"Well, that's a broad question," the black-hole man in the doorway — ambling in, leaning against the wall, looking all speculative at Palamedes now — points out dryly, as if to underscore the contrast between that, "and another wet spot, is it? Are you trying to tell me you weren't sitting in it when you created it, then?"
Such skills! Especially for someone with no spatial awareness at the time!
(Augustine is well aware that he's being an ass. It's been a tough few days.)
"If you do want an answer," is almost gentle, "you are going to need to be more specific."
Almost gentle. Almost. In one of those iron-fist-in-velvet-glove sorts of ways, maybe.
Good gracious, Palamedes thinks, but do they all love hearing themselves speak. Maybe he's too tired to really mind the tone, but something about being almost-gently given the runaround still rankles. He squints, then takes a sip of cold tea.
"Alright, I'll handle those in order, I guess. First: I would call it flopped, not sitting, if you really want to split semantic hairs. Squids don't sit."
Helpfully.
"Second: I don't really need to be told you're a Lyctor, so which of the other Houses has your fingerprint on it? It's not the Seventh."
Maybe if everyone conveniently looked alike every time — hah, but no. He shrugs, like, this line of questioning from himself, the Warden, is to be expected so much that he will even eat up the 'tell it to me like I'm five years old' kind of scraps. "Like I said, I'm Sixth, so color me curious."
"Mmmm, no, I agree," Ye Olde Lyctor begins, which as far as these things go is not actually terribly specific. (It is, however, about squid-positioning.)
There's a moment, just following, when he looks as though he's maybe planning to pull one of those goodness gracious, a Lyctor, little old ME? acts — but he doesn't, as it happens, perhaps because of how certain this stripling youth is about his identity as Not Related to the Seventh.
"It's terribly uncouth of you to speak as though you assume I only left a single fingerprint on the House I co-founded," he says instead, in a tremendously reasonable sort of tone.
There's a little bit of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, then, as he adds: "Gracious, but she'd be tickled to see what's become of her library. You barely look a thing like her," not that he knows this is what Palamedes has already been thinking, "but I suppose you already know that, if any of her official portraits have survived."
He keeps looking at Palamedes, then, about five seconds too long for comfort, before finally sweeping into a tiny bow, of the sort where it's flatly impossible to tell which party it's supposed to be mocking.
"The Saint of Patience, First of the Undying Emperor's Fists and Gestures and Et Ceteras, at your service."
As long as you aren't actually expecting much service, adds one raised eyebrow.
(... Well, after all, who knows what's buried under that blanket, and how much service it ought to get?)
Her library, says the Lyctor, and oh, if that doesn't set off the part of Palamedes that still holds wide-eyed, boyish admiration for the founder of the Sixth House. So he hasn't been made entirely cynical by Canaan House and everything after, it seems — he wouldn't blink rapidly a few times, abruptly distracted by a thousand questions about her swimming up to the surface from the recesses of memory, if he were cynical.
"They're in protective storage," is what he manages to say about the portraits. Half of the Sixth is in protective storage these days, which has not bothered him except for very specific moments like this one. As for looking like her, or not, "The Sixth has a bloodline problem."
Or maybe he, too, would be a weirdly close match! Imagine that.
The Lyctor has not actually given him a name, but alright: "Patience, then. I didn't ask for service."
He's good like this, thanks muchly, hm, sir. Saint. Palamedes would like to ask a healthy amount of questions still - like, a reasonable couple dozen? Nothing major - but this Saint has already made it clear that he doesn't answer questions without a lot of circular hoop-jumping, and Palamedes is kind of tired, still.
Instead he remembers something Gideon had told him ages ago, and without thinking past the first thought he asks, "Were you on his spaceship? I heard it was 'spooky.'" How many bones are on it. He must know.
Given that not even God is a mindreader, perhaps His Saints can be forgiven for the lack.
Given that Augustine the First has never encountered Palamedes Sextus before, perhaps he can be forgiven for not following the intuitive leaping of his logic.
He hears: They're in protective storage; the Sixth has a bloodline problem.
"I never quite was sure why that thing had to be parked quite so close to Dominicus," he admits, and a tiny little line between his eyebrows deepens quizzically. "Really, it's a miracle you don't all have a lot more cancer, practically sitting in its outer atmosphere — although I suppose you lot aren't afraid to treat those aggressively."
(He'll just step hard on that particular sore subject, none the wiser, then.)
"As for service — did that phrase actually fall out of style when I wasn't looking? Damn." That, there, is a hell of a disappointment for Augustine, or so it appears. But the Disappointment Expression doesn't stick around for long, because it's replaced with one of extreme skepticism.
"Which spooky spaceship would that be, if you don't subscribe to the theory that all ships in the Nine Houses are, in fact, His?"
"We aren't, no," Palamedes says flatly, and feels himself becoming an iota more tired in real time. None of the white-hot indignation that struck him on God's Own Sofa (other), but he's too exhausted by life and everything to have a fast-talking banter session about, well. Cancer treatments.
It isn't the Saint's business, anyway, and Palamedes idly suspects that it wouldn't move him, besides. He slouches in his goth children blanket with a short sigh, brow furrowing as he carefully considers the many rousing defenses of the Sixth he could come up with and quietly puts them away. It's not as if they can put the whole of the Library somewhere else so easily, or he just would?
Nothing for it now. Now he is a squid, or something. Life throws curveballs, etc, and fast-talking Lyctors, as a bonus.
"Do you subscribe to that theory?" he asks, mildly, and then doesn't wait for an answer before he shrugs and adds, "I don't honestly know — I was in the River. You would have to ask the Ninth cav which ship she was talking about."
Edited (don't look at me changing a single word) 2022-04-14 05:36 (UTC)
One raised eyebrow to underscore that whole 'extreme skepticism' thing from a moment ago, and:
"So far as I'm aware, the last time anyone who would count as a Ninth cav was on a Cohort ship that was sizeable enough that it wasn't just a shuttle was at least, oh, forty, forty-five years ago?"
Patience raises a hand and wobbles it back and forth in that eternal gesture of 'eeeeeeeh, so-so, something like that'.
"Of course, if you mean Gideon," and it's still really weird to apply that particular name to anyone other than the Saint of Duty, thanks, "well, that opens the door to a number of different questions, really."
He is not addressing the Cancer Topic issue; he is also not actually answering any questions that Palamedes has asked, even though he is, in some ways, freely offering information.
Palamedes picks up his ice cold teacup and sucks down half of its remnants, for the sake of having something to fill the air time. He thinks Sixth for the truth over going around in circles at hell o'clock in the morning, which makes him feel an ounce better, and he frowns at the dregs at the bottom of his cup, thoughtfully.
He picks out the relevant bits of this latest non-answer: on a Cohort ship, forty-five years ago— placing Gideon, emphasis whole, on a different ship entirely, or else someone need immediately defend her honor as someone who would 'count as a Ninth cav.'
He wonders if this other ship has a name, and if it's something resoundingly ridiculous, and if it has blankets embroidered with goth children and unpleasant chalk biscuits.
(This is unfair to the biscuits. He rescinds the thought, privately.)
"I mean Gideon," he says. "I'm assuming neither the questions nor the door are for me, but if you happened to enumerate them out loud while I sat over here, that would be something."
"Oh, they're for her, really," he answers, easily enough. "Starting with 'why the hell did you think that was a ship,' I should think. You don't actually enjoy drinking tea that cold, do you?"
Reflecting, again, on his own sojourns at the Ninth House, about umpty-zillion years ago, he adds: "Although, come to think of it, I don't suppose she ever had been on a station otherwise... certainly the Cohort transport shuttles seldom enough had passenger manifests leaving the Ninth, in recent decades."
Another point to painstakingly tug out and put on his mental list: a station, and not a ship. Alright; that's something, and he remembers with perfect clarity the look on the other Lyctor's face as she sighed wistfully about the Emperor loitering 'beyond the system,' outside the demesne of Dominicus, and he wonders if that's where it is.
It doesn't matter. Not really. Only to his curiosity.
"I don't," is what he says about the tea, and then, "Are you really picking on her word choice?"
Give him a moment to down the rest of the cold tea, for the hell of it, and as he leans over to put the cup down on whatever passes for a side table in here, "What's the next question?"
There are a lot of little tables, in any room called a study; if they aren't brought in by the room's owner, they tend to sneak in on their own, sidling along out of sight until they can look like they've always been wherever they are. Accordingly, one of them must catch Palamedes' empty cup, off to the side, there.
"Are you collecting them for her? Or for your own list?" Patience asks, and then holds up a hand, then — actually, just one finger. One moment. "Wait a tic," he says, which is not actually asking if Palamedes wants to wait, just —
Whatever.
He leaves the room; he knows, thanks to Paul Atreides, where all the tea things are, although he's not entirely clear on what the hell sort of rock was supposed to make the water hot — no matter; what's a little bit of atomic excitement between friends? Someone who can manipulate the body and the spirit with ten thousand years' worth of practice can surely manage enough of a microwave-effect that by the time he's got the tray with tea bags, water, real fresh milk and also sugar, not to mention two fresh teacups, back to John's study, well.
The water's just coming up to the boil by the time he sets the whole tray down on the coffee table, which can largely be distinguished from a tea table by being too low to the ground to be reasonably functional for much of anything at all.
"You were saying?"
Look, Palamedes! Fresh tea and three whole questions, for free!
And then, in the middle of asking him questions, the Saint of Patience turns and just leaves the room. Palamedes sits there on the couch, torn between getting up and following - just to see, he has to know - and well, just sitting there. He's still been... wobbly, and the thought of wobbling around in front of this Lyctor is, hm, mortifying?
Mortifying is a good word for it. He can't place why, because his instinct is not, at the moment, to convince anyone from the First to like him (that's the spite), but eugh. No, thank you.
So he sits there, and leans his head on the back of the couch cushions, and he waits. He can hear the not-so-distant sound of a tray being prepared, and so it's with only surreal surprise (this is indeed happening? right now, to him? is he still dead?) that he regards the tray as it's set down.
"You were, actually," he says, and alright - haltingly, he leans forward from his goth blanket to consider the tea tray. "Something about lists of questions, so: yes. Sure. I'm making plentiful lists. Does it matter if Gideon hears your questions from me? I don't fabricate anything; you can rest assured, I can ask her 'why the hell did you think that was a ship' faithfully and accurately."
"Hmmm, yes, well," answers the Saint of Patience, who... maybe he was trying to make a point of testing how much of it Palamedes has...? Results data would have been more meaningful if that had been clearer, of course, so who knows; maybe not. Patience is assembling all the various bits and pieces of Fresh Tea only now, directly in front of Palamedes, who could — presumably, assuming the Sixth is still maintaining minimum-acceptable-bounds of instilled paranoia in their lesson plans — therefore test the nature of the substances in front of him, as manipulated by the black-hole-Lyctor who is every bit as much an awkwardly-folded-grasshopper as Palamedes himself, hunched up over the table.
(Same height, after all, give or take a smidge, or pair of shoes.)
The tea things, as it happens, are completely benign; it's the person who sets the brewing cup in front of Palamedes who is the terminal danger — so isn't it nice that, instead of death, he's bringing fresh tea, et cetera et cetera?
He settles back with his own mug and a thoughtful expression, fidgeting with a biscuit blatantly stolen from God's Own Supply, and asks:
"Is there a reason she can't hear them from me, if they're my questions, and meant for her? Why install yourself as the intermediary?"
"I'm a busybody," Palamedes offers, without humor. This is plain and simple fact, actually, he cannot help himself. He holds up fingers to count off the options: "I've been dead for five weeks and I need something to do. I don't meet many people like you, and you seem more interested in her than me, so I'm leaning in. Take your pick; I'll make a case for whatever."
He shrugs; he considers the tea tray and then he sits back, leaving it alone. It isn't a matter of trust— genuinely, that's a nonstarter, there is none and so why bother pretending he's considering it— but he's decided that, for the time being, the best move in Lyctor games is not to play. He's not thirsty, anyway.
Belatedly, he holds up another finger for his count. "She's my friend. I have a vested interest in my friends."
Friends being approached by Lyctors, specifically, he doesn't add; it's implied in the pause before he decides yes, those will do, those are the top reasons. His hand drops back to his lap.
"If you were planning to tell me to eat shit, I'd have figured we'd be there by now."
"Oh, Lord no, I'd never be quite that crass," the Lyctor responds promptly. "Quite aside from the microbiological implications, I prefer to avoid learning if the people with whom I converse have that particular taste."
Classy as hell, huh?
"No, I simply prefer to handle my business directly, I'm afraid — which doesn't mean I'm uninterested in you." Inasmuch as he's interested in anyone who hasn't made Lyctor grade, anyway. "You wouldn't happen to be one of the ones who ended up at Canaan House, then, would you?"
It wasn't as if Harrowhark had ever been particularly forthcoming about her life at the Ninth House, but — well, he was fairly certain he would have heard, at some point in the last fifty years or so, if the Ninth had started being chummy with the other Houses again. Wouldn't he have?
He hasn't really had time to inspect that relationship here, yet, to come up with any other conclusions, anyway.
Ah, so this is divine punishment: listening to a Lyctor talk about the myriad concerns of eating shit, literally. He deserves this one, Palamedes thinks; serves him right for not immediately dissolving into nothingness as soon as the Saint wandered in. Truly, this is retribution for his many sins.
Or: ew.
"One of," he says, and wonders in a flash how much the Lyctors know about what happened there. God made sad eyes at him and apologized for things getting out of hand at Canaan House, claimed not to have known until it was too late, but that Canaan House's very particular tragedies happened thanks to another Lyctor is, well. The question asks itself. Palamedes wonders what would be worse: that every Lyctor loves and hates God in equal measure to— to whatever her name was, or that God and his Lyctors just don't pay attention to their own recruitment process.
Although someone, somewhere has really dropped the ball when it comes to paying attention to the process, already. Palamedes blinks, and thinks studiously about Canaan House's visitors in a vacuum, instead of its evil basement.
Well, alright. He sighs, and opts for a more personal course, one that's likely safer, "I don't know what the Cohort found there, or where they put the rest of me, but it's as I've said: I've been in the River ever since. I'm a piteously terrible gossip mill, all told."
"Oh, Lord, it's not as if I have any idea what they've done," is a promptly dismissive take on where Palamedes' poor bones have gone. (And other — squishier — bits, for that matter, assuming those were also collected in a nice bucket-in-a-coffin for the Sixth House to mourn.) "I just heard that our darling, wicked little Seventh went and got herself killed off in exchange for a couple of babies — not what any of us were expecting — well." He holds up a hand, pronates it, then wobbles it back and forth in a so-so gesture. "Not what I was expecting, anyway, especially not so quickly. Couldn't help but wonder if that wasn't what tipped off the other Number Seven to hurry up its schedule, but — well, no need for you to worry about that old lag, now, is there?"
Altogether too cheerful, for someone dropping tiny little context-free hints about just How Weird Shit Gets on the other side of the universe, huh.
Palamedes does get a more speculative look landed on him, though, as the Saint of Patience reaches out to bob his teabag in its cup — glancing down at it only very briefly indeed, apparently deciding it is Not Done — then settles back in his seat once more.
"Are you always a piteously terrible gossip mill? Or do you only mean that in this particular case?"
Yet again, all Palamedes can think is, ah, so many words. He mumbles a half-hearted interjection, "I was giving context," about his various, hm, parts. The rest washes over him like he's not really there, as soon as the wicked little Seventh is mentioned. It's a strange feeling, to listen to the Saint of Patience talk about her like a— like a person, and not a monster who killed a bunch of children and people he cared about. Maybe that's his own problem, thinking of her as a thing and not a woman to make the wound scab over more easily.
He doesn't mention any of that. He feels like admitting anything about his involvement in all that might be gauche, at least right this second. It occurs to him that he still doesn't know her name, but Patience says something arcane about another Number Seven, and the thread of curiosity attached to that chases away anything else Palamedes might have been thinking of asking.
Hmm.
Something to think about.
He raises an eyebrow to the Saint's scrutinizing look, and then he shrugs.
"It depends on who's asking, and about what," he offers. "I literally couldn't tell you anything about the time between Canaan House and... I don't know when, actually. Harrow washed up on this shore before I did, but the timing doesn't line up with the last time I saw her."
A beat. "So, in this particular case, I am useless as a gossip mill. What did you want to gossip about?"
Is the Saint of Patience aware of the meaning behind the look on Palamedes' face that doubtless occurs — the look of someone in this committee meeting is in love with the sound of their own voice, and is making sure to utilize their time on the floor filling the air with as many related sound waves as possible, and I am only paying enough attention to be able to notice if someone directs a question at me personally and in the meantime only my expression is Politely Interested — during a good half of his commentary?
Eh... maybe, but it's not like he has a reason to care either way.
"You preliminary greeting, before you realized who I was, seemed to indicate that you've been here before — been and gone again, for that matter, especially given your additional notation about Harrowhark."
(Spoilers: the Saint of Patience may also, in fact, actually be in love with the sound of his own voice — that, or it's the actual act of Pedantic Lecturing.)
"That's not gossip, unless this is going somewhere," he points out, because what in hell would the Saint of Patience care about his tenure in Trench for, honestly. He frowns briefly, recalling, then, "Three months, give or take an extra day or so. I'm fairly certain I was the fourth to arrive."
So close. Could have been sixth. Sometimes, life can be a terrible disappointment.
He waits, then. Either he learns where it's going or he hears more intriguing and mostly-nonsensical Lyctor Facts, so it's only lose-lose in the part where he's still in God's ugly house.
"Three months allows for quite a lot of observation," says the Lyctor, in a tone that is ... maybe, judged generously ... meant to be ... complimentary? Cajoling? Buttering-up, with better-quality butter than the canned stuff comprising Ianthe's hair? "Especially from the Heir to Cassy's House — I'm sure you've taken all sorts of interesting notes about just about everyone you've met, and everything you've seen."
He shrugs a single hand, which is a fascinating trick all by itself, and twists his mouth up into one of those frown-shaped rueful smiles.
"Not that I particularly expect you'd want to share the notes themselves with me, of course — instinctive guarding against plagiarism, I shouldn't wonder; she was always the same way."
Because, of course, there is not a single other reason under this or any other sun that Palamedes would hesitate to share everything he knows with a saintly stranger (according to self-introduction and clothing choices and generally being-a-black-hole to necromantic senses)...
Palamedes looks down and begins the arduous process of unfolding himself from this atrocious goth children blanket, shrugging it off after a long beat to reveal, unsurprisingly, sedate Sixth greys. As he's bunching up the blanket to leave it in a rumpled heap on the other end of the couch, he says, "You're even less persuasive than he is."
And he unfolds the rest of himself to put both feet on the floor and wobble upright, with the steadiness of someone whose longest walk in the past five weeks has been from one room to another in this very house, earlier this very morning. He shifts from one foot to the other, testing his ability to not wipe out immediately on first step, and judges it good enough.
"Honestly, 'I bet you take notes real good'? Who does that work on?" The Emperor's earlier attempts to ply him with notebooks and apologies he'd never want or ask for still rankles; he doesn't feel like doing this again. He nods, once, to the Saint.
"This has been completely unilluminating, thanks. I have to get my own house in order, so I'm going to go. Ask him about his notes, he's desperate to share them."
The Lyctor does not appear to be particularly surprised, nor even particularly displeased, at this dismissal; but Palamedes would be forgiven by anyone, surely, if he missed the brief sharpening of Patience's gaze on him, at the confession that God has attempted to persuade Palamedes of something — and, apparently, did not do a tremendously good job of it.
(That sharpened look is somehow shark-like: dead-eyed, hungry — and here, look, a scrap of flesh to consider, to track down.)
By the time Palamedes is actually looking at him, giving him his barest-modicum-of-politesse in the form of a nod, the Saint just looks dryly amused.
"Oh, please," he scoffs lightly, and picks up his teacup again. "You haven't had your tea — it's actually tolerably decent, surprise surprise — and anyone would think you couldn't recognize that that was just the blatant flattery, to butter you up a bit. I don't know you, Master Warden," or even your name, but heir to the Sixth does come with some logical titular assumptions, at least, "and I have no idea what you want, but that doesn't mean I don't expect you to be, in fact, real good at taking notes. Which will not, logically, be identical to the Emperor's notes."
(Which he's going to have to have some Words with John about — or, more likely, just go help himself to reading, and talk about later.)
"You've asked any number of tangential questions, but you have not, as yet, asked me any questions for me to provide you with illuminating answers, whether or not you're going to turn them into manuscripts; I don't even know if you can doodle, much less illustrate." As an example, gestured vaguely with the teacup, perhaps meant to urge that Palamedes in fact consider drinking that nice fresh of left-on-read tea that was made for him, right in front of him, in an acknowledgment that he has zero reason to trust that a Lyctor isn't going to poison him.
He makes a point of not asking where Palamedes lives, what house he wishes to get in order, when it so obviously isn't spoken of as a House — whether or not this is going to be registered as a diplomatic point.
"Aren't you from academia? I should think you would be quite well practiced at working with people you dislike. I certainly can."
"'Can' and 'have to' are remarkably different states of mind," Palamedes says, as he takes a look around for a beat before crossing, slightly hobblingly, to where his Sleeper bag sits on an unused chair. He picks it up to flip it open and rifle through it, mostly to take out the cloak, but also to make sure everything that's supposed to be in it is still in it.
"That's your tea; I didn't ask for it. If it helps, flattery doesn't work on me."
He shakes the cloak out, then pulls it around his shoulders to fiddle with the fastenings. For all intents and purposes, he is ready to hobble right out the front door in a minute here, but.
"It's nothing personal; I don't know you, either. You can blame him, if you like. He tried the 'dear Sixth academic' routine first, and we had a slight disagreement in the middle." He makes a face, not quite a grimace, but thin-lipped and displeased all the same. Boy, does it still rankle. He's never been one for going through the motions of social theatrics, so sitting and drinking the tea with some old man he's not keen on twice in one day has been a nonstarter.
As always, God takes and takes and takes.
After another moment of rooting in the bag, he closes it up with a decisive tug. He looks at the Saint. "What was your Seventh's name?"
"I'm sure it will be utterly delightful for me to discuss with him, at some point," possibly never, says the Saint, as bland background noise for Palamedes's bag-rooting.
When the Master Warden looks at him again, there is a particularly inhuman quality to him; something static, perhaps, the sort of 'unmoving' that includes 'unchanging' but also includes a hint of television snow — the uneasy sense of someone who has only lived through ten thousand years (and more than that besides) by not really living through them, just — counting them off — holding them at arm's length, waiting for them to pass him by.
Approximately five and a half seconds pass, between question and answer:
"Cytherea Loveday, known for the Miracle at Rhodes," he says, distantly, as if reciting something he barely remembers, or possibly as if he's remembering it so thoroughly that his voice is echoing through a ten-thousand-year-long tunnel; is there any real difference, at this point?
And then his gaze sharpens, ash-grey vs lambent-grey, and he asks (quite thoughtfully), "What was yours?"
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Such skills! Especially for someone with no spatial awareness at the time!
(Augustine is well aware that he's being an ass. It's been a tough few days.)
"If you do want an answer," is almost gentle, "you are going to need to be more specific."
Almost gentle. Almost. In one of those iron-fist-in-velvet-glove sorts of ways, maybe.
no subject
"Alright, I'll handle those in order, I guess. First: I would call it flopped, not sitting, if you really want to split semantic hairs. Squids don't sit."
Helpfully.
"Second: I don't really need to be told you're a Lyctor, so which of the other Houses has your fingerprint on it? It's not the Seventh."
Maybe if everyone conveniently looked alike every time — hah, but no. He shrugs, like, this line of questioning from himself, the Warden, is to be expected so much that he will even eat up the 'tell it to me like I'm five years old' kind of scraps. "Like I said, I'm Sixth, so color me curious."
no subject
There's a moment, just following, when he looks as though he's maybe planning to pull one of those goodness gracious, a Lyctor, little old ME? acts — but he doesn't, as it happens, perhaps because of how certain this stripling youth is about his identity as Not Related to the Seventh.
"It's terribly uncouth of you to speak as though you assume I only left a single fingerprint on the House I co-founded," he says instead, in a tremendously reasonable sort of tone.
There's a little bit of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, then, as he adds: "Gracious, but she'd be tickled to see what's become of her library. You barely look a thing like her," not that he knows this is what Palamedes has already been thinking, "but I suppose you already know that, if any of her official portraits have survived."
He keeps looking at Palamedes, then, about five seconds too long for comfort, before finally sweeping into a tiny bow, of the sort where it's flatly impossible to tell which party it's supposed to be mocking.
"The Saint of Patience, First of the Undying Emperor's Fists and Gestures and Et Ceteras, at your service."
As long as you aren't actually expecting much service, adds one raised eyebrow.
(... Well, after all, who knows what's buried under that blanket, and how much service it ought to get?)
no subject
"They're in protective storage," is what he manages to say about the portraits. Half of the Sixth is in protective storage these days, which has not bothered him except for very specific moments like this one. As for looking like her, or not, "The Sixth has a bloodline problem."
Or maybe he, too, would be a weirdly close match! Imagine that.
The Lyctor has not actually given him a name, but alright: "Patience, then. I didn't ask for service."
He's good like this, thanks muchly, hm, sir. Saint. Palamedes would like to ask a healthy amount of questions still - like, a reasonable couple dozen? Nothing major - but this Saint has already made it clear that he doesn't answer questions without a lot of circular hoop-jumping, and Palamedes is kind of tired, still.
Instead he remembers something Gideon had told him ages ago, and without thinking past the first thought he asks, "Were you on his spaceship? I heard it was 'spooky.'" How many bones are on it. He must know.
no subject
Given that Augustine the First has never encountered Palamedes Sextus before, perhaps he can be forgiven for not following the intuitive leaping of his logic.
He hears: They're in protective storage; the Sixth has a bloodline problem.
"I never quite was sure why that thing had to be parked quite so close to Dominicus," he admits, and a tiny little line between his eyebrows deepens quizzically. "Really, it's a miracle you don't all have a lot more cancer, practically sitting in its outer atmosphere — although I suppose you lot aren't afraid to treat those aggressively."
(He'll just step hard on that particular sore subject, none the wiser, then.)
"As for service — did that phrase actually fall out of style when I wasn't looking? Damn." That, there, is a hell of a disappointment for Augustine, or so it appears. But the Disappointment Expression doesn't stick around for long, because it's replaced with one of extreme skepticism.
"Which spooky spaceship would that be, if you don't subscribe to the theory that all ships in the Nine Houses are, in fact, His?"
no subject
It isn't the Saint's business, anyway, and Palamedes idly suspects that it wouldn't move him, besides. He slouches in his goth children blanket with a short sigh, brow furrowing as he carefully considers the many rousing defenses of the Sixth he could come up with and quietly puts them away. It's not as if they can put the whole of the Library somewhere else so easily, or he just would?
Nothing for it now. Now he is a squid, or something. Life throws curveballs, etc, and fast-talking Lyctors, as a bonus.
"Do you subscribe to that theory?" he asks, mildly, and then doesn't wait for an answer before he shrugs and adds, "I don't honestly know — I was in the River. You would have to ask the Ninth cav which ship she was talking about."
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"So far as I'm aware, the last time anyone who would count as a Ninth cav was on a Cohort ship that was sizeable enough that it wasn't just a shuttle was at least, oh, forty, forty-five years ago?"
Patience raises a hand and wobbles it back and forth in that eternal gesture of 'eeeeeeeh, so-so, something like that'.
"Of course, if you mean Gideon," and it's still really weird to apply that particular name to anyone other than the Saint of Duty, thanks, "well, that opens the door to a number of different questions, really."
He is not addressing the Cancer Topic issue; he is also not actually answering any questions that Palamedes has asked, even though he is, in some ways, freely offering information.
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He picks out the relevant bits of this latest non-answer: on a Cohort ship, forty-five years ago— placing Gideon, emphasis whole, on a different ship entirely, or else someone need immediately defend her honor as someone who would 'count as a Ninth cav.'
He wonders if this other ship has a name, and if it's something resoundingly ridiculous, and if it has blankets embroidered with goth children and unpleasant chalk biscuits.
(This is unfair to the biscuits. He rescinds the thought, privately.)
"I mean Gideon," he says. "I'm assuming neither the questions nor the door are for me, but if you happened to enumerate them out loud while I sat over here, that would be something."
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Reflecting, again, on his own sojourns at the Ninth House, about umpty-zillion years ago, he adds: "Although, come to think of it, I don't suppose she ever had been on a station otherwise... certainly the Cohort transport shuttles seldom enough had passenger manifests leaving the Ninth, in recent decades."
(There used to be an actual pilgrim trade.)
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It doesn't matter. Not really. Only to his curiosity.
"I don't," is what he says about the tea, and then, "Are you really picking on her word choice?"
Give him a moment to down the rest of the cold tea, for the hell of it, and as he leans over to put the cup down on whatever passes for a side table in here, "What's the next question?"
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"Are you collecting them for her? Or for your own list?" Patience asks, and then holds up a hand, then — actually, just one finger. One moment. "Wait a tic," he says, which is not actually asking if Palamedes wants to wait, just —
Whatever.
He leaves the room; he knows, thanks to Paul Atreides, where all the tea things are, although he's not entirely clear on what the hell sort of rock was supposed to make the water hot — no matter; what's a little bit of atomic excitement between friends? Someone who can manipulate the body and the spirit with ten thousand years' worth of practice can surely manage enough of a microwave-effect that by the time he's got the tray with tea bags, water, real fresh milk and also sugar, not to mention two fresh teacups, back to John's study, well.
The water's just coming up to the boil by the time he sets the whole tray down on the coffee table, which can largely be distinguished from a tea table by being too low to the ground to be reasonably functional for much of anything at all.
"You were saying?"
Look, Palamedes! Fresh tea and three whole questions, for free!
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Mortifying is a good word for it. He can't place why, because his instinct is not, at the moment, to convince anyone from the First to like him (that's the spite), but eugh. No, thank you.
So he sits there, and leans his head on the back of the couch cushions, and he waits. He can hear the not-so-distant sound of a tray being prepared, and so it's with only surreal surprise (this is indeed happening? right now, to him? is he still dead?) that he regards the tray as it's set down.
"You were, actually," he says, and alright - haltingly, he leans forward from his goth blanket to consider the tea tray. "Something about lists of questions, so: yes. Sure. I'm making plentiful lists. Does it matter if Gideon hears your questions from me? I don't fabricate anything; you can rest assured, I can ask her 'why the hell did you think that was a ship' faithfully and accurately."
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(Same height, after all, give or take a smidge, or pair of shoes.)
The tea things, as it happens, are completely benign; it's the person who sets the brewing cup in front of Palamedes who is the terminal danger — so isn't it nice that, instead of death, he's bringing fresh tea, et cetera et cetera?
He settles back with his own mug and a thoughtful expression, fidgeting with a biscuit blatantly stolen from God's Own Supply, and asks:
"Is there a reason she can't hear them from me, if they're my questions, and meant for her? Why install yourself as the intermediary?"
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He shrugs; he considers the tea tray and then he sits back, leaving it alone. It isn't a matter of trust— genuinely, that's a nonstarter, there is none and so why bother pretending he's considering it— but he's decided that, for the time being, the best move in Lyctor games is not to play. He's not thirsty, anyway.
Belatedly, he holds up another finger for his count. "She's my friend. I have a vested interest in my friends."
Friends being approached by Lyctors, specifically, he doesn't add; it's implied in the pause before he decides yes, those will do, those are the top reasons. His hand drops back to his lap.
"If you were planning to tell me to eat shit, I'd have figured we'd be there by now."
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Classy as hell, huh?
"No, I simply prefer to handle my business directly, I'm afraid — which doesn't mean I'm uninterested in you." Inasmuch as he's interested in anyone who hasn't made Lyctor grade, anyway. "You wouldn't happen to be one of the ones who ended up at Canaan House, then, would you?"
It wasn't as if Harrowhark had ever been particularly forthcoming about her life at the Ninth House, but — well, he was fairly certain he would have heard, at some point in the last fifty years or so, if the Ninth had started being chummy with the other Houses again. Wouldn't he have?
He hasn't really had time to inspect that relationship here, yet, to come up with any other conclusions, anyway.
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Or: ew.
"One of," he says, and wonders in a flash how much the Lyctors know about what happened there. God made sad eyes at him and apologized for things getting out of hand at Canaan House, claimed not to have known until it was too late, but that Canaan House's very particular tragedies happened thanks to another Lyctor is, well. The question asks itself. Palamedes wonders what would be worse: that every Lyctor loves and hates God in equal measure to— to whatever her name was, or that God and his Lyctors just don't pay attention to their own recruitment process.
Although someone, somewhere has really dropped the ball when it comes to paying attention to the process, already. Palamedes blinks, and thinks studiously about Canaan House's visitors in a vacuum, instead of its evil basement.
Well, alright. He sighs, and opts for a more personal course, one that's likely safer, "I don't know what the Cohort found there, or where they put the rest of me, but it's as I've said: I've been in the River ever since. I'm a piteously terrible gossip mill, all told."
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Altogether too cheerful, for someone dropping tiny little context-free hints about just How Weird Shit Gets on the other side of the universe, huh.
Palamedes does get a more speculative look landed on him, though, as the Saint of Patience reaches out to bob his teabag in its cup — glancing down at it only very briefly indeed, apparently deciding it is Not Done — then settles back in his seat once more.
"Are you always a piteously terrible gossip mill? Or do you only mean that in this particular case?"
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He doesn't mention any of that. He feels like admitting anything about his involvement in all that might be gauche, at least right this second. It occurs to him that he still doesn't know her name, but Patience says something arcane about another Number Seven, and the thread of curiosity attached to that chases away anything else Palamedes might have been thinking of asking.
Hmm.
Something to think about.
He raises an eyebrow to the Saint's scrutinizing look, and then he shrugs.
"It depends on who's asking, and about what," he offers. "I literally couldn't tell you anything about the time between Canaan House and... I don't know when, actually. Harrow washed up on this shore before I did, but the timing doesn't line up with the last time I saw her."
A beat. "So, in this particular case, I am useless as a gossip mill. What did you want to gossip about?"
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Eh... maybe, but it's not like he has a reason to care either way.
"You preliminary greeting, before you realized who I was, seemed to indicate that you've been here before — been and gone again, for that matter, especially given your additional notation about Harrowhark."
(Spoilers: the Saint of Patience may also, in fact, actually be in love with the sound of his own voice — that, or it's the actual act of Pedantic Lecturing.)
"How long were you here, before?"
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So close. Could have been sixth. Sometimes, life can be a terrible disappointment.
He waits, then. Either he learns where it's going or he hears more intriguing and mostly-nonsensical Lyctor Facts, so it's only lose-lose in the part where he's still in God's ugly house.
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He shrugs a single hand, which is a fascinating trick all by itself, and twists his mouth up into one of those frown-shaped rueful smiles.
"Not that I particularly expect you'd want to share the notes themselves with me, of course — instinctive guarding against plagiarism, I shouldn't wonder; she was always the same way."
Because, of course, there is not a single other reason under this or any other sun that Palamedes would hesitate to share everything he knows with a saintly stranger (according to self-introduction and clothing choices and generally being-a-black-hole to necromantic senses)...
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And he unfolds the rest of himself to put both feet on the floor and wobble upright, with the steadiness of someone whose longest walk in the past five weeks has been from one room to another in this very house, earlier this very morning. He shifts from one foot to the other, testing his ability to not wipe out immediately on first step, and judges it good enough.
"Honestly, 'I bet you take notes real good'? Who does that work on?" The Emperor's earlier attempts to ply him with notebooks and apologies he'd never want or ask for still rankles; he doesn't feel like doing this again. He nods, once, to the Saint.
"This has been completely unilluminating, thanks. I have to get my own house in order, so I'm going to go. Ask him about his notes, he's desperate to share them."
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(That sharpened look is somehow shark-like: dead-eyed, hungry — and here, look, a scrap of flesh to consider, to track down.)
By the time Palamedes is actually looking at him, giving him his barest-modicum-of-politesse in the form of a nod, the Saint just looks dryly amused.
"Oh, please," he scoffs lightly, and picks up his teacup again. "You haven't had your tea — it's actually tolerably decent, surprise surprise — and anyone would think you couldn't recognize that that was just the blatant flattery, to butter you up a bit. I don't know you, Master Warden," or even your name, but heir to the Sixth does come with some logical titular assumptions, at least, "and I have no idea what you want, but that doesn't mean I don't expect you to be, in fact, real good at taking notes. Which will not, logically, be identical to the Emperor's notes."
(Which he's going to have to have some Words with John about — or, more likely, just go help himself to reading, and talk about later.)
"You've asked any number of tangential questions, but you have not, as yet, asked me any questions for me to provide you with illuminating answers, whether or not you're going to turn them into manuscripts; I don't even know if you can doodle, much less illustrate." As an example, gestured vaguely with the teacup, perhaps meant to urge that Palamedes in fact consider drinking that nice fresh of left-on-read tea that was made for him, right in front of him, in an acknowledgment that he has zero reason to trust that a Lyctor isn't going to poison him.
He makes a point of not asking where Palamedes lives, what house he wishes to get in order, when it so obviously isn't spoken of as a House — whether or not this is going to be registered as a diplomatic point.
"Aren't you from academia? I should think you would be quite well practiced at working with people you dislike. I certainly can."
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"That's your tea; I didn't ask for it. If it helps, flattery doesn't work on me."
He shakes the cloak out, then pulls it around his shoulders to fiddle with the fastenings. For all intents and purposes, he is ready to hobble right out the front door in a minute here, but.
"It's nothing personal; I don't know you, either. You can blame him, if you like. He tried the 'dear Sixth academic' routine first, and we had a slight disagreement in the middle." He makes a face, not quite a grimace, but thin-lipped and displeased all the same. Boy, does it still rankle. He's never been one for going through the motions of social theatrics, so sitting and drinking the tea with some old man he's not keen on twice in one day has been a nonstarter.
As always, God takes and takes and takes.
After another moment of rooting in the bag, he closes it up with a decisive tug. He looks at the Saint. "What was your Seventh's name?"
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When the Master Warden looks at him again, there is a particularly inhuman quality to him; something static, perhaps, the sort of 'unmoving' that includes 'unchanging' but also includes a hint of television snow — the uneasy sense of someone who has only lived through ten thousand years (and more than that besides) by not really living through them, just — counting them off — holding them at arm's length, waiting for them to pass him by.
Approximately five and a half seconds pass, between question and answer:
"Cytherea Loveday, known for the Miracle at Rhodes," he says, distantly, as if reciting something he barely remembers, or possibly as if he's remembering it so thoroughly that his voice is echoing through a ten-thousand-year-long tunnel; is there any real difference, at this point?
And then his gaze sharpens, ash-grey vs lambent-grey, and he asks (quite thoughtfully), "What was yours?"
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