It begins with a door...

[alittlebitdodgy]

... a door you're quite sure wasn't there a moment ago.  Backing out of it is a man, his attention completely taken up by the unknown person he's conversing with.

'Yes, well,' he clears his throat, 'a dead family is all well and good, but I think it's about time I called in that favour, my lady.  Needs must be met, clients to meet and all that.  So

Comments

[fightingblind]

Oh, Dear Someone, someone nearly as shiny as Jarlaxle. Thank goodness for sunglasses. Zaknafein nodded in the Marquis' general direction, covertly sizing him up.

[alittlebitdodgy]

The Marquis nods back, all charm and smiles. Still, he can't help but feel under scrutiny.

[fightingblind]

"Do you often walk through walls?" Zaknafein asked, his tone just this side of dry.

[alittlebitdodgy]

'Oftener than you would think,' he says, his tone equally as dry. He starts, faking amazement, 'Are you telling me this is unusual?'

[fightingblind]

"No, I just like to know who does it." He was a wizard or a psionist, to Zaknafein's mind- he liked neither possibility.

[alittlebitdodgy]

He's about to admit that opening doors is the lady Door's speciality, but quickly bites back his words. It might be profitable to have this fellow believing he has powers he certainly doesn't. So he merely says, 'Caution is always a virtue. You never know who could be waiting around the corner.'

[fightingblind]

Zaknafein chuckles wryly. "Those who do not know that are dead or soon to be."

[alittlebitdodgy]

'I sense a certain self-assurance in you, sir. Mayhap you've discovered the key to living in this... strange and curious place? Or perhaps you're just more foolhardy than most.'

Ah, good natured taunting is what keeps the Marquis going. He's always careful not to go to far: you never know what a man's disposition will allow.

[fightingblind]

"Foolhardy." He shrugged thoughtfully. "I have been called worse things, and they might be true." In truth, he was self-assured because projecting anything else was just asking to be attacked, but there was no need to show the Marquis he as that paranoid.

"I have lived here a while. You get used to it."

[alittlebitdodgy]

At this point, he's had just about enough of the Mansion and so he says with a hint of irony, 'What's to get used to? It's all a walk in the park. Time that isn't, temporary death; the whole thing's simple as an Ordeal.'

'By the way,' he adds, 'Do you know a Jarlaxle?'

[fightingblind]

Zaknafein merely chuckled. 'Do not eat anything just left out, is all I have to say.'

'He has already sparkled at you, then?'

[alittlebitdodgy]

The Marquis makes a mental note to avoid any week-old take out.

'Yes, sparkled at me, insulted you - the whole shebang.' How can he help trying to mix things up a little? It's in his nature, or at least that's his excuse.

[fightingblind]

"Said that I am gloomy and entirely too boring?" Zaknafein guessed.

[alittlebitdodgy]

The Marquis nods. 'For a start. Also that you wouldn't know how to command if you read an entire library on the subject and that your entire existence is just one pointless episode.' He may have gone a bit far on the last point, he concedes.

'Is it just me, or do I sense some bitterness lurking under the surface?'

[fightingblind]

Zaknafein looked at the Marquis for a moment, and then could not help but laugh.

"You are just like him, aren't you?"

[alittlebitdodgy]

'Am I? I'm afraid I have not been acquainted with the gentleman for long enough to have thoughts on the subject. Or to discern whether it's a compliment or an insult.' He's feeling rather jovial at the moment and so decides to take the statement as a compliment, whatever the original intent may have been.'

'You, on the other hand, are nothing like him. However did you two come to work together?'