*COMPLETE* Allayria promised to do what it takes to stop the Jarles, to make the ugly decision. She thinks, at last, she understands what the dynast meant. The lesson earned from the top of that lonely cliff and given the dark murky water below.
It...
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Late morning sunlight streams in through the shutter cracks on the high set windows, casting golden beams onto the dusty stone floor of the assembly hall. The thunderclouds and gray have broken over Thalassa City and the soldiers take it as a sign. They move through here, meeting and murmuring, pausing every time their gaze flits toward her. Allayria's siege team is here too, taking orders from a grim General Jin, nodding in respectful acknowledgment as they catch her gaze.
Ruben and the Southern Battalion are on their way up; the hawks have carried that news, and while they wait Jin counts and schemes, tallying the living and the dead, taking stock of their stores. Once Ruben is here they will know. Once Ruben is here, they will move.
"When it is time, call the banners and look for me in the sky."
Seated on the dais, Allayria glances up to the half-boarded windows, as if to see Dynast Qui Wren's mark in the atmosphere. He told her he would be there when it was time. He told her he would be her sight.
Am I not what you asked for? she queries silently, bitter salt tainting her mouth as the aftereffects of her nighttime excursion shake in her fingers. They clutch at the armrest, as she sits, fixed, on this battered throne, holding makeshift court over these scattered military plans. Where is your end of the bargain?
Lei shifts at her side, now equally unused to this inertness, and, perhaps, fretting over their muted guest, who still stretches out like a star many floors above them.
Tonight, she promises herself with only a shiver of anxiety. Tonight I try again.
It's something she must do alone; or at least, only with Lei. It is something she must not tell Ruben.
Not anymore, she decides, remembering how the thing gasped and trembled, and what lay waiting in the caverns of its mind.
She can almost feel Ruben's anxious gaze, conjure the way his wide eyes would watch, hawkishly, as she does what must be done.
I will do what it takes to stop the Jarles, she thinks to herself again, an old echo of words once sworn to a man she had thought she knew. I will give up the things I never wanted to.
Ruben's eyes are not clouded with disquiet the next time he sets them on her; instead there's something like a glimmer, a shade of the amusement they once held. Perhaps he's laughing to see her here, so clearly uncomfortable in the space she occupies. Or perhaps he's just glad to see her again.
There's no motley crew behind him though, and this almost disturbs her until he climbs up and says, without prompting: "Kitchen."
Satisfied, she looks away. They can rest a little while longer.
"What news here?" the Skill master asks instead, and Lei gives his report. They're standing in front of her, a meeting of two worlds, and Ruben is telling them about the freeing of the Thalassan noblemen when they hear it.
