lady marcos & korporal cassul; complete. | mid-evening.
The last dance had worn down her resolve. As Divina approached the refreshments table, the maverick withered away, facade falling from her face like crumbling petals. Just a drink, she thought, and she would go. A tired hand sluggishly reached for the nearest glass of water. At the very last moment, it bumped into another hand reaching for the same – calloused fingers matching hers, bruised knuckles, gunpowder burns. When she followed the lines of the wrist to the suit jacket to the shoulder to the face, it was a startled Rictor Cassul that met her eye.
After an awkward pause: “All yours,” he said, retreating and taking the glass beside it instead. He held it too tightly, the fingers tense.
Normally, she might have grasped for a scathing witticism. Without defenses, she had learned to wound before she could be wounded, to shed the warm acceptance of Via for the frigid hostility of Sir Marcos. But all night long had Divina been struggling against an anger infinitely larger than her own. And so there was only a dull nod as she took the glass and raised it to her lips, the korporal’s agitation noticed and ignored.
That in itself made Rictor do a double-take; he’d been girding himself for a verbal lashing, a vicious greeting the gnawed at the frayed friendship-that-no-longer-was. The mental question mark was visible in his widened eyes, the arch of an eyebrow.
“Well, good evening to you too,” Rictor said, bemused. He’d expected better. “Nothing?”
She returned the bemusement with a blank stare. “Someone’s had one tedious dance too many.”
“Shame. I was feeling all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready for a go.” Rictor’s grip on the glass had eased, and he took the opportunity to take a long sip of the water. The female knight looked different than usual, though he couldn’t put his finger on how or why.
Perhaps it was the setting. He hated these things too.
“Pity.” It was to be no more than that, but as Divina took another draught, the Coulombe girl’s skirt edged in the corner of her vision. Abruptly, absently—“You have taken a squire, correct?”
“Aye. Storm Kapur.”
“Your thoughts,” she prompted, “on the experience.”
That eyebrow arched again. “Valuable. Always nice to have someone around to look after the armour, refill the bullets, fetch the food and coffee.” The lurking sardonic expression gave him away; Rictor was joking, as he almost always was. After another pause, however, he seemed to chew over the question, and after a reluctant pause – this was Marcos, this was the fell knight he’d dropped like the poisonous weed she was – he continued: “Been valuable. We all started there, after all.”
She tossed his japes away with her next exhale; it was the concluding sentence that she paused over, the words folded and unfolded in her mind like a paper sculpture. “And on Falk?”
His gaze turned harder at that, eyes narrowing. “She was looking into archery,” he said flatly.
“Has she a talent for it, then?” Her eyes left her glass, a peculiar earnestness left naked in their depths. “You have referred her to Aleyne, I presume.”
“Yes, and not yet. Was letting her figure shit out on her own. I’m not a referral service.” Not my problem was the answer jutting up in Rictor’s mind – the accuracy of that defense, however, was still up for debate. “Thinking of taking one on, are you?”
“Liu,” she said dismissively, as if it explained everything. “Overall assessment?”
Rictor had to echo the words to ensure he’d heard correctly. His hand lowered, the near-empty glass of water now dangling by his side. “What—overall assessment of Drake Liu?”
Finally, a flicker of irritation peeked from behind her mask’s gilded filigree. “Of Falk,” she corrected, and it was clear that she was loath enough to be asking him, of all people, for an opinion. Her own glass, empty, was gently returned to the table.