In which a game is played...

[lesefton]

Sefton catches Paige going through his things, and then they have a conversation. Sefton gets (most of) what he wants, and Paige isn't quite sure what she gets. More than she thinks, actually.


Another morning, another glimpse of Sefton's only haven from students. The bed is unmade, left ready for someone else to take care of, and the usual pile of clothes have been dumped on the chest that sits at the end of it. His couch is half hidden under another pile of clothes, and his desk under a pile of hides. His bookshelves are the sole spot of order, volumes lined up neatly, according to some system that makes sense of their owner.

It's amidst these most personal and intimate of arrangements that Paige moves, wearing a pair of black leather slip-ons instead of the usual boots so that her footsteps might be less audible. With a sneaky sort of grace she goes from the bed and its chest to the desk. Selecting a hide at random, she puts her fingertips to her bottom lip to nibble idly on a fingernail during her perusal. His door was closed upon her entering and nothing has been disrupted until now.

Such a hide to peruse -- for some reason the Headmaster is apparently expected to take an interest in the pregnancy of a woman called Besla, who writes cheerfully and prolifically about her experience, not to mention familiarly. Out in the hallway, thick rugs muffle footsteps, although two pairs can be heard hurrying past, and another following them more slowly.

Not adept at stealing into someone's room, nor at scanning said room for 'information', Paige doesn't go running when she hears the first two pairs of steps, surely noticeable in their haste outside. She does pause, poised, like a cautious creature, but only to continue a beat later when nothing comes of it. That third pair she must not hear at all for she's still going about her business, setting that hide down and ruffling through the others.

Now that, that is unfortunate. The others reveal, at a glance, letters bearing the seals of the Smith and Harper Halls, an account from a weaver for a considerable sum, covering female clothing, and the timetables of a few students. Something else is revealed, though, and that happens when the door swings abruptly open. The Headmaster himself appears, a book in one hand, black curls in his eyes -- he looks more like a student than their teacher, too young and too dishevelled to be an authority figure -- and he stops short at the sight of his guest.

She was intent on the timetables, though those with seals were tucked under her arm, next in line. When the door opens she drops the sheet she'd been reading and makes a noise that could, if one were being very general, be described as a small cry. Startled and openmouthed, Paige's initial reaction is stiffness. Staring with big eyes at the suddenly open doorway and, more importantly, at who's /filling/ it, she's no doubt too stunned for words for none come.

Sefton's as handsome frowning as he is smiling, and there's a confidence in him that suggests he's well aware of this. From his frozen halt, he slowly unwinds, and lifts one hand to rake his hair back from his eyes -- as though he needs to see carefully, to be sure that what his eyes report is true. Then he speaks, his lazy drawl rolling out the words, self-assured and faintly displeased. "Is there some assistance I can offer you?"

"Uh." Thank goodness /one/ of them broke that terrifyingly silent moment, otherwise it would have gone on forever. Paige, seeming to just now realize what she's gotten herself into, looks down quickly at the hides tucked under her arm and screams at herself. On the inside. Outwardly she tries to remain calm. This is /fine/. "I... No." Setting those hides very carefully down on the desk and patting them once with both hands, she lets her eyes wander while she thinks. Fast. "I was just..." Shit.

This is /fine/. For one person in the room. Sefton's dark eyes flicker down to follow the hides as she sets them down, and as she pats them, and then they lift once more to her face. "You were?" he prompts, as courteous as may be, but quite evidently waiting for the conclusion of the sentence. And quite evidently blocking the door.

A blocked door does not make for good escape. So Paige is stuck with this man whose room she's been rifling through and who probably doesn't like the idea of her being here at all much less going through his things. After taking stock of her situation with the calculated, methodical thinking of a person who reacts well to bad things, she says, calmly, "I was snooping."

"It would seem," Sefton agrees, his drawl as lazy and relaxed as ever -- there is only that slightly darker note underlying his tenor to suggest that he is anything other than those things, "that you were." He turns his head away from her then, but only so he can look back, and catch the edge of the door with one hand to push it closed, watching until it clicks into place. Then that dark gaze is on her face once more. "You have the advantage of me, I am afraid. You know who I am, I think, but I am not similarly informed."

The door closing makes her twitch, then close her eyes. Being impatient and frustrated with one's self is the worst. "I know what you are," she replies readily, then straightens, clasping her hands before her to keep them from their fidgeting. "I wash clothes." It's an old standby, that line, meant to disarm. What harm could a laundress do?

"It would seem that is not all you do," Sefton points out, backing up a step to lean against the closed door, dark eyes still on her face. "Is there an explanation you would like to offer at this point? In fairness, I should say that it is hardly possible for your situation to worsen, so you ought not be afraid of that."

"I'm not afraid," Paige informs /him/, meeting his eyes without blinking. It's a lie, but then again the kind of fear she's currently feeling isn't the shaking sort. It's the sort that lurks in the back of your mind, waiting for when you can pay it attention before hitting you. It's fear of bigger consequences than just those that might come from breaking and entering. With a shrug, nonchalant, she offers, "I... wanted to see inside."

Sefton allows the quiet to draw out then, studying her in silence for several beats before he replies. "I think it would be wiser if you were," he drawls, shifting his grip on the book he holds, and looking down to study it for a moment with absent interest. "What is your name?"

Lifting her chin a fraction, Paige continues to stare him down. His confidence is doing him no good in this situation. One eyebrow lifts, cocked without her thinking. "Paige."

"Paige," Sefton repeats quietly, continuing his study. "What was it, Paige, that you wished to see inside my hides?" He moves away from the door, then -- for all the good it would do her, she'd probably have time to dart out of it if she tried -- and walks forward to the bookshelves, slotting the book back into place.

"I... was going to move onto your books," Paige supplies, weakly, turning when he moves so she won't have to worry about him being in a blind spot. "I heard you had so many things in here. I like to read." Letters from Besla, yes, very informative.

"You like to read," Sefton repeats, a measure of cynicism entering that drawl of his. "If there is a reason I should not ask your superiors why it is that you were reading my personal correspondence, Paige, I should very much like to hear it."

Superiors. That raises the panic level a bit. But Paige, as mentioned, is a careful girl, not at all unfamiliar with looking steps ahead for an option. So it is with fists at her sides that she decides admitting to being someone's pawn is possibly safer than the alternative. "I was told to," she blurts, no longer looking at him but still deliberately keeping him in front of her.

That engages the Headmaster's interest a little -- she has only a view of his profile as he studies the shelves, but his brows lift a little, idly. "By whom were you told?" Again that pleasant, courteous tone, as though she is somehow worthy of greater consideration than her rank merits.

Paige is, perhaps, unused to such treatment. Not enough so that it throws her off, but there's an edge of uncertainty to her now. Choosing to omit Miniyal's name, she says, simply, "A woman." Then, continuing on the same obscure path, "She... She told me to come here and find something interesting."

"If you do not know her name, then you are foolish indeed to put yourself in this situation," Sefton observes, turning his head now to regard the laundress once more. Almost kind, his tone, the words drawn out lazily and thoughtfully. "I do not think you are quite so foolish, so I must conclude that you are not telling me her name by choice."

Kind. Or patronizing. Still Paige isn't settled. "Then make your conclusions," says the little girl playing a great, big adult game. "What would happen if I keep choosing not to tell?"

Sefton, disobliging, does not reply, but rather continues on his own tangent. A fault amongst instructors, so used to setting the direction of any discussion, perhaps. "What is it that you will tell her, having looked at my letters?"

That requires some thought before she answers with an honest, "I don't know. That Besla is happily awaiting the birth of her child?" Paige keeps her expression placid, perhaps roping in some of the usual flatlinedness she feels for her own purposes, just now. "Or that you don't make your own bed. And she'll tell me to go about my business."

"And what will you achieve, by telling her that?" Sefton has turned his head, and now he turns the rest of him, so he can rest a shoulder against the bookshelf, and regard her squarely. "For what purpose do you do so?"

Paige considers that bookshelf and not him while answering. "I do so because she's sent me. And I will achieve peace. From her, anyway. I doubt she cares what I bring her if it's trivial and I don't think it's in her to scold."

"I am asked a dozen times a day to do things for other people," Sefton obseves in reply, nodding towards the desk. "You have seen for yourself. Many of those requests, I refuse, for any number of reasons. Why did you not refuse this request, Paige?"

She's looking at him /now/, straight and green. "Because if I had I would have been punished." There's a pause, there, for her to chew on her lip and stare down at the floor, her eyelashes a fringe of darkness against pale and freckled skin. "I couldn't refuse."

"There is an argument to be made that you will be punished regardless," Sefton returns, dark eyes meeting green with a measure of amusement in them -- cat, mouse, game sort of amusement. "Although I suppose, had I not returned, you might have considered this the preferable option."

"Punishment without embarrassment is the preferable option," Paige tells him, bristling quietly under the sort of regard he holds her in. "Walking away from something with your dignity still intact. I'd rather have that than the alternative, if given the choice."

"You have given this some thought, then," Sefton replies, observing that bristle, his mouth twitching for a moment to the start of a smile. "Clever girl, Paige." Silence, after that, as he takes his time over choosing what comes next. "I will not bother to ask you how she would embarass you. I do not imagine you are foolish enough to tell me. I should like to know her name."

Folding her arms and putting a foot out to help her stay balanced so still for so long, Paige doesn't give any name. What she does give is a statement of fact, something she obviously believes to be very true. "I can't trust you not to go to her and ruin everything. Or, if I did tell you, I can't trust her not to do what she isn't doing because I'm doing this for her." Yes, that.

"Then your position is precarious," Sefton replies. "If you do not tell me, what do you think might happen, Paige?" Again, that brief flash of white teeth. Cat, mouse, game.

"I couldn't say," Paige, in a deceptively light voice, answers. "My place isn't inside your head. I can only imagine it might end with me being sent from the Weyr." Which doesn't please her, not at all, but she can't let anything show so she tries to be strong.

"Would that be worse than your embarassment?" The question is light, and Sefton's dark eyes are very interested to see what happens when he asks that -- there's not much other outward sign of his interest, though. He tilts his head to one side, watching.

What happens is... well, nothing. A movement in her throat, maybe, when she swallows, the slight narrowing of her eyes. Paige takes a deep breath in. "No." No, it wouldn't be worse at all.

"Well then," Sefton murmurs, his drawl drawing out those words, making much of the vowels, seeming to enjoy speaking them. "I should say you are threatened not so much with an embarassment as a catastrophe, Paige. You have rather played it down."

She looks away, down, again, a tell perhaps. "Isn't that how these games are played with you people?" Paige is careful to keep her voice quiet and even. Raising it risks a tremble or loss in sturdiness and she can't afford that, not now. "You play your hand close. You don't lie but you don't tell the truth either. You never give anything away you haven't been asked for and you don't say too much." When she looks at him again there's a fierceness in her eyes, something like hatred or disgust but less cultivated. "I pay attention."

Sefton laughs then, tipping his head back, unheeding -- although perhaps not unaware -- of her glance. His white teeth flash against his olive skin when he grins, and he is shaking his head when he looks back to her once more, lifting a hand to rake his hair back from his eyes. "You have been paying very close attention, Paige, I am impressed." He shoves his hands into his pockets, and considers her for a moment. When he speaks, the rich amusement is gone, and something kinder lingers. "I should not to have to begin locking my door. It would be inconvenient."

Paige is not put at her ease by the change in his attitude, though that he isn't looking at her anymore like he finds her the most silly thing is something of a comfort. "Then maybe you should stop her from wanting to know things about you. She told me you, specifically. If I tell her you caught me... I may not tell her. Then I can't know that you won't. If neither of us does she might send me back for more. Or to someone else." So.

"That is quite a tangle," Sefton replies, frowning faintly, as though he is mulling over this problem that they must face together. "Have you thoughts on what we should do, Paige?"

"We?" There's a crease, a wrinkle in between Paige's eyebrows where all her confusion lives. "You already know all you need to know to make a decision. You should need no further help from /me/. And /I'm/ going to do the same thing regardless of what /you/ do. Besides, I see the same outcome, no matter what anybody does."

The wrinkle draws another smile, although he glances away for a moment, so if that cat and mouse note has reentered his grin, it is concealed. "What are you going to do, Paige? Regardless of what I do."

/That/ makes /her/ smile, in the slow, deliberate way of earth shifting over centuries. "That," Paige says, softly, "is mine. And you don't need to know. It isn't the ending of my story you should be concerning yourself with, but yours."

Sefton glances back then, brows lifting briefly. There's a flicker of something in his dark eyes -- disinterest, almost. "Then perhaps you are not quite as insightful as I thought, Paige. You are passing up an opportunity if you think so."

Her hands are at her sides again, loose and somehow personifying how lost she just became. "What opportunity?" Paige asks, bemused, while she ignores the look in his eyes.

"Indeed," Sefton replies, that tinge of boredom still inhabiting his drawl as he turns his head to look up towards the bookshelves. "If you depart, as matters stand, I will be obliged to say something about this to someone. You have chosen not to say to me who asked you to come here, and if you consider the fate that would befall you worse than being required to depart the weyr, then perhaps you are right to do so. I am surprised you make no attempt at all to better this situation, however."

"And how," Paige begins, her eyebrows lifting along with her chin, "would you expect me to do /that/?" At this point she's still standing beside the desk so, upon asking that, she leans a hip against it and folds her arms again. Whether or not she meant it to be, it's a gesture of some invasiveness.

If it is, it doesn't seem to bother the Headmaster. Indeed, he moves away from the bookshelf, and there's silence as he walks across to the couch, leaning down to scoop up the clothes that cover it, and then turning so he can ease down into it, stretching his legs out in front of him. Not the move of a man who feels the need to claim some power from their relative positions. "Paige," he murmurs, drawing her name out in a low murmur. "I am not the one risking my position in life. Or at least not in this conversation." Something in that comment amuses him, and he flashes a grin at his own words. "I suppose if you trust me not at all, then you are rather caught. You do not make me an offer -- because you do not trust me -- and you leave, believing you cannot trust me to keep this secret. Or you do make me an offer, but you believe -- because you do not trust me -- that you will not honour it."

Increasingly more perplexed, Paige follows him with her eyes alone when he moves, the corners of her mouth pulled down into an obvious frown of concentration. This is not a language she's at all well-versed in, for all her pretending, and it needs some tracking. "What offer could I possibly make you? I'm no whore and I'm no dignitary, no one with the means to fulfill what has probably become by now in your life an impressive thirst for connections, for things to hold over the heads of others. There's nothing I have that you'd want."

His mouth quirks once more to a small smile, although one hand comes up to smooth it away. "I have no desire to bed you, although I am sure," -- and one hand comes up, as though to fend off the notion of insult -- "you have admirers. As for the rest --" He shrugs, lifting a hand again to rake his hair back from his eyes. "You have one thing I want, which is a name, but that you will not give me. Am I to take it your fear of your embarassment -- your catastrophe, if you like -- is so great that you will not put a foot out of place where this woman is concerned?"

"Please," Paige interjects after his addition, as if his tacking that last on to defend himself from her wrath was insult enough. Then, when he's finished and she's thought it over, she affirms with, "Yes. Because it would be catastrophe. If people knew..." Trailing off, looking down, she leaves it at that. It would be bad enough. "What would you do, if I told you?"

Sefton's dark eyes rest square on her face now, measuring her in some way that he does not signal. "If you told me," he replies, still drawing his words out, contemplative now, "then I would be keeping two secrets for you, Paige."

"And how do I know I can trust you?" It's a simple question or just the tone of her voice has it sounding so very, very easy. With a challenge hidden somewhere in the lift of her chin Paige stares right back at him.

"You do not know you can trust me," Sefton replies, lifting his hands once more, to shrug his helplessness in that. "I am telling you that you can, but if you wish to take advantage of that, you are obliged to take my word."

The measure of him is taken slowly, delicately almost. Paige is still unused to this man sitting on his couch in his room, offering her trust and being amused. But when small animals are backed into a corner they fight or fly. "Miniyal." There.

There is no pretence of shock, or really anything much of a reaction at all. Sefton simply nods, once more raking his curls back from his eyes, and he continues watching her. "What does Miniyal know, that you do not wish others to know?"

"You wanted a name." The narrowing of Paige's eyes is subtle and unhappy. Stubbornly she continues, "And I gave it to you. If I told you what she knows then I'd have two people hanging it over my head and I have plenty enough shadows following me around."

"If you cannot trust me," Sefton points out, still courteous -- less lazy and unkind now -- then I will tell Miniyal that I know, and she will tell the world. If you can trust me, then I will not tell her name, and neither will I tell your secret. You have taken your leap now, Paige. If you wish to make something of it, I would like you to complete it."

There's that set to her again, that mountainous steadfastedness, like waves could come crashing down and yet she'd be unmoving. It's in the rare moments like these, when such demand is put on her, that she becomes more than the frailest leaf clinging to the tree. "That won't change that the two of you will know. Why do /you/ need to know? Why is it such an important detail?"

"I don't need to know," Sefton replies. "I would like to know. I would like to know because, I suppose, I like to know things. And because -- perhaps I am arrogant -- it strikes me that this thing you fear might be a thing in which I might take a hand, to your benefit. I am, as you have noted, not without influence."

Paige seems to be holding herself frozen for that long moment after he speaks, the long moment she creates out of silence and pause. Then, perhaps oddly, another smile curves up her mouth on one side; sweet and suddenly gentle is her face, the expression she wears. "I like to know things too," she tells him. And, then, "And you're right." In the second that hangs between that and the next that smile disappears, "You are arrogant." Turning, her hands around her skirts to keep them up from the floor, she makes for the door without scurry. Long, confident strides. She'll make them if it kills her.

Sefton laughs once more, unrestrained, tipping his head back without raising a protest at her departure, his mirth apparently entirely genuine. He trains dark eyes on her once more as she reaches the door, but they are full of amusement -- and something else, positive -- even after his laughter has stopped. "Please do not go through my posssessions again," he manages, his lazy drawl restored once more.

"I won't," Paige calls back, breathless, over her shoulder, having some trouble with the handle of the door before getting it open. Turning so she'll be backing out, she yells, "And leave me alone!" And, out of instinct, she very carefully and gently shuts the door behind her, making her exit a most contradictory one.

Sefton watches that exit with every sign of enjoyment, grinning broadly. Only after she is gone does he rise from the couch, crossing over to inspect his desk, and glance down at the letters, picking up those Paige discarded to look them over in silence.