“But if you wish to let the frigid mutt eavesdrop, then by all means. It is your blood, not mine.” He gave Hester a meaningful look, waiting for her response before lowering his voice.
"I understood your purpose, but we've only spoken twice. If I invited you into a crypt and asked you to gag yourself, you'd be a fool to comply." And Lucien would be much more able to defend himself in that scenario than she would here, if it came to that. "Perhaps once we've come to know each other better, we'll both feel differently."
"Something is rotten on this ship. What we experienced in the cave was wrong. You know King best. Why would he leave his pet vampire behind?”
"To ensure Caleb does whatever he's supposed to do," Hester responded, almost instantly. "They must have come to some sort of arrangement over Sinead's corpse. The Good Captain made Sinead an offer, didn't he? Caleb must have heard of it, and offered to take her place when they met in the cave in exchange for being spared, I suppose." She shrugged, eyes sliding to a spot on the wall left of Lucien's head. "Possibly he was also sent along to distract you?"
“The only thing that ever stopped me being exactly who I wanted,” she said, “was the worry that I would soon be dead … and now I am dead, and I am sick of roses, and I am horny for revenge.” -Harrow the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir
"Understood," Lucien conceded, giving nothing more to that part of the conversation. He doubted that he and the necromancer would grow any closer than they already were, bonded by a common enemy who now lurked upon the ship. Speaking of whom, Lucien raised an eyebrow as Falmouth responded without hesitation as to the reason for Naveen's presence.
"I take it this is a common tactic for King?" If he had not known of her disdain for King at this point, Lucien might have worried about the necromancer being a traitor in their midst. As it was, there already seemed to be one in the case of O'Cain. Something still did not sit right, though. From what he had been told, King's ambush had been too well-planned, too prepared. Something did not sit right with the vampire, but he was unsure as to what. Fortunately, Lucien was pulled from his thoughts by a light accusation from the necromancer.
"Distract me? I find that difficult considering he seems to be avoiding me. Perhaps he is afraid that I will ensure his symmetry. Then perhaps that ice mask can cover his whole face instead."
Last Edit: Sept 1, 2023 18:45:20 GMT by HighVoltage
"Oh, he'd love that, I imagine," Hester grumbled, grimacing at the far wall. "I'm surprised he didn't just do it himself. Or turn the scarwork into something artistic."
"And--no, it's not something he does often." She leaned back against the wall, ignoring the slight stab of pain from her injuries. Wall-leaning made her gesturing feel a little more emphatic. "This whole 'fleet' thing is... Very new. It's a consequence of the undead bird army, I suppose."
“The only thing that ever stopped me being exactly who I wanted,” she said, “was the worry that I would soon be dead … and now I am dead, and I am sick of roses, and I am horny for revenge.” -Harrow the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir
Lucien gave a sound that could potentially be called a chuckle, if the vampire was wont to do such things.
"He does appear to be less of a beast and more of a peacock." Lucien leaned against his desk, thoughts of his encounter with King flitting through his mind, of the words exchanged, half-heard through a frenzied rage as he had given Naveen his current injuries.
"He really intends to bring them down? Why now? Was he simply biding his time, or did something change?"
The image of Naveen as a peacock was somewhat disquieting. There was a god in Leimor who wore the skin of a peacock, to conceal its own hundred eyes amidst the feathers. You had to look at it, and if you looked long enough it might teach you something worth knowing, but if you looked into the wrong eye--
"He's been looking for the tools to do it with for a while," Hester said, noting Lucien's relatively relaxed posture. That was as good an excuse to start pacing as she was likely to get.
"I think that, yes, he was biding his time. Powerful as he is, I doubt even he could have taken the heart of the fae empire on his own." There was no point in even a pretense at making eye contact, now. She stared at the floor in front of her, relying on her sense of death to tell her if the corpse-walker started to move.
"What do you want to come of this, anyway?"
“The only thing that ever stopped me being exactly who I wanted,” she said, “was the worry that I would soon be dead … and now I am dead, and I am sick of roses, and I am horny for revenge.” -Harrow the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir