[SE] Out, Damned Spot!

A joke Jigano could deal with. Discovering that the painfully shy but perfectly nice young man on the Atheneum's steps was a Launceleyn by adoption, though? The mirth fled the Loreseeker's face, but there was only a flicker of betrayal there before it was replaced by sympathy. "Are you one of those Zariah bullied into joining? Like Rexanna?" he asked gently. Peter, Peter... he knew he'd heard that name before. "Are you the one Zariah was going to force her to marry?" he asked, a flicker of stern steel underlying the gentleness. It seemed likely that Peter was a victim as well, but if he'd been party to that atrocity that had forced Rexanna into the Voice's embrace...

The bard knew that he was going to have to stencil a new sign for the guild, petty as it was. Safrin had been right about the foolishness of the grandiose claims he had been making, though, and this was just one more to correct.

The brief history lesson ended with a question and a shrug as Jigano focused on the mud, his good mood fading as he realized he was working beside one of Zariah's pets. "Who knows? It was more than three hundred years ago. But ambitious and power hungry seem likely, given what she became in the end." Very Launceleyn traits, too, though he kept the bitter words behind his tongue. Zariah had broken his own little found family with her threats and self-important decrees, and those wounds were still fresh and bleeding.

"Indeed," came the neutral response to Peter's lack of focus, the provost's attention mostly on his control over his magic and keeping the mud contained within four separate earthen walls. He'd seen Remi make far more complicated shapes from dirt and rocks, but simple walls and pillars seemed the limit of what he could manage at the moment.

"The Crimson Cataract? Yes, I've seen her. I was there when Arduinna healed her of the blight the Ascended brought down on her. She was dying from it," he spoke bitterly, for not long after he had also been brought low by the same sickness.

He brought the walls of the earthen corral grinding together into a smaller and smaller shape until the memory mud in the very center could be reached, then leapt down the steps to help shovel it into the last barrels. "Well done!" he called, the tension momentarily broken by the successful teamwork of the last capture. He helped load the barrels onto the waiting wagon, then nodded to the driver to set the mules pulling it into motion. "Perhaps it's for the best," he said conversationally as he collected the borrowed tools and shook hands with the volunteers. "Zariah doesn't seem the type to keep around anyone who isn't useful to her. She may yet let you go free if you can lay low and slip her interest."

There it was, the reaction that Peter had been expecting. The ease of Jigano’s smile slipping away, replaced by something colder, and more pitying. He doesn’t need that, and averts his eyes quickly, jaw working in quiet upset, and something like shame. It’s irritating, even though he knew this was coming. Mention of Rexanna had him upset for an entirely different reason. The need of how far reaching that particular Plan of Zariah’s was made him quiver with nausea. ”I didn’t want that.” There isn’t steel in his voice, not like Jigano’s, but there is a sharpness to the words, an insistence, a how dare you. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that the loreseekers cheer has been rapidly whicked  away. It also doesn’t take one to see the parallels of the past and present, the lines that are being implied. Truth be told, it worried Peter to think about, a second schism caused by the blind pursuit of power and magic. Years of practice made it easy for him to keep his tone light, despite his own mood souring in turn. ”Is it... something someone is uh... is studying?” Peter kept shovelling  mud into barrels, the lull in the conversation having more to do with the effort of their respective tasks than the newfound tension between them. And until that point, they had been getting along so well, at least in Peter’s opinion. He had actually been looking forward to asking more questions, leaning on Jigano for advice on how to pursue whatever his latest fixation was. But now, he just wanted to avoid the other man, at least for a bit. ”Me too, I... I was there too.” Peter remembers  the chill of her skin, the terrible sadness in her, coming from the blight, the sickness in her and around her. ”The ascended? I didn’t... I didn’t know that.” A worrying development, and one Peter would have to ask Rex about next time he was able to talk to her. The bucket that Peter had gone head over heels for was added to one of the barrels, the rest of the mud scooped up and packed away in no time. A small smile returned to his scarred face as they worked, and he could really see how much had been accomplished. The mud was being carted away, off to somewhere it would do less harm hopefully, and the entrance to the Atheneum was clear, the books within safe. As he passed the shovel back to Jigano, he smiled thinly, the other mans words sending a deep discomfort churning in Peters stomach. ”I didn’t think... I hadn’t thought about it that way.” He wasn’t necessarily sure being cut loose was what he wanted, but he tried to appreciate where the suggestion was coming from. As the last of the tools were returned to where they belonged, Peter took one last look at what they accomplished, and tried to enjoy the feeling that it left him with, rather than the feeling their conversation had left him with. He turned towards the library, intending to spend the rest of his day doing what he’d originally planned. Something made him pause though, and turned back to Jigano. ”Let me know if um... if you need help with anything else. For here.” And with that offer made, he disappeared into the building. Peter Perfectly able to hold my own hand, But I still can’t kiss my own neck;

"No... but did you do anything to help Rex free herself when she made it clear she didn't want to go through with it?" Jigano asked coolly. Rexanna had been the one who had protested, fought, run so she wouldn't be abused in such a way. Perhaps she would have chosen Ascension someday for Bastien's sake anyways, but Zariah had forced her to make that choice much sooner and under far greater pressure than she would have done otherwise. And from what he'd heard from Rex, Peter had been unhappy... but had been willing to go along with it, to drag her into his misery rather than stand up to the Tyrant's bullying demands.

But at least he hadn't been an active force for cruelty. Loren had risen above his name, so perhaps Peter could as well. Jigano didn't know him well enough yet to see if there was steel beneath that quiet exterior, a core of something sturdy enough to survive the undertow of Zariah's personality...

Or if he'd be pulled out into the depths and drowned beneath her ambitions, as had happened to so many others in Northhaven.

So though a distance came between them, Jigano did not turn the would-be Launceleyn away. He continued to talk to him, though his answers were terser than they had been, and his joy in the day was clearly diminished. "Everyone is studying that," the bard agreed gravely. "It's a truth everyone wants to know. The old gods have their side of things, and the Voice has hers, but it's likely the truth is somewhere in between. I don't trust the Voice... but the old gods are hardly unbiased in this matter. So we gather scraps of what we learn from both sides and try to piece a coherent tale together from them."

It was a damn shame that Zariah had her talons in the man, Jigano thought with a frustration he tried not to show as they shoveled and magicked the earth to contain the Memory Mud. He would have liked to invite Peter to the guild, finding the quiet man's curiosity refreshing... but he couldn't risk Zariah slipping a spy within his members so easily. If Peter would have married Rex because the Tyrant told him to, something as simple as stealing journals and some of their more precious and unique books might make the newest Launceleyn feel guilty, but it would hardly give him greater pause than being forced to marry a stranger.

Damn the woman anyways. A pity Caido didn't have a hell he could see her in.

The Undine's Song had been enough of a distraction that the bard hadn't noticed the strangers gathered, too focused on her and how to ease her pain. He slanted Peter a questioning glance at hearing that he hadn't heard about the Ascended's part in spreading the Blight, given that it had been the talk of the town for a season's span, but simply nodded an affirmative to the information.

He tilted his head thoughtfully, wondering if Peter would take the chance even if it was offered to him, or if he preferred the supposed safety of Zariah's steely fingers around his throat. Some men were like that, though Jigano had difficulty trying to see things from that angle. He had always fought; first, his father's plans to make him a smith, then the town's uneasiness with the star-fallen technology he had loved to scrounge as he explored around Torch, and then, of course, against the Technic League, the Black Sovereign, and the iron god Unity itself.

But that was his way, not Peter's, and he simply offered an encouraging smile and a nod, hoping that the seed he had planted might yet grow into a flower of freedom for the scholar at his side.

"I'll keep you in mind," he assured the Launceleyn, though he made no promises to recruit him for more assistance in the future. For now he'd watch and wait, and see what he would make of himself and his newfound family ties. If he was one such as Loren, then there would be no problem. But if he truly was Zariah's pet...

Well. Cross that bridge when they came to it.

Tools put away and barrels of mud headed out of town, Jigano turned to jog back to catch up with the wagon, determined to see this project through to the messy, muddy end. But at least the mud would be outside of the Atheneum and away from their precious books!

{Finish}