The bottle of vodka Eleanor pulled down was so poor the label was hand-made and the mere scent of it burned her nostrils, but the smile she had after taking a mouthful was satisfied.
Here was a man cut from marble, perhaps even bronze. He had that look about him. As if he had stood as a model for one of the classic sculptors. Tall and muscular enough to be considered imposing. A pressence that commanded attention upon entering a room. Yet he did not enter a room. Not yet. He stood in silhouette beneath a street lamp just across the street from the Inn.
The bottle hit the bar with a hard thump, her fingers flexing until they went white; her skin was crawling, like cold breath up along her too-warm skin. Eleanor's expression fell to a careful frown.
The man across the street shared a private, quiet joke with himself. He tipped his head to regard the street with a quarter twist of a grin. The machine across the way pulled his eyes up, narrowed them, and he watched the rider proceed in through the front door with idle disinterest. After giving it some thought, he removed himself from beneath the street lamp and strode with militaristic confidence, slowly and deliberately, toward the awaiting porch.
The shiver that rolled through her limbs had her shuddering, eyes going wide. Eleanor jeked her head up, the lines of her body gone tense as she observed the common room. Nothing, she told herself, nothing.
Ascending the stairs, he dipped a polite nod to the lone occupant who remained on the porch. "Good evening," he said to her. A deep, rich voice that, even subdued to a hush, sounded as if it had the honor of commanding armies, once upon a time. He proceeded to the door and opened it, stepping in without a moment's hesitation.
The expression of confusion settled on her face was slapped away for shock. Like a deer caught in a hunter's rifle, her first instinct was to bolt and she found her limbs incapable of doing so. Frozen stiff, the Ink burned at her spine and Eleanor sucked in a harsh breath. That happened to be when Missie popped up like Rhydin's own version of Whack-a-Mole right in front of Eleanor and left a nickel-plated cigarette lighter in the shape of a ferret on the counter for her.
When Missie's form jolted in front of her, the ex-knight's limbs still laid dead where they were. She couldn't move, couldn't yell or scream or run; it was an invisible, strangling grip he had on her.
There was, unmistakably, something akin to a twinkle in his eyes. The grin exposed him as sharing another private joke with himself. He took a few steps in and paused, turning his head to examine the occupancy of the common room. This way and that in slow consideration. He looked back up, across the room, and locked eyes with the frozen ex-knight for but a moment. He lifted a hand in a beckoning gesture, pointed silently to the rack of bottles behind the bar, and chose an empty table to claim as his own. He pulled out a chair, seated himself, and waited.
"Are you okay' Don't you like the ferret-thing?" Missie thought Eleanor did not look well.
"F*ck," she breathed, when she was able to again. Her hands clenched and unclenched the bar counter, feeling the blood return to her limbs. Eleanor's expression drew into hard lines, kohl-dark eyes flicking down to Missie. It gave her time to process. It gave her something. "I'm fine, kid." Her voice was hoarse and the lie hung heavy on her tongue. "I like it fine. But I need to go over and talk to an old friend." The breath that poured from her lungs was slow, her eyes finding him again. You're dead. I killed you. I felt your blood run cold.
She lurched up from her lean, scarred fingers wrapping around the narrow neck of a bottle without checking the label; the other took two glasses, clinking against each other in her hand. All her coy movements had fallen loose, replaced by a woman worn years from war. For now, the common room was an absent battlefield and she crossed to meet her enemy.
This man was much too large for the table he chose; it didn't suit him. He reclined somewhat back in his chair, however, taking on a demeanor of ease. Lifting one leg, he set his ankle atop his knee, hooked an arm over the back of the chair, and watched the ex-knight come stiffly nearer. With all the silent pleasantries of a diplomat courting an ambassador, he gestured to the empty chair across from him to invite Eleanor to have a seat.
She knew when she was cornered, and it was now. Setting the bottle between them, she pulled the chair free while her mind groped desperately for explaination; this man was dead. She killed him. His blood ran down her blade in another of Rhy'din's rotting alleys, and here he was. The panic that struck her heart was well-hidden, as ever it was. This was a battlefield. "Hail, High Mage Dogal of Kesina." Her voice was flat, coarse as a stone.
A battlefield in which the two of them were without swords. The honorific etched a frown across his mouth, and his eyes narrowed. Sure signs of his displeasure with her choice of words. For a moment, he had been looking aside, making observations of the room and those within it. "Lady Knight Eleanor of House Greene," he countered, scathingly. Snapping his fingers, he pointed down at the seat, if she had not yet sat upon it. In that motion he was also indicating the glasses. They were in need of filling yet.
"Go to hell." The feral cat snarl of her voice remained a minute undertone; sitting, she snapped the cork from the bottle (brandy, by the smell), and poured for them both. The room was gone for her. Everything else was insignificant compared to this dead man walking, to the heat snaking up her spine, raking her raw. "What the hell are you?"
Her first statement started the crawl of the grin upon his mouth, hungrily replacing the frown. His eyes never found hers, not yet. They roved, turned and wandered, sipped the sights surrounding them that he seemed irrationally comfortable with. Reaching for his glass, he pulled it forward but did not yet lift it to drink. "A traveling minstril came to court onece," he told her. "He had quite the story to tell me about a distant land, a land parched under a burning sun that saw hardly any rain."
The Ink burned her, but she did not show it; not for him. She wanted a sword and she wanted his blood on it, again and again, until she was sure he would not come back, whatever he was. When he started his story, Eleanor's jaw tensed up. "Get on with it." Kill me, her eyes told him. Just try.
"He told me—" He went on, lifting his glass, as if she had never asked him anything at all. "—and I still find this impossible to believe— that in this land it would get so hot and dry that there would only be only one watering hole anywhere for thousands of miles around. This minstrel said that all the beasts were so thirsty that they gave up hunting in favor of sharing a space at the hole to drink. Lions and gazelle. Drinking together. Not a one fleeing nor the other feasting. Only drinking the water. And when they were done, the beasts — lions and tigers, gazelle and buffallo — they all went their separate way." His grin told her: All in due time.
Her own glass lay idle. Her mind created elaborate images of picking up the glass, smashing it into his gods-forsaken mouth to hear him scream instead of speak, but her limbs were lead heavy. None of it helps her, none of it.
"Boggles the mind a bit, doesn't it?" Conversationally, he asked her this. His gaze tore away from the room at large and finally he focused dead on her. He lifted his glass and sipped the liquor of choice through his teeth. He could be remarking about the story he just told her, or he could be talking about something else altogether, such as her bafflement at his very presence here.
Her smile was sickeningly sweet, curled at the corners and pretty as a newborn lamb. "Go f*ck yourself, champ." She was a feral cat who walked into the wrong alley, straight into a cage where an old tin of tuna had been a siren call for a door to snap behind her, left her yowling like all the demons of hell were at her tail.
"Ooooh now, Eleanor. There's no cause for that kind of language, is there?" He matched her smile, lowering his drink. Though his was edged and curved like the horns of a ram. They could butt heads all night. "Besides, where's the fun in that?" She sprung the trap with a mouth like that.
She shuddered out a breath, her eyes briefly falling half-mast even if they were still heavy set with rage; he made her feel unclean and started a fire in her that kept burning sharp. "Coward."
He clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. "If I were a coward, my sweet doe, would I be here" You'd think a sword through the eye would frighten me into never daring to come near you ever again. Then again—" He paused to knock back what was left in his glass, rolled the flavor around on his tongue before swallowing, then set the glass down with a clink to punctuate the rest of his statement. "A sword through the eye should reasonably kill a man, shouldn't it."
"You were dead — dead on my own damn blade." Her knuckles grew white against the table's edge; fear and anger bounced against her guts and drove her mad. "Shall I remind you again?" His eye. She set her own on it, her mind moaning for answers where her body stood firm. She was trained to be this way, and he trained her well.
"Are you quite sure I was dead" More to the point of the matter, are you certain it was me you killed?" He taunted. He teased. With merely words he played her emotions against her. Stirred the pot of madness brewing deep down inside of her. He reached for the bottle to refill his own glass. "I think you should be certain of those things before asking a question like that. I'm not sure it's me who needs reminded of anything."
Her fist snapped down and into the table, shaking the bottle and glass; it was the closest she could get to punching his perfect, pristine face and that damned smile. "You were dead." Was he" Was it him or another" Had she failed" No, no— "I killed you. I don't know what gods-be-damned sh*t you pulled, but I saw it."
He laughed, deep and sonorous. "That's the trouble with women," he mused sardonically, rising from his chair. He put the glass down on the table, full, not bothering with taking another drink. This watering hole was spoiled. "You can put a sword in their hand, teach them how to use it, let them pretend they're soldiers for a while, but in the end they're all the same. Ruled by their emotions, and only good for f*cking." He practically dared her to come at him and throw that punch where she wanted it to land.
She jolted from her chair like a fox out of a hole, raw-knuckled and fierce as a desert storm. The fist of her better arm went out sharp for his jaw, the rage boiling through her veins, pounding through her ears until she could hear nothing. Give her a sword and she'd end the night in blood.
She was a swift little vixen, he had to give her that. She had the speed where he had the bulk to slow him down in comparison. But she didn't have the strength, without a sword, to defeat him here tonight. Her knuckles clipped his jaw, and his hands came up to redirect her momentum. Fingers reached to close around a wrist, twist her arm up behind her back, push against her shoulders and shove her down on the table.
And that was when Mish'Cael walked right into the middle of the sh*tstorm Eleanor brewed.
