Completed Knives in the Dark

[Elijah]

Elijah looked away from her melancholy gaze and down at the papers in his hand. He wanted to say she was wrong but she wasn't. Even if the Dynast would listen to him and perhaps, the Mother willing, even believe his story, what would she be able to do surrounded by nobles she wasn't sure she could trust? And if one of them found his letter... With a sigh he closed his fist and screwed the paper up within. When it was a shrivelled ball he launched it into the flames which hissed and spat in its eagerness to consume the piece of parchment.

He smoothed out the evidence on his lap once more as though hoping it might somehow reveal the answers to their situation.

"What do you propose we do?" Elijah ran a hand through his hair and glanced up at her with a tight jaw. She looked exhausted even sitting on the edge of the bed and he thought to say something about her getting in but held his tongue. Instead he stood up and pointedly fetched the soup for her.

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly. She had not really given much thought to the solution, not beyond finding evidence. Not, really, beyond seeing herself as doing something, anything other than giving up and curling up in a gutter somewhere to die. Some indomitable spirit within her had refused to simply....cease, despite everything.

So she closed her eyes, and sat in silence for a time. Long enough, perhaps, to make it seem that she had fallen asleep sitting up. Thus composed, she looked inward and thought as furiously as her frail mind would allow her to.

So many snakes, hidden in the grass. So many enemies, some hidden and some not. Where to begin working on this tangled skein of fate? What thread should she pull at to begin the process of the unraveling. And, more important, do so quickly enough to head off the coming calamity that would lay the nation low and spill the blood of tens of thousands of her loyal subjects in the ensuing chaos?

The journey of a thousand miles begins with but one step, someone whispered to her from beyond the grave, and she shivered at the sepulcheral voice. Matter where that step land? Think not overlong on such things - any direction forward is still forward and 'ere the beginning truly start, must needs be taken...

One step at a time. That was where she had need to start. And she needn't do it alone, either.

"We must inventory the resources available to us," she said slowly, and gradually became more confident as she went on, albeit tired. "Before...it was just....just me, but...but with you, there may be others." She gestured at the papers with her hands again, drawing attention to the hurts she had already suffered in pursuit of this nightmares' end. "Find those we know are loyal...but not approach them. Merely keep an accounting of what we have. And then..."

She looked to the papers. They held lists, incomplete, of stashes of weapons in the city and surrounds. They held the names of some merchants and other less notable members of the overarching conspiracy. They knew that House Ki'onte was a part of this treachery, and the contents of the manuscript implicated others but far more tenuously than she.

"We must play this carefully, attempt to find as many of them and put people in place....before telling the Dynast herself. So that we can act upon the conspirators before they have a chance to unleash the maelstrom in full."

It sounded so grand, but she was damned if she knew where to begin.

 

[Elijah]

Politics had never been his strong suits but battles were and this? This was still a battle even if it was being fought by words and in dark corners at the moment. As she spoke he grew more confident in that conviction which allowed for his mind to click into the mode it needed to be in.

"The start of that list can be the people within these walls," Elijah nodded to himself as he seized the new job she had set before him and threw his whole being into it. Already his grey eyes had livened enough to force the tiredness back if even for a few minutes. Suddenly he stood and strode to the disused desk in the corner to fetch parchment and ink. It always helped to write these things down. He brought it back to the bed and sat down beside her with his brows furrowed in thought.

"They're far removed from Dalradia to care for it. They barely keep up to date with who the current Dynast is," he quickly wrote down ten names and their positions. A cook, a medic, a young couple of stable hands and the rest wizened veterans. He then began writing down squadrons he had worked with, that he trusted and knew were beyond the touches of politics. It wasn't many, but a healthy five joined the list.

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

She felt completely inadequate to this task. She said nothing of her own self doubt, for she could see that her words, however uncertain, had put some steel back in Elijah's spine, had pushed some of the weariness away. If only her own weariness would leave her be; her hurts, dispelled, her doubts cast to the winds. Unfortunately, the road she traveled upon had ever been paved with doubt and uncertainty. Or with certainty of her own inadequacy, if not uncertainty.

After all, how could she succeed where her mother had failed? She was barely into her thirties and her mother had lived for centuries. She lacked the experience not only with the courts, but with the world at large. And the world seemed a hostile place, with nary a place of refuge or a friendly face.

Save one.

"Unless we had an army at our backs it matters little how few we are," she said without any certainty at all. "To cut out the rot..." Would require a civil war, at the very least. The blood would flow in the streets, and innocent and guilty alike would suffer.

She was no great tactician. But then, in her mind, she was nothing but a construct that wore the face of nobility and competence, a lie on the face to conceal the weakness that she knew dwelt within her soul. No great tactician, and yet...an idea came to her.

"Perhaps....perhaps if we let it be whispered in the streets that some foul plan was afoot," she said wearily, almost to herself. "Let rumor do what it does best, and then watch to see who acts and plan accordingly..."

 

[Elijah]

As Captain of the Pegasi it was one of his jobs to have his ears to the ground. In the past the Captain's informants had been from the middle and upper crusts of society - merchants, shop-keepers, those that were seen as the pinnacle of law abiding citizens. It had been one of the first things he had changed when coming into office: not that a lot of people knew about it. The cutpurses, whores and beggars who he casually stopped in on during his visits to his family provided far better information than an honest shop keep and it appeared as though he was about to utilise their other use.

"I can arrange for that," the tangle of eyes and ears he had in the lower city would also mean it couldn't be traced back to him, especially whilst he was out of the city. He added a few words to the list which made no sense to anyone but himself and those the cipher referred to.

"I'll send some letters," he announced and then stood to the creaking of limbs and a muffled yawn. "Whilst you sleep, Lyssia," he said, nodding to the bed meaningfully.

 

[Lyssia D'avore]

She had nothing else to add to that, really. As a measure of how exhausted she was, she did not even offer up token resistance to his suggestion - she would see it as such, rather than a demand - that she get some rest. The abominable ache in her arms drained her nearly as much as the short jaunt from bed. It was frustrating how often she ended up bed-bound from her adventures; she had known many a soul whose own exploits of derring-do made hers pale by comparison and they could go enjoy themselves after their ventures while she was forced to languish again, and again, and again...

...in the gods damned bed.

"Perhaps it is for the best," she said sourly. She looked up at him with those tired eyes, something like concern flitting about in their depths. "See to yourself as well, Elijah," she added. It was not very often that she used his name, often times preferring to refer to him by rank. She might well be as mud to the nobility she had once been before, but it was very difficult to unlearn a lifetime of thinking a certain way.

Her own personal feelings aside, which were an ever increasingly tangled mess that she had little hope of ever untangling. With those thoughts a pleasant spice for a tormented sleep, she climbed onto a bed designed for someone a bit taller than she, and looked at the man meaningfully, arms folded (carefully) beneath her breasts.

 

[Elijah]

By the Mother how did anyone manage to look sitting in bed threatening?

Elijah cleared his throat and drew his bushy brows down into a dark frown which he could only help was half as good as the look she was fixing him with right now. He somewhat doubted it though. He looked away as if suddenly interested in a view outside the window and scratched at his beard. Perhaps a bath counted as looking after himself, he certainly needed one. Sleep would be trickier.

"You can sure if I don't Cook will ensure she takes the matter into her own hands and she's a hard woman to avoid," not in the least because she was built like a brick privy. He'd witnessed her wrestled grown men into sick beds when they had insisted on getting up and watched her wrestle spoons of vile tasting broth down clenched jaws. He smiled faintly at the thought then pulled himself together with a shake and strode for the door.

"Tomorrow is a new day," Samantha had always said that and it had always brought him comfort no matter the trials he had faced that day. "Sleep well, Lyssia," he inclined his head and then shut the door softly on his way out.