Speaking their names, they shake the flag
Waking the earth, it lifts and lags
We see a thousand rooms to rest
Helping us taste the bite of death
I know, I know my time has passed
I'm not so young, I'm not so fast
I tremble with the nervous thought
Of having been, at last, forgot
-Sufjan Stevens

Red Dragon Inn
Same night

Mr. Cale stopped just shy of the door, half hoping to catch his breath and build his nerve. A nightcap would fix that, tonic and gin, or maybe, something a tad stronger. He hadn't consulted Jack in a while. The bookworm debated entry all the while fumbling with the knife into his beloved briefcase. Casualty of war, little did he know.

Looking around the room, Maia suddenly got that sense of being closed in. Couldn't see the stars by the window, couldn't feel the wind. This was usually the sort of thing that only happened her first few days landside after a long time spent on the account, but the little bit of rising panic was probably due to a few other factors. Another sip of tea and she moved for the door, to step out to the porch and get some air. She opened the door and found herself face to face with...one of those few other factors.

Eyes went wide with surprise for the span of a heartbeat before they went narrow. She barreled out on to the porch, pulling the door shut behind her with a decisive thud before reaching up to tangle strong fingers in any bookish odd or end she could wrangle. One hand. The other reached for the blade sticking from his breifcase. "You."

The factor was undeniably bookworm shaped, although for the moment he was without a book. Instead, a briefcase, and a knife, the knife being wrestled free of leather bindings. It was a temporary victory. He held the knife aloft just as the Inn exhaled a pirate.

Maia reached for a briefcase, hand, whatever. Both were covered in skin. Both could be stuck.

Her fingers curled around that wrist and twisted in an unkind fashion. "Drop it." Tweak. Growl. To say that she was pissed would have been a profound crime of understatement.

Instant outcry. Arden was still trying to cope with his meeting with the ranger. Cale could not handle another trauma, although, this one being legions more terrible. The blade was dropped on command, though he did force a backstep into the rail, an attempt to reclaim his wrist.

?Unhand me.? More plea than demand, though he bristled with frustration, and History 101 whispered days of yore, where they really did kill the messenger. He half wondered how far this world had progressed. He did not pose the question to her. Only gulped and stared in terror.

The minute the knife thunked on the ground, she kicked it, to send it sliding out of reach... though... he really did not look like he'd be fit to grab it back and stick her with it. Maia took a step back, hands on her hips, chin high. She was tiny beside him, like most, but she covered him with a look. That look. Her look. I own you. "Do not scream, or I will give you a legitimate reason to make that much noise. Do you understand me, clearly?" No hat. She had been without it for days. She had been without many of her favorite things.

His heart gave up its rhythm for some wild dance within the cage of his chest, overly done up in buttons and trim, and a green vest that spilled over his belt. He paled, considerably, a nervous tick reeking havoc over his brow. He swallowed, and in doing so, forced down a series of screams into his bowels. ?Madame, I..? He what? Did not mean to deliver her a piece of someone or something or..? He blinked.

"Don't you Madame me." She was calm as the death she had so often laid at her feet in ones and twos and threes and more, when the occasion had demanded more. As the muscles in her body tensed, that shoulder ached, and she ignored it, just as she ignored the buzz of the inn behind her and the wind of the path before her.

"It is not my intent to kill you, presently, so stop fearing for your life. Your energy will be better spent in contemplation of your conscience." Quick words, spoken softly but no less sharply than the intent behind them. "An innocent man is dead, over something I have done, though I haven't the faintest why.." Those words caused her voice to waver, her heart in its own thrum. "I know this because of you. But I am not going to waste time asking you who. I know about Irrykin."

A deep breath and she cut those eyes up to meet him. "I need to know why."

He might have flinched beneath her terrible gaze, and though she called for it, the quaking of his limbs never ceased, and his knees still threatened to buckle beneath him. He definitely flinched when she divulged that bit of information, of his employer's name (and lover, but Arden hid that well beneath his shirt collar). He had only just given it up to Hawk, but did not provide responsibility along with it. ?My Employer is better suited to answer your questions. He does not pass on such information to me or my colleagues. We are, we are agents of delivery, Mada-Mis-Sir..ahh..? He suppressed a cough with a balled fist. ?My task was to tender the goods, and so I have, task completed.?

Maia trembled, white rage and thoughts of justice waltzing together through her mindscape. Balled a tight little fist, and for a minute, she thought she might strike him. Her jaw clenched, her impotent grief dropping that arm to her side as her eyes welled. All those feelings and nowhere else to put them. "Dead. An innocent, and everything I-" She bit into her lip, too hard and turned her head. "Your employer is a pig-felching coward. Sending..." She brushed the back of her hand against wet cheeks, looking all the more defiant as that salted hand then waved at him derisively. "Men. Barely men, to do the dirty work. I don't suppose you do the killing. You just make it real."

The last question, barely a whisper. "How could you?"

Thoughts delayed. He did not offer her a rush of explanations, ones that the Jackal had dispelled with silver lining. He only stammered in all his odds and ends, his hand catching the back of his head, still in search of longer pieces of hair now nonexistent. Through her tears, he looked absolutely blank, where terror had once reigned supreme. If he was second guessing his lover's motives, he didn't voice it to her. ?No.? And that was it.

"You take messages to him?" Her rational question came to him with a glare, and she was certain, at the look of him, that something was indeed very wrong with him. Maybe slave had been the right word. Maybe the barrister would be better off dead. The steel that hung from her hip enticed, like the sway of hips, like the thrill of a bottle and a dance.

?I do.? He spoke simply, and kept one hand above his head. It's mate still held the briefcase in check, useless as it was, what with the hole through its very heart. He'd need a new legal pad too, but that was the least of his problems.

"Tell him..." She paused, that irrational moment gone, another feather carried off by the wind. Maia was fire and steel again, the roar of an endless sea, and as solid as the ground beneath her. "I thank him for the message, and I look forward to the next." She would be surprised if Mister Cale would be delivering it, but. It would not be the first time she had ever been surprised.

The barrister (more or less), nodded adruptly, and, taking this as his cue to exit, did. Perhaps he would be the one carting the next package, all surprises standing. The Jackal had a twisted sense of humor, twisted, and often cruel. He broke from her small, yet fearsome presence and forced his feet to the steps, taking up a short stride, so as not to topple over. He had had quite a night thus far, and his nerves were shot, but thankfully, he was not. Or stabbed. Or otherwise mauled.

She moved to the porch swing to settle there. Maia had learned little about her part in this, but her study of the bookish thing, in person, had been revealing in terms of what she was dealing with. A sociopathic sense of civility. She set the porch swing to do what it was destined to do with a kick of her foot, she wondered how on earth Arden Cale had avoided being murdered so far.

And I'm hanging on your words
Like I always used to do
The words they use so lightly
I only feel for you
I only know because I carry you around
In the background
I'm in the background
- Third Eye Blind

The bookworm sat in the shadows of the study, his dilemma carefully deposited at the center of the dark wooded desk. The pouch was the problem, for inside the pouch, was a box, and inside the box, was?

Well, Arden didn?t want to think about that. No sir. Not one little bit.

He buried his face into his hands, sinking fingers beneath thick wire frames, rubbing at his eyelids. The gelatinous roll beneath such a thin layer of epidermis gave rise to a shudder. It was the noise that bothered him, the soft squish of an eye in its socket, for it reminded him that bodies were made of interlocking parts, complementary in their segmented fashion, each part performing some fragile function?

Fragility. Cells and tissue, muscle and vein. Arden knew the downside of fragility, knew what a mess a severed artery could make, knew the pallor of the dead.

?No more,? he said, aloud, snatching the dreadful parcel, leaving the sealed letter behind. It looked more at home among Irrykin?s books and little mirrors than it did paired with the pouch. He would find it there, later, when he arrived home. Arden never had cause to keep track of his comings and goings, but now he hoped the Jackal?s arrival would be soon.

Shaking free of his squeamishness, he stood and exited the study. He went for the kitchen, holding the package out in front of him as far as his arm would stretch. His eyes roamed everywhere away, often catching bits of his own repulsed reflection as he walked side by side Irrykin?s mirrored-tiled walls.

What he saw gave rise to memory, more wistful than sad:

?You have very, striking eyes... Look here, at me. Has no one ever said such things to you before??

And so he followed the one who spoke of his beauty, and his brilliance, though Arden knew nothing of the terrible burden he would have to bear.

?It also wouldn't be in the best interest of truth to assume that there was a soul attached to the thing your piece of delivery belonged to. You have seen peripherally a handful of instances. Do not judge me if you do not know the entire truth of what I do.?

But she had said otherwise.

?An innocent man is dead??

Innocent. Man. These words haunted Arden. So, what horror had her fury unleashed? Somehow, he didn?t think the box beheld the pieces of an innocent, yet the thought of those pieces still turned his stomach.

Shaking his head and gritting his teeth, he locked the well-bound horror in the pit of the kitchen?s freezer, reigning in his repulsion with the closure of the freezer door. The chill would keep whatever it was from rotting, and out of sight, out of mind.

Arden moved for the living room, which was curiously overrun with mirrors, and settled into the sofa. Perhaps a hundred bespectacled green-eyed boys stared back, wearing the same look of dread. He?d mean to ask the Jackal later, he?d mean to be soft and gentle in his cross-examination - innocent blood, and a seer still missing - but it would probably end like all their other debates: arms entangled, mouth on mouth, sweet silver encrusted words at his ear. Arden wondered when he had first noticed it, first realized how much of a hold his lover had on him, but couldn?t remember.

?I suppose,? he said, to all of his two-dimensional selves, ?he had me at hello.?

With an uncaring smirk, the sort one sports when one has accepted defeat (albeit Arden?s was sweeter than most), the youth slumped into the cushions and closed his eyes. He?d rid himself of his daily burden, and thus, could slumber the rest of the night away in this consensual slavery. If it was hours before Irrykin returned home, the parts were better left on ice, the letter well out in the open?