Wei Wuxian (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
acrookedpath) wrote2020-09-23 05:05 pm
acrookedpath) wrote2020-09-23 05:05 pm
[pfsb]
The good news: the energy-revealing array works!
The bad news --
It's not bad news, he insists to himself. It just... is. It's a complication, a hole in the road, a little snare tripping him up. That's all. It doesn't have to be more. It might not even be in the first place, yes? He is dead, Lan Zhan is alive, of course seeing just how very alive would stir something in him. That's all it is.
Right?
Never mind that he's fairly certain if he placed the same array on Harrow, or Tom-gongzi, or Ingress, he would not have been struck the same way. That -- it's ridiculous, this is all ridiculous, and that's why he's out here by the lake, standing on a flat rock with another array of talismans fluttering in his hand.
The key is not just luring resentful energy from the forest, despite the suppression around the inn. It is how swiftly he can do it. During his coffee-fueled spree of work last night, he drew up some new lures that ought to work faster than a traditional set. Now he scatters them in a wide circle around his feet, gestures sharply, and sends a bolt of red energy into the yellow paper slips.
Silently, in his head, he begins to count. One... two... three...
At the count of thirteen, something boils at the forest's edge, dark and oily.
Wei Wuxian smiles and lifts his flute to meet it.
The bad news --
It's not bad news, he insists to himself. It just... is. It's a complication, a hole in the road, a little snare tripping him up. That's all. It doesn't have to be more. It might not even be in the first place, yes? He is dead, Lan Zhan is alive, of course seeing just how very alive would stir something in him. That's all it is.
Right?
Never mind that he's fairly certain if he placed the same array on Harrow, or Tom-gongzi, or Ingress, he would not have been struck the same way. That -- it's ridiculous, this is all ridiculous, and that's why he's out here by the lake, standing on a flat rock with another array of talismans fluttering in his hand.
The key is not just luring resentful energy from the forest, despite the suppression around the inn. It is how swiftly he can do it. During his coffee-fueled spree of work last night, he drew up some new lures that ought to work faster than a traditional set. Now he scatters them in a wide circle around his feet, gestures sharply, and sends a bolt of red energy into the yellow paper slips.
Silently, in his head, he begins to count. One... two... three...
At the count of thirteen, something boils at the forest's edge, dark and oily.
Wei Wuxian smiles and lifts his flute to meet it.
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The doll looks at Wei Wuxian one final time -- still teeming with resentful energy, still wholly under control -- and nods in satisfaction.
I am ready when you are.
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I will navigate you to their quarters by a different route. I don't want you to have to pass Ianthe again. She rises, and with a nod to the skeleton, moves to the Bar.
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Keeping close to the walls to remain as unnoticed as possible, the doll scampers deeper into Canaan House.
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She leads the doll to a set of rooms and under a door, into a bedroom set up in the traditional necromancer & cavalier set-up; eg, one bed perpindicular to the other. It is a relatively tidy room, although there are miscellaneous accumulations of books, on and around one bed, and weapons, on and around the other.
There is also a table, but its contents are difficult to see from this angle.
On a disused mattress rolled up in the corner, two tall young people are talking, one male and one female. In the young woman, tallness is joined with general yokedness; Gideon Nav is an impressive physical specimen. Like Harrow, she dresses all in black and her face is painted. It was not very well-done even before the smudges and smears of emotional devastation. Her hair is like a flame on a black candle.
"--would do anything to become a Lyctor," Gideon is saying. "She'd easily have killed Dulcinea's cavalier if she thought it would help her become a Lyctor. Nothing else matters to her. I know that now. In the last couple days, I sometimes thought--"
The young man has gone for the necromantically-traditional tall-and-spindly style, like clay rolled out thin. He wears glasses and a grey robe and appears to be, rather awkwardly, comforting the young woman.
He says, very gently, “You really should not need me to tell you that an eleven-year-old isn’t responsible for the suicides of three grown adults.”
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This is --
His first thought, kept private from Harrow, is that he should not be listening to this. He does not know either of these people, and the conversation is clearly a fraught one, a private one. But he has sworn to help Harrow, and it would be a terrible waste to come this far and leave with so little.
Wei Wuxian draws a deep mental breath and begins with the most basic information.
Your cavalier is in here, he tells Harrow. She is speaking to a man I assume is the Sixth.
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If he has not killed her already, that is an excellent sign. Do you happen to see a severed head lying around?
Gideon and the Sixth are arguing about semantics and the logistics of fault.
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With the same caution, the doll grabs hold of the table leg and begins to creep higher.
They were discussing the Seventh's cavalier for a moment. Saying that someone would do anything to become a Lyctor, including killing him.
And taken in conjunction with the Sixth's mention of an eleven-year-old causing, or not causing, the suicides of three people --
Reluctantly, I think they may have meant you.
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Reaching the top of the table, the doll is now face-to-face with... a huge, dead face. The muddy, sickly brick-colored face of Protosilaus the Seventh."
"Look, Nav. You ratted out your childhood nemesis to get her in trouble. You didn’t kill her parents, and she shouldn’t hate you like you did, and you shouldn’t hate you like you did."
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Well, says Wei Wuxian calmly, staring into the giant, mottled face before him. I see the head.
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Then I believe we can withdraw.
Gideon and Palamedes are now examining a piece of flimsy.
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The flimsy provides an excellent distraction for Wei Wuxian's paper doll to take a running leap off the table, drift to the floor, and sprint to slide underneath the Sixth's door.
Quickly, the doll backtracks along the same route Harrow instructed it to follow, scrambling over the stone floors and leaping up stairs.
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When the doll comes through the door, she scoops it up and summons the skeletons to follow, tucking something from the Bar under her arm. She hurries back to reunite the doll with Wei Wuxian.
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The doll jumps from Harrow's hands, gliding through the air to land on Wei Wuxian's chest. The glowing characters along its back wink out. He draws in a quick, sharp breath, the music stuttering briefly, but resumes in short order, the melody transitioning to Rest as the smoke unwinds from his body.
Soon it is just him, the flute, and an ordinary paper doll drifting free to land in his lap.
(And Harrow and a gaggle of skeletons.)
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"I am... pleased the Sixth appears to be trustworthy." Desperately pleased.
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"You are not worried they found the head?" he asks.
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"Gideon took matters out of my hands because she trusted them more than she trusted me. That was... misplaced, and I cannot pretend I enjoy it." She swallows but her composure remains tight. "But since she cannot tell how long the man was dead, understandable."
"I had considered the options of what you might find, and Gideon with the head speaking peacefully with Palamedes was... One of the preferable possibilities. It means Camilla is seeking me, not Gideon, and for non-traitorous reasons. I will surrender myself to her immediately when I return."
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"They were not only discussing the Seventh's cavalier," he says, quieter. "They were discussing the death of your parents."
He will not let Harrow approach any of the three -- Palamedes, Camilla, or Gideon -- without knowing that much.
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There's a black portfolio she had had tucked under her arm; she holds it now as if she has forgotten it.
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No louder, he says, "It sounded as if Gideon blamed herself. The Sixth was... trying to reassure her otherwise. But I do not want to pick at your wounds, Harrow. I only say this so you do not walk to them blind."
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She closes her eyes. "May the Emperor damn me to the darkest depths of the River. There is so much I have not said to her."
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There's also the problem of the Sixth knowing she has been ruling in her father's name all this time, but... well, she's very nearly an adult now, and they all have bigger problems.
She looks down at the portfolio. "Ah. Here." She thrusts it out towards him.
It is a black linen portfolio, with holsters for pen on the inside cover, and a sheaf of large talisman papers clipped inside, lightly gridded and perforated to create talismans of various sizes. In an interior pocket are pages patterned into paper dolls.
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"Harrow, this -- " He laughs a little as he rifles the edges of the talisman papers. Experimentally, he flexes one, noting the way it gives a little at the perforation, and beams in delight. "This is for me?"
And there are dolls in the back! A whole set of them! This is fantastic.
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