If the abrupt tilt of his attention in her direction is any indication, the man sitting in the niche bust's shadow hadn't expected to be addressed—not by the crowding Somerset magicians in their starched uniforms, or the College Fellows, and certainly not by some young woman in the colors of the colony outposts. For a briefly flashing instant, the surprise plays clearly out in his sagging face. He looks almost boyish there: a lad with sloppily combed curls in a rumpled shirt stuffed into a very black coat as if that might pass him off as respectable.
Then she sits. And, like a cracked door closing to erase the slit of a view into the adjacent room, that surprise disappears from off of his face. In it's place, the handle of the cane in the shape of a snarling dog has flicked round. Its muzzle sets between her ribs as a barricade to preserve the inches remaining between her hip and his. Surely she of all people must recognize a ward: Keep your damned distance.
His ward practically singes the air, makes her own power stir against the inside of her fingertips below the skin, but she only offers him a sunny smile. "I suppose it could be easily missed," she replies with light laugh, and the sound vibrates up the shaft of the cane from her ribcage to his hand.
She neither leans closer nor pulls away, like the pointed jab — both the physical and spoken one — isn't something to be rebuffed by just yet. Acknowledging the threat, but not being reactive to it.
"And yet," she says after a moment. "There are other, far less sonorous places here at the Hall you could enjoy the quiet of, if you really wanted to. So: here to observe of your own volition, or been ordered? My condolences, either way."
The snarling end of the cane remains at it is, apparently perfectly comfortable laid there against her ribs in order to preserve that separation of the few inches between them on the bench. It doesn't waver; his wrist remains locked where it's turned—a habitual precaution against proximity, apparently, and one which seems to have little bearing on the impolitely arch tenor of his reply:
"Your condolences?" It's a little biting, as if he might laugh and the sound would be the unpleasant kind of humor. The eye he turns on her is very dark, shaded so thoroughly by the heavy edge of his brow and the tilt of his head away from the windows across the vestibule and the dreary weather outside of them so as to appear nearly black.
"My, whatever outpost you crawled out of must be very far removed from the civilized world if that's how you feel about it."
(Is, strictly speaking, no answer at all to her question.)
"Aldeph and yes, we are terribly uncivilized down there," Pela answers the non-question with mock severity, as if being tasked to relay some tragic revelation. "We live in huts made of mud and sticks, letting our goats eat off the kitchen table. We only bathe once a month, and we don't use currency but trade in seashells and cormorant feathers. At night we huddle around the fires and bang rocks together for music. Truly, I am not fit for proper Kalvadan society. I suppose you'll just have to send me back, shamed like a spurned housewarming gift."
Pela holds the serious expression through the clerk returning once again through the door, calling more names but still not hers, before she breaks into a grin with a soft laugh.
"Those are the things you mainlanders really think of the south, aren't they? I'm only having a bit of fun. I don't know what's put the adminstrators so far behind pace, but I don't think it is supposed to backed up like this with so many of us here. It makes me wonder what's going on."
She looks back at the knot of people filling the room. "Peace, sorré. I only sat because no one else had, no other reason. That is a lovely ward you're using, by the way. Who cast it, might I ask?"
That is the question. For that limn of the arcane certainly doesn't belong to the man sitting beside her; he's as cold and emptied of magic as a stone. —No, more than that, for the various rocks and trees and most stationary life of the world is often given to absorbing some latent murmur of magic. No, the man sat on the bench beside Pela is like the hole in a bucket through which magic passes through. And thus, rare that it must be for an object to be enchanted so, that modified ward must come from the stick with the silver snarling dog-faced handle itself.
(It is not a witch's ward, not really. More a magic of repulsion, cleverly laced into the metal and wood, and gently humming there where it's laid across her ribs. If he were to twist his hand, or jam it closer, perhaps the enchantment would nip discouragingly out as surely as if that cast dog's mouth had bitten.)
In answer to this question, the man smiles. It's not a particularly pleasant expression: all teeth, and a certain cold heat in the dark cast of his eyes which suggests he disapproves of its general trajectory.
"The administrators are behind," he says. "Because little girls and boys with their enfeebled Talents keep crawling from out of colonies like yours begging to be taught proper magic, and the College can't keep up with them. Some imbecile in the House proposed slaying two birds with one stone, and now Drayton's been saddled with sorting both the apprenticeships and you lot to satisfy the House's audit. But you're right. They're being shockingly incompetent with this whole horse trading business. Maybe when you go in, you can use your seashells to demonstrate some cleaner way of doing things."
So that's a no to her question, then.
Only after, impulsively, does he ad (far more conversationally, as if he's forgotten to that he's been insulting her)— "Who knows. Maybe they're starting a new war."
Best she give him no reason to bite back at her, for the time being. Academically, Pela might have been interested to know how her own warding would naturally protect her in such an instance, but in a crowded room with people already on edge, she could foresee it being a spark to dry tinder. It was a good thing that she didn't feel pressed to rise so easily to the acerbic bait this stranger kept handing her.
"If I see any enfeebled boys and girls," she returned. "I shall be sure to tell them of your deep disapproval. Coming here was not my first choice either, but it wasn't... let's say, it wasn't phrased as a request."
Her sunny demeanor finally dims a little when he mentions the possibility of a war. It was a thought that had crossed her mind on the sail to Somerset as well, despite there being no real evidence yet of it. But to recall so many outlying magicfolk when seemingly nothing else had precipitated it? It wasn't completely implausible.
"Well," she says finally, looking back at the throng of waiting bodies in the room. "That would be disagreeable news, if it were true."
And here, at last, some spark gleams in the man's black eye. It's as if that dimming of her disposition had by some arcane transitive quality passed that slaked enthusiasm into him instead, as if he is pleased to have taken a chip out of her.
"Don't say that too loudly here, girl. Someone will overhear and call you a treasonous dissenter." The stick remains exactly where it is, but the man leans over by a half degree as if to relay a secret to her in confidence despite the assembly in the hall about them: "They still hang people for that charge, you know."
"It would be a frightening rope indeed which could noose any ward-witch," Pela says impishly. "But since your attitude seems predisposed to the worst of everyone and everything, I don't think I need to be concerned about that being the cause without evidence of it."
The clerk returns and "Cintri, Pela!" is among the calle out. Thus named, she slides back a few inches in order to clear his cane tip, the fabric of her shirt still minutely concaved where he'd had it pressed.
"Thank you for the diverting company. Perhaps we'll run into one another again."
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no subject
Then she sits. And, like a cracked door closing to erase the slit of a view into the adjacent room, that surprise disappears from off of his face. In it's place, the handle of the cane in the shape of a snarling dog has flicked round. Its muzzle sets between her ribs as a barricade to preserve the inches remaining between her hip and his. Surely she of all people must recognize a ward: Keep your damned distance.
"I hadn't noticed."
no subject
She neither leans closer nor pulls away, like the pointed jab — both the physical and spoken one — isn't something to be rebuffed by just yet. Acknowledging the threat, but not being reactive to it.
"And yet," she says after a moment. "There are other, far less sonorous places here at the Hall you could enjoy the quiet of, if you really wanted to. So: here to observe of your own volition, or been ordered? My condolences, either way."
no subject
"Your condolences?" It's a little biting, as if he might laugh and the sound would be the unpleasant kind of humor. The eye he turns on her is very dark, shaded so thoroughly by the heavy edge of his brow and the tilt of his head away from the windows across the vestibule and the dreary weather outside of them so as to appear nearly black.
"My, whatever outpost you crawled out of must be very far removed from the civilized world if that's how you feel about it."
(Is, strictly speaking, no answer at all to her question.)
no subject
Pela holds the serious expression through the clerk returning once again through the door, calling more names but still not hers, before she breaks into a grin with a soft laugh.
"Those are the things you mainlanders really think of the south, aren't they? I'm only having a bit of fun. I don't know what's put the adminstrators so far behind pace, but I don't think it is supposed to backed up like this with so many of us here. It makes me wonder what's going on."
She looks back at the knot of people filling the room. "Peace, sorré. I only sat because no one else had, no other reason. That is a lovely ward you're using, by the way. Who cast it, might I ask?"
no subject
(It is not a witch's ward, not really. More a magic of repulsion, cleverly laced into the metal and wood, and gently humming there where it's laid across her ribs. If he were to twist his hand, or jam it closer, perhaps the enchantment would nip discouragingly out as surely as if that cast dog's mouth had bitten.)
In answer to this question, the man smiles. It's not a particularly pleasant expression: all teeth, and a certain cold heat in the dark cast of his eyes which suggests he disapproves of its general trajectory.
"The administrators are behind," he says. "Because little girls and boys with their enfeebled Talents keep crawling from out of colonies like yours begging to be taught proper magic, and the College can't keep up with them. Some imbecile in the House proposed slaying two birds with one stone, and now Drayton's been saddled with sorting both the apprenticeships and you lot to satisfy the House's audit. But you're right. They're being shockingly incompetent with this whole horse trading business. Maybe when you go in, you can use your seashells to demonstrate some cleaner way of doing things."
So that's a no to her question, then.
Only after, impulsively, does he ad (far more conversationally, as if he's forgotten to that he's been insulting her)— "Who knows. Maybe they're starting a new war."
Wouldn't that be nice.
no subject
"If I see any enfeebled boys and girls," she returned. "I shall be sure to tell them of your deep disapproval. Coming here was not my first choice either, but it wasn't... let's say, it wasn't phrased as a request."
Her sunny demeanor finally dims a little when he mentions the possibility of a war. It was a thought that had crossed her mind on the sail to Somerset as well, despite there being no real evidence yet of it. But to recall so many outlying magicfolk when seemingly nothing else had precipitated it? It wasn't completely implausible.
"Well," she says finally, looking back at the throng of waiting bodies in the room. "That would be disagreeable news, if it were true."
no subject
"Don't say that too loudly here, girl. Someone will overhear and call you a treasonous dissenter." The stick remains exactly where it is, but the man leans over by a half degree as if to relay a secret to her in confidence despite the assembly in the hall about them: "They still hang people for that charge, you know."
no subject
The clerk returns and "Cintri, Pela!" is among the calle out. Thus named, she slides back a few inches in order to clear his cane tip, the fabric of her shirt still minutely concaved where he'd had it pressed.
"Thank you for the diverting company. Perhaps we'll run into one another again."