"'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.
no subject
"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?"
no subject
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?"
no subject
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."
no subject
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.