry sound— made so from the unfamiliarity of disuse, not for lack of water.

“So it must be,” determined well before he even speaks, settling straight-backed in his seat to let his arms fold easily. The air is fragrant with something, baked bread and the faint wafting of roasted herbs— much a relief after so long a day. He wonders, distantly, how Emperor Gramis must fare in his frailty, for he spent himself no less. “For you stand now where few ever have before you, and few ever will again. At the crown of an empire.”

Not just the city sprawling around them, millions of flittering lives visible from where they're seated, but the expanse beyond.

“So many envy you.”

He says empire, and Jone looks down from the balcony on instinct. Empire, the thing she feared in her youth, and she looks down: it's just people. That's all Fedlhelm was, all Videreyn is.

It's all so stupid.

"I used to like that," Jone admits carefully. Her expression is the level, even thing that lives beyond the shores of her poor sense of humor. "Being a creature to envy... I relished it. But now it seems more distraction than glorious."

“It is both.” He levels his stare at her, cool and even, as steady as the stone beneath their feet. “It has always been both.”

—a sentiment interrupted by appetizers and a fresher course of drinks, servants waved away with an easy hand.

“Does that truth now trouble you?”

Jone eyes the food, taking care to slowly pick the correct fork. "I am more troubled by how to eat this... roll. Dumpling?"

She knows how to eat those with her hands, but is currently convinced that's the wrong answer in the strange game of courtesy they play. It would be annoying, if Jone did not love winning so much.

"I have learned not to believe in grand concepts. Better to give loyalty to people. The deserving."

She does not specify who is and who is not deserving. If Gabranth is afraid to touch his boot to her shoe-- as annoying as that is-- it is not a safe place to speak of deep truths. Yet they are unwatched, at least in this moment. Her gaze flickers to him, pointedly.

Gabranth answers that question for her: reaching across to take one roll between his notched fingers— splitting it open to reveal a pocket of glistening meat inside.

A fair attempt, Jone.

“People are fleeting. Ideals would serve you better: a cause, a flag, a nation— those are far more difficult to kill.”

Not impossible, but more difficult.

Even so, he does not miss her intent when she emphasizes to whom she swears allegiance. Selfishly, it is not an unwelcome thought.

She squints at him, canny and beckoning. Oh, so now she can use her hands. Yet she repeats his motions with care, before selecting a fork at random to skewer the meat with.

"Ideas die quickly in the hearts of weak men."

She looks away from him, down to the food she's sawing in to. Probably the wrong knife, too, but this one is the sharpest. "Look at Videreyn," she says, "it was founded on lofty principles, all failed. A cause is only as good as those who uphold it."

“Fortunate then that Archades possesses no such weakness.”

Aside from the senate, perhaps, though he is biased in his estimate of them: he, a hound to the royal family and their decrees, is no friend to dignified bones in lengthy cloaks. They would see him no differently in turn.

“You move too harshly. Your meal is not your enemy.” His mouth twists barely when he speaks. Fond sentiment.

"You're talking yourself up, now," Jone says, but she doesn't correct him. The chain of loyalty stretches far; she prioritizes him, which means she prioritizes his priorities. Otherwise, it's beneath what little honor she has; people must be met in kind, if they are to be met truly.

"Right, right," Jone mutters, selecting a different knife. The meat isn't rough, anyway; it's been cooked to a tenderness that leaves it almost falling before her fork, much less the knife. "You ordered this? It's new to me."

She isn't sure what the rich ate in Fedlhelm; maybe it was what the rich ate in Archades. Maybe Gabranth actually has preferences. Wonders may never cease.

That draws his stare for a beat, hazel eyes glancing up from beneath the shade of long lashes. He'd not truly considered her full stance on the matter before speaking— which, for him, hardly stands as an uncommon practice.

It is not that he does not know what to make of it, it is that he does not know how to embrace her devotion where it courses through him.

"Was it more familiar to you, what we ate before, in Videreyn?" He turns his fork, finishing off one course and leaving pause for yet more. Meager means are not his while he remains in capital. "A fine steak is common within most regions, after all, no matter how it is prepared."

Jone remembers cutting everything into tiny pieces first isn't considered good manner, so she finally begins eating, a little faster than one ought to. She's getting there, but it's a slow process, especially in light of her earlier experiences with food.

"If it was not fried or battered-- or both-- I hardly took notice of it." She couldn't afford it. "You've better taste than I."

There's a half-moment where it seems as though Jone is trying to decide something, before she looks Gabranth in the eye and winks. Yes, it's worth it to turn that innuendo in, damn whatever mood it'll put him in.

Not a poor one, it seems, for all that he could grimace or growl from where he’s seated, he only flashes the edge of a dull smile. The memory of one. Rare favor.

“Of this I am aware.”

Perhaps that says much of her, as it speaks much of him in turn.

“Your wounds, they do not trouble you?”

He’d been concerned during the ceremony and subsequent meeting— he expected her to tire quickly, yet no sweat peppers her brow as she sits at table with him, no strain apparent in her bearing. Either she masks its presence well, or she is healing. Well and truly.

Oh, so he likes being reminded of getting blown. That shouldn't surprise her. Why does it surprise her? She has really got to stop overthinking this bastard.

Jone finishes a mouthful of food just as he asks, literal and figurative rumination interrupted by a fair question. She leans over a bit so she can pat her wounded side-- lightly, but still more than she would have managed otherwise.

She takes a drink before answering. "I'll have a pretty scar to add to all the ugly ones, nothing else."

He is, for all his layered demands, a simple man at heart. A well-kept, well-guarded secret.

"There is no such thing as an ugly scar," he scoffs, ignoring a beautiful mirror-like dessert flecked with gold as it's set before them, its shining surface catching both city lights and stars alike. A master stroke of work from whichever chef was responsible for its creation, no doubt.

And to Gabranth, it is merely another meal, as he pays it no heed.

"All are triumphs. Proofs of conquest in survival."

Jone, meanwhile, stares at her food with confusion. She's supposed to eat this? But it's so pretty.

Luckily, Gabranth distracts her before she has to decide what spoon to destroy it with. Jone snorts, shaking her head. "No, Gabranth. Some really are... are evils writ upon the body."

Slipping back into that Archadian way of speech may be more convincing. It certainly has more decorum. She should try to keep up more, in his presence, but he makes her so bloody comfortable, these days.

He does not comprehend it. His scars— the ones that run deep— don’t mirror the marks on his body. The two are ever divided, and so to his simplistic heart her promise makes no sense in any way he can tangibly grasp.

But he trusts her. And the weight in her voice, her accent as it slips through. A choice.

His brow twists, and then he finally moves instead to study the custard-like confection before them, cutting clean through one of its unbroken edges with a spoon. There is no portion to be taken away, no plates for their own servings. An intimate dessert. The staff chose presumptively, he thinks.

“Do you regret many of them, then?”

Jone takes a careful spoonful, mirroring Gabranth. The desert is sweet, but not overmuch, a gentle sort of sugary flavor that melts pleasingly over her tongue. It mostly distracts her from memories of knives held when she was defenseless, rocks thrown, furniture she was thrown into.

Jone takes another spoonful of the desert-- it really is lovely-- before sitting back and thinking on how to answer. "I agree that wounds in battle are no thing to be ashamed of," she concedes lightly, "but scrabbles to escape, petty squabbling, traps and mistakes... I hold no pride in the evidence of marks."

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