[His stride is sure even in unfamiliar territory. Kaz Brekker has gotten the lay of the land as much as he could, maps and word of mouth, scoured books and in-person study, but this is not his home. The dusty ground settles differently beneath his feet from the marshy softness of his home. Kerch as an island nation is temperate and rainy, Ketterdam as its capital even more so being one of if not the largest port city in the known world. His home is known for its canals and narrow streets, for its endless greed and glossed over vices. A realm that did not have a monarchy but rather a putative oligarchy known as the Merchants Council. It claims to be worldly and renowned, a nation where anyone with talent and skill might make something of themselves.
The Council makes a mockery of such ideas even as claiming to uphold them, and Kaz has vowed to turn their sins against them while reaping their rewards.
It isn’t merely spite and revenge that urges him onward though, nor is it even his fierce desire to protect the people he now calls his. Kaz also simply has a mind that’s never quiet, never still. Even when sitting and plotting his fingers find their way to locks to pick or coins to disappear. He’s never allowed a mystery to remain unraveled or a door to remain locked. Perhaps that’s partly why he takes on these jobs that take him far and wide nowadays. A new challenge, for if he grows complacent, he isn’t worth his second chance at life. Perhaps it’s for the money, that admittedly is very nice, too. There’s no such thing as enough in his mind, because there are always more uses for it. There’s always the risk of losing everything, as he’s had happen to him more than once, and stocking up for a rainy day meant many things in water-logged Ketterdam.
Perhaps there’s some small part of him that finds kindred causes, where he sees the value in allies near and far that exist beyond betrayal. Kaz Brekker always has fists raised and ready to fight, and more and more now, those reasons extend beyond just his self-preservation.
He’s a little worse for wear right now but not in any dire straits nor needing medical aid. His limp is a little more prominent than usual for being up on his leg for so long, black leather clad hand curled over his crow’s head cane as he uses it to help him walk. He’s wearing dark clothing that befits the local fashion to blend in, as dark as possible, the sole oddity still being the gloves he won't remove. There’s some bruising on his face, along with a scar over his left eyebrow and another along his neck that are much older. Sleep-deprived shadows always exist beneath his eyes, bruisings that are reflected in a gaze that says they’ve doled out worse. He doesn’t smile, but his eyes are sharp and focused. Predator and protector rolled into one. Kaz Brekker is intense, never really at ease, and it shows in his expression. It isn’t particularly friendly by default, more marble than mirthful with harsh angles and slicked back hair, but it’s a reserved reckoning. One that lies in wait, rather than striking without reason despite what rumors circulate.
He comes to rest outside the gate after having scanned the perimeter, never being too careful. He clocks any guard towers or passing stations, any strolling on the streets or buildings in sight. Exchanging any known signal, he studies the young woman whose words have remained wrapped in his mind. Experience begat wisdom, not age, and her eyes seem nearly as ancient as his own when he meets them. Perhaps that’s merely the night sky, or his own perception. Head cocked to the side, he doesn’t take out her parcel just yet but his head dips in greeting.]
Lovely night to avoid much strolling, it seems. I have the parcel, if you’ve the payment, Priestess. Are we to exchange now, then?
[She knows this area best, along with her customs, so for the moment he’ll defer to her on how such trades normally went.]
Edited (Amended his clothing for setting purposes!) 2023-07-10 20:07 (UTC)
[ They say, no one can move undisturbed through Doana’s streets like the priestesses, even the darkness dares not approach them. If it were true, no harm would ever come to an initiated to the Mountain Mother, and every priestess knows this not to be true, but most people are unwilling to commit the sin against the Goddess that they may, for gold or glory, have committed against a young woman more easily. Thus, tonight Ara Vana has been able to move through the inner city, from the temple at its centre, to the suburbs without much interference. A little girl who shouldn’t have been up at all had met her halfway across a square, wanting to touch her hand, so that she may know the touch of a mother and Ara Vana’s heart had ached. Even at age six or seven, she had already worn the slave necklace. Out of her own purse, she had paid her a copper piece. A symbolic sum, but the girl’s eyes had widened comically before she had kissed the hem of Ara Vana’s tunic and scurried off.
The round city of Doana, located in the desert but only a day’s journey from the sea from hence Ara Vana’s family had come, is well known for its tall city walls, towering far above her head as she stands in their shadow, awaiting Kaz Bekker, the star-finder. Behind them, the gate is a sight to behold, even in the dark, the blue glaze of the tiles seeming to reflect the moonshine. The mountain goat design, the Mountain Mother’s sacred animal, built into the front and back of the towers for protection shines silvery.
Igana, their high priestess, had given Ara Vana this task as punishment, because she is being too vocal about her concerns for the future of the temple, if the changes currently being employed are not halted, are not rolled back. She thought it fitting that the priestess who could possibly wonder why the Mountain Mother would no longer need her Companion, should spend her time searching for the compass to the heavens. You already know the way, it seems, she had said with a sharp smile and given her Kaz Bekker’s number, ‘to fix it’. Ara Vana had been more concerned that the compass could be stolen at all. What it might mean to the temple, yes, but even worse – what it would mean to the people, should they hear. The panic it could create.
So, albeit feeling the unfairness, she still felt the weight of her duties even more strongly. Her devotion to her Goddess, yes, but to her people, too.
Which is why she looks at the man who has saved them for now with more gratitude than even the coin they are paying him can equal. She shakes her head slightly, in a manner that doesn’t mean, no, but wait. He has shown her a kindness that all customs insist she must repay and money has never been the way. ]
We are to exchange pleasantries for a moment, so no one thinks twice of us. [ A small smile. ] Then, we exchange one thing for another afterwards.
[ Looking up at him, his face marked by shadow and bruises, she frowns briefly and keeps her hands to herself with an effort. At the temple, they have salves and lotions, but none of it has followed her here. ]
[In another life, one that Kaz has carried with him in vaulted silence within himself, he lived on a farm. There had been meadowed fields and the scent of hay, clover, and apples. A goat’s bleat mingled with the cow’s mooing and chickens’ persistent clucks. His gaze now didn’t focus on the silver goat design, but the images drew his mind backwards for a moment. It had been peaceful for him in those early years of childhood, but only out of ignorance. Kaz hadn’t fully realized how in debt their father had been. Society’s ills touched him long before he became aware of their tightening.
Yet despite the retrospect that leaves him ever on alert now, there’s a softer undercurrent, a gentler wave. He always did enjoy animals and their symbolism. For those first few years, they along with his brother had been his only friends.
Kaz did buy his father’s farm back, many years later, but he doesn’t return to visit. It doesn’t smell the same, it doesn’t sit right. It can’t. Perhaps if he was less crooked inside he’d find better ways to honor the Rietveld name, one that didn’t rest on good Kerch sensibilities of tossing money at a problem. As it is, for now at least, simply knowing the farm isn’t in some thoughtless banker’s greedy hands is enough, and he lets the tenants take care of the rest.
He likes to think there are goats back on it now, too.
He wonders a little what they mean to Doana. Likely something more grand and symbolic than what they meant to a child making friends. Though predictably, Kaz finds more worth in the latter for himself.
There is something to be said though for symbolism. Kaz knows people called witches and saints, and while he’s never felt any inclination to bend a knee or raise a prayer to those that are merely people for him, he’s seen the power that belief held by others can wield. Idolation and fear often go hand in hand, but the underlying common denominator that faith can lead one to act is undeniable. He suspects that the priestesses at the temple want the compass back not merely for their own beliefs, but to avoid sowing uncertainty among their constituents.
A slight crook at the edge of his mouth’s left corner flicks upwards for a moment. They aren’t in an immediate rush then for the drop. He’s had times where a sense of urgency took precedence, but opting for a more casual cadence to blend in is easy enough as well. This sort of adaptation he can run with.]
If I’d known I’d be expected to gain manners and be pleasant, I might have charged extra. [A deadpan joke, he’s not actually adding taxes, but it’s true that Kaz isn’t known for having a delightful disposition.
Though the conversations he’s had with her so far haven’t been the normal pleasantries that make him bored and impatient within two minutes.]
What, my face? It’ll just have a little more personality for a few days. [He says it as one who deals with physical violence on an alarming rate on the regular. He’s more concerned about the illegal trade market that extends to her realm. Sacred objects can fetch a pretty coin, but it’s a more niche market than many others. Spider fingers tend to create webs that tangle even the unassuming, and he’d rather know who’s pulling the strings for the jobs he takes. Not merely who hired him, that he knows, but who stole the item and who, if any, the buyers were, too. Or if it was stolen specifically to undermine her temple. He overheard a name, or perhaps a phrase, while inside, and glanced over some papers that looked of interest, but the streets didn't seem the time to bring any of it up. It might end up meaning nothing anyway, but living as he does so close to the gutters, he sees all stones as worth being turned.
No, he’s practicing his pleasantries. He can hear his friends mocking him from across the sea.]
Is it common for one from your temple to be out and about, conversing with people on the street?
[ The changes running through the temple these days like undercurrents, like rippling waves, are making her uneasy about the sudden theft of the compass for many reasons. Only once in its long, recorded history has the temple lost sight of one of its sacred belongings – and that was back in the Years of Stone – the transition of time between the first Companion priestess that did not fulfil her duties and her later successor who would take them upon herself yet again. In that slip, it’s said, the temple lost the Mother’s Necklace with beads of rock from the top of the mountain where no man has gone. It has never been recovered. They only know about it from their chronicles and legends.
While Ara Vana is devout, devout to the core of her being, she recognises that it seems unlikely that it’s pure coincidence how the two times the temple is robbed would be under the lead of a bad Companion. This might not come down to the Mountain Mother at all. This may not go deeper than a bad person, a rotten apple, in their midst. As much as that is a bad omen, it might be a bad woman first.
Looking his face over, thinking it needs no more personality, he holds plenty inside himself, she wonders what he has gathered of all this from his chase, from his reacquisition. She will not ask him here, but if he is going to allow her, she may accompany him to his lodgings, it would only be polite of her, he is a stranger in Doana and she is more familiar with its streets than most.
A natural transaction. He would have charged extra, he jokes, making her smile, small, to herself, chin dipped slightly downwards, and she? Well. ]
I would have paid the fee out of my own pocket.
[ Turning slightly, she starts down a side street, beckoning him to follow, just a subtle gesture of her hand, indicating walk with me. She keeps her pace slow, relaxed, her eyes not searching the buildings they pass as much as register, in a friendly, familiar way. No one from the outside would look at them and think anything amiss. Or anyone from the inside, either.
Those are where her greatest fears are centered at the moment. She has seen Igana’s schemes. If they are great within the temple structure, they may be great and greater yet outside of it. There are forces in this world that are beyond the priestesses, beyond the temple. There is a darkness out there.
Keeping her voice low, pleasant, she smiles wider at his comment, raising her chin slightly. Is it with a sense of arrogance? Is it awareness, they are difficult to tell apart. She takes pride in her position, a pride that is earned her, but she saves none of it for herself. ]
We have our various duties that bring us out here. And at times, it is merely important we are seen, taking part in our community. The temple is its own world, but the world is wider than any walls, the temple’s or otherwise. If we seclude ourselves, we are letting half the Mountain Mother’s creation down.
[ She turns her head to glance at him, sideways, a tilt of her chin. ]
To love the world, yet to have created a parallel world that is your very own alongside it. Does that sound paradoxical to you?
[The inner workings of temples and places of worship Kaz has only ever memorized on a technical level. He’s had to use the churches in various places as points of entry in the past, which has meant studying their outline and design, knowing the social hierarchy and hours of operation. He breaks them down like he does any other building or home, with a dispassionate critical eye. Each one’s design and function says just as much about the society in which it sits as it does the architects who construct it.
The largest cathedral in Ketterdam was known as the Church of Barter, built on the plan of the god Ghezen’s hand. The cathedral itself sat upon the great palm, each of its five extended fingers accented with smaller chapels at each fingertip. To reach the top of the cathedral one has to head upwards through a variety of chapels stacked on top of one another like sweetened cake fillings, each commissioned by a separate wealthy merchant family, each preening like peacocks over their placement being higher than another.
Perhaps some of Ketterdam’s citizens truly believe in the god of commerce and industry. To Kaz it seems a lot more performative than anything else.
Ara Vana seems different to him, but then again, she also serves in a house of worship. If Kaz ever bothered to get to know one of the servants of the chapels in his own backyard, perhaps he’d find similarly devout beings.
Perhaps not.
Kaz may not follow her faith, but he at least respects that Ara Vana seems to be genuine in them.
He strolls alongside her through her city’s streets, cane moving in tandem as he walks as another limb. His gaze studies the area discreetly, soaking it in as he does any place. Entrances and exits, windows and ledges. Where secrets may hide and what shadows float at night. He notes how the people move and look, what gazes stare upon their faces and what animals scurry through the streets for scraps. Where it looks like power might congeal and how the outskirts feed into those paths. It’s a map of movement, intersecting to form a place of pleasantry or potential battlefield. He never forgets the latter, no matter how quiet the former.
His own voice is raspy, like a bag of broken marble pieces jostling together, leftover from what’s been used to make his exterior. It’s never been called particularly pleasant to hear, adding fuel to those who consider him made of demon fire, but it’s low and not threatening when conversing with her.]
Sounds like what most who have a home do, doesn’t it? There are layers within any society, units that start large or small and grow in one or the other direction. How stunted those rings of expansion are varies, depending on the person and situation. I’d say it’s less paradoxical and more reciprocal, since usually, the larger community around a home still impacts what goes on inside to some degree or another, and vice versa.
[His life and experiences in Ketterdam are extremely influenced by the city’s values and norms, and it bleeds through to his smaller family unit in the Slat, which in turn impacts how they interact with Ketterdam. Even so, there’s room for some individuality, as his home in the Slat is very different from a rich mercher’s home, and while both overlap in some ways due to sharing parts of the Ketterdam experience, they don’t in others.]
And just like the larger world changes, so does any parallel world and the person or persons within it can.
[He glances over, quirking up an eyebrow.]
Has your temple’s faith changed much over the years?
[ They walk next to each other in a companionable quiet that isn’t total silence, the way total silence eats and devours and disrupts, but filled with the sounds of life. Breathing, his, hers. The gentle thud of his cane and their uneven strides, hers slow by default, his keeping up by willpower alone. She thinks, he isn’t the type to back down, even if given the chance. It might be so, the chance is no opportunity to him, but mockery. She watches him out the corner of her eye, the dark palette of his clothes making him blend into the Edonian night easily, while her dark grey robes do the same, only the lighter hem of her undergarments drawing pale lines near the ground, around her sandal-clad feet. No one else in the whole empire are allowed to wear these particular shades of grey. They’re sacred. They sanctify the person wearing them.
Protection, in a way. Recognition, in another.
Darker hues are strongly associated with the mythological darkness in her faith, it is associated with permanent death, with destruction and with evil, though evil is a many-nuanced thing. When he wears it, however, she thinks – the darkness has found a star and the star wears it, so that it must submit. It must bow down. It must be backdrop, not foreground.
Ara Vana likes that. She likes him, and while she feels with many people, since Gharan – few have resonated. In that, the silence has been a lonely place. Something different from the homes he is talking about, the places where one is not just at ease and safe, but not alone and that is what sets it apart from the larger world.
It makes Ara Vana wonder whether she has made the larger world her home for too long, her duties and her role in her community, at the temple and in the streets, but carved out no real safe space for herself. The Mountain Mother is supposed to fulfil that role, but the Mountain Mother let people have each other.
And for a while, Ara Vana had. But as with everything, having is a temporary notion. She swallows hard once and looks at him as he asks his question, meets his raised eyebrow with a twist of her mouth that shows her displeasure. How much she can tell him, she isn’t sure, but since they won’t listen to her within the temple institution, maybe she must look out. Maybe she must look to the stars. Looking straight ahead again, she says, slowly, the darkness of her own voice matching his: ]
It used to be steady like the drum. One beat always expecting the next, following certain patterns and rhythms. Recognisable, even when the melody changed. The past few years…. [ She can’t make herself talk about the Companion priestess behind her back, even as she knows what she is doing is wrong and against the Goddess’ wishes. She is still too faithful to the only home she knows. ] The only problem with our beliefs is that they are dictated by human hands and human hands err.
[ She knows this intimately as a scribe to the temple, chronicling the myths and legends, the laws. She knows that one mistake in the writing can change the meaning of a paragraph, a whole piece. She knows additions can say more about the scribe making them than about the Mountain Mother’s history.
As she knows that removing a whole sacred ritual from the book is a woman’s doing, not the Goddess’. Ara Vana may not have joined the priestesses’ ranks with the ambition of becoming Companion herself, though with time, she decided she would see it as an honour to be chosen, but neither is she the petty girl who simply wanted to own herself, at whatever cost.
She believes now. To see someone who does not… To see her control the very direction they’re steering in? It belittles and belies everything Ara Vana believes in. ]
[There is little about Kaz Brekker that isn’t manufactured, right down to the surname he stripped off the side of a machinery piece. A crow might be his calling card, but for animals of legend, he’s resonated with that of a griffin. Not because of the animal parts themselves per say, but rather, because of the concept of picking parts of a being that would be of the most use, and molding them together to make something more. For a long time Kaz had thought he’d left behind everything he’d once known in Ketterdam’s harbor once rising from death’s barge. That he was nothing but picked up parts left scattered in the streets, elements he fit and molded about himself that might not have healed properly but served him well. Ketterdam herself is his mother, profit his father, and they combined to craft a crooked man whose sharp edges none dared touch for how harsh they cut.
He hadn’t set out to found a family. Kaz had spent several years on the streets alone as a child, content to survive without ever having anything else to lose. It was only at twelve when he saw the man responsible for his family’s death, saw the enormity of what he was up against, that Kaz set out to form an army. He found those with talents that were being squandered, he listened to shadows that others let slip away, he put a knife in the hands of those who were hurt and taught them to be dangerous themselves. He renovated a building so it did not leak and provided safety in which to sleep. All of this he did with revenge in his mind.
Somewhere along the way, he found people who believed in him for more than that.
He found people whom he had reason to live for more, too.
It doesn’t strip away the petty spite for him, but he’s learned how to bend his angles to not shed the blood of those for whom he cares. Even if his Crows, those he’s closest with, have spread their wings to stretch out beyond him these days, he carries them all with him. He has new fledglings in his nest, he has a whole city to take back and distribute power within. A country, even. Perhaps more than one. Miles to go, brick by brick, a never ending fight. He doesn’t know what he might do if he stops. He doesn’t think he can now.
It isn’t how he’s made.
He notes the tone change in her voice when she speaks.]
That they do, Priestess. Hands err, they fumble. They take practice working with, and not many find the time. And that’s being charitable, thinking only on the people who let things slip by accident.
[He’s been asking questions of her, both out of genuine curiosity to know the area better from her perspective and learn about her, and because Kaz’s default is often to focus on anyone other than himself in discourse. He can tell though that this is a topic that is weighing on her heart, from her expression and the vague details she shares. It brings about a protective flash within him, the familiar spark of his ever-burning inner flame to not let people stand alone like he had so long ago. He likes her own fire, even if she has a much more gentle surface manner in wielding it.]
Often the best way to steal a man’s coin purse is to tell him you’re after what’s in his other pocket. [He raises a shoulder in a shrug, a little stiff from the long day. He can't wait to wash some of the grime away, at least that which settles on the surface.] Not that I’m attributing any malice to your people, and sometimes, changes that come from mistakes aren’t for the worse. Just in a larger sense, I’ve come across enough times where people feigned ignorance or ineptitude when there’s something more beneath it.
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no subject
The Council makes a mockery of such ideas even as claiming to uphold them, and Kaz has vowed to turn their sins against them while reaping their rewards.
It isn’t merely spite and revenge that urges him onward though, nor is it even his fierce desire to protect the people he now calls his. Kaz also simply has a mind that’s never quiet, never still. Even when sitting and plotting his fingers find their way to locks to pick or coins to disappear. He’s never allowed a mystery to remain unraveled or a door to remain locked. Perhaps that’s partly why he takes on these jobs that take him far and wide nowadays. A new challenge, for if he grows complacent, he isn’t worth his second chance at life. Perhaps it’s for the money, that admittedly is very nice, too. There’s no such thing as enough in his mind, because there are always more uses for it. There’s always the risk of losing everything, as he’s had happen to him more than once, and stocking up for a rainy day meant many things in water-logged Ketterdam.
Perhaps there’s some small part of him that finds kindred causes, where he sees the value in allies near and far that exist beyond betrayal. Kaz Brekker always has fists raised and ready to fight, and more and more now, those reasons extend beyond just his self-preservation.
He’s a little worse for wear right now but not in any dire straits nor needing medical aid. His limp is a little more prominent than usual for being up on his leg for so long, black leather clad hand curled over his crow’s head cane as he uses it to help him walk. He’s wearing dark clothing that befits the local fashion to blend in, as dark as possible, the sole oddity still being the gloves he won't remove. There’s some bruising on his face, along with a scar over his left eyebrow and another along his neck that are much older. Sleep-deprived shadows always exist beneath his eyes, bruisings that are reflected in a gaze that says they’ve doled out worse. He doesn’t smile, but his eyes are sharp and focused. Predator and protector rolled into one. Kaz Brekker is intense, never really at ease, and it shows in his expression. It isn’t particularly friendly by default, more marble than mirthful with harsh angles and slicked back hair, but it’s a reserved reckoning. One that lies in wait, rather than striking without reason despite what rumors circulate.
He comes to rest outside the gate after having scanned the perimeter, never being too careful. He clocks any guard towers or passing stations, any strolling on the streets or buildings in sight. Exchanging any known signal, he studies the young woman whose words have remained wrapped in his mind. Experience begat wisdom, not age, and her eyes seem nearly as ancient as his own when he meets them. Perhaps that’s merely the night sky, or his own perception. Head cocked to the side, he doesn’t take out her parcel just yet but his head dips in greeting.]
Lovely night to avoid much strolling, it seems. I have the parcel, if you’ve the payment, Priestess. Are we to exchange now, then?
[She knows this area best, along with her customs, so for the moment he’ll defer to her on how such trades normally went.]
no subject
The round city of Doana, located in the desert but only a day’s journey from the sea from hence Ara Vana’s family had come, is well known for its tall city walls, towering far above her head as she stands in their shadow, awaiting Kaz Bekker, the star-finder. Behind them, the gate is a sight to behold, even in the dark, the blue glaze of the tiles seeming to reflect the moonshine. The mountain goat design, the Mountain Mother’s sacred animal, built into the front and back of the towers for protection shines silvery.
Igana, their high priestess, had given Ara Vana this task as punishment, because she is being too vocal about her concerns for the future of the temple, if the changes currently being employed are not halted, are not rolled back. She thought it fitting that the priestess who could possibly wonder why the Mountain Mother would no longer need her Companion, should spend her time searching for the compass to the heavens. You already know the way, it seems, she had said with a sharp smile and given her Kaz Bekker’s number, ‘to fix it’. Ara Vana had been more concerned that the compass could be stolen at all. What it might mean to the temple, yes, but even worse – what it would mean to the people, should they hear. The panic it could create.
So, albeit feeling the unfairness, she still felt the weight of her duties even more strongly. Her devotion to her Goddess, yes, but to her people, too.
Which is why she looks at the man who has saved them for now with more gratitude than even the coin they are paying him can equal. She shakes her head slightly, in a manner that doesn’t mean, no, but wait. He has shown her a kindness that all customs insist she must repay and money has never been the way. ]
We are to exchange pleasantries for a moment, so no one thinks twice of us. [ A small smile. ] Then, we exchange one thing for another afterwards.
[ Looking up at him, his face marked by shadow and bruises, she frowns briefly and keeps her hands to herself with an effort. At the temple, they have salves and lotions, but none of it has followed her here. ]
You have truly put yourself in line for this.
no subject
Yet despite the retrospect that leaves him ever on alert now, there’s a softer undercurrent, a gentler wave. He always did enjoy animals and their symbolism. For those first few years, they along with his brother had been his only friends.
Kaz did buy his father’s farm back, many years later, but he doesn’t return to visit. It doesn’t smell the same, it doesn’t sit right. It can’t. Perhaps if he was less crooked inside he’d find better ways to honor the Rietveld name, one that didn’t rest on good Kerch sensibilities of tossing money at a problem. As it is, for now at least, simply knowing the farm isn’t in some thoughtless banker’s greedy hands is enough, and he lets the tenants take care of the rest.
He likes to think there are goats back on it now, too.
He wonders a little what they mean to Doana. Likely something more grand and symbolic than what they meant to a child making friends. Though predictably, Kaz finds more worth in the latter for himself.
There is something to be said though for symbolism. Kaz knows people called witches and saints, and while he’s never felt any inclination to bend a knee or raise a prayer to those that are merely people for him, he’s seen the power that belief held by others can wield. Idolation and fear often go hand in hand, but the underlying common denominator that faith can lead one to act is undeniable. He suspects that the priestesses at the temple want the compass back not merely for their own beliefs, but to avoid sowing uncertainty among their constituents.
A slight crook at the edge of his mouth’s left corner flicks upwards for a moment. They aren’t in an immediate rush then for the drop. He’s had times where a sense of urgency took precedence, but opting for a more casual cadence to blend in is easy enough as well. This sort of adaptation he can run with.]
If I’d known I’d be expected to gain manners and be pleasant, I might have charged extra. [A deadpan joke, he’s not actually adding taxes, but it’s true that Kaz isn’t known for having a delightful disposition.
Though the conversations he’s had with her so far haven’t been the normal pleasantries that make him bored and impatient within two minutes.]
What, my face? It’ll just have a little more personality for a few days. [He says it as one who deals with physical violence on an alarming rate on the regular. He’s more concerned about the illegal trade market that extends to her realm. Sacred objects can fetch a pretty coin, but it’s a more niche market than many others. Spider fingers tend to create webs that tangle even the unassuming, and he’d rather know who’s pulling the strings for the jobs he takes. Not merely who hired him, that he knows, but who stole the item and who, if any, the buyers were, too. Or if it was stolen specifically to undermine her temple. He overheard a name, or perhaps a phrase, while inside, and glanced over some papers that looked of interest, but the streets didn't seem the time to bring any of it up. It might end up meaning nothing anyway, but living as he does so close to the gutters, he sees all stones as worth being turned.
No, he’s practicing his pleasantries. He can hear his friends mocking him from across the sea.]
Is it common for one from your temple to be out and about, conversing with people on the street?
no subject
While Ara Vana is devout, devout to the core of her being, she recognises that it seems unlikely that it’s pure coincidence how the two times the temple is robbed would be under the lead of a bad Companion. This might not come down to the Mountain Mother at all. This may not go deeper than a bad person, a rotten apple, in their midst. As much as that is a bad omen, it might be a bad woman first.
Looking his face over, thinking it needs no more personality, he holds plenty inside himself, she wonders what he has gathered of all this from his chase, from his reacquisition. She will not ask him here, but if he is going to allow her, she may accompany him to his lodgings, it would only be polite of her, he is a stranger in Doana and she is more familiar with its streets than most.
A natural transaction. He would have charged extra, he jokes, making her smile, small, to herself, chin dipped slightly downwards, and she? Well. ]
I would have paid the fee out of my own pocket.
[ Turning slightly, she starts down a side street, beckoning him to follow, just a subtle gesture of her hand, indicating walk with me. She keeps her pace slow, relaxed, her eyes not searching the buildings they pass as much as register, in a friendly, familiar way. No one from the outside would look at them and think anything amiss. Or anyone from the inside, either.
Those are where her greatest fears are centered at the moment. She has seen Igana’s schemes. If they are great within the temple structure, they may be great and greater yet outside of it. There are forces in this world that are beyond the priestesses, beyond the temple. There is a darkness out there.
Keeping her voice low, pleasant, she smiles wider at his comment, raising her chin slightly. Is it with a sense of arrogance? Is it awareness, they are difficult to tell apart. She takes pride in her position, a pride that is earned her, but she saves none of it for herself. ]
We have our various duties that bring us out here. And at times, it is merely important we are seen, taking part in our community. The temple is its own world, but the world is wider than any walls, the temple’s or otherwise. If we seclude ourselves, we are letting half the Mountain Mother’s creation down.
[ She turns her head to glance at him, sideways, a tilt of her chin. ]
To love the world, yet to have created a parallel world that is your very own alongside it. Does that sound paradoxical to you?
no subject
The largest cathedral in Ketterdam was known as the Church of Barter, built on the plan of the god Ghezen’s hand. The cathedral itself sat upon the great palm, each of its five extended fingers accented with smaller chapels at each fingertip. To reach the top of the cathedral one has to head upwards through a variety of chapels stacked on top of one another like sweetened cake fillings, each commissioned by a separate wealthy merchant family, each preening like peacocks over their placement being higher than another.
Perhaps some of Ketterdam’s citizens truly believe in the god of commerce and industry. To Kaz it seems a lot more performative than anything else.
Ara Vana seems different to him, but then again, she also serves in a house of worship. If Kaz ever bothered to get to know one of the servants of the chapels in his own backyard, perhaps he’d find similarly devout beings.
Perhaps not.
Kaz may not follow her faith, but he at least respects that Ara Vana seems to be genuine in them.
He strolls alongside her through her city’s streets, cane moving in tandem as he walks as another limb. His gaze studies the area discreetly, soaking it in as he does any place. Entrances and exits, windows and ledges. Where secrets may hide and what shadows float at night. He notes how the people move and look, what gazes stare upon their faces and what animals scurry through the streets for scraps. Where it looks like power might congeal and how the outskirts feed into those paths. It’s a map of movement, intersecting to form a place of pleasantry or potential battlefield. He never forgets the latter, no matter how quiet the former.
His own voice is raspy, like a bag of broken marble pieces jostling together, leftover from what’s been used to make his exterior. It’s never been called particularly pleasant to hear, adding fuel to those who consider him made of demon fire, but it’s low and not threatening when conversing with her.]
Sounds like what most who have a home do, doesn’t it? There are layers within any society, units that start large or small and grow in one or the other direction. How stunted those rings of expansion are varies, depending on the person and situation. I’d say it’s less paradoxical and more reciprocal, since usually, the larger community around a home still impacts what goes on inside to some degree or another, and vice versa.
[His life and experiences in Ketterdam are extremely influenced by the city’s values and norms, and it bleeds through to his smaller family unit in the Slat, which in turn impacts how they interact with Ketterdam. Even so, there’s room for some individuality, as his home in the Slat is very different from a rich mercher’s home, and while both overlap in some ways due to sharing parts of the Ketterdam experience, they don’t in others.]
And just like the larger world changes, so does any parallel world and the person or persons within it can.
[He glances over, quirking up an eyebrow.]
Has your temple’s faith changed much over the years?
no subject
Protection, in a way. Recognition, in another.
Darker hues are strongly associated with the mythological darkness in her faith, it is associated with permanent death, with destruction and with evil, though evil is a many-nuanced thing. When he wears it, however, she thinks – the darkness has found a star and the star wears it, so that it must submit. It must bow down. It must be backdrop, not foreground.
Ara Vana likes that. She likes him, and while she feels with many people, since Gharan – few have resonated. In that, the silence has been a lonely place. Something different from the homes he is talking about, the places where one is not just at ease and safe, but not alone and that is what sets it apart from the larger world.
It makes Ara Vana wonder whether she has made the larger world her home for too long, her duties and her role in her community, at the temple and in the streets, but carved out no real safe space for herself. The Mountain Mother is supposed to fulfil that role, but the Mountain Mother let people have each other.
And for a while, Ara Vana had. But as with everything, having is a temporary notion. She swallows hard once and looks at him as he asks his question, meets his raised eyebrow with a twist of her mouth that shows her displeasure. How much she can tell him, she isn’t sure, but since they won’t listen to her within the temple institution, maybe she must look out. Maybe she must look to the stars. Looking straight ahead again, she says, slowly, the darkness of her own voice matching his: ]
It used to be steady like the drum. One beat always expecting the next, following certain patterns and rhythms. Recognisable, even when the melody changed. The past few years…. [ She can’t make herself talk about the Companion priestess behind her back, even as she knows what she is doing is wrong and against the Goddess’ wishes. She is still too faithful to the only home she knows. ] The only problem with our beliefs is that they are dictated by human hands and human hands err.
[ She knows this intimately as a scribe to the temple, chronicling the myths and legends, the laws. She knows that one mistake in the writing can change the meaning of a paragraph, a whole piece. She knows additions can say more about the scribe making them than about the Mountain Mother’s history.
As she knows that removing a whole sacred ritual from the book is a woman’s doing, not the Goddess’. Ara Vana may not have joined the priestesses’ ranks with the ambition of becoming Companion herself, though with time, she decided she would see it as an honour to be chosen, but neither is she the petty girl who simply wanted to own herself, at whatever cost.
She believes now. To see someone who does not… To see her control the very direction they’re steering in? It belittles and belies everything Ara Vana believes in. ]
no subject
He hadn’t set out to found a family. Kaz had spent several years on the streets alone as a child, content to survive without ever having anything else to lose. It was only at twelve when he saw the man responsible for his family’s death, saw the enormity of what he was up against, that Kaz set out to form an army. He found those with talents that were being squandered, he listened to shadows that others let slip away, he put a knife in the hands of those who were hurt and taught them to be dangerous themselves. He renovated a building so it did not leak and provided safety in which to sleep. All of this he did with revenge in his mind.
Somewhere along the way, he found people who believed in him for more than that.
He found people whom he had reason to live for more, too.
It doesn’t strip away the petty spite for him, but he’s learned how to bend his angles to not shed the blood of those for whom he cares. Even if his Crows, those he’s closest with, have spread their wings to stretch out beyond him these days, he carries them all with him. He has new fledglings in his nest, he has a whole city to take back and distribute power within. A country, even. Perhaps more than one. Miles to go, brick by brick, a never ending fight. He doesn’t know what he might do if he stops. He doesn’t think he can now.
It isn’t how he’s made.
He notes the tone change in her voice when she speaks.]
That they do, Priestess. Hands err, they fumble. They take practice working with, and not many find the time. And that’s being charitable, thinking only on the people who let things slip by accident.
[He’s been asking questions of her, both out of genuine curiosity to know the area better from her perspective and learn about her, and because Kaz’s default is often to focus on anyone other than himself in discourse. He can tell though that this is a topic that is weighing on her heart, from her expression and the vague details she shares. It brings about a protective flash within him, the familiar spark of his ever-burning inner flame to not let people stand alone like he had so long ago. He likes her own fire, even if she has a much more gentle surface manner in wielding it.]
Often the best way to steal a man’s coin purse is to tell him you’re after what’s in his other pocket. [He raises a shoulder in a shrug, a little stiff from the long day. He can't wait to wash some of the grime away, at least that which settles on the surface.] Not that I’m attributing any malice to your people, and sometimes, changes that come from mistakes aren’t for the worse. Just in a larger sense, I’ve come across enough times where people feigned ignorance or ineptitude when there’s something more beneath it.