ofelia zhou deals in secrets. (consultancy) wrote in emillion, @ 2014-02-09 20:08:00 |
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Guy rubbed at his face in exhaustion and allowed himself a moment to silently thank the Grand Inquisitor. A firm advocate of the art of agitated chain-smoking, no one bothered to question the activity during her steel-fisted term in office, and so it was that the mage had already nudged open the window of the break room and allowed himself a cigarette in private. Coffee was brewing. Behind him, on the small, round table was a folder full of outlands maps, constituting something similar to what one might consider Ninth Bureau homework. Information needed to be updated quickly and consistently, and when it came to the territories surrounding the city, change happened frequently (and in some recent cases, most disturbingly). Guy had his work cut out for him that morning, but first, he needed to perk back up to his usual levels of profound energy. His hand was already reaching for the sugar, and an ungodly number of spoonfuls were leveled into his mug before stirring, the utensil clinking against the sides in a loud and agitated rhythm—a stern enough warning for anyone looking to burst into the room for an impromptu chat. For meeting the synergist along the street was one thing, and catching him around these halls was another matter entirely. All of the inquisitors were different beasts here, in fact: their masks would slip, identities shedding like snakeskin, the observers instead turning to reams of paper and cribbed notes in tight handwriting. The entire building was a humming machine of reports being handed to the Grand Inquisitor in person. (Rolled-up scrolls in pneumatic tubes had been briefly considered, but the safety issue was paramount. Safety, safety, safety: discretion was the watchword at LeSait.) But the door opened, and another familiar figure entered, a stack of folders tucked under one elbow and her hair pulled into an utilitarian ponytail (not much different from the state of affairs back at her office, in short). “Morning,” Ofelia – Starling – said, blossoming into a smile at the sight of Lenard. Her eyes drifted to his mug, the bureau’s sludge being rendered drinkable with what looked like an entire pound of sugar. “Hm. Sure you don’t want any coffee with that?” Guy puffed a cloud of smoke at the woman, recognition washing over his features before turning back to the coffee in question. He allowed himself a small, cautious sip of the drink—sweetness overwhelming the usual burnt flavor, for this was an act of necessity far more than pleasure here. One hand held both mug and cigarette, the smaller object caught between index and middle finger and burning red hot indignation. “Do you want me to pour you a cup?” The offer might’ve sounded more genuine, or generous, anywhere else, but the truth of the room remained out in the open, and offering anyone a taste of this particular brew was not entirely an act of kindness. “It’s fresh, I’ll admit.” With a twitch of his foot, Guy nudged his chair over, opening up a bit of room at the table and leaning over to move his things aside. “That would be lovely, thank you.” The other inquisitor fetched a clean mug from the sink and then set up camp, her own folders and papers sharing the newly-vacated space on the table. Ofelia couldn’t help it: she found herself looking at the maps, taking in Guy’s neat handwritten notes. The Outlands and their towns were far outside her purview, a girl born for the city and its delicate republic of thieves. “You’ve been on some more outdoors reconnaissance, I take it.” “Well now, I’d say the Bureau has taken an especial interest,” he replied, taking the empty mug in hand and indulging the other inquisitor in the vice of terrible coffee. “Recent events and all that, you know.” And how much Ofelia knew exactly about certain strangers that had, quite literally if one was given to certain theories, plagued the city, Guy hadn’t a clue. But emphasis on keeping an eye on the Outlands had become quickly apparent to him upon the recovery of his health nevertheless, and she’d been right about the maps at least. The synergist poured the black, pungent brew in the empty mug and set it gingerly on the table they now, apparently, had decided to share. Afterward, Guy snubbed out the remnants of the cigarette between his fingers and sent it sailing toward the nearest trashbin before settling down in a seat himself. Taking another sip of his own coffee, he allowed her to inspect the maps, a sizeable stack of obscure black and grey splotches, and cryptic sets of coordinates marked out by his own hand. Ofelia leaned over the table, a stray lock of dark hair drifting into her eyes before she swept it aside in irritation; she examined the cartography like she would read any report compiled by her sources, with careful attention to detail. “But we all have our share of extra work these days,” he said. “That we do,” she said vaguely, still perusing. He continued to watch her with some interest, recalling vaguely having danced with her at one of the holiday parties (and how little their particular paths crossed outside the present environment—nothing too unusual there). When Ofelia finally set aside his notes, she shook her head. “It’s been disappointing on my end. You’d think the criminal networks would have a better bead on mysterious outsiders. But somehow they always find a way to slip their way in unnoticed regardless, wreak all sorts of havoc.” She took a seat then, drawing in her cup of coffee with a nod of thanks. “Maybe we need better eyes on the gates,” she mused. “Liminal space between city and outlands. Pretty important threshold, all said.” The woman spoke more freely within these walls, but still fell into the instinctive habits of business, business, business: cutting straight to the chase and never considering any different. It was only after the fact that she paused, thinking. Guy nearly had fallen into his own bout of thoughtfulness at the subject as well, but the man was never entirely quiet nor still. Leaning over the table, his fingers tapping against the surface, the combined tonic of coffee and sugar worked quickly to rouse the man into his usual abundant show of energy (conversation too, he supposed, perhaps helped to ease the effort along). “And what do the guards look for, do you suppose?” Shifting around in his chair, he leaned back. “A quiet, curious man who goes to mass on Sundays and enjoys sight-seeing?” The sour tone wasn’t held back, and the bitterness lingered on his tongue like burnt coffee. Having spent enough of his own time trying to pick apart the events that had unfolded, Guy remained staunchly unsatisfied with the information he had culminated as well. “Village to village, and no one had suspected a thing.” “Mm. Good point. So it’s hard to imagine what we could’ve done better.” Even as she’d berated herself over and over upon recovery, that frustrating litany of why didn’t you see it coming? “I think the truth of the matter is, Emillion’s grown too big to keep an eye on easily, even with all of us. Perhaps a police state would keep it under control in the way we require, but...” Ofelia gave a twist of the shoulders, a sardonic angle to her smile, a gesture that simultaneously conveyed helplessness and irony. Her entire guild would be rendered impossible in such an environment, her existence moot. “Seems the only alternative is to continue working with our hands tied.” “It would’ve been better, I’d say, if we had someone to question,” Guy admitted. “A way of gaining more information.” Unfortunately, he recalled to himself, after all the fighting and destruction that had occurred right at the very doorstep of the Mages Guild, they hadn’t managed to acquire near to anything like a live suspect to interrogate. Another regret piled atop the others—that he hadn’t been able to respond to the incident himself. He took another sip of his coffee and offered Ofelia a speculative glance over the rim of his mug. “And what do you suppose the root of all this has been?” “A gil for my thoughts, so to speak?” For a moment, a fleeting expression passed across her face that might’ve been exhaustion; some old ghost of the weeks spent bed-ridden. Ofelia weighed her response, picking her way carefully through the next few words: “In all honesty, Guy? I really don’t know. And I absolutely hate working with unknown variables or uncontrolled situations. And this has felt like nothing but one large blind gamble all year.” With anyone else, that admission would have constituted a betrayal, her true emotions shuddering to the surface despite the woman’s best poker face to keep it in check. But if there was anyone who could understand this exasperation and lack of control, perhaps it was another true coworker. Her movements mirroring his, Ofelia drank her coffee, diligently repressing any reaction to its quality. Silence permeated the room as the two lingered over their shared frustrations on the matter (a quiet admission of his own feelings), as Guy continued to drink his coffee and consider her words. Nothing in his years as an inquisitor had ever felt this—insurmountable before, as their adversaries remained in shadows, playing at games no one knew the rules of. “We can’t afford to lose,” he said finally, setting his mug down on the table. “Least of all, I’d suppose, for the fact that Heinlein would murder all of us for it.” Her lips twitched in amusement. He reached out to his maps, stacking them up neater (something to occupy hands that refused to still for any profound length of time). Work to be done, evidence of life continuing onward, even in the midst of these series of troubles and turmoil. Evidence too, maybe, that there was still time for the odds to be swayed in their favor—to somehow get a one-up on their adversaries. “These stakes are far too high now.” “Agreed. It’s not just eyeing trade routes and eavesdropping on dissidents anymore. Parts of the city keep getting levelled in various attacks.” Ofelia rustled the pages of her own folders, revealing reports on smuggling movements with an almost contemptuous flick of the fingers. The coffee was cooling in her other hand, turning more unpalatable by the minute, but she didn’t seem to mind. “Do you ever,” she said slowly, “find it difficult to balance it?” The woman’s eyes were trained on Guy’s fingertips, the neat stack of thick maps, anything but his face at the moment. He stirred again, shifting his feet across the floor. Guy looked to the maps under his hand and flipped between the pages with a calloused thumb, his eyes noting red ink in the margins, jittery additions in pencil. “I’ve heard that question posed,” he admitted after a while, “for years and years inside these walls.” He shrugged and wondered how long it had been since he’d honestly posed the question to himself, how long since he had reflected on his own state of affairs. His eyes moved to where her mug of coffee sat. A semblance of his often used smile ghosted across his features—an attempt at reassurance, perhaps. “Feeling unsatisfied?” With her work, with her personal affairs, the synergist allowed Ofelia to fill in the blanks herself. She could brush the question off, fending it aside with niceties and something shallow—but the whole purpose of the inquisitor and their questions was to probe beneath the surface. “Perhaps. A little.” She exchanged a weary, enigmatic look over their tar-black coffee. “I spend so much of my life – both for the Bureau, and my own work – attending to and watching and listening and chasing other people’s lives, sometimes I feel like I’ve forgotten how to have one of my own. Long considered it an occupational hazard, though. Hence, I suppose, wondering how other inquisitors had it.” “Life on the road, admittedly,” Guy said with a wry smile, “doesn’t lend itself easily to maintaining a consistent social life.” He scratched his chin and reflected on how easy it was to leave the city and its complications behind, traveling from one dusty village to another, collecting information and aiding those along the way (all for the sake of the guild, of course). Did he ever seek to regret it, well, that was the question. Was it worse to have settled into these particular habits, to have accepted his lot? He pulled at the edge of one of the maps, turning it up with his thumb and folding it over. “Add in everything else, and I suppose after a while balance become less of a concern.” A raw admission, the words rang through his own ears, jerking along his shoulders and propelling him up to his feet once again. Guy, ever-moving, stood up and walked over to the coffee pot again. A moment of consideration, and he began to dump the rest of the pitch black brew into the sink—where it would not be reheated over and over throughout the day to poison yet another pair of weary inquisitors. Wasteful, she almost joked, the word already halfway off her tongue, but she let it drip down the sink along with the coffee. Where Guy was all jittery, perpetual movement and fidgeting, Ofelia was a constant: steady hands and steady voice, glassy and still, the eye of the storm. “Our perspective, you mean?” she said. “Something like that,” he shrugged, leaning on the edge of the counter with both palms. Guy gazed over his shoulder, wondering how a typical coffee break in the middle of the day’s duties had turned into such a peculiar conversation (but somewhere a seed had already been planted, waiting to sprout similar ponderings on another day). “But with times as heated as they are, you know,” he added, “there’s no reason to live with doubts and uncertainty, don’t you think?” Tomorrow wasn’t guaranteed, they always said. Not for inquisitors, not for guild members in a time of chaos, and not anyone else in the city. At another place and time, he might’ve tried to make the whole topic sound lighter, but not here it seemed. “True. Carpe diem, as they said once upon a time.” It was a grudging admission, coming from Zhou (she of the risk-averse, cautious, and calculating nature). But some chain of events had been set in motion with that plague rotting away at her insides, watching the world from her hospital bed: a wrench thrown in the gears, sabotage to the natural order, and food for thought. Her gaze drifting across the paperwork for the tenth time, Ofelia finally leaned forward, selected a single map from Guy’s stack, gave a thoughtful hm and then copied over some of the coordinates. “Sorry. Piggybacking some of this,” she said to the air, comparing her smuggling route against his annotated codes, the dotted lines linking the various little villages and townships of Valendia. “By all means,” he said with a wave of his hand. Guy wandered over once again to stand and watch as she made her notes, instantly curious at the sudden effort. He folded his arms over his chest as he watched, shuffling from foot to foot—a state of perpetual motion, or so it seemed, barely anchored by Ofelia’s presence and their present conversation. “Do let me know if you need any explanations, will you?” “So I shall.” One finger panned down the margins of the grid, until Ofelia looked up and met his eye . “Thank you for the chat, by the by, unscheduled though it was. This was—enjoyable. We don’t often get to cross paths, we bureaucrats.” A flicker of a smile. “The pleasure’s assuredly all mine,” Guy said with a crooked grin, realizing afterward that he had perhaps honestly meant it. Shaking his head, the synergist leaned down to point at a pair of unusual coordinates. For the sake of accuracy in notes, he decided, a brief explanation would likely be necessary. |