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?"
Vaguely, Palamedes had expected knowing her name to inspire some kind of feeling. He's sure it does, somewhere in the space where he's put her face and her words and her dispassionate disregard of the lives she took, her impotent fury. Somewhere down there an emotion stirs to think of her as Cytherea, not the Lyctor, and damningly— he doesn't know if it's anger of his own. A fresh application of rage would be perfectly reasonable, and anything else - well.
Risky.
He nods and picks up the bag, heading for the door. His first instinct is to go in silence, damn God and damn his Lyctors and maybe go scrape Cytherea off whatever she eventually died upon and ask her what anybody else's name is; Palamedes doesn't believe the Saint, like, cares. About his Seventh.
But for her sake, then. He's at the door; he half-turns, hand against the doorframe.
"Dulcinea Septimus," he says weightily, without embellishment, and then turning to go, "I'll see you around, Saint."
Like, Ah, good, a much less cloyingly insipid name; well done, her.
Like, It's a very pretty name.
Like just repeating it — but he knows the look of a man who absolutely does not want a specific name to be in his mouth; he doesn't say it.
Only: "I'm sure," because he isn't God to offer the eternally obnoxious 'not if I see you first' — and then picks up the rejected tea, and takes a sip, letting Palamedes leave without further objection.
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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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Risky.
He nods and picks up the bag, heading for the door. His first instinct is to go in silence, damn God and damn his Lyctors and maybe go scrape Cytherea off whatever she eventually died upon and ask her what anybody else's name is; Palamedes doesn't believe the Saint, like, cares. About his Seventh.
But for her sake, then. He's at the door; he half-turns, hand against the doorframe.
"Dulcinea Septimus," he says weightily, without embellishment, and then turning to go, "I'll see you around, Saint."
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Like, Ah, good, a much less cloyingly insipid name; well done, her.
Like, It's a very pretty name.
Like just repeating it — but he knows the look of a man who absolutely does not want a specific name to be in his mouth; he doesn't say it.
Only: "I'm sure," because he isn't God to offer the eternally obnoxious 'not if I see you first' — and then picks up the rejected tea, and takes a sip, letting Palamedes leave without further objection.