It is another of Illuvatar’s salons: a celebration to welcome in the new year and close out the season’s festivities. She is wearing her finest stress (still not that fine, and much less so were the color not so good at concealing stains) and concealing her finest knife (quite fine indeed, but less appropriate for the gien company). She may be without hat or gloves, and her shoes might be more suited for a back alley brawl than a waltz, but her demeanor (not to mention being a protege of the host himself) mostly makes up for these deficiencies.
As conversation members come and go, she is eventually left alone with Thomas.
“Hello sir, she says, guardedly, there is too much of satisfaction and hunger in his eyes for anything else, “I don’t believe I caught your name?”
He looks at her, glancing at her dress and its careful attempt at finery. He extends a white-gloved hand, moving his sparkling cane to the other. “Mr. Thomas Greenville, at your service”. He plasters his smile onto his face while he tries to assess what she can get from him. “What may I do for you?”
He pauses, “And may I ask your name?”
“Szalome Vevoda,” she replies, taking his hand in hers for a moment, marveling at the smoothness of it in hers, “at yours.”
Blinking slightly from the reflection coming of his cane, she looks him up and down. This was definitely his element, his relaxed stance and careful smirk told that well enough. That being said, he had the look of someone who is getting away with something; it was an off-putting, and more than slightly irritating, feeling - feeling like you’re being taken advantage of.
“And what do you do, Mr. Greenville? Our host always has such interesting guests, and it is a delight to get to know them.”
“Oh, you know; whatever I’m needed to do,” Thomas replies, his eyes darting about the room quickly, unsure who can and cannot overhear this conversation. “I’ve worked some with our good host at the University, I’ve spent some time at Mahogany Hall, I wrote for a time, before getting bored of the job (although I will admit I miss my good readers)” He drops his voice and adjusts the sleeves of his suit. “I’ve worked some for a certain lady in Spite …”
He stands up straighter and raises his voice just enough to be certain his next sentence will be overheard, and begins to gesticulate with the cane. “And what do you do my dear? Marlon! You must come meet this lovely young woman,” as he waves down a dapper young man who comes and greets her before settling onto Thomas’s arm.
It is another of Illuvatar’s salons: a celebration to welcome in the new year and close out the season’s festivities. She is wearing her finest stress (still not that fine, and much less so were the color not so good at concealing stains) and concealing her finest knife (quite fine indeed, but less appropriate for the gien company). She may be without hat or gloves, and her shoes might be more suited for a back alley brawl than a waltz, but her demeanor (not to mention being a protege of the host himself) mostly makes up for these deficiencies.
As conversation members come and go, she is eventually left alone with Thomas.
“Hello sir, she says, guardedly, there is too much of satisfaction and hunger in his eyes for anything else, “I don’t believe I caught your name?”
He looks at her, glancing at her dress and its careful attempt at finery. He extends a white-gloved hand, moving his sparkling cane to the other. “Mr. Thomas Greenville, at your service”. He plasters his smile onto his face while he tries to assess what she can get from him. “What may I do for you?”
He pauses, “And may I ask your name?”
Tonight the darkness of the London night is punctuated by candles in windows, the small circles of flickering light marks of the season’s festivities. Masked figures skulk in the tremulous shadows, their eye sockets as dark and impenetrable as the hearts they hide. Confessions are given and taken in turn, for Hallowmas is upon London; the season of secrets, with all its sins and absolutions, its betrayals and confidences.
Somewhere in this revelry, a meeting, ostensibly of chance, but who can ever tell with him, let alone during Hallowmas. In the flickering light of the candle between you, stands your mentor, Illuvatar. The rubbery man mask he wears hides his face, but not his identity; his manner (and the ring on his finger) are instantly recognizable.
The mask, though, is a wonder. The opalescent sheen of the mantle somehow captures the impression of the moist undulations of the rubberies. Its valves and vents contort in such a manner as to make his voice quaver and modulate in an alien, fluting way, fluctuating between low and high mid utterance without interruption.
“A confession for a confession?” he pipes, his voice and face not his own. “A sin for a sin?”
Thomas laughs, hoping the sparkle of his gilded mask and mirth will hide the chill he feels at the thought of both what he might be forced to divulge and what Illuvatar might tell him.
“Of course. I hope you find mine diverting,” Thomas responds, watching what he can see of Illuvatar’s expression through the mask. He walks over towards the alleyway, “I’ll tell you my secret first, I suppose.” As Illuvatar approaches, Thomas wonders what to tell him. What can he say that will elicit a true confession from his mentor but not open him to anything truly dangerous? He begins to babble, almost giggling, about Marlon–or more accurately about the affair he had with the beautiful 19 year old once-urchin who cornered him to ask for help getting in with the Widow since he had had no luck in the years since being kicked from the urchin gangs. Marlon had no idea. But as he told the tale, Thomas grew more and more nervous, perhaps this was insufficient.
“This did lead me to a grand loss; I’m afraid to look at mirrors. I brought the boy into the Glass and, well, let’s just say the Finger-Kings took an interest in him. One I was not expecting.”
Illuvatar watches Thomas pace and stammer. He wonders if he feels guilt for this one, or if it is merely part of his repertoire, a mere nothing to be put forward in the hopes of something more substantial being given in return. Regardless, he would keep it in confidence (though he muses, he is unlikely to receive the same confidentiality) and offer his in turn.
“Flesh changes, the Chain forbids, “ he says, his voice burbling through the mask, “but the chain does not touch here; the weak may become Great. I have indulged in the shapeling arts, I have been touched by the principalities of Hell, I have drank of the Mountain’s blood and coveted her Garden, and I have sought more ways that this: I have become more than I was. I have sought the cracks in the Law and pushed my way through them. I have ascended link by link the the Chain that once was my binding.”
His mask is barely visible in the light of the flickering candle now, losing himself for a moment in the recollection of his past and the giving of his confession.
“This is my sin, the sin of ambition, and of transcendence.”
Thomas starts. He had not expected anything so great, nor anything so very small and close. Ambition. Is that sin? What did Illuvatar give up for his ambition? And, it suddenly dawns on Thomas, how did he do so and can it be replicated. The tale of the poor possessed urchin, guilty as Thomas feels for condemning such a beautiful boy to a life under the tigers’ watch, has no meaning next to Illuvatar’s confession.
He looks at his mentor for some time, weighing the debt that he owes. He tries to expiate it, of course, taking a bottle less of wine for a favor here, watching out for Illuvatar’s agents in Spite there–although if the tall woman who trades in amber doesn’t listen soon, Thomas isn’t sure even Illuvatar himself could save her from the Widow’s assassins–but he never seems to be able to really lower the principal. Not that he wasn’t expecting this. Illuvatar had been playing the game for a very long time and one does not reverse a debt quickly. Thomas holds his tongue and fiddles with the deck of cards in his sleeve. He’ll depend on them before he asks for advice in transcendence. He can take no help that cannot be repaid.
Tonight the darkness of the London night is punctuated by candles in windows, the small circles of flickering light marks of the season’s festivities. Masked figures skulk in the tremulous shadows, their eye sockets as dark and impenetrable as the hearts they hide. Confessions are given and taken in turn, for Hallowmas is upon London; the season of secrets, with all its sins and absolutions, its betrayals and confidences.
Somewhere in this revelry, a meeting, ostensibly of chance, but who can ever tell with him, let alone during Hallowmas. In the flickering light of the candle between you, stands your mentor, Illuvatar. The rubbery man mask he wears hides his face, but not his identity; his manner (and the ring on his finger) are instantly recognizable.
The mask, though, is a wonder. The opalescent sheen of the mantle somehow captures the impression of the moist undulations of the rubberies. Its valves and vents contort is such a manner as to make his voice quaver and modulate in an alien fluting way, fluctuating between low and high mid utterance without interruption.
“A confession for a confession?” he pipes, his voice and face not his own. “A sin for a sin?”
Thomas laughs, hoping the sparkle of his gilded mask and mirth will hide the chill he feels at the thought of both what he might be forced to divulge and what Illuvatar might tell him.
“Of course. I hope you find mine diverting,” Thomas responds, watching what he can see of Illuvatar’s expression through the mask. He walks over towards the alleyway, “I’ll tell you my secret first, I suppose.” As Illuvatar approaches, Thomas wonders what to tell him. What can he say that will elicit a true confession from his mentor but not open him to anything truly dangerous? He begins to babble, almost giggling, about Marlon–or more accurately about the affair he had with the beautiful 19 year old once-urchin who cornered him to ask for help getting in with the Widow since he had had no luck in the years since being kicked from the urchin gangs. Marlon had no idea. But as he told the tale, Thomas grew more and more nervous, perhaps this was insufficient.
“This did lead me to a grand loss; I’m afraid to look at mirrors. I brought the boy into the Glass and, well, let’s just say the Fisher-Kings took an interest in him. One I was not expecting.”
Thomas pulled on his cheap white gloves and his mask before leaving the house. That Jerusha woman had wanted to meet up with him for some unknown reason. He has no idea what for–since she hates him, perhaps as much as he does her. Not that they haven’t been able to help one another occasionally since the salon. Mostly in the form of sparring bouts tha he certainly only enjoys because once in a while he lands a good punch on her jaw. Although, she does best him more often than not–but he’s been getting better.
When he arrived at the constabulary, where, presumably, she has her office, she surprised him by leading him up a flight of stairs to a small flat. When she mentioned to him that this is where she lives, he was slightly appalled. He drew his finger across her mantelpiece, watching the dust accumulate on his glove. He smirked. “It’s even worse than I thought. So why, exactly did you ask me to subject myself to this place? We could have met for tea somewhere nice. We could have gone to Dante’s–I know you’ve been. And I would have been willing to pay if you cannot afford it at the moment.”
His gloves – not his finest, though more expensive no doubt than the dress she wears, bought fourth-hand – are a disgusting and immaculate white. Liza makes a conscious effort not to follow their movement with her eyes, not to trace the gestures and the shapes he inscribes in the air as he speaks. It would only please him. And that is the very last thing she wishes to do.
There are those she dislikes as a point of pride: once committed to the rivalry, she refuses to be the first to yield. There are others she dislikes as a point of principle, others morals forbid her from holding them in any high regard, whatever her enjoyment of their company.
Then there are those like Thomas, with whom she is taking tea, who she dislikes completely, thoroughly, and without remorse, for little other reason than the way they set her teeth on edge – and, of course, the way they draw their damned white-gloved finger along her mantlepiece and ask why they did not meet somewhere nice.
“I have nae been to Dante’s.” Liza resists the urge to grind her teeth as she fetches mis-matched mugs from a cupboard. “Nor am I interested in making a grand affair of what is meant tae be a business proposal. Sit down; there’s a chair somewhere. I’ll make the tea. Unless you’re going tae criticize that, too, in which case—” She rounds on him, thrusting the kettle at him with a frown. “You can bloody do it yourself.”
Thomas fumbles with her dinged kettle before looking about for somewhere to place it. Finally, he sets it down and hunts up a chair. “I do make a good pot of tea. And this way, I can be certain of what’s going into it.” He sits down, crossing his legs quickly and folding his hands on his knee. The chair is hard, like something from the servant’s table in the Palace where, back before he got banished from the court, he used to wheedle sweets out of a grumbling pastry chef. But it’s better than being flea-ridden–or whatever the Neath has to approximate fleas–which he is certain any upholstered chair in this hideous flat would have to be. “Well, sit down–this is your … house … after all.”
The kettle squeals and he get it from the heat. He smells the tea in the pot before pouring the water in. “Ah, I see that at least you manage to keep yourself in decent tea. Newly picked and dried about last week?” He hands her the teapot and returns to his seat. “Now, I’m sure you want me out of this place as much as I want to get out, so let’s make this quick. You said a business proposition? What do I need to do, and what do I get out of it?”
Thomas pulled on his cheap white gloves and his mask before leaving the house. That Jerusha woman had wanted to meet up with him for some unknown reason. He has no idea what for–since she hates him, perhaps as much as he does her. Not that they haven’t been able to help one another occasionally since the salon. Mostly in the form of sparring bouts tha he certainly only enjoys because once in a while he lands a good punch on her jaw. Although, she does best him more often than not–but he’s been getting better.
When he arrived at the constabulary, where, presumably, she has her office, she surprised him by leading him up a flight of stairs to a small flat. When she mentioned to him that this is where she lives, he was slightly appalled. He drew his finger across her mantelpiece, watching the dust accumulate on his glove. He smirked. “It’s even worse than I thought. So why, exactly did you ask me to subject myself to this place? We could have met for tea somewhere nice. We could have gone to Dante’s–I know you’ve been. And I would have been willing to pay if you cannot afford it at the moment.”
Thomas was hurrying from a meeting with the Widow in Spite–not that anyone would have noticed. His long strides were measured and careful as he flashed about his jeweled cane, not caring who saw it. He had employed a pleasant spy to alert him is he needed to hide the cane, but for now, it went quite nicely with his neddy suit. It was of the utmost importance that he did not appear to be coming from her home; one never knows who might be watching. As he walked along, he did not notice the small woman coming at him from the opposite direction. Not until the moment that he walked smack into her, that is.
“Who are you and where do you think you are going, walking like that?” he shouted at his casual assailant. “You could have knocked me down! You’re lucky my cane didn’t hit you!” He yanked off his white gloves before angrily brushing off his suit, pulling them back on with a snap. “Wait a moment. I know you. You’re that woman from Illuvatar’s salon–the nervous one. Yes. Yes. Still chasing after that diamond are you?”
@theascendingsocialite
You hear frantic knocking and what would be best described as gibbering outside your door. When you look through the peephole you see Illuvatar on your step, he appears to be having an involved conversation with your lamp, while looking around as if he is being watched. His normally impeccable figure is disheveled: his hair wild, clothes torn, and his body covered with various abrasions.
“Oh my, I wonder what he’s gotten up to,” Thomas thinks and opes the door. He starts to talk “Oh, my dear Sir, do come in, perhaps a cup of tea?” wondering what on earth his bizarre mentor could be doing getting him up at this hour when Illuvatar dashes into the front hall and starts shouting incoherent gibberish about water and North and thunder and fire and who knows what else. Thomas slams the door shut behind him and hisses, “What were you thinking? Talking to my lamp and then running into my house? Are you insane?”
“Not yet, my boy, not yet,” responds Illuvatar.
Thomas takes a deep breath and guides Illuvatar to a spot in front of his fire, sending the friend visitng him to tell Marlon that he won’t be up to bed this evening and to amuse himself if he so desires. “Ah, well, I wasn’t going to get much sleep anyway. Sit down and tell me what’s going on. It might help.” Illuvatar sits down and Thomas sets himself up across from him with a bottle of cheap mushroom wine–Illuvatar’s too far gone to notice that Thomas can’t afford an endless supply of the good stuff he’d like to be drinking–and sets his goldfish on the table next to his chair, fully aware that this will be an interminable evening and he will be more skittish at the end of it. “You owe me for this; I won’t let you forget it my good sir. I expect some good words with your more influential friends once you have recovered your wits. You will be receiving a list of introductions I would like made–and I’m rather short on the ‘86 if you happen to have any spare bottles.” Illuvatar nods assent blearily (Thomas is unsure how much Illuvatar understood, but he is willing to ensure he gets what he deserves for this kindness later) and begins to regale him with his recent dreams. They are a cacophony of violence and energy–horrible deserts of thunder, buildings falling apart around Illuvatar, lightning trapped in ice, waterfalls drenching him, cold like the forests of Norway in January, a mirror that reflects not what Illuvatar does, but what he will do, chess pieces shifting back and forth across the sea, flesh falling apart, old men dancing on fire and trapped in vines. Thomas recognizes a few of his own nightmares, but had no idea that dreams could descend so far. When the clock chimes six, Illuvatar looks much better and Thomas is very glad to have such a merry little goldfish and thinks he may go out to the Duchess’s salon with his pretty jeweled cane the next evening–it might help take his mind off things. “Remember, Illuvatar, you need to help me with Her and with lord and Lady Rockton. I’ll need more pull with them if I am to accomplish anything.”
As he rambles, he becomes more and more lucid, coming back from the terrors that gripped his mind. He hasn’t felt like that in a long time, but that damn hunger, and meat, and white teeth, and red red RED. NO. He’s back, he’s fine. Even as he’s speaking, he is reassuring himself. Of course, in his ravings, he had to come to this doorstep. The help he gained here will be more expensive than in other place, regardless of how deeply Thomas is already in his debt. Oh well, a small price really, a few words and a few bottles. He could have been in much worse danger, or paid a much higher price.
“Yes, yes. All that and perhaps some more to show my gratitude, Thomas, my boy,” he says, waving his hand nonchalantly, the motion cut short as the image of gripping the other man’s throat, and warm, wet, red blood on his hands and, NO. He is better. But he is still far from good. Thomas has done more than enough though, especially for one night. He is well enough to get home without being reduced to gibbering.
Over the next few days words are said in lavish rooms, deals are made as glasses filled with expensive spirits (not literally, merely alcohol, this time at least) click against one another, perhaps more times than is strictly necessary, but it is good to be generous. Several boxes of bottles are also delivered, tucked into one of them a folder with several documents that could be put to good use by those that know how. Debts are paid - not great ones, those will come in time, a reckoning shall not be postponed indefinitely after all, and one thing folds into another - but for now, all shall be well.
@theascendingsocialite
You hear frantic knocking and what would be best described as gibbering outside your door. When you look through the peephole you see Illuvatar on your step, he appears to be having an involved conversation with your lamp, while looking around as if he is being watched. His normally impeccable figure is disheveled: his hair wild, clothes torn, and his body covered with various abrasions.
“Oh my, I wonder what he’s gotten up to,” Thomas thinks and opes the door. He starts to talk “Oh, my dear Sir, do come in, perhaps a cup of tea?” wondering what on earth his bizarre mentor could be doing getting him up at this hour when Illuvatar dashes into the front hall and starts shouting incoherent gibberish about water and North and thunder and fire and who knows what else. Thomas slams the door shut behind him and hisses, “What were you thinking? Talking to my lamp and then running into my house? Are you insane?”
“Not yet, my boy, not yet,” responds Illuvatar.
Thomas takes a deep breath and guides Illuvatar to a spot in front of his fire, sending the friend visitng him to tell Marlon that he won’t be up to bed this evening and to amuse himself if he so desires. “Ah, well, I wasn’t going to get much sleep anyway. Sit down and tell me what’s going on. It might help.” Illuvatar sits down and Thomas sets himself up across from him with a bottle of cheap mushroom wine–Illuvatar’s too far gone to notice that Thomas can’t afford an endless supply of the good stuff he’d like to be drinking–and sets his goldfish on the table next to his chair, fully aware that this will be an interminable evening and he will be more skittish at the end of it. “You owe me for this; I won’t let you forget it my good sir. I expect some good words with your more influential friends once you have recovered your wits. You will be receiving a list of introductions I would like made–and I’m rather short on the ‘86 if you happen to have any spare bottles.” Illuvatar nods assent blearily (Thomas is unsure how much Illuvatar understood, but he is willing to ensure he gets what he deserves for this kindness later) and begins to regale him with his recent dreams. They are a cacophony of violence and energy–horrible deserts of thunder, buildings falling apart around Illuvatar, lightning trapped in ice, waterfalls drenching him, cold like the forests of Norway in January, a mirror that reflects not what Illuvatar does, but what he will do, chess pieces shifting back and forth across the sea, flesh falling apart, old men dancing on fire and trapped in vines. Thomas recognizes a few of his own nightmares, but had no idea that dreams could descend so far. When the clock chimes six, Illuvatar looks much better and Thomas is very glad to have such a merry little goldfish and thinks he may go out to the Duchess’s salon with his pretty jeweled cane the next evening–it might help take his mind off things. “Remember, Illuvatar, you need to help me with Her and with lord and Lady Rockton. I’ll need more pull with them if I am to accomplish anything.”