*Is* this how it happens?

[for_tradition]

There's a woman in the Bar proper. She's commandeered a medium-ish sized table and covered it with things: books, pieces of parchment, notes. There's a plate of biscuits and a pot of tea. She has one pair of glasses tucked on her shining brown hair, and she's wearing another, and she's humming to herself.

She is also, as a certain cavalier might say, mega-dead... but she doesn't seem at all perturbed by it.

Comments

[hinotfuckingdead]

"Dreadful," he murmurs. "I must return. I cannot enter the system, but we can send down the Cohort. I hate to interrupt the trial, but it appears, regretfully, to have been interrupted regardless."

"I tell you in confidence, Abigail, we can scarce afford another crisis."

[for_tradition]

"Oh! Lord," she says, smiling a little: "Who could I tell?"

With her murder, after all, Canaan House now lacks a speaker to the dead. She puts down her cup and leans on the table, studying her God, the Kindly Prince, the Emperor Undying, with clear interest.

"What has happened?"

[hinotfuckingdead]

"Eighteen thousand killed," he says, and he looks furious. "A cowardly suicide attack on troop transports. Nuclear. Blood of Eden is stirring."

"And other enemies as well, foes only the Lyctors can manage."

[for_tradition]

"Blood of Eden?" she says, startled. "I had heard they'd been...dismantled."

She steeples her fingers, considering. "With this added context...it hardly seems like coincidence, Lord."

[hinotfuckingdead]

"They have been," he says. "Their leadership has been crushed. This is mere reflex action of a corpse. But as we know, a corpse can still do considerable harm."

"No, I agree, Abigail. This is a deliberate act, to stretch us thin and force me back into the system. Yet I cannot abandon the postulants. Even if my hands and gestures did not require reinforcement, you are the heirs of the Houses. A devastating blow to our leadership."

[for_tradition]

Abigail Pent sips at her tea, and taps her fingers against her cup. "If there is one positive to be gleaned from my murder and that of the Fourth House," she says, thoughtful, "it is that the remaining heirs and cavaliers are now aware that the situation has deteriorated. And there are several, Lord, I would not discount. It is my hope they may now learn to work with, rather than against one another, and that we may yet be blessed with a new generation of saints.

"If they can learn to get along, that is," she adds, with no small amount of maternal amusement.

[hinotfuckingdead]

"I received word of what happened from the Ninth cavalier," he says. "I liked her."

"In the mean time, Abigail, I hope you can find respite here. It is, after all, free real estate."

[for_tradition]

Abigail beams at him. "Gideon the Ninth! How wonderful. So she speaks after all? Well, Magnus will be delighted – and I'll have lost another bet, but then, I often do."

She places her teacup back down, and looks about the room. "Yes," she says, "curious, isn't it? I'm extremely disappointed in myself for never following along this particular line of inquiry." She doesn't sound disappointed; she sounds like an honors student who has just been told there's a whole wing to the library they had never noticed before.

"And the food is excellent – I didn't think it was possible to grow the Darjeeling variant of camellia sinensis anymore."

[hinotfuckingdead]

"Believe me. She talks."

"Abigail," he says, intent. "Did you ever see her eyes?"

[for_tradition]

"Her eyes? No, Lord. She wore tinted glasses everywhere, even inside Canaan House."

She's burning with curiosity and staring at him a little too intently – the look of someone who spends most of her time with books and bones. "Why?"

[hinotfuckingdead]

"I had a glimpse--and. Well. Perhaps it was nothing."

"Did you see anything else suspicious in Canaan House? Anyone other than the sixteen guests and three priests, anyone acting out of character?"

[for_tradition]

She gives this question due consideration.

"I was not personally familiar with several of the heirs and cavaliers," she demurs, with the unstated understanding that she had thoroughly researched them all. "Aside from the Ninth, who arrived with a replacement cavalier, everything seemed in order.

"I will say Protesilaus the Seventh is not what I had expected; I had heard he was a fine cavalier and reasonably amiable man, but he has proved to be quite taciturn. We arrived; Teacher explained the singular rule of the House; we dispersed to our various tasks and plans. Magnus tells me the Ninth has turned out to be an excellent fighter, which no one anticipated."

[hinotfuckingdead]

He frowns. "No one twirling an an obvious moustache and vowing to kill everyone in the room, eh? A pity. Well. I had to ask."

He reaches out and takes one of her hands.

"Abigail, allow me to repeat again my condolences to you and Magnus. If I had my way the two of you would have been joined together eternally at my side. It's all such a dreadful waste, death."

[for_tradition]

"I don't believe anyone even had a moustache," she says, regretfully.

Despite her death, her hand is warm, and so is the smile she offers her God, as she pats the back of his hand with her free one. "Don't fret about us, Lord. You don't marry – if I may say so myself – one of the greatest spirit magicians the Fifth has ever seen without knowing you're in it for the long haul. I may have failed in becoming your Lyctor, but I still have a few tricks up my sleeve."

[hinotfuckingdead]

He squeezes her hand, then rises with a bow. "I am going to put matters in train. Please, enjoy your worthy retirement. Until the final Resurrection!"

[for_tradition]

Abigail inclines her head graciously, somehow managing to return his courtesy without actually getting up and dipping into a bow.

"Until then, Lord," she says, and holds up a plate.





"Biscuit for the road?"

[hinotfuckingdead]

"Gladly." He takes one, and stalks for the door, with dignity appropriate to the King Undying.

Well, damn. If his people are going to keep showing up here he's going to have to find another bar to drink in.