brittlest | open rp.

Aterlacus does not so often see new arrivals. It particularly does not see arrivals quite like this - a girl, and one of rather extraordinarily tender years, straight-backed and stony-faced. (In the years to come, no doubt there will be more like her, as even children catch a revolutionary fervor and begin to organize to resist the inhumane conditions of their factories and workhouses - but for now, at least, the union men and suffragettes coming in tend to have at least reached their majority.)

The cell in which she is deposited is across from Ralston's. Irregular again, the mixing of sexes, but what is one to do in such an irregular situation? She does not resist or fight when they lock her in, but the moment the guards are gone, she's pacing and exploring - dragging fingertips over iron bars, feeling at the mortars between the stones, measuring the length of the cell pace by pace.

There is no one to whom Caleb can plead his case. (I cannot be here, I can't, I am needed elsewhere, you don't understand—) Those who wield authority here do not care to listen, and in his more spiteful moments, Caleb suspects they cannot undo whatever it is that brought him to this place to begin with.

There is a castle. It is cavernous and cold and filled with possibility. If he could think of something other than the absence of Nott, or the peril with which he'd left her (and Beauregard, and then the others, Fjord and Jester and Yasha) to navigate, or the fresh-made grave in which they had buried Mollymauk—

Well. It is a place where Caleb could coax out information. He could learn here. No one is stopping him.

No one but the splinter of guilt that reminds him: He had not left them when he was able, and he is surely not excused for leaving on a technicality, so surely he must devote himself to slipping the cage he's found himself in, no matter the gilding of the bars.

Magic hums in every corner of Thorne. It makes Caleb's molars ache for biting down, tearing into it. That same fervor that had driven him through book after book once Beauregard had finally, finally brought him to the library is unchecked but for his own tenuous grip on rickety morality.

His notes diverge. What he should pursue, what will take him home, and the rest. Revenge. Rectification. A scaffolding of scribbling notes in a journal set alongside his spell book, both working in tandem.

It is harder to do on the road.

There are skirmishes at the border and their hosts have been neglectful and disinterested, but they dislodge their guests from the castle to tend to their affairs in what might be a battle, or might resolve itself before reinforcements arrive. Caleb cannot think of it.

He is hunched by the fire now, writing still, mapping what could be a spell, could blow up in someone's face. The ink shimmers faintly, even in the poor light, made worse by—

"Please, you are blocking the fire," is carefully posed, one hand hovering over the page as he looks up. This man, with his cane, who Caleb has seen in passing but said little to before now. What he is capable of is a mystery, one Caleb is not sure he needs answered. Eventually he will need help, yes, but he hardly knows what he needs yet.

And so: he is polite, quiet, easy to ignore. That has served him well so far in his life.

Among the short stack of incidentals in the travel bag to Vienna had been a carton of Senior Service cigarettes. Perhaps they'd been meant as a thoughtful gesture. With their man in Vienna being both something of a chain smoker and unlikely to return set foot on English soil any time soon given the allegedly ignominious nature of his departure, why not send along a little taste of home? Or perhaps they'd been meant as a warning: we recall which brand of cigarettes you like best. What else might we remember?

Or maybe both. Who can say.

"For me? How kind," had been Michael Ralston's droll reply when they'd at last been delivered to him and very shortly before he'd winged the whole carton directly into the Danube. "It's a shame I've quit."

It's easily the poorest lie he tells. Ten minutes later, he had found a cigarette in a pocket and commenced with smoking it. The rest of his untruths, if there were any, had been impossible to discern. Maybe he really does know the owner of the empty theater box into which they're later secreted so they can get their first look at the cadre of men in attendance in one of the boxes opposite. But that follows. One doesn't play the role of courier into the Easten Bloc without learning how to lie.

"Christ, have you ever witnessed such a miserable arrangement?" Is not in reference to the box across the way, but rather must pertain to the music currently occurring in the orchestra pit. "Anyway, the one all the way to the left is your man."

Every morning on the way from his flat into the home office, Michael Ralston—a sort of analyst, if you will—takes a very minor detour. Nominally, it's to stretch his legs. He spends a great deal of time at a desk, and is somewhat prone to being sedentary, and the first thing his new physician had told him when he'd been released from St. Lawrence's was that vigorous exercise and plenty of air would be key to his recovery and swift reintegration back into the world. In truth, this side trip ensures Ralston's ability to regularly monitor the state of a particular third floor flat's window in which the flat's occupant is sometimes paid or otherwise convinced to string her laundry across.

On days such as this one, he arranges to take the train across town and pay a visit a relation of an old and now dead school friend. She's getting on in years, and he has a key to her flat which is a fact all of her neighbors know, and he thinks nothing at all about letting himself in. It isn't until Ralston is standing in the little hallway with one arm already out of his coat that he pauses. This place is nothing is not one of careful routine, and whatever record is being played at low volumes in the other room is one he's never heard before.

He slowly extracts himself the rest of the way from his coat, folding it over his arm. The dog headed cane is fetched back up from where it had been ambivalently leaned against the wall, but rather than clunking along directly into the sitting room, he simply carries it in hand so he might advance marginally more silently into the doorway.

It feels very inevitable to find a different person entirely waiting for him there among the chintz furniture as opposed to the little old woman who for so long has acted as his contact back to Moscow.

"I wasn't aware Aunt Jane had many guests," he manages rather than Who the fuck are you?

Edited 2022-06-26 17:37 (UTC)

They say a lot of things about ward-witches.

"Don't anger a ward-witch, they'll draw a line in the dirt," some scoff derisively. "Don't anger a ward-witch," others mutter furtively. "They'll draw a line 'round your neck."

In some ways, they're even more regulated to being seen as mere tools than other disciplines of magic: shield this, ward that, connect X to Y to Z. In some circles they're even considered outright mundane, the magical equivalent of a blue-collar tradesperson. Nothing exotic and glamourous, just necessary even as the number of them waned over the years, over the decades.

Pela's happy to let those preconceptions work for her, smiling dutifully when expected. Born in a sunny southern colony, this is only the second time she's ever been to Somerset, but any excitement and indulgence she might have for the opportunity to see it again is blunted by the reason that she's here. Recalled by the State as part of an "asset review program", things were changing. Pela knows that she was likely to be reassigned somewhere far from her homeland, perhaps even here in Somerset.

She's not alone, arriving with a contingent of other magic users also from Eajorynn, although she's the only ward-witch among them. Their group is guided in for processing while the necessary administration is handled, and Pela takes the opportunity to look around while waiting her turn.

prison break au? prison break au.

let me here.

i looked at so many maps for this and it doesn't show.

byerly;

WE'RE WINGING IT HERE WE GO