Not whatsoever. It is my handwriting on the envelope, furthermore, and yet I have never written a letter to Ortus Nigenad. I suspect the man incapable of reading prose. Nor would he wear such things.
[Oh, but the giant lady who tried to eat her before she passed out probably was wearing them? It's fine.]
[For some reason, her ears go red at that and she looks cross with him? But - ]
. . . My sin is Despair. Perhaps it was easier for me to fill it last week than you for yours.
[Anyway, she's saved from this conversation about indulgences by a memshare.
You are sit on your cot, dressed in a sickly green hospital gown, next to Ianthe Tridentarius, your face bare and unpainted, your head shaved bald. Two skeletons are beside you, at your bidding holding up a mirror, one showing the back of your head and one the front. You are finishing your letters, scrawling in a cipher you know she will not be able to undo. She is frowning at you, her expression hard to understand, something like wonder and bemused shock.
"This may not work," she tells you.
"You have reminded me," you say tersely.
“I’ll say it again. The procedure could fail. Or it may work, but only temporarily. There could be any number of side effects — physical disorders — if you push your brain too hard, any surgery could simply heal over — and if you’re doing what I have a suspicion you’re doing, it could play merry hell with scar tissue. This is profoundly experimental. More to the point, it is totally fucking demented.”
Your eyes meet - yours pitch black, hers violet, but already dotted with blue and brown flecks; you can see the color of Naberius Tern's eyes in hers more each time you look at her. You look down at the tray of tools in front of you — scalpel, saw, little bottle of water with a spray nozzle.
You're astonished when Ianthe speaks and her voice has almost something like concern in it, because Ianthe "I love my twin and also murder" Tridentarius is a stone cold sociopath. "Ninth. Maybe this is an eleventh-hour point to make, but I find myself making it. Tell me what you’re doing. Tell me the details of your grim, dark, and shadowy plan. If you don’t, I have no assurance that I am not about to have a front-row seat as you reduce yourself to a gibbering wreck - or lower. A vegetable. A hunk of wood. A Fourth House write-in advice column.”
You do not deign to answer her, so fixated are you on the work, on understanding each step of what you must do, and nothing else, because if you begin to think of ought else, if you begin to consider what might go wrong, you fear your nerve will crack and your will will crumble. Ianthe makes her voice as low and coaxing, and she presses: “Make me understand what this is worth to you, Ninth. Think about what you’ve promised. Consider what I am, and what use you might get from me. I am a Lyctor. I am a necromantic princess of Ida. I am the cleverest necromancer of my generation.”
That wakes you, for one moment, from your maudlin reverie. “Like hell you are,” you snap, with a ghost of your old pride.
“So impress me,” says Ianthe, unmoved, though she stares at you with those changing eyes at you, as though she's trying to untangle something in your gaze, or reveling in the astonishing pinched ugliness of your bare face.
“I will impress upon you this,” you hiss. “I asked you for a reason. That reason was not your genius, which I admit exists. Nobody who reverse-engineered the Lyctoral process could be anything but a genius. But I haven’t seen anything that makes me believe you are more than — a kind of necromantic gymnast, doing showy tricks without concern for the theory. You’re not of Sextus’s calibre either.”
“No,” says Ianthe lightly, “but Sextus’s head exploded, proving to the world that he hadn’t accounted for everything.”
You didn't know you had new depths of anger and grief left to uncover, but something in your heart clenches. "I may have been Sextus’s necromantic superior, but he was the better man. You are not even so worthy of that brain as to wipe its bloodied remnants from the wall,” you tell her coldly. “You are a murderer, a conwoman, a cheat, a liar, a slitherer, and you embody the worst flaws of your House — as do I. Nonetheless, I did not ask you because you are a Lyctor, Third. I did not even ask you because you know significantly more about your subject than I do.”
“Tell me, because I am hugely bored of hearing all my flaws,” says Ianthe, pretending as always to be unbothered.
You stare into the mirror, and your black eyes stare back, dull and empty, a void. “I asked you because you know what it is,” and here, against your will, your voice shakes, “to be — fractured.”
“Harrowhark,” says Ianthe. “Let me give you a little advice. It is free and smart. I’ll walk this back now — I’ll adopt the sweetest good humour about everything you’ve done for me already — if you admit that you are running away. And running away is for fools and children. You are a Lyctor. You have paid the price. The hardest part is over. Smile to the universe, thank it for its graciousness, and mount your throne. You answer to nobody now.”
“If you think that you and I are not more beholden than ever,” you say, and hope your voice isn't truly as raw as it sounds to you, “you are an idiot.”
“Who is left? What is left?”
You shut your eyes for a moment, and then when you open them again, your heart stops. In the mirror, you immediately see that they are not correct. You are heterochromatic, with celestially mismatched irises. One black. One gold. Your chest clenches in horror and your stomach threatens to heave.
"We are wasting time," you command Ianthe. "Open me up."
“It will be worse for you in the end, Nonagesimus—”
Out of patience, uncharacteristic, you roar - "Do it, you faithless coward, you swore me an oath! Expose the brain — guide me — and let me handle it from there! There’s still time, and you thieve it from me!"
“All right, sister,” says Ianthe, resigned, and she reaches for the awl first. The hammer would be second; the hammer for her living hand, the awl for the dead. She rests it high on your frontal bone, and squints. "Time to absolutely fuck you up."
She strikes and splits your skull open, and everything goes black.]
well, sasazuka has seen a few of these at this point. it's strange every time, seeing something that he is obviously not meant to, things that the other person was likely to never bring up to him.
but this is one of the few that makes him pause to actually try and take in what he saw. a lot of it goes over his head, because there are too many references he has no way of knowing what they connect to. but he can understand the gist of it.
[She's just sitting here, calmly, still sitting on the bench, not reacting one bit.]
I'm not alone in receiving gifts this week. Mollymauk received a cat. Perhaps you ought to - [Well, she was going to say indulge in his sin better, just to be mean because she feels like this conversation took a strange left turn, like he realized something she didn't, but then she remembers his sin and thinks better of it.]
[Oh. Oh. The pain in her frontal lobe goes from a dull throb to a jack hammer; she clutches the side of her head, looks up at him, and with glinting, furious eyes, yells at him - ]
[She calms down basically instantly once he stops talking about it, though she's still holding her head in her hands, and looks faintly nauseated.]
I quite agree, and I wouldn't expect you to be careless with such things. [But she knows he isn't going to go around telling anyone about. . . what even was it, again?]
[ he has no idea what the fuck was going on, and it's obvious she doesn't want to talk about it, so.
sasazuka has no issues with digging into someone's private matters, but it's only when it's actually relevant to information they need. this isn't a case like that. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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but he walks over. ]
What's that?
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[It says on it To be given to Gideon Nav.]
It's just an envelope, addressed to my old cavalier, with nothing but a pair of sunglasses inside.
no subject
[ hm. ]
Do you recognize the sunglasses?
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[Oh, but the giant lady who tried to eat her before she passed out probably was wearing them? It's fine.]
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huh. well. ]
And you don't know what it's a reward for?
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. . . My sin is Despair. Perhaps it was easier for me to fill it last week than you for yours.
[Anyway, she's saved from this conversation about indulgences by a memshare.
You are sit on your cot, dressed in a sickly green hospital gown, next to Ianthe Tridentarius, your face bare and unpainted, your head shaved bald. Two skeletons are beside you, at your bidding holding up a mirror, one showing the back of your head and one the front. You are finishing your letters, scrawling in a cipher you know she will not be able to undo. She is frowning at you, her expression hard to understand, something like wonder and bemused shock.
"This may not work," she tells you.
"You have reminded me," you say tersely.
“I’ll say it again. The procedure could fail. Or it may work, but only temporarily. There could be any number of side effects — physical disorders — if you push your brain too hard, any surgery could simply heal over — and if you’re doing what I have a suspicion you’re doing, it could play merry hell with scar tissue. This is profoundly experimental. More to the point, it is totally fucking demented.”
Your eyes meet - yours pitch black, hers violet, but already dotted with blue and brown flecks; you can see the color of Naberius Tern's eyes in hers more each time you look at her. You look down at the tray of tools in front of you — scalpel, saw, little bottle of water with a spray nozzle.
You're astonished when Ianthe speaks and her voice has almost something like concern in it, because Ianthe "I love my twin and also murder" Tridentarius is a stone cold sociopath. "Ninth. Maybe this is an eleventh-hour point to make, but I find myself making it. Tell me what you’re doing. Tell me the details of your grim, dark, and shadowy plan. If you don’t, I have no assurance that I am not about to have a front-row seat as you reduce yourself to a gibbering wreck - or lower. A vegetable. A hunk of wood. A Fourth House write-in advice column.”
You do not deign to answer her, so fixated are you on the work, on understanding each step of what you must do, and nothing else, because if you begin to think of ought else, if you begin to consider what might go wrong, you fear your nerve will crack and your will will crumble. Ianthe makes her voice as low and coaxing, and she presses: “Make me understand what this is worth to you, Ninth. Think about what you’ve promised. Consider what I am, and what use you might get from me. I am a Lyctor. I am a necromantic princess of Ida. I am the cleverest necromancer of my generation.”
That wakes you, for one moment, from your maudlin reverie. “Like hell you are,” you snap, with a ghost of your old pride.
“So impress me,” says Ianthe, unmoved, though she stares at you with those changing eyes at you, as though she's trying to untangle something in your gaze, or reveling in the astonishing pinched ugliness of your bare face.
“I will impress upon you this,” you hiss. “I asked you for a reason. That reason was not your genius, which I admit exists. Nobody who reverse-engineered the Lyctoral process could be anything but a genius. But I haven’t seen anything that makes me believe you are more than — a kind of necromantic gymnast, doing showy tricks without concern for the theory. You’re not of Sextus’s calibre either.”
“No,” says Ianthe lightly, “but Sextus’s head exploded, proving to the world that he hadn’t accounted for everything.”
You didn't know you had new depths of anger and grief left to uncover, but something in your heart clenches. "I may have been Sextus’s necromantic superior, but he was the better man. You are not even so worthy of that brain as to wipe its bloodied remnants from the wall,” you tell her coldly. “You are a murderer, a conwoman, a cheat, a liar, a slitherer, and you embody the worst flaws of your House — as do I. Nonetheless, I did not ask you because you are a Lyctor, Third. I did not even ask you because you know significantly more about your subject than I do.”
“Tell me, because I am hugely bored of hearing all my flaws,” says Ianthe, pretending as always to be unbothered.
You stare into the mirror, and your black eyes stare back, dull and empty, a void. “I asked you because you know what it is,” and here, against your will, your voice shakes, “to be — fractured.”
“Harrowhark,” says Ianthe. “Let me give you a little advice. It is free and smart. I’ll walk this back now — I’ll adopt the sweetest good humour about everything you’ve done for me already — if you admit that you are running away. And running away is for fools and children. You are a Lyctor. You have paid the price. The hardest part is over. Smile to the universe, thank it for its graciousness, and mount your throne. You answer to nobody now.”
“If you think that you and I are not more beholden than ever,” you say, and hope your voice isn't truly as raw as it sounds to you, “you are an idiot.”
“Who is left? What is left?”
You shut your eyes for a moment, and then when you open them again, your heart stops. In the mirror, you immediately see that they are not correct. You are heterochromatic, with celestially mismatched irises. One black. One gold. Your chest clenches in horror and your stomach threatens to heave.
"We are wasting time," you command Ianthe. "Open me up."
“It will be worse for you in the end, Nonagesimus—”
Out of patience, uncharacteristic, you roar - "Do it, you faithless coward, you swore me an oath! Expose the brain — guide me — and let me handle it from there! There’s still time, and you thieve it from me!"
“All right, sister,” says Ianthe, resigned, and she reaches for the awl first. The hammer would be second; the hammer for her living hand, the awl for the dead. She rests it high on your frontal bone, and squints. "Time to absolutely fuck you up."
She strikes and splits your skull open, and everything goes black.]
no subject
well, sasazuka has seen a few of these at this point. it's strange every time, seeing something that he is obviously not meant to, things that the other person was likely to never bring up to him.
but this is one of the few that makes him pause to actually try and take in what he saw. a lot of it goes over his head, because there are too many references he has no way of knowing what they connect to. but he can understand the gist of it.
and what happens at the end. ]
Oh.
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[She's just sitting here, calmly, still sitting on the bench, not reacting one bit.]
I'm not alone in receiving gifts this week. Mollymauk received a cat. Perhaps you ought to - [Well, she was going to say indulge in his sin better, just to be mean because she feels like this conversation took a strange left turn, like he realized something she didn't, but then she remembers his sin and thinks better of it.]
It's no matter. Only a trinket.
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there's a moment where he tries to figure out how to word this. ]
I just saw something of yours-- a memory. Someone opened your skull.
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Do not. Do not. Breathe not another word.
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I just thought you should know I saw it. It's already too much of an invasion of privacy.
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[She calms down basically instantly once he stops talking about it, though she's still holding her head in her hands, and looks faintly nauseated.]
I quite agree, and I wouldn't expect you to be careless with such things. [But she knows he isn't going to go around telling anyone about. . . what even was it, again?]
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sasazuka has no issues with digging into someone's private matters, but it's only when it's actually relevant to information they need. this isn't a case like that. ]
I'm not. No need to worry about that.