Alayne Lombard
Citizen
Employee at the Bath House
Lost child of the Deveroix household.
Posts: 329
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Post by Alayne Lombard on Jul 15, 2011 16:50:09 GMT -5
So my life had gone from sad and confusing, to miserable and confused. A very limited change, if I was honest with myself – I had no idea where I stood in many of its aspects, and with war afoot, the bathhouse was quiet. Couldn't say I had any kind of bloody complaint about that. If I had my word to say, which I didn't, I'd say that even if it made me poorer than I already was, in a way, it also gave me a break from men. I probably needed one, even if my body ached for attention at times. So bored and at a loss with what to do with myself, I'd taken to sample the pubs and crawly places on Night's Doorstep, and I didn't feel like going to the Poulet, so instead I went to another place, one I hadn't gone to before. I tried not to decide if the name, Traveler's Inn, had something to do with Necthan, or not. In fact, I tried not to think of it, or of him, at all. Or of my confusion, and whatever other emotions he made me feel. Damn him and how he stirred me. Instead, I wandered into the quiet place and asked for a glass of lemonade, sat on a stool, and idly picked up a leaflet lying about. I didn't read much – and the last piece of work I'd read had been... ah, well. Best not to think of that, I supposed. It was about the war – and so I started to read laboriously, hoping (and fearing) that maybe Hal or Yves would be mentioned somewhere. Ah, I didn't have enough friends - I couldn't afford to lose even one, I mused sadly.
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Post by Felicien Clermont-Montmorency on Jul 15, 2011 17:20:48 GMT -5
I had dosed Mr Woofles up with laudanum and stuffed him into the bottom of the wardrobe, before shedding my tasteless finery in favour of the sort of plain, functional clothes I vastly prefer. Leaving Fouinon to stand guard – for Felicien had The Headache – I let myself out of my bedroom window, climbed easily down the ivy until I was about halfway to the ground, leapt to the branch of a nearby tree and was on terra firma in less than five minutes of minor exertion. This was precisely the reason we had chosen the room. I tied Felicien's floppy hair back from my face so it wouldn't infuriate me and, invisible as any other commoner, made my way to Night's Doorstep.
I had a long night of work before me. The press, who is a cantankerous old harridan at the best of times, was not running well and required my attention, there were still several hundred copies of La Voix to be distributed, I had some jobs of a banal but paying nature to complete, and Mauvoisin wanted to read me his latest poem, which was an epic, satirical masterpiece entitled “My Love Made Me Feel Like Everything Would Be Okay But Then I Realised That It Was Just Sex And The World Was Still As Shit As Ever.†I was not exactly anticipating the experience with the deep relish.
Because of Felicien's Headache, I hadn't eaten dinner, so I ducked into the nearest pub, which turned out to be a rather uninspiring place called The Traveler's Inn. But I like uninspiring. It gives me time to watch and think. I took a table in far the corner, ordering ale, and some bread and cheese, from the waitress. I was pleased to note that a few issues of La Voix were lying about the place. Someone was even sitting at the bar reading it, although I couldn't see much of her except a fall of red hair, shockingly vivid in that muted place. My dominating emotion, however, aside from a bitter sense of accomplishment, was relief – it is the printer's fear that people see the product of your labour and think only “huzzah! Cheap privy paper!â€
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Alayne Lombard
Citizen
Employee at the Bath House
Lost child of the Deveroix household.
Posts: 329
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Post by Alayne Lombard on Jul 15, 2011 18:01:27 GMT -5
And I was reading and reading, forgetting to have my drink of lemonade, making out the words and trying to understand them. The long sentences were unclear, but I liked the way they were worded.
Spoiled brats. Like those who came to the bathhouse, and paid me to suck on their cocks, and to let them think they'd conquered me. Ha. Bollocks. I just fucked them and took their money, whatever they owed me. More, sometimes. If I could.
But oh, no, I didn't want to think of my friends as our brave toffs – Yves and Hal had both gone thinking they were doing the right thing, and they were brave and good and kind and – oh, no, they weren't unnamed, they were my friends! I gasped at the thought of sacrificed, feeling suddenly sick to my stomach.
What about the girls? They were in safe keeping I knew, but still. Somewhere deep down, I thought, what about me? Yves was family to me.
And then I had no clue who these people were, those named, but they all were a 'de' Something-or-Other, they all were, well, important folk. Probably. If they were somehow mentionned. Was this Mauvais character dead? Surely not by a child, I didn't want to think. Ah, that was a low blow. Even if it wasn't a lie that nobles could well be dunces at times.
But still. Still. Whoever had written this was making light of it, but I could somehow understand what they were saying, and I felt compelled to read this to someone, and well, for lack of a better audience, I chose the barkeep as my victim.
“Aye, good man,” I called. “Here's something else that cropped up, have you read it?”
He looked at me with a sore eye.
“I haven't, lass, that bloody thing's been all over the inn, let me throw it out,” he said, and reached to snatch it from my hands.
“No you won't!” I retorted flippantly, and I hopped off my stool, holding it far from his grasp. “Listen to this, rather: war is bloody, death is ugly, no man's pride (not even a King's) is worth another man's life (not even a peasant's). The worst of peace is far better than the best of war. Think on that, and feel what I feel: angry and ashamed. What do you think of that, ha? I got friends out in Camlach, and now I think I'm feckin' pissed off too, if they're putterin' out for a man's pride! They got families, you know!”
“A man's pride!” the barkeep hollered, “haven't you heard that they killed Queen Sabrina, silly girl? Put that away, here someone hears you and you get taken to the dungeons!”
He leaned over again, trying to make a grab at me.
“They can put me where they like,” I replied, laughing, “I'll fuck my way outta thar, and they won't have a thing to complain about, all them guards and the like. 'sides, barkeep, don't you think they got better things to do than bugger a whore for saying that war's bad, and not even in her own words, at that? You're a right git, yes you are!”
He seemed ready to kick me out, and I skipped again out of his reach, suddenly entertained by my own altercation.
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Post by Felicien Clermont-Montmorency on Jul 16, 2011 14:36:36 GMT -5
The ale was watered – typical, but it quenched my thirst. However, the bread was fresh and nutty, and cheese strong and rich, so the meal at least was satisfactory. But then I eat and drink for necessity, rather than pleasure. If I could stop, and still live, it was a distraction I would have gladly abandoned. Would that I could have dispensed with other such necessities. Think how much more time a man might have if he did not have sleep. Think what he might accomplish. To say nothing of the fact Ann pursues me in my dreams. Sometimes I see her like she was, laughing in the sunlight, always two steps ahead of me, a little bit stronger, a little bit faster. And sometimes she comes to me with pale lips and hollow eyes, and I am Felicien and she mocks me for what I have made of my life, the ruin I have made of myself. The pages of La Voix swirl around her, dripping printer's ink the colour of old blood. No, I do not sleep well, but nor do I deserve to. I will sleep as peacefully as only the dead know on the ashes of the old order. The flames of destruction will cleanse my soul.
I put my thoughts more usefully to the next issue of La Voix. I knew I should expose the Summer Fete “darling Nomnom†was holding – so typical of the aristocracy to fear a little a pain. Let us make ourselves happy while good men die. And let us not forget the extraordinary cost of such revelry. The worst of it was, the poor girl probably thought she did it only for the best, but fondness should never have the power to stop the presses. Just the reverse, in fact. Tearing her down would help me control something in myself that could only be a weakness. Nobody was guiltless. Not even a pretty, yellow-haired, bare-foot girl who cared for sick animals.
At that moment, I was distracted by a verbal altercation at the bar. The red-haired woman was reading aloud from La Voix. Whatever broken shell remains of the organ I once believed a heart stirred with a dark pleasure. This was precisely what I wanted: people talking, people thinking. I didn't care if they agreed with me, or disagreed with me, or thought I was mad, as long as they read what I had to say. As long as it troubled them enough to argue about it. This is how revolution begins: in the thoughts of a few men, and then like forest fire it spreads unstoppably.
I – Florian – have little use for smiles, although an imbecilic grin is never far from Felicien's face. But hearing the red-head upbraid the barkeep I did feel like I wanted to smile. I took a drink of ale, instead, finding that particular twist of the lips a little challenging to accomplish. The woman had a scold's tongue on her, and the vocabulary of a dock worker. And from her words it seemed she might belong to an older profession still.
All the same, as she moved away from the bar, I was surrendered to the impulse of the moment. “I cannot promise to be good company,†I said to her, “but if you would care to sit here a while you would at least find me sympathetic to your politics.â€
What had I done? I have no idea how to have a conversation that is not strictly business, or in which I am not expected to be an idiot. But it was too late now.
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Alayne Lombard
Citizen
Employee at the Bath House
Lost child of the Deveroix household.
Posts: 329
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Post by Alayne Lombard on Jul 16, 2011 21:47:50 GMT -5
“You minx!” the barkeep roared, and I reckon, he was well on his way to step from behind the bar and give me a penny or two for my trouble, when a voice from the back – calm enough, or was it amused? Couldn't tell from where I was. Anyway, this voice then came from another, an ordinary fellow – maybe a shop clerk? But he had some sort of presence about him. Would have thought him a librarian or some sort of fellow like that. Not a playwright, if the only one I knew was anything to go by.
That stopped the bartender short, though. “Well, if you're paying for the whore to stay,” he told the interloper, “then fine. Otherwise, she can leave. This is a respectable establishment.”
I turned to look back, and stuck my tongue, chuckling at my immaturity, then turned genially to the clerk who'd made an invitation.
“And I'm very respectable, I'm a laaaaady, if you please,” I said, taunting, and gave him a mock curtsey, just as he returned behind his bar.
Then I ambled over to the man's table, skirts and hips swinging for my sport, and paused, hands on my hips.
“Don't know that I got any politics, m'lord,” I drawled. “I just say what I think, is all. You read this?” I waved the leaflet at him, then offered it to him, before I plopped into a chair, grinning for the first time in a while.
Maybe it was because I'd found it so very liberating to have my words with the barkeep. Maybe it was because he wasn't looking at me like any other man, in fact, he wasn't looking at me at all, which was, well, a change. I figured he didn't like women. Well and good, I could deal with that, certainly.
And part of me had a little teeny tiny hope that I knew who had written the torch I'd just handed over to my new tablemate.
Teeny tiny. A flicker, quickly evaded.
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Post by Felicien Clermont-Montmorency on Jul 18, 2011 14:11:04 GMT -5
The red-headed whore subjected to me a sharp-eyed, appraising gaze, which I returned blandly enough. Her profession being what it was, I suspected she was a rather shrewd judge of character but hopefully my plain clothes and cultivated air of anonymity discouraging her from looking too closely. There's nothing to be done about my voice though, which drips with all the privileges of my former life. But still education can be bought.
“I believe,” I said to the barkeeper, rather irritatedly, “that we might count 'whore' among the skilled professions, and it is considered courtesy to pay a professional for their time. Therefore I have no objection to buying her a....” I squinted at the pale-coloured drink she had left on the bar “...barley water if it would also induce you to stop prating at us and do your damn job, at which, by the by, you display neither skill nor professionalism.”
I turned back to my new found companion, who had thrown herself down into the chair opposite and was still grinning from ear to ear, her eyes blazing with satisfaction and defiance. It was hard to resist such a look and I felt the corners of my mouth twitch slightly in response.
“Well,” I said to her, “whether you believe you have politics or not, mine are strongly in favour of letting people say what they think. And given what appears to be a powerful tendency to do just that I believe in that respect we have something in common.”
Ye Gods, what was wrong with me. I knew how to write a stirring pamphlet and I knew how to make someone believe I was an idiot unworthy of notice but starting a conversation with a stranger in a bar was entirely beyond me. I sounded as stilted as a book in bad translation.
In confusion, I accepted the copy of La Voix she offered me. “I … yes … I have read it,” I said, stammering unhelpfully. Strange, I can pretend to be an entirely different person to the man I am, but I can't quite look someone in the eye and lie to them directly. Is that morals or cowardice, I don't know. “By the way,” I added, pushing across the bread and the cheese, “do help yourself, if you're hungry.”
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Alayne Lombard
Citizen
Employee at the Bath House
Lost child of the Deveroix household.
Posts: 329
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Post by Alayne Lombard on Jul 18, 2011 20:08:56 GMT -5
So whoever this feller was, he had respect for the whore. Some of it, anyway, enough to demand it. He had the drink wrong, though, and that made me smirk a little in amusement, though whatever barley water was (camel's piss, I'd heard it called?) I was unlike to drink it.
“Lemon water,” the barkeep barked. “Not barley. Know you drinks, lad, if ya dunno your manners,” he grumbled, and I chuckled even more, for he seemed to be annoyed aplenty by the situation.
When he spoke, though, he sounded a bit like a circle-pedia, or whatever that word was, and I decided he must be a bookshop clerk, the kind that wrote letters for people on the side, maybe even the sort to write awful odes and call'm poetry. He had the right of it, though, and I nodded in agreement – with what bit of what he said I got, anyways.
He looked absolutely confounded by my question and I blinked, because it was a simple question with a simple answer, and it had seemed to take too much thought from someone who sounded like he'd swallowed a phallus-sher-nary to be normal. I blinked.
“Ah, well, thank you,” I said in response to his offer of food. “But I'm more interested in what you think of it. Is a bit crazy, but they have the right of it, don't they, that no man's pride is worth another man's life?”
Given that some of those lives were lives I knew, it was very important to me. I meant to say, for fuck's sake, Yves has kids! One doesn't take a father's life for no good reason, aye? I couldn't envision it without feeling very angry.
I picked a piece of bread and tore it, nibbling at it, but through a mouthful, I asked, “And who's this Mauvais fellow? And how do they even know about those folk dying and losin' eyes and things?”
My lemonade came, and I gave the bartender a cocky, toothy grin, swallowed, had a sip, and winked at him before he left. He looked even more flustered, and I swallowed my bite lest I laugh with my mouth full, and choke myself to death.
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Post by Felicien Clermont-Montmorency on Jul 20, 2011 16:16:29 GMT -5
Pale coloured drink. Non-alcoholic. Looked like piss. Probably tasted like it. So I couldn't tell lemonade from barely water. As far as I was concerned, it was the same difference. But nothing further was to be gained by bickering with the bartender, if anythign had been gained the first time, so I let him stomp off, muttering, and congratulating himself on the last word. Prick.
There's no hope of getting the last word when the other fellow has a printing press at his command.
But I immediately dismissed that thought as unworthy. After all, Antoinette was instrument of justice, not personal vanity. Although it would have been the easiest thing in the world to mention, just in passing, that the landlord here was an uppity, monarchist shit. Or even that the ale was watered and there were cockroaches in the pies.
As I was wrestling with my conscience, I suddenly remembered I had a companion, and that I was being spoken to. “What do I think about it?” I repeated. “Well, it's all right, I suppose, I think there's some sort of tasty grain in the bread and the hard cheese has been left to mature but the softer cheese is ...oh … you mean what do I think about the pamphlet.”
Naamah's tits, I'm actually idiot. I've been Felicien too long.
“I agree with it,” I said fervently, trying again. “All of it. Of course," I found myself rushing on, a trifle defensively, "polemic, the art of stirring people's hearts and minds, takes a certain style, so that's why it might seem a bit extreme now and again. But under all that, what it says is true.” Why was I defending my writing to a passing whore? If she thought I - or the pamphlet - was crazy, she was entitled to reach that conclusion.
Maybe she was right though. Perhaps a bit less rhetoric, a bit more sincerity was needed in future.
“As for where they get the information...” I shrugged. This was getting a little dangerous. I'd picked up most of what I knew by eavesdropping, hearsay and a light fingered approach to other people's correspondance. Nobody guards their tongue, or their documentation, when Felicien is around, and why should they? Mauvoisin also had contacts on the front lines. Contacts. Hah. Say it like it is, Florian. His brother. Likely dead now. “... I suppose they have their sources?” I finished lamely.
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Alayne Lombard
Citizen
Employee at the Bath House
Lost child of the Deveroix household.
Posts: 329
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Post by Alayne Lombard on Jul 20, 2011 16:32:44 GMT -5
I didn't say a thing while the bartender (what an ass) argued with the fellow with the cheese.
Who would probably always be the Cheese fellow to me, because has anyone ever blabbered on at length on food? It's one thing to bemoan not having some, alright, but he was talking like a connoisseur, was that even the right word, and I stared at him, eyebrows drawn up, half-frowning.
He seemed to catch himself and answered my questions, and they were really only half-answers.
“Well, I dunno,” I said finally. “But I think if them's gonna give out rumors on papers, it'd be nice t have proof. I mean, what if this Verreuil fellow was my favorite john? I'd want to know for real, not from some leaf like that. No, I think they're right on the ideas, but there’s something iffy with the way they're doin' it. It's not right to fling names about without proof.”
I reached for the leaflet again, sighed.
“I'm gonna write to the line, methinks. I want to know if my friends are fine. Some of'm have kids, you know? And I think I'd want to know if the girls are orphaned. Gods, I think he left them with some decent woman, but still.”
I shrugged, and realizing that I was babbling a bit too much, I stuffed a piece of firm cheese in my mouth, and articulated around it, “I 'alk 'oo much, 'orry.”
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Post by Felicien Clermont-Montmorency on Jul 22, 2011 12:54:40 GMT -5
I pushed the cheese towards her, having lost interest almost entirely in the distraction of food when she spoke to me about ideas instead. I was honestly a little stung, but trying not to show it. I mean, who was she to lecture me … well not me precisely but the unknown pamphleteer who happened to be me ... about truth? Much of that information came direct from the palace. Thanks to my work the average peasant in Night's Doorstep was now as well informed as the King himself. And she was complaining for the lack of proof?
I lent forward across the table, resting on my elbows. “I think truth is a slippery idea at the best of times,” I said, far more comfortable in this sort of discussion than smalltalk, since it doesn't require that I know who I am. “There is no one truth, just lots of little, individual truths jostling against each other like patrons in a bar, sometimes overlapping and sometimes contradicting each other, sometimes even getting into fights. A pamphlet like that is created from those truths.” I tapped La Voix for emphasis. “But I will give you that it is merely an interpretation of truth, and thus fallible. The fallacy, however, is your conviction that you could find something less fallible, and therefore more true."
“So say you do write to the front lines, to one of your friends, and he tells you he saw another friend cut down in battle. Is that the truth? No, it's merely one man's truth. One man's story. Perhaps in the chaos he was mistaken, and it was not your friend he saw cut down at all. Perhaps your friend was merely wounded. Perhaps your friend is secretly in love with you and would prefer not to share your favours, and would prefer it, in the darkest corner of his heart, if the other fellow was dead. What makes that letter any truer than something you read in a pamphlet?”
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Alayne Lombard
Citizen
Employee at the Bath House
Lost child of the Deveroix household.
Posts: 329
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Post by Alayne Lombard on Jul 23, 2011 3:03:46 GMT -5
He was using words I wasn't exactly familiar with. Fallacy? What was that? I blinked at him, but nodded, and let him go on. Little truths. Heh. I'd heard of little lies that amount to a big lie, but little truths? What was he going on about?
I might have glazed over, just like I did when Tigris had lectured me about... I wasn't what about anymore. Ah, right, about stealing from ungrateful johns, and about lying to her.
Then again, I hadn't lied, and that was what had gotten me in trouble. And then the feller went on and on, and if he hadn't started to ask me questions to retain my attention, and he was talking about my friends. And even if his scenario was bullcrap, I understood his point.
I was astounded to note that I actually had an answer.
“Well,” I said, “because I know him, I'd be more tempted to believe his word.” I shrugged, “And he's not in love with me, he's like my brother, and he knows not to touch the girls.” Of course he did – and I'd known him a long, long time. No, that would never happen with Yves, not if I wrote to him. With Hal... I couldn't tell, he'd been so odd. But not with Yves. “and 'sides,” I went on, “what idiot would want to own a whore, when her living is to share, what did you call them? Her favours.” Suddenly, I found this word amusing, and looked down my bodice, at my breasts. “Well, there are two of them,” I said, chuckling. “Or more. Should I count other body parts?” I gave him a wicked grin, and shrugged it off just before I took a large gulp of my lemonade and returned to the subject at hand.
“But anywho, I have no bedamned clue who wrote this,” well, I hoped I knew but I didn't know, “and that means whoever's writing this could be just giving me a load of crap to read. And it's too bad, really, because I like what they're saying, about a man's life and what it's worth, but suppose it's not true and that man who died, that Duc de Mauvais, he isn't really dead after all, well then, that does mess up with the whole lesson, don't it? And since I can't actually go to the feller who wrote this and ask'm about it, well, it's not all that believable, you know?”
I frowned, and looked at the leaflet again.
“Even if I like it. I mean, the idea. And I agree. It's easy to say things in hiding.” A pause. “Hm. Guess I could see why, though.”
I wondered, really, if the King would like this little piece of work. If it was anything like the sort of authority I had to deal with, I wasn't so sure. “Aristos, they don't like it when you tell them like it is. Think you're just a nobody, like me, you know. A bathhouse girl. My word's not worth much.”
I lifted my chin at him, with some challenge to it. “Or do you think otherwise?”
I only knew a handful of people who did, and I didn't expect this stranger to be one of the exceptions. None of them spoke like him – and the one I knew who was as educated as this one...
Ah, well. He'd had some of my 'favours', I thought wryly to myself. And I wouldn't mind giving them to him again, even if I had a hard time understanding him, or even believing that my word counted for him, betimes.
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Post by Felicien Clermont-Montmorency on Jul 24, 2011 16:16:18 GMT -5
At her comment about the foolishness of wanting to possess a whore's, err, favours, I merely gave her a sardonic look (directing it carefully to her face, rather than the assets to which she seemed to be, intentionally or not, drawing attention): “Oh yes, because no man in history has ever been an idiot.”
I wished she'd stop going on about knowing who wrote the pamphlet. I've passed people in the street who have been speculating before (the front runner appears to be some playwright I've never heard of), but I've merely taken satisfaction in their ignorance. However, perhaps because she kept insisting on making the discussion personal, I had to bite my tongue several times to avoid snapping “look, it's me, all right, can we move on?” Because it truly didn't matter who wrote the pamphlet. Only that it was written and read.
“I believe that piece of news – or rumour as you insist on calling it – is absolutely correct. Some Duc is dead. But even if it he wasn't, why would that change the message? The whole country knows a Duc is dead. But then so is Fronsac the standard bearer, and Luc the farmer, and Gregoire the second lieutenant, and who speaks for them? A war is not a handful of aristocrats fighting for their honour and their country. It's a lot of ordinary men and woman dying for this.” I snapped my fingers in the air in front of her face. “Fuck all. That's the point.”
I couldn't remember the last I'd had such a lengthy or passionate conversation with anyone who wasn't Fouinon or Mauvoisin – although, being rather in awe of my education, tend to agree with whatever I say. The experience had left me a little disorientated, but I was not unhappy. Far from it. And it was getting easier, too, I think. Florian has too long been Felicien's ghost but Florian is who I truly am. I think.
“When there is not complete equality and freedom, sometimes the truth must speak from the shadows,” I said. “But at least she's spoken at all. I do not expect such a pamphlet would be well received in exalted circles.” A thin smile crept across my lips as I said it. I looked forward to the outrage. “But isn't that precisely what this writer is trying to address?” I said, tapping La Voix again. “The idea that a man's words, or a man's word for that matter, is worth more if you're rich and titled.” I met my companion's gaze again. “Or, err, woman,” I added.
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Alayne Lombard
Citizen
Employee at the Bath House
Lost child of the Deveroix household.
Posts: 329
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Post by Alayne Lombard on Jul 24, 2011 19:48:54 GMT -5
No man had ever been an idiot with me, no. I'd been an idiot with one, though. Probably still was. Bugger that. What made it worse was how little I wanted to spread my legs, when the time came. Even if I prepared myself, and still did, and was good enough a faker to get away with it. I shrugged.
“Yeah, well that's the thing, right, some Duc is dead. And you think people don't know that ordinary fucks are dying out there? The woman who lives across from the bathhouse, she got news that her oldest got killed on first assault. Was wailing all day and night, poor woman. I'd say she scared off the johns if there'd been any. Fuck, you think I don't know that? You think the people don't know that they're dying? What are you saying, some prissy fuck with enough money to own a printer is going to spread the news? That's silly as hell.”
I groaned at him further, at him and his talk of big ideas, and I leaned forward on the table, poking at it with my index.
“You speak of freedom and all those things, about a man or a woman's word being worth something. Well, you know what? I read and got curious because my stomach's full enough that its growls won't be the only sounds I hear. Give this to Widow Grenier and her starving litter, and you'll see if she cares. She'll wipe her youngest' butt with it, and ask you for bread, because frankly, that's what the people want. And need. You read too much. Think too much too, prolly.”
And raising my chin, I finished my lemonade, then set my glass on the table.
“I'm Alayne, by the way. I fuck at the bathhouse for a living. Who're you?”
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Post by Felicien Clermont-Montmorency on Jul 25, 2011 9:03:34 GMT -5
Was this, then, what people thought of me? Truth is a bitter draught, indeed. But, then, I didn’t do this because I wanted gratitude, or because I thought it would feed the starving in the short-term: I did it because I thought, because I knew, it was right. And I’d already wasted enough time in fruitless conversation. Work was waiting.
“If you think all we need to live is food and water, then you’ve reduced us to nothing but beasts. You can’t conquer a man with a sword because that’s not how you change his heart. And you may say I think too much and read too much but we have plenty of people to starve and die. Perhaps we need a few more to do what I do.”
I pushed back my chair. There are a fair few around here who know who I am and what I do. What could harm could one doxy do to Florian – since he is little more than a ghost of an idea. Sometimes I wonder if Florian dreams he is Felicien or Felicien dreams he is Florian. Maybe I am neither.
“Well met, Alayne,” I said, smiling a rather wintry smile. “I’m a prissy fuck. Enjoy the cheese.”
I tumbled some coins onto the table to pay for what we’d consumed, turned and left.
As comebacks go “enjoy the cheese” would haunt me for days.
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Alayne Lombard
Citizen
Employee at the Bath House
Lost child of the Deveroix household.
Posts: 329
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Post by Alayne Lombard on Jul 25, 2011 12:37:57 GMT -5
I gaped as the Prissy Fuck (what else could I call him, since he wasn't man enough to give me a name?) stood, and spoke, and spoke of people being beasts. He sounded like a friggin' aristo, and not the kind I like. Not the charming, lovely ones who come down to the stinkers to slum their life up, no. He sounded like one of them basterds who turn their nose up because Night's Doorstep stinks too much.
Ah.
Not even man enough to respond, save with an insult. Then again, I'd christened him, poor lad. What a sorry cad.
“Hey,” I called at his back. “If you think you're so smart, why are you giving up so soon? Think it'll be easy, changing minds, just because you say so? You got one person here willing to listen and talk about it. Not nod, talk. But that's too scary, innit? Too scary to face, and you'd rather I call you Prissy Fuck forever, than face me? There's no honor in that, or whatever you aristocrats call it. So come back and face me, and don't be afraid. Because if you want to speak for the people, best look'm in the eye first.”
I had no idea if he would remain or not, I didn't really care - I was angry, now, and I looked at the cheese with some distaste, then into my empty glass with a sad sigh. Could have used a real drink, about now.
Well.
I was relieved. Prissy fuck wasn't who I thought, at least. In retrospect, it was a relief.
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Post by Felicien Clermont-Montmorency on Jul 30, 2011 12:40:53 GMT -5
Her words thudded into my back like knives.
I paused in the doorway, so tempted to turn back, and hurl some of my own. She thought me a coward – I, who risked everything, to hold up a mirror to the world that sickened me. She threw concepts around like she knew what they meant: courage, and honour, and similar bullshit. Meaningless all of them. The only thing that mattered was truth, the rest were mere chains.
But what did she know? She was nothing but an ignorant harlot. A fuck-addled doxy. It didn't matter what she thought of me. Or of anything.
My steps took me rapidly away, but not rapidly enough to outrun what had already been said.
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