"No one speaks for me"
Who: G'thon and Issa.
When: day 9 or so, month 5, turn two of the seventh pass.
Where: G'thon's new quarters. Before a body turns up in them, thank you!
What: Issa makes good on G'thon's request for tea and conversation.
G'thon's Quarters
The job of moving in has only been half-done. The bedchamber is made up - most likely the headwoman's staff saw to that - and the many bound volumes G'thon has collected over the turns have been arranged fairly well on a broad, tall bookshelf that dominates one wall of the main room. A little table and chairs provide dining or study space, and a rolling cart with tea service atop it is always to be found somewhere. A somewhat worn divan probably came with the place. Other than these things there is no sense of anyone having settled here. Certainly, there are signs of the moments of daily living; a soiled teacup, a recently-used quill stained with ink, a book left open on the mantel. But there are boxes and satchels against the wall and only a sparing few clothes moved into the wardrobe, as if the former weyrleader does not expect to reside here long - or cannot be bothered to properly unpack.
Contents:
Issa
Obvious Exits:
Out
------------------------------ G'thon's Quarters -----------------------------
G'thon: Tall, balding; lined face; hazel eyes; prominent nose, strong jawline. Dressed in gray and black, often forgoes the knot of a Reachian bronzerider.
Issa: Short brown hair and cold blue eyes. Issa has a small, athletic stature, and a rounded face with a birthmark on her left cheek.
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Tea is prepared, spices of local descent herbing the air with their steamy scents. G'thon is somewhat less so; he's in the back of the main chamber by the fireplace, where no fire crackles, slipping out of his greatcoat. He's left the door open, so he must know the time of day; must expect this visitation. More proof of his - or someone's - expectation: a basket of warm pastry, very sweet, stationed upon the little table next to a little unlit lamp filled with a slightly green-colored oil.
When Issa appears in that open door, she looks a great deal healthier than when she last met the former Weyrleader. Her dark curls are arranged into some meager semblance of order and even her attire is more composed than normal, her rumpled and well-worn riding gear replaced by an ankle-length navy blue skirt and a short tunic of a heavy cream color. Her eyes find him easily, but she pauses just outside the entryway, schooling her face to match this placid composure. When her gentle smile and straight posture are firmly in place, she speaks, a simple assertion of her presence. "Sir." As her hands fold, clasping properly in front of her, she lets her gaze light on the clutter of the room, pausing on the bookshelf the tea set out before she turns to watch him expectantly.
G'thon finishes removing his coat and doubles it in his hands, turning to present a warm smile and mild reply. "Issa. Please come in. I haven't lit a fire - if you find it cold, I shall. Won't you have a seat? May I get you some tea?" All of these offerings - and then the old man starts toward the door through which Issa came in, obliging himself to cross the whole width of the room, going the long way 'round the furniture to do it.
"Yes, please," Issa replies easily, stepping further into the room. Skirt swirling around her ankles, she slips over to the table with a measured step, choosing the chair closest to her and lowering herself gracefully into it. "And don't bother about the fire. I'm well used to the little chill of the caverns." There's a lull in the conversation, which she uses to rearrange herself, legs crossing as her hands smooth down the little wrinkles that spring up on her skirt. Her eyes gradually find their way to G'thon's face, and she favors him with a polite smile. "Settling into... your new room, sir?"
There is a coat-peg by the entry. He hangs the coat there, but the true point of his travel might just as likely be the flattening of his pale palm against the door to assure it swings softly shut. "Not really," he replies then, after the lull, after the door's closing, after a little more silence. His smile is wry; it makes his words seem so. "I've been distracted by other business." He moves a little slower now that they're in private, allowing the ache of his scars to bend his gait slightly short on one side. Toward the tea he goes, and there stops to take up the pot, overturn a cup onto a saucer, poor. The ritual. His hands do it well, without measure of his attention. That he turns upon Issa instead, with that same warm wry smile: "I trust you're feeling better? I do have a little citrus and some molasses if you'd like them in your tea."
The little greenrider turns her eyes to watch his progress, apparently finding some significance in the shutting of the door or the limp to his step. But otherwise, she remains stationary in her chosen chair, her hands curled about her crossed knee. "I am. It was just a passing cold, that's all," Issa offers with a bit of a sheepish bent to her smile. "I don't think it was helped by my standing out in the rain, exactly, but I've gotten through it despite that moment of irrationality." Peeking over into the tea he's busy pouring, she then continues with a murmured, "Molasses would be wonderful."
"You were waiting for someone." G'thon provides this as a convenient excuse, not as a prying question - but he does cast up a quick dry glance, one silvered brow raised, to make it clear he finds the excuse amusing as well as adequate. With two cups of tea poured he takes from the tray a creamer and another container somewhat like it; the latter contains, apparently, molasses. With that in offering he apparently sees it fit to forgo sweetener, and brings to Issa's place one of the cups, a wee spoon upon its saucer, and both of the amendments. "I'll let you fix it up," he murmurs, and retreats to the tea tray for his own cup. "It's been a wet spring, so I expect more of those little bugs to go around. A turbulent season." Her words.
A tiny trickle of laughter breaks through the polite demeanor that Issa's managed to maintain until now. "I was. Though I could have chosen a drier spot to wait." She shrugs off the subject however, tucking back a glossy curl before she leans forward to fiddle with the molasses and tea, eyes hidden from view as she peers down. Wee spoon is dipped into the container where the molasses lies and is lifted with a liberal amount of the gooey stuff balanced precariously on its end. Ever so carefully its ferried across to her cup and stirred in with a faint clinking. She daintily gathers up the cup and saucer, not ceasing her stirring as she lifts her gaze to him again. "Turbulent," she agrees, her echo of the word falling heavier than it should. "And growing more so. My mother's becoming worried about the incidents in the lower caverns."
G'thon sets down his tea on a table beside another chair, but does not trouble to sit down yet. Instead he comes back by Issa to wait and, when she's done with them, take the cream and molasses from her to return to the service. "As is mine," says the old man, and though he manages a little of that wryness in his retort, he shakes his head as well. The smile he'd greeted the greenrider with, and held until now, slips away. "We said we'd speak frankly here, didn't we? May I ask you a question, Issa?"
Issa tips her cup against her lips, allowing for a heat-testing sip before she indulges any further. The cup is then lowered before she answers, her eyes following it down, to the saucer waiting in her left hand and balanced there deftly until her right can swing about to provide further support. The greenrider blinks back up at him again, her lips still effortlessly twisted into an obliging smile. "Of course, sir." Her fingers if spied, however, gripping the saucer with a white-knuckled tension, would provide a tiny glimpse past that calm exterior that she holds in place so well.
Having done with the molasses and cream, the old man has at last no reason not to move slowly across the room to the chair opposite Issa's and sink, as if it pains him, into it. Only once settled does he offer her a wan smile. "Don't 'sir' me. Not after you've already Ganathoned me." His tone is gentle, moreso than the words deserve. "You mentioned people disappearing. And I had an idea as to what you meant - but since then - well. It's been disconcerting, hearing what I hear out there." A tip of his bald head suggests the lower caverns, perhaps, down the hall on which he now lives; but he cannot have lived here long enough, yet, to have 'heard' literally those goings-on. "I am not under the impression any dreadful ill has befallen Diya." That's not a question. But he stops talking there, reposed in his chair and watching Issa closely, as if it were.
There's a slight lift to Issa's eyebrows, a flicker of surprise that slips through at his admonition, and she offers a tilting nod of her head. Fair enough, seems to be the unspoken sentiment. For all the warnings of frank conversation, she seems to be unprepared for such a turn and buys time by slowly lifting her cup for a pensive sip of her tea, eyes skipping across the wall behind G'thon's left shoulder. "It's hard to know exactly what has befallen Diya at all," she finally answers, gaze drifting deliberately back to his face. Her cup is replaced, and she balances it on its saucer, the saucer on her knee, all steadied by her firm fingers. One hand is freed from that trifling duty though, and it wanders to her throat where a small emerald pendant hangs. With her elbow propped on the arm of the chair, she traces the face of the jewel idly. "She was, though, the disappearance I referred to. You'll understand, surely, if I say that her absence eclipses other questionable disappearances I've heard of, terrible though they may be. It's been... hard to be without her." Frankness promised is delivered, if the sincerity in her voice is any indication.
"Is it?" G'thon's brows arch high, sending those fine creases in repeating curves up the length of his forehead. But he does not push farther upon the subject of what's befallen Diya. Instead he bends sideways to take up his tea - only to stop halfway back into his straight-backed repose in the chair and witness, silent, the greenrider's fingers upon the pendant. One brow settles; the other remains high. There is a terrible length of silence in which he displays no grasp of social manners at all and simply watches the woman's hand and the jewel she toys with. Eventually he does draw his gaze up to her face; for her, his eyes offer the gift of reproach. Thin lips express certain disapproval, as if already he finds the terms of their engagement wanting on her part. But he speaks calmly, and according only to what Issa has already said. "Yes." A beat. "It has been. I regret that she is not here to help." He sits there, then, with the saucer cradled in one palm and the teacup's handle pinched lightly between finger and thumb of the other hand, one brow quirked. If what he has said sounds odd, well, it seems likely that it was intentional, given his expression.
In response to his stare, Issa's fingers hurriedly straighten the pendant again, fingertips smoothing it flat against her skin before she drops her hand, letting it instead hang off the end of the arm of the chair. "Help, s-?" she prompts, clipping out the offensive syllable before it can drop into conversation. And like her memory, her composure is already beginning to slip, a faint frown finding her forehead as she puzzles out his reaction. "With the... transition? I was..." and a pause follows, perhaps for a mental reminder of just what is called for in this conversation, "unaware that Diya had any involvement in the change in leadership."
"Issa." G'thon's lips press thinner yet. "Diya could not have done what I hope to do. Not as our weyrwoman, in any case." He looks down, then, reviewing his distorted reflection in the surface of his tea. "Unfortunately, as I may have implied in our earlier meeting, I did not adequately prepare for the extent of opportunism Yevide might exhibit. This may be somewhat more challenging than I had anticipated - and I regret." He looks up; slips the least trace of his one-sided smile; banishes it. "I regret that it will be slower than I had hoped. Now." He raises the cup from the saucer, bends his head slightly, half-closes his eyes and blows across the surface of the steaming liquid. "You mentioned other disappearances. The people are unhappy. If you won't talk to me about Diya - " He glances up. He does not quite need to get her eyes with his to make his point; a spot somewhere beneath her chin will do, and then he looks into his tea once more. "Talk to me about my Weyr."
So much to react to in his little speech, but Issa barely offers a bat of those pale eyes for all of it. Evenly, her motion measured, she takes the time to drink her tea as he speaks, her fixed gaze the only assurance that he still holds her full attention. She deems the subject of Diya past, or so it would seem from the direction her words take when she next speaks. "Our Weyr," she begins pointedly, the cup hovering saucerless just below that chin of hers, "has been torn apart by this scheme of yours." Though her voice carries a strictly neutral, fact-stating tone, a challenge snaps in her gaze as it meets his over the curve of her cup, unwavering as she then peripherally guides the tea down to its proper resting spot. There's a new tension tugging at her mouth, the polite smile sinking slowly away. "There are those who support our new leaders, but they're being quieted by someone... well, if not someone with official power, then someone with connections. Threats mostly, but it's escalating. The headmaster's assistant was kidnapped recently, those are the mutterings. Which prompted the resignation of the brownriding wingleader, who also happens to be her lover. A drastic move for someone wanting simply to thwart the Weyrleader's decision, sure. But it's what they feel they've been driven to do, it would seem. Which is all the more frightening." For a beat, she lets her gaze drop, one hand rotating her cup on its saucer idly as she thinks. "You said slowly," she notes. "Are you so sure that this goal you have in mind, this goal for which Diya is imperfect, is going to be attained?" And so the absent goldrider creeps back into the conversation, however briefly.
She's a spirit that haunts him, certainly; but G'thon only twitches another telling shred of that smile upward on the right-hand side when Diya's name, once banished, comes back again. "Quite," he replies, simply, and inclines his head in a genteel nod. The movement evolves gracefully into the raising of his cup, a solemn sip of tea. "I do not, however, want its imminence to be purchased by unrelated lives. That's a mistake I had not meant to repeat. Those who think it necessary to quell even the least support for our new leaders must learn to think otherwise." There is a slight sense that he has something else to say, but it seems he must replace his cup on its saucer, cross his legs at the knee, and place the saucer on the arm of the chair where one fingertip resting on its rim can keep it steady before he can speak further. Only then can he apparently glance up again, and this time offer his pale hazel regard for the greenrider's icy one. "And to adjust the targets of their energies."
Issa's own teacup remains steadied on her knee, and is stared at intently for a moment after he pronounces his faith in the success of his cause. Her gaze is lifted from that spot only by his mention of repeating mistakes, her eyes flicking up to meet his just as he deems it necessary to avoid them. "I think you dismiss their conviction too easily, Ganathon," she says coolly once he's raised his eyes again. If he won't have one title, he will have the other. "Your Weyrleaders have obviously failed to convince them that these new and appropriate targets that you so vaguely indicate involve what's best for High Reaches. 'Adjusting' is no longer a matter of debate and discussion. As they've clearly shown." The greenrider shakes her head and lowers her intent gaze to capture her teacup in a pensive stare once again. "I don't want you to underestimate them. They've followed through on a few of their threats. If they do so for the other things we hear..." A helpless shrug, and she returns her eyes to him, watching how he reacts to that insinuation left hanging in the air.
"I don't underestimate them. Not now. But Issa - " The Weyr's former leader settles a little more deeply into his chair, letting his shoulders fall slightly round even while keeping his back distressingly straight. "I wonder what you believe I can, or should, do to stop them. I do not have the level of support I might have hoped for." He bends his head without letting his eyes leave her, raising his cup from the saucer - that remains on the chair's arm - for a sip. Only as the liquid slips past his lips does he half-close his eyes again, for a moment perhaps transcendant in tea. When he replaces the cup this time there is the faint chink of fine ceramic, a slight clumsiness of the fingers in not settling the cup's foot precisely into the saucer's hollow. "What other things do you hear?"
"Vagueness everywhere," is apparently what Issa hears, "Insinuations of harm to supporters, to their loved ones. Though death has never cropped up specifically in the chain of reports, I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility." Her right hand, left idle for so long, now stirs to help guide her mostly empty, mostly cooled teacup and its saucer to the table. "As for a plan of action? Perhaps you would be better off asking one of your Caucus-trained bronzeriders." As she leans back into her chair, that faint smile springs to life again, weakly. "I'm just a greenrider with her ear to the lower caverns. I make observations, that's all. I don't assume to have the wherewithal to suggest broad political maneuvers, that's for sure." Candidly, she meets his gaze, composure regained for the moment, her hands folding, one over the other, in her lap.
"There have been some, however." G'thon's finger resettles along the rim of the saucer, securing it upon the arm of the chair, and his gaze lowers to the surface of the tea shivering slightly from its unsteadiness there. "Deaths." He's quiet then, though upon 'bronzeriders' he looks up again, and finds it within himself to arch one of those pale brows very high indeed. That's the expression he offers her when she finds her eyes again with hers. "You have the wherewithal to suggest them, Issa, unless I mistake your perceptiveness and your command of language. The wherewithal to make them has been denied you some time; but please." He overturns the hand not busied by holding the tea steady, offering her his long, pale palm as supplication. "We agreed to speak frankly here. As I mentioned before, I cannot seem to make such an agreement with a Caucus-trained bronzerider." A very specific one. "By all means, make your suggestions."
Issa turns her face down to concentrate on her cuticles, the mention of the reality of death causing a clouded flicker of emotion that must be hidden. "Oh, yes," she responds, quietly reluctant, as if that memory would have been better left buried. "You think that... Lady Sian and... it was connected to those same threats?" Tender worry invades her voice, but she swallows it down as she lifts her eyes to gather his response. "It changes everything if these same people have already made the leap into such a dangerous territory," she explains. There's a promise of the expected advice inherent in her tone, but it won't come before she's gotten the details straightened out, it seems. Expectantly, she waits, eyes skipping as she studies his response.
"I don't know." He's earnest, eyes steady. The promise of her intonation wins back his composure; his brows resettle and he rests his long pale hand again on one leg. Daring, the finger that steadies his saucer taps it in a silent cadence. "I am not sure it could be said the Lady Sian supported our new leaders. I do, however, think that it might be said that where one cause for killing goes unpunished, others will find opportunity as well." G'thon lets out a bit of a sigh, not quite repetant but certainly rueful enough, and looks down at his tea. Tea, Issa. Issa, tea. "I think we have to assume the leap has been taken, or that it will be at any moment. As much as I might like to make preventative arrangements - Issa, I am hoping you will have some other advice, as well."
"Yes," Issa muses, drawing out the sibilant sound. Slowly, it leaks out into a breathy sigh and then fades into silence as she nods over what little concrete information G'thon has to offer her. She looks away then, letting her gaze land where it will without really looking at anything in the room. One can see the options being weighed, consequences measured, possible paths flipped through and discarded or amended. With a pensive lethargy, one hand travels up, fingertips tapping restlessly at her lips as she thinks. "The guards need to redouble their efforts, obviously. If they can spend so much time keeping watch on one Caucus goldrider, they can surely spare some effort for the interests of another," she says through those masking fingers, no apology in her voice for referring to the Weyrwoman in such terms. "They're independent from the leadership, officially at least. It would do well to quiet the violence without validating their threat to the stability of our leaders." Something sparks in Issa's countenance then: a small twitch of her lips but not a smile, a thinning of her gaze but not a glare. She regards the former Weyrleader again. "And as much as you may not want to hear it, we need a Reachian touch to our leadership. They don't trust J'cor. I don't trust him," she admits, "If perhaps they could see your influence still, sir, things would quiet." It's all deliberate now, the way she speaks, even the inclusion of that banished title. "This complete displacement," and again her gaze scans the room, "can't be helping."
G'thon nods once, then again, about the guards; a discontent narrowness creates fine lines around the corners of his eyes. "They - " He takes a breath, parts his lips with his tongue to smooth them, and closes his mouth around whatever else he might have said. One brow creeps up at what he might not want to hear, then resettles almost immediately. By the time he speaks he has on a wry version of that lopsided smile; his words are flavored with no sparing use of bitter. "I have recently been told that my touch upon our leadership is undesireable. That it should be, at most, invisible. Hence." He overturns that slim pale hand again and this time wriggles the fingers as he sweeps a gesture around, welcoming her to gaze all she likes; the man who was Weyrleader understands her point, obviously. "I think I find your words comforting, in truth. I will not abandon my efforts to exert influence. Perhaps I should begin with Lexine's guards, then?"
"I had gathered as much." Another frank admission falls freely from this observant greenrider about the distaste the Igenites have for local influences. "I would yes. The Captain..." Issa hesitates, eyes skipping away from his only to return with a much deeper frown. "I can't speak for his loyalties, but he seems like the sort of man to listen to reason. I would speak with him yourself, however." She heaves a sigh that erases that modest grimace, shifting in her seat as she switches the order of her legs primly. "Invisibility, secrecy are... in part, what caused the turmoil that we have now," she delivers levelly, "We could all do with a little less, I think."
"Have I any alternative? No one speaks for me, Issa." But G'thon is only dejected for a moment, and only very slightly so even in that briefest time. Slowly his smile creeps back up the right side of his mouth; slowly a little light sparks in his eyes and he chases his gaze back from the half-unpacked furnishing of his new residence to the woman's face. "I will talk to him. But I have a few things I must put in order before I may do a great deal without cover. The fact remains that I am here in part at the weyrleader's sufferance. To act in a manner that he cannot be convinced is in his best interest, is in fact within the scope of his order - " The old man's smile turns weak and he again breaks eye contact. "I need to be have reason above his command to remain at High Reaches before I may be -too- bold."
"Then, for your sake, I wish these people handing out threats have my enduring patience for such things." For all her claims to quiet persistance, there's an restless tic beating irregularly beneath Issa's calm words and the eyes that meet his flash a steely sharpness his way. "Boldness is occasionally called for," she says, substituting her own twist on his words from their previous conversation.
G'thon looks up at her for some time in silence, his smile slipped from weak to absent. "I suppose you are correct," he manages at last, voice warmed by the smile he can no longer coax his lips to wear. Another sigh, tight-throated, tense-shouldered. He uncrosses his legs and slides forward in his chair, barely perched there now. "When I am gone, then, Issa, will it be you who takes my place? - No matter," and with a wave of that ghostly and slender hand he dismisses his own question. "I must do the best I can and not concern myself with the consequences of my failure. But tell me." Now he finds her face again with his hazel regard, and in so doing regains some measure of his composure, some dignity and distance with which to comport himself. "What would Diya say, if she knew you'd advised me so?"
Issa slowly detaches her gaze from the former Weyrleader as the subject returns to one she thought abandoned long ago. "I like to comfort myself by thinking that she'd say I was doing the best I knew how in the wake of recent events." The rigid harshness of the gaze she turns on him has migrated to her voice now, bristling against his insinuation of displeasure on her absent mentors part. "Since no one can seem to find her, I suppose I'll have to be content with that." Blame flies rampant under her cool delivery, but that's nothing new. As her hand smoothes idly at her skirt once again, she quiets herself to a strictly conversational tone then. "No one can find her... can they?" Brashly taking advantage of their agreement to frankness, she rests her attention on his expression, her suspicion allowed to affect her features in a quick thinning of those pale blue eyes.
A low murmur, little more than a 'hm' of assent, darkens the old man's throat as his only reply regarding whether the vanished weyrwoman would be pleased or not with these goings-on. He suffers willingly - even willfully, perhaps - the greenrider's condemnations; he remains unflustered even by her bristles. Once she has smoothed herself, he allows her a faint smile, which might at first seem his only answer to her last question. But then he pops his jaw, a habitual gesture foreboding words. A hesitation, then: "I suppose it would depend on whether one knew where to look." A bit abruptly, G'thon takes up his cup and saucer in separate hands, though the cup's foot and saucer's bowl remain in intimate arrangement; so encumbered, he gets to his feet and starts around the chair toward the tea-service, as though his drink requires refreshment or amendment. So spared the directness of eye contact he speaks a little more, voice soft, head bowed. "And upon whether one had the means to go looking."
The greenrider watches G'thon make his way to the tea for only so long before she turns to stare at her own cup sitting abandoned on the table, the mouthful of molasses-sweetened tea that remains within it grown still and cold. With G'thon's back turned she indulges in a moment of surprise, one eyebrow ascending into a graceful arch, though it doesn't have the desperate tilt that might be expected. Perhaps there's an inkling of the sentiment remaining in her widened eyes when he turns back to look at her, but her voice carries nothing of the sort. "And these 'means'... are attainable?"
He has put his cup down by the time he turns around - and done nothing else, apparently. No pouring, no stirring. An excuse. Now he faces her, and a pale hand props him up against the tea-cart as though he can no longer quite stand to support his own posture, as if he might collapse of weary weight at any time. There's no small hint of that in his expression and in the little sigh he lets out before he replies. "I don't like to think what I think about where Diya's gone. She was - " He swallows. This is an unusual gesture, the rise and fall of the lump in his neck, the staring suddenly at the floor, only to glance back up with equal abruptness. "If there was any more reasonable hiding spot, I would rather think she'd found it. But even I've heard Nenuith might have flown - and certainly not at any of the Weyrs, or in their coverages. Am I just hearing nonsense, Issa? I - " Hesitation, again. Emotion, perhaps. His eyes seem a little watery, hazel turning pale. "You would know better than I."
Issa turns slightly in her chair to watch this unusual display at his first faltering, her attuned hearing marking easily the aberration. There is no sympathy stirred in her countenance, however, for sudden showings of emotion. No, the slant is to be found in her voice, a melancholy devotion stringing along through her words, as she replies, "I've heard the same. And I don't doubt the sense of it." Easily hands are folded once again, but this time a single finger escapes confinement, tapping aimlessly on the knuckles of the opposite hand. "Nenuith was due to rise long ago. It's logical that..." But a quick shake of her head sweeps that train of thought away. "It seems she's gone off the map," she finishes, her shoulders struggling to offer a shrug under some enormous invisible weight, pale eyes meeting his watery gaze firmly.
"Yes." G'thon has very little else to say. He keeps that miserable look up for a time, until it seems he's no longer able to meet her eyes. Then he turns around and, to have something to do, picks up the pot and refreshes his tea. "Can I get you another cup?" Because he must, now that he has poured, offer. He comes away from the cart with eyes drier for the break, saucer cupped in one hand, to leave his own tea beside his chair.
"No, thank you," Issa responds, with no explanation for her refusal. The tilt of her chin grows ever steeper as he approaches and she watches him with intent eyes. "I'd like to ask you something, though," she says with a tone of bracing warning, "that might be a trifle more personal." There's a beat for that announcement to settle across the distance between them, and then she continues. "I've gathered that E'sere has been distant from you as of late. But I'm curious as to the direction that your conversations have taken since he's returned from Igen." With an extremely girlish gesture, she tucks a curl behind her ears and drops her gaze to her lap for a brief moment, perhaps giving weight to those rumors about a relationship between this greenrider and the evasive bronzerider.
G'thon's brows slide up. But his answer is quick in coming, or at least quick in beginning; the curl-tucking and gaze-dropping either affect him little, or incline him toward swift reply, perhaps to be kind. "We have discussed Nabol, to no conclusion of any merit, and the decline of reason, and E'sere has remarked that he doubts he will ever be comfortable with J'cor's leadership, or something to that effect." The summary is simple, but the old man finds an even more condensed version to offer, along with a helpless little shrug, before he retakes his seat across from the greenrider. "I asked him for his suggestions. He declined to make them."
That delicate gesture must have been a fluke, for there's no trifling disappointment to follow it up when Issa finds she's not among the topics he lists. With a puzzling frown, her gaze picks across the room as she picks over what he says. Then with a little purse of her lips, she turns to regard him again. "He's been much the same with me," she mutters, still a bit distracted by her own thoughts. "Well," marks the return of her full attention, however, "I hope that I have been somewhat more obliging."
"You have, and I hope I've earned it." This is a throwaway comment with barely a trace of his crooked smile attached, but warmly enough offered. More to the point, he goes on, "In truth I find myself currently somewhat worried about E'sere. He said he would visit his mother; I somehow doubt that he has done so." If G'thon is aware of the greenrider's apparent distraction, if he takes any note of the level of her interest in the wingleader's doings, he does not seem inlined to make any exceptions to his promise of frank speech because of them: "I think he's holding back. I wish I could trust him - but then, I expect he can't trust me. It's a matter about which we haven't spoken, not since Igen." Not since, therefore, Nabol. This is pertinent: the old man mouths a silent, surprised 'ah,' as though he's just remembered some other key point. "About Lord Odern. He said he had done what he could for them; that he could not do more. Do you believe that?"
"I'll admit that I don't know what to believe when it comes to E'sere, recently." Or Nabol for that matter, as the implication in her response runs that deep. Issa's twisted curls are now shaken away from her face hastily, whatever distracted her apparently giving way to frustration. "Though I do like to believe," she continues, what confidence she puts into the assertion sounding like the kind that is easily shaken, "that he wouldn't use the lives of so many innocents as a political tool. And that if he could spare the Nabolese the... ordeal of lasting Thread without coverage, he would." Pale eyes now eagerly search for either agreement or rebuttal for her hesitant beliefs.
"Then he must be doing something that he hasn't told me about." This is not intended to be in any way reassuring; in fact, G'thon's presentation could be better described as displeased than as hopeful. "I worry about him. If you like, I will try to talk to him - but I must admit I have little faith that he will have anything to say to me that would soothe either of us." A pause here, and the old man looks down at the tea beside him, then back up at Issa. He gambles on a weak, small smile, a private one, just for her. "I admit I would have thought you'd know more."
"No, don't." Talk to him, that is. Issa throws the directive out dismissively, as if it were merely a mere preference. "I don't think he'd be very happy to find I've been talking to you." For several beats the only thing that meets his tiny smile are a spattering of baffled blinks carried out in silence. But a smirk soon appears, demurely hidden as she drops her chin. "E'sere is a private man," is all she offers, a quiet reply. Her hands are unfolded from their position on her lap and she lifts herself from that retiring position to something more casual. Her elbow again finds rest on the arm of the chair and she props up her chin with her knuckles, staring across at the former Weyrleader.
"I see," replies G'thon, and allows a little more silence to balance the softness of her response. "Perhaps that is something they teach in Caucus." This comes out on a sigh while the dragonless rider pushes himself up out of his chair, like an old man reflecting bemusedly upon the newfangled things they teach in schools these days. A telling little sparkle in his eyes is brief, but betrays deeper intent attached to his words. He does not, however, delve further. Instead he begins the signals of closure: "This has been a real treat, Issa. I hope you'll come again some time."
At that cue, Issa too rises, too easily for the gravity of the conversation now behind them. Nudging back the chair, she leans just slightly to offer her hand in a ladylike gesture of farewell, carefully arranged curls spilling forward at the motion. "I'll be sure to, sir," she assures him, more than just forgetfulness accounting for that slip of a title.
He sighs a little, but this time does not correct her. Instead he puts out one of those pale and slender palms, fingers curved just a bit, to lift her hand in his. She will be ladylike; he shall be the gentleman. But their closeness allows him a last observation. It may be excused, perhaps, by the fall of her curls; they draw his gaze to the side of her face and downward, where the silver chain catches a little light. He glances at the emerald, then brings his eyes back up and removes his hand from beneath hers. "I'm sorry," G'thon murmurs, as though his downward glance had been indecent. "It's a lovely pendant. It reminds me of one I once gave a girl, many turns ago."
A smile curls Issa's lips, reminiscent of the one she wore upon entering. An indulgence for old men and their supposed romances long past. "Thank you. A gift," is the only explanation, those fingers he releases find the pendant subconciously. "Thank you for the tea. I hope you can settle into your new quarters without too much difficulty." One last sweeping gaze is spared for the disorder of a room before she turns back to offer a simple, "Goodbye."
"Any time." G'thon retreats, and as Issa's gaze draws attention to the state of his chambers, the old man is inclined to look around himself. His expression becomes a little distant, perhaps a little sad, wan-smiling. "Have a good evening," he responds, a little too late.
When: day 9 or so, month 5, turn two of the seventh pass.
Where: G'thon's new quarters. Before a body turns up in them, thank you!
What: Issa makes good on G'thon's request for tea and conversation.
G'thon's Quarters
The job of moving in has only been half-done. The bedchamber is made up - most likely the headwoman's staff saw to that - and the many bound volumes G'thon has collected over the turns have been arranged fairly well on a broad, tall bookshelf that dominates one wall of the main room. A little table and chairs provide dining or study space, and a rolling cart with tea service atop it is always to be found somewhere. A somewhat worn divan probably came with the place. Other than these things there is no sense of anyone having settled here. Certainly, there are signs of the moments of daily living; a soiled teacup, a recently-used quill stained with ink, a book left open on the mantel. But there are boxes and satchels against the wall and only a sparing few clothes moved into the wardrobe, as if the former weyrleader does not expect to reside here long - or cannot be bothered to properly unpack.
Contents:
Issa
Obvious Exits:
Out
------------------------------ G'thon's Quarters -----------------------------
G'thon: Tall, balding; lined face; hazel eyes; prominent nose, strong jawline. Dressed in gray and black, often forgoes the knot of a Reachian bronzerider.
Issa: Short brown hair and cold blue eyes. Issa has a small, athletic stature, and a rounded face with a birthmark on her left cheek.
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Tea is prepared, spices of local descent herbing the air with their steamy scents. G'thon is somewhat less so; he's in the back of the main chamber by the fireplace, where no fire crackles, slipping out of his greatcoat. He's left the door open, so he must know the time of day; must expect this visitation. More proof of his - or someone's - expectation: a basket of warm pastry, very sweet, stationed upon the little table next to a little unlit lamp filled with a slightly green-colored oil.
When Issa appears in that open door, she looks a great deal healthier than when she last met the former Weyrleader. Her dark curls are arranged into some meager semblance of order and even her attire is more composed than normal, her rumpled and well-worn riding gear replaced by an ankle-length navy blue skirt and a short tunic of a heavy cream color. Her eyes find him easily, but she pauses just outside the entryway, schooling her face to match this placid composure. When her gentle smile and straight posture are firmly in place, she speaks, a simple assertion of her presence. "Sir." As her hands fold, clasping properly in front of her, she lets her gaze light on the clutter of the room, pausing on the bookshelf the tea set out before she turns to watch him expectantly.
G'thon finishes removing his coat and doubles it in his hands, turning to present a warm smile and mild reply. "Issa. Please come in. I haven't lit a fire - if you find it cold, I shall. Won't you have a seat? May I get you some tea?" All of these offerings - and then the old man starts toward the door through which Issa came in, obliging himself to cross the whole width of the room, going the long way 'round the furniture to do it.
"Yes, please," Issa replies easily, stepping further into the room. Skirt swirling around her ankles, she slips over to the table with a measured step, choosing the chair closest to her and lowering herself gracefully into it. "And don't bother about the fire. I'm well used to the little chill of the caverns." There's a lull in the conversation, which she uses to rearrange herself, legs crossing as her hands smooth down the little wrinkles that spring up on her skirt. Her eyes gradually find their way to G'thon's face, and she favors him with a polite smile. "Settling into... your new room, sir?"
There is a coat-peg by the entry. He hangs the coat there, but the true point of his travel might just as likely be the flattening of his pale palm against the door to assure it swings softly shut. "Not really," he replies then, after the lull, after the door's closing, after a little more silence. His smile is wry; it makes his words seem so. "I've been distracted by other business." He moves a little slower now that they're in private, allowing the ache of his scars to bend his gait slightly short on one side. Toward the tea he goes, and there stops to take up the pot, overturn a cup onto a saucer, poor. The ritual. His hands do it well, without measure of his attention. That he turns upon Issa instead, with that same warm wry smile: "I trust you're feeling better? I do have a little citrus and some molasses if you'd like them in your tea."
The little greenrider turns her eyes to watch his progress, apparently finding some significance in the shutting of the door or the limp to his step. But otherwise, she remains stationary in her chosen chair, her hands curled about her crossed knee. "I am. It was just a passing cold, that's all," Issa offers with a bit of a sheepish bent to her smile. "I don't think it was helped by my standing out in the rain, exactly, but I've gotten through it despite that moment of irrationality." Peeking over into the tea he's busy pouring, she then continues with a murmured, "Molasses would be wonderful."
"You were waiting for someone." G'thon provides this as a convenient excuse, not as a prying question - but he does cast up a quick dry glance, one silvered brow raised, to make it clear he finds the excuse amusing as well as adequate. With two cups of tea poured he takes from the tray a creamer and another container somewhat like it; the latter contains, apparently, molasses. With that in offering he apparently sees it fit to forgo sweetener, and brings to Issa's place one of the cups, a wee spoon upon its saucer, and both of the amendments. "I'll let you fix it up," he murmurs, and retreats to the tea tray for his own cup. "It's been a wet spring, so I expect more of those little bugs to go around. A turbulent season." Her words.
A tiny trickle of laughter breaks through the polite demeanor that Issa's managed to maintain until now. "I was. Though I could have chosen a drier spot to wait." She shrugs off the subject however, tucking back a glossy curl before she leans forward to fiddle with the molasses and tea, eyes hidden from view as she peers down. Wee spoon is dipped into the container where the molasses lies and is lifted with a liberal amount of the gooey stuff balanced precariously on its end. Ever so carefully its ferried across to her cup and stirred in with a faint clinking. She daintily gathers up the cup and saucer, not ceasing her stirring as she lifts her gaze to him again. "Turbulent," she agrees, her echo of the word falling heavier than it should. "And growing more so. My mother's becoming worried about the incidents in the lower caverns."
G'thon sets down his tea on a table beside another chair, but does not trouble to sit down yet. Instead he comes back by Issa to wait and, when she's done with them, take the cream and molasses from her to return to the service. "As is mine," says the old man, and though he manages a little of that wryness in his retort, he shakes his head as well. The smile he'd greeted the greenrider with, and held until now, slips away. "We said we'd speak frankly here, didn't we? May I ask you a question, Issa?"
Issa tips her cup against her lips, allowing for a heat-testing sip before she indulges any further. The cup is then lowered before she answers, her eyes following it down, to the saucer waiting in her left hand and balanced there deftly until her right can swing about to provide further support. The greenrider blinks back up at him again, her lips still effortlessly twisted into an obliging smile. "Of course, sir." Her fingers if spied, however, gripping the saucer with a white-knuckled tension, would provide a tiny glimpse past that calm exterior that she holds in place so well.
Having done with the molasses and cream, the old man has at last no reason not to move slowly across the room to the chair opposite Issa's and sink, as if it pains him, into it. Only once settled does he offer her a wan smile. "Don't 'sir' me. Not after you've already Ganathoned me." His tone is gentle, moreso than the words deserve. "You mentioned people disappearing. And I had an idea as to what you meant - but since then - well. It's been disconcerting, hearing what I hear out there." A tip of his bald head suggests the lower caverns, perhaps, down the hall on which he now lives; but he cannot have lived here long enough, yet, to have 'heard' literally those goings-on. "I am not under the impression any dreadful ill has befallen Diya." That's not a question. But he stops talking there, reposed in his chair and watching Issa closely, as if it were.
There's a slight lift to Issa's eyebrows, a flicker of surprise that slips through at his admonition, and she offers a tilting nod of her head. Fair enough, seems to be the unspoken sentiment. For all the warnings of frank conversation, she seems to be unprepared for such a turn and buys time by slowly lifting her cup for a pensive sip of her tea, eyes skipping across the wall behind G'thon's left shoulder. "It's hard to know exactly what has befallen Diya at all," she finally answers, gaze drifting deliberately back to his face. Her cup is replaced, and she balances it on its saucer, the saucer on her knee, all steadied by her firm fingers. One hand is freed from that trifling duty though, and it wanders to her throat where a small emerald pendant hangs. With her elbow propped on the arm of the chair, she traces the face of the jewel idly. "She was, though, the disappearance I referred to. You'll understand, surely, if I say that her absence eclipses other questionable disappearances I've heard of, terrible though they may be. It's been... hard to be without her." Frankness promised is delivered, if the sincerity in her voice is any indication.
"Is it?" G'thon's brows arch high, sending those fine creases in repeating curves up the length of his forehead. But he does not push farther upon the subject of what's befallen Diya. Instead he bends sideways to take up his tea - only to stop halfway back into his straight-backed repose in the chair and witness, silent, the greenrider's fingers upon the pendant. One brow settles; the other remains high. There is a terrible length of silence in which he displays no grasp of social manners at all and simply watches the woman's hand and the jewel she toys with. Eventually he does draw his gaze up to her face; for her, his eyes offer the gift of reproach. Thin lips express certain disapproval, as if already he finds the terms of their engagement wanting on her part. But he speaks calmly, and according only to what Issa has already said. "Yes." A beat. "It has been. I regret that she is not here to help." He sits there, then, with the saucer cradled in one palm and the teacup's handle pinched lightly between finger and thumb of the other hand, one brow quirked. If what he has said sounds odd, well, it seems likely that it was intentional, given his expression.
In response to his stare, Issa's fingers hurriedly straighten the pendant again, fingertips smoothing it flat against her skin before she drops her hand, letting it instead hang off the end of the arm of the chair. "Help, s-?" she prompts, clipping out the offensive syllable before it can drop into conversation. And like her memory, her composure is already beginning to slip, a faint frown finding her forehead as she puzzles out his reaction. "With the... transition? I was..." and a pause follows, perhaps for a mental reminder of just what is called for in this conversation, "unaware that Diya had any involvement in the change in leadership."
"Issa." G'thon's lips press thinner yet. "Diya could not have done what I hope to do. Not as our weyrwoman, in any case." He looks down, then, reviewing his distorted reflection in the surface of his tea. "Unfortunately, as I may have implied in our earlier meeting, I did not adequately prepare for the extent of opportunism Yevide might exhibit. This may be somewhat more challenging than I had anticipated - and I regret." He looks up; slips the least trace of his one-sided smile; banishes it. "I regret that it will be slower than I had hoped. Now." He raises the cup from the saucer, bends his head slightly, half-closes his eyes and blows across the surface of the steaming liquid. "You mentioned other disappearances. The people are unhappy. If you won't talk to me about Diya - " He glances up. He does not quite need to get her eyes with his to make his point; a spot somewhere beneath her chin will do, and then he looks into his tea once more. "Talk to me about my Weyr."
So much to react to in his little speech, but Issa barely offers a bat of those pale eyes for all of it. Evenly, her motion measured, she takes the time to drink her tea as he speaks, her fixed gaze the only assurance that he still holds her full attention. She deems the subject of Diya past, or so it would seem from the direction her words take when she next speaks. "Our Weyr," she begins pointedly, the cup hovering saucerless just below that chin of hers, "has been torn apart by this scheme of yours." Though her voice carries a strictly neutral, fact-stating tone, a challenge snaps in her gaze as it meets his over the curve of her cup, unwavering as she then peripherally guides the tea down to its proper resting spot. There's a new tension tugging at her mouth, the polite smile sinking slowly away. "There are those who support our new leaders, but they're being quieted by someone... well, if not someone with official power, then someone with connections. Threats mostly, but it's escalating. The headmaster's assistant was kidnapped recently, those are the mutterings. Which prompted the resignation of the brownriding wingleader, who also happens to be her lover. A drastic move for someone wanting simply to thwart the Weyrleader's decision, sure. But it's what they feel they've been driven to do, it would seem. Which is all the more frightening." For a beat, she lets her gaze drop, one hand rotating her cup on its saucer idly as she thinks. "You said slowly," she notes. "Are you so sure that this goal you have in mind, this goal for which Diya is imperfect, is going to be attained?" And so the absent goldrider creeps back into the conversation, however briefly.
She's a spirit that haunts him, certainly; but G'thon only twitches another telling shred of that smile upward on the right-hand side when Diya's name, once banished, comes back again. "Quite," he replies, simply, and inclines his head in a genteel nod. The movement evolves gracefully into the raising of his cup, a solemn sip of tea. "I do not, however, want its imminence to be purchased by unrelated lives. That's a mistake I had not meant to repeat. Those who think it necessary to quell even the least support for our new leaders must learn to think otherwise." There is a slight sense that he has something else to say, but it seems he must replace his cup on its saucer, cross his legs at the knee, and place the saucer on the arm of the chair where one fingertip resting on its rim can keep it steady before he can speak further. Only then can he apparently glance up again, and this time offer his pale hazel regard for the greenrider's icy one. "And to adjust the targets of their energies."
Issa's own teacup remains steadied on her knee, and is stared at intently for a moment after he pronounces his faith in the success of his cause. Her gaze is lifted from that spot only by his mention of repeating mistakes, her eyes flicking up to meet his just as he deems it necessary to avoid them. "I think you dismiss their conviction too easily, Ganathon," she says coolly once he's raised his eyes again. If he won't have one title, he will have the other. "Your Weyrleaders have obviously failed to convince them that these new and appropriate targets that you so vaguely indicate involve what's best for High Reaches. 'Adjusting' is no longer a matter of debate and discussion. As they've clearly shown." The greenrider shakes her head and lowers her intent gaze to capture her teacup in a pensive stare once again. "I don't want you to underestimate them. They've followed through on a few of their threats. If they do so for the other things we hear..." A helpless shrug, and she returns her eyes to him, watching how he reacts to that insinuation left hanging in the air.
"I don't underestimate them. Not now. But Issa - " The Weyr's former leader settles a little more deeply into his chair, letting his shoulders fall slightly round even while keeping his back distressingly straight. "I wonder what you believe I can, or should, do to stop them. I do not have the level of support I might have hoped for." He bends his head without letting his eyes leave her, raising his cup from the saucer - that remains on the chair's arm - for a sip. Only as the liquid slips past his lips does he half-close his eyes again, for a moment perhaps transcendant in tea. When he replaces the cup this time there is the faint chink of fine ceramic, a slight clumsiness of the fingers in not settling the cup's foot precisely into the saucer's hollow. "What other things do you hear?"
"Vagueness everywhere," is apparently what Issa hears, "Insinuations of harm to supporters, to their loved ones. Though death has never cropped up specifically in the chain of reports, I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility." Her right hand, left idle for so long, now stirs to help guide her mostly empty, mostly cooled teacup and its saucer to the table. "As for a plan of action? Perhaps you would be better off asking one of your Caucus-trained bronzeriders." As she leans back into her chair, that faint smile springs to life again, weakly. "I'm just a greenrider with her ear to the lower caverns. I make observations, that's all. I don't assume to have the wherewithal to suggest broad political maneuvers, that's for sure." Candidly, she meets his gaze, composure regained for the moment, her hands folding, one over the other, in her lap.
"There have been some, however." G'thon's finger resettles along the rim of the saucer, securing it upon the arm of the chair, and his gaze lowers to the surface of the tea shivering slightly from its unsteadiness there. "Deaths." He's quiet then, though upon 'bronzeriders' he looks up again, and finds it within himself to arch one of those pale brows very high indeed. That's the expression he offers her when she finds her eyes again with hers. "You have the wherewithal to suggest them, Issa, unless I mistake your perceptiveness and your command of language. The wherewithal to make them has been denied you some time; but please." He overturns the hand not busied by holding the tea steady, offering her his long, pale palm as supplication. "We agreed to speak frankly here. As I mentioned before, I cannot seem to make such an agreement with a Caucus-trained bronzerider." A very specific one. "By all means, make your suggestions."
Issa turns her face down to concentrate on her cuticles, the mention of the reality of death causing a clouded flicker of emotion that must be hidden. "Oh, yes," she responds, quietly reluctant, as if that memory would have been better left buried. "You think that... Lady Sian and... it was connected to those same threats?" Tender worry invades her voice, but she swallows it down as she lifts her eyes to gather his response. "It changes everything if these same people have already made the leap into such a dangerous territory," she explains. There's a promise of the expected advice inherent in her tone, but it won't come before she's gotten the details straightened out, it seems. Expectantly, she waits, eyes skipping as she studies his response.
"I don't know." He's earnest, eyes steady. The promise of her intonation wins back his composure; his brows resettle and he rests his long pale hand again on one leg. Daring, the finger that steadies his saucer taps it in a silent cadence. "I am not sure it could be said the Lady Sian supported our new leaders. I do, however, think that it might be said that where one cause for killing goes unpunished, others will find opportunity as well." G'thon lets out a bit of a sigh, not quite repetant but certainly rueful enough, and looks down at his tea. Tea, Issa. Issa, tea. "I think we have to assume the leap has been taken, or that it will be at any moment. As much as I might like to make preventative arrangements - Issa, I am hoping you will have some other advice, as well."
"Yes," Issa muses, drawing out the sibilant sound. Slowly, it leaks out into a breathy sigh and then fades into silence as she nods over what little concrete information G'thon has to offer her. She looks away then, letting her gaze land where it will without really looking at anything in the room. One can see the options being weighed, consequences measured, possible paths flipped through and discarded or amended. With a pensive lethargy, one hand travels up, fingertips tapping restlessly at her lips as she thinks. "The guards need to redouble their efforts, obviously. If they can spend so much time keeping watch on one Caucus goldrider, they can surely spare some effort for the interests of another," she says through those masking fingers, no apology in her voice for referring to the Weyrwoman in such terms. "They're independent from the leadership, officially at least. It would do well to quiet the violence without validating their threat to the stability of our leaders." Something sparks in Issa's countenance then: a small twitch of her lips but not a smile, a thinning of her gaze but not a glare. She regards the former Weyrleader again. "And as much as you may not want to hear it, we need a Reachian touch to our leadership. They don't trust J'cor. I don't trust him," she admits, "If perhaps they could see your influence still, sir, things would quiet." It's all deliberate now, the way she speaks, even the inclusion of that banished title. "This complete displacement," and again her gaze scans the room, "can't be helping."
G'thon nods once, then again, about the guards; a discontent narrowness creates fine lines around the corners of his eyes. "They - " He takes a breath, parts his lips with his tongue to smooth them, and closes his mouth around whatever else he might have said. One brow creeps up at what he might not want to hear, then resettles almost immediately. By the time he speaks he has on a wry version of that lopsided smile; his words are flavored with no sparing use of bitter. "I have recently been told that my touch upon our leadership is undesireable. That it should be, at most, invisible. Hence." He overturns that slim pale hand again and this time wriggles the fingers as he sweeps a gesture around, welcoming her to gaze all she likes; the man who was Weyrleader understands her point, obviously. "I think I find your words comforting, in truth. I will not abandon my efforts to exert influence. Perhaps I should begin with Lexine's guards, then?"
"I had gathered as much." Another frank admission falls freely from this observant greenrider about the distaste the Igenites have for local influences. "I would yes. The Captain..." Issa hesitates, eyes skipping away from his only to return with a much deeper frown. "I can't speak for his loyalties, but he seems like the sort of man to listen to reason. I would speak with him yourself, however." She heaves a sigh that erases that modest grimace, shifting in her seat as she switches the order of her legs primly. "Invisibility, secrecy are... in part, what caused the turmoil that we have now," she delivers levelly, "We could all do with a little less, I think."
"Have I any alternative? No one speaks for me, Issa." But G'thon is only dejected for a moment, and only very slightly so even in that briefest time. Slowly his smile creeps back up the right side of his mouth; slowly a little light sparks in his eyes and he chases his gaze back from the half-unpacked furnishing of his new residence to the woman's face. "I will talk to him. But I have a few things I must put in order before I may do a great deal without cover. The fact remains that I am here in part at the weyrleader's sufferance. To act in a manner that he cannot be convinced is in his best interest, is in fact within the scope of his order - " The old man's smile turns weak and he again breaks eye contact. "I need to be have reason above his command to remain at High Reaches before I may be -too- bold."
"Then, for your sake, I wish these people handing out threats have my enduring patience for such things." For all her claims to quiet persistance, there's an restless tic beating irregularly beneath Issa's calm words and the eyes that meet his flash a steely sharpness his way. "Boldness is occasionally called for," she says, substituting her own twist on his words from their previous conversation.
G'thon looks up at her for some time in silence, his smile slipped from weak to absent. "I suppose you are correct," he manages at last, voice warmed by the smile he can no longer coax his lips to wear. Another sigh, tight-throated, tense-shouldered. He uncrosses his legs and slides forward in his chair, barely perched there now. "When I am gone, then, Issa, will it be you who takes my place? - No matter," and with a wave of that ghostly and slender hand he dismisses his own question. "I must do the best I can and not concern myself with the consequences of my failure. But tell me." Now he finds her face again with his hazel regard, and in so doing regains some measure of his composure, some dignity and distance with which to comport himself. "What would Diya say, if she knew you'd advised me so?"
Issa slowly detaches her gaze from the former Weyrleader as the subject returns to one she thought abandoned long ago. "I like to comfort myself by thinking that she'd say I was doing the best I knew how in the wake of recent events." The rigid harshness of the gaze she turns on him has migrated to her voice now, bristling against his insinuation of displeasure on her absent mentors part. "Since no one can seem to find her, I suppose I'll have to be content with that." Blame flies rampant under her cool delivery, but that's nothing new. As her hand smoothes idly at her skirt once again, she quiets herself to a strictly conversational tone then. "No one can find her... can they?" Brashly taking advantage of their agreement to frankness, she rests her attention on his expression, her suspicion allowed to affect her features in a quick thinning of those pale blue eyes.
A low murmur, little more than a 'hm' of assent, darkens the old man's throat as his only reply regarding whether the vanished weyrwoman would be pleased or not with these goings-on. He suffers willingly - even willfully, perhaps - the greenrider's condemnations; he remains unflustered even by her bristles. Once she has smoothed herself, he allows her a faint smile, which might at first seem his only answer to her last question. But then he pops his jaw, a habitual gesture foreboding words. A hesitation, then: "I suppose it would depend on whether one knew where to look." A bit abruptly, G'thon takes up his cup and saucer in separate hands, though the cup's foot and saucer's bowl remain in intimate arrangement; so encumbered, he gets to his feet and starts around the chair toward the tea-service, as though his drink requires refreshment or amendment. So spared the directness of eye contact he speaks a little more, voice soft, head bowed. "And upon whether one had the means to go looking."
The greenrider watches G'thon make his way to the tea for only so long before she turns to stare at her own cup sitting abandoned on the table, the mouthful of molasses-sweetened tea that remains within it grown still and cold. With G'thon's back turned she indulges in a moment of surprise, one eyebrow ascending into a graceful arch, though it doesn't have the desperate tilt that might be expected. Perhaps there's an inkling of the sentiment remaining in her widened eyes when he turns back to look at her, but her voice carries nothing of the sort. "And these 'means'... are attainable?"
He has put his cup down by the time he turns around - and done nothing else, apparently. No pouring, no stirring. An excuse. Now he faces her, and a pale hand props him up against the tea-cart as though he can no longer quite stand to support his own posture, as if he might collapse of weary weight at any time. There's no small hint of that in his expression and in the little sigh he lets out before he replies. "I don't like to think what I think about where Diya's gone. She was - " He swallows. This is an unusual gesture, the rise and fall of the lump in his neck, the staring suddenly at the floor, only to glance back up with equal abruptness. "If there was any more reasonable hiding spot, I would rather think she'd found it. But even I've heard Nenuith might have flown - and certainly not at any of the Weyrs, or in their coverages. Am I just hearing nonsense, Issa? I - " Hesitation, again. Emotion, perhaps. His eyes seem a little watery, hazel turning pale. "You would know better than I."
Issa turns slightly in her chair to watch this unusual display at his first faltering, her attuned hearing marking easily the aberration. There is no sympathy stirred in her countenance, however, for sudden showings of emotion. No, the slant is to be found in her voice, a melancholy devotion stringing along through her words, as she replies, "I've heard the same. And I don't doubt the sense of it." Easily hands are folded once again, but this time a single finger escapes confinement, tapping aimlessly on the knuckles of the opposite hand. "Nenuith was due to rise long ago. It's logical that..." But a quick shake of her head sweeps that train of thought away. "It seems she's gone off the map," she finishes, her shoulders struggling to offer a shrug under some enormous invisible weight, pale eyes meeting his watery gaze firmly.
"Yes." G'thon has very little else to say. He keeps that miserable look up for a time, until it seems he's no longer able to meet her eyes. Then he turns around and, to have something to do, picks up the pot and refreshes his tea. "Can I get you another cup?" Because he must, now that he has poured, offer. He comes away from the cart with eyes drier for the break, saucer cupped in one hand, to leave his own tea beside his chair.
"No, thank you," Issa responds, with no explanation for her refusal. The tilt of her chin grows ever steeper as he approaches and she watches him with intent eyes. "I'd like to ask you something, though," she says with a tone of bracing warning, "that might be a trifle more personal." There's a beat for that announcement to settle across the distance between them, and then she continues. "I've gathered that E'sere has been distant from you as of late. But I'm curious as to the direction that your conversations have taken since he's returned from Igen." With an extremely girlish gesture, she tucks a curl behind her ears and drops her gaze to her lap for a brief moment, perhaps giving weight to those rumors about a relationship between this greenrider and the evasive bronzerider.
G'thon's brows slide up. But his answer is quick in coming, or at least quick in beginning; the curl-tucking and gaze-dropping either affect him little, or incline him toward swift reply, perhaps to be kind. "We have discussed Nabol, to no conclusion of any merit, and the decline of reason, and E'sere has remarked that he doubts he will ever be comfortable with J'cor's leadership, or something to that effect." The summary is simple, but the old man finds an even more condensed version to offer, along with a helpless little shrug, before he retakes his seat across from the greenrider. "I asked him for his suggestions. He declined to make them."
That delicate gesture must have been a fluke, for there's no trifling disappointment to follow it up when Issa finds she's not among the topics he lists. With a puzzling frown, her gaze picks across the room as she picks over what he says. Then with a little purse of her lips, she turns to regard him again. "He's been much the same with me," she mutters, still a bit distracted by her own thoughts. "Well," marks the return of her full attention, however, "I hope that I have been somewhat more obliging."
"You have, and I hope I've earned it." This is a throwaway comment with barely a trace of his crooked smile attached, but warmly enough offered. More to the point, he goes on, "In truth I find myself currently somewhat worried about E'sere. He said he would visit his mother; I somehow doubt that he has done so." If G'thon is aware of the greenrider's apparent distraction, if he takes any note of the level of her interest in the wingleader's doings, he does not seem inlined to make any exceptions to his promise of frank speech because of them: "I think he's holding back. I wish I could trust him - but then, I expect he can't trust me. It's a matter about which we haven't spoken, not since Igen." Not since, therefore, Nabol. This is pertinent: the old man mouths a silent, surprised 'ah,' as though he's just remembered some other key point. "About Lord Odern. He said he had done what he could for them; that he could not do more. Do you believe that?"
"I'll admit that I don't know what to believe when it comes to E'sere, recently." Or Nabol for that matter, as the implication in her response runs that deep. Issa's twisted curls are now shaken away from her face hastily, whatever distracted her apparently giving way to frustration. "Though I do like to believe," she continues, what confidence she puts into the assertion sounding like the kind that is easily shaken, "that he wouldn't use the lives of so many innocents as a political tool. And that if he could spare the Nabolese the... ordeal of lasting Thread without coverage, he would." Pale eyes now eagerly search for either agreement or rebuttal for her hesitant beliefs.
"Then he must be doing something that he hasn't told me about." This is not intended to be in any way reassuring; in fact, G'thon's presentation could be better described as displeased than as hopeful. "I worry about him. If you like, I will try to talk to him - but I must admit I have little faith that he will have anything to say to me that would soothe either of us." A pause here, and the old man looks down at the tea beside him, then back up at Issa. He gambles on a weak, small smile, a private one, just for her. "I admit I would have thought you'd know more."
"No, don't." Talk to him, that is. Issa throws the directive out dismissively, as if it were merely a mere preference. "I don't think he'd be very happy to find I've been talking to you." For several beats the only thing that meets his tiny smile are a spattering of baffled blinks carried out in silence. But a smirk soon appears, demurely hidden as she drops her chin. "E'sere is a private man," is all she offers, a quiet reply. Her hands are unfolded from their position on her lap and she lifts herself from that retiring position to something more casual. Her elbow again finds rest on the arm of the chair and she props up her chin with her knuckles, staring across at the former Weyrleader.
"I see," replies G'thon, and allows a little more silence to balance the softness of her response. "Perhaps that is something they teach in Caucus." This comes out on a sigh while the dragonless rider pushes himself up out of his chair, like an old man reflecting bemusedly upon the newfangled things they teach in schools these days. A telling little sparkle in his eyes is brief, but betrays deeper intent attached to his words. He does not, however, delve further. Instead he begins the signals of closure: "This has been a real treat, Issa. I hope you'll come again some time."
At that cue, Issa too rises, too easily for the gravity of the conversation now behind them. Nudging back the chair, she leans just slightly to offer her hand in a ladylike gesture of farewell, carefully arranged curls spilling forward at the motion. "I'll be sure to, sir," she assures him, more than just forgetfulness accounting for that slip of a title.
He sighs a little, but this time does not correct her. Instead he puts out one of those pale and slender palms, fingers curved just a bit, to lift her hand in his. She will be ladylike; he shall be the gentleman. But their closeness allows him a last observation. It may be excused, perhaps, by the fall of her curls; they draw his gaze to the side of her face and downward, where the silver chain catches a little light. He glances at the emerald, then brings his eyes back up and removes his hand from beneath hers. "I'm sorry," G'thon murmurs, as though his downward glance had been indecent. "It's a lovely pendant. It reminds me of one I once gave a girl, many turns ago."
A smile curls Issa's lips, reminiscent of the one she wore upon entering. An indulgence for old men and their supposed romances long past. "Thank you. A gift," is the only explanation, those fingers he releases find the pendant subconciously. "Thank you for the tea. I hope you can settle into your new quarters without too much difficulty." One last sweeping gaze is spared for the disorder of a room before she turns back to offer a simple, "Goodbye."
"Any time." G'thon retreats, and as Issa's gaze draws attention to the state of his chambers, the old man is inclined to look around himself. His expression becomes a little distant, perhaps a little sad, wan-smiling. "Have a good evening," he responds, a little too late.