Acton paced his room with all the tension of a prisoner before an execution. He felt the way he did before a big performance: muscles taut, pulse in his throat, alert to every movement caught from the corner of his eye. What he really wanted was a drink, but things the last few weeks had been pretty dry.
Luckily Raum was out – where, the buckskin didn’t know. Denocte’s Ghost had been even more of a haunt of late, and not even Acton could keep track of his comings and goings, much less what was on his mind. So the former Crow was alone when finally he left the keep below the warm sun of a spring afternoon and sauntered into the Night Markets to help.
It was a combination of guilt and bribes from a few of his favorite merchants that brought him to the back of a crowd gathering to listen to instructions. It wasn’t that Acton was embarrassed to be helping his home rebuild (though, fine, he was), it was that he was so unused to getting his hands dirty doing anything that could be considered straight work. It felt strange – like he was as scattered as the pieces of Caligo’s mosaic.
To help distract himself, he cast an amber-eyed gaze over the small gathered crowd, easily picking out their guests from Terrastella. He hadn’t spoken to any of them, but had kept an eye out for the former golden queen – and the antlered stallion he’d helped beat bloody on Reichenbach’s behalf.
There was a man it might be interesting to run into in a dark alley, but not so much a daylight work crew.
Neither of them was present, and that was just as well. Acton was relieved when those gathered began to break up, some into groups and some splitting off singly. Many would rehang banners and replace posts, but the buckskin preferred not to break a sweat; for now he only made his languid way up and down the marketplace, looking for a smooth glint in the long grass and along the alleyways.
It was strange, too, to see the markets in the daylight; the sun did not love Denocte the way the stars did. What was magical with lanterns lit and incense burning was almost garish during the day, and with the damage from the storm it had the air of a hastily-abandoned carnival.
So distracted was he that Acton didn’t realize he was upon another figure until he shouldered them hard enough to stumble back a step. With a grunt he shook himself, then looked up. “Sorry, I was distracted looking for some rocks. Say, you haven’t seen any that are shiny and pale and round-ish, have you?”
10-04-2018, 09:17 PM
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Odeen [PM] Posts: 175 — Threads: 29 Signos: 1,315
Raymond. and at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
when the man comes around
Raymond had never taken part in rebuilding a kingdom.
As a young stallion, he'd been forced to slip away as his home was razed to the ground, its treasures and traditions reduced to raw materials for the benefit of its conquerors. From that point there had been no rest for him, no chapter where the waters if his life flowed slowly enough to pool in the stones of one place or another. In some places he passed like a windblown shadow; in others, he left the seeds and scars of revolution. But they were not his homes to heal.
There were nights, stalking the reaches of Denocte, that even now the red regent wondered if he was suited to the trappings of civilization. When he dreamed, he dreamed of towering, lonely buttes under empty blue skies. He dreamed of coiled-spring sinews and eyeshine in the darkness. And yet here he was prowling the night markets, offering his hand in the recovery efforts.
Weird.
Raymond chewed on the thought as he set about putting things in order, only to be shouldered from his self-reflection by the intrusion of a painted stallion whom he recognized as a Denoctean, but had never actually met.
"I can't say that I have," he replied, moving smoothly past the accidental transgression in lieu of acknowledging Acton's apology. What he didn't say was that he hadn't been looking for the stones he described: Raymond had appreciated the night mother's moonstone seal for the artistry involved in its construction, but his distrust in the goddess had only grown with greater familiarity. He'd not considered attending to appeals to her vanity over the sundry miseries suffered by her followers. Perhaps Acton saw differently, but perhaps it didn't actually matter.
"But two sets of eyes are sharper than one." He smiled. "Name's Raymond; I don't believe we've properly met."
The first thing he thought on realizing who he’d just shouldered into was that the red man was shorter than he’d always seemed from a distance; close on the heels of that was notice of just how sharp, how glintingly wicked, that blade on his tail was.
It did not seem wise to point out either observation, and so he only nodded at the stallion’s words. “Ah, well. Wouldn’t want to make anything too easy,” he said drily, and for the first time wondered just how long this would all take. It all sounded very noble in his head - helping rebuild Denocte from the ashes, the strength of the people, yada yada - but his throat was already dry and his mind already itching for something more interesting.
At least that second part might be looking up.
The buckskin smiled in return, keeping back a little of the powder-and-flint, a little of the slyness. Raymond’s words had not betrayed much familiarity, and while what he said wasn’t untrue, Acton had a keen memory despite the amount of substances he’d imbibed in his colorful life; he remembered the red from the summit, from the castle and Isra’s crowning, from the tumbling of the Gate.
Normally his opinion might not have been so warm - Acton cared little for authority figures that actually acted like authority figures - but he’d been proven wrong enough recently that he was willing to sit on his presumptions a little longer.
Maybe he was finally growing up.
“Acton. I’m not sure I know what proper means anymore.” Not that he ever had in the first place, but it certainly seemed like they were all a kind of orphan now - and that was something he was achingly familiar with.
He stepped past, then, going back to his casual inspection of the weeds and debris that studded the markets, looking for an out-of-place gleam. Acton didn’t much care what Caligo thought, either, but he knew the markets wouldn’t be complete without each gemstone returned to their splendid crown.
Besides, it was easier than woodwork.
“You’re our Regent now, aren’t you?” He kept his voice deliberately even, not even glancing over his shoulder at the man; there was nothing to suggest he had known the last regime, or knew, too, that Raymond’s first allegiance had not been to Night. Acton was no longer interested in pointing fingers. “Careful, it’s been a short-lived position lately.”
Rendari were certainly not what one might consider tall, and in a cross-section Raymond would not have been considered among their largest members, but strength and size were non-issues in a group whose greatest assets lay in strategy and agility. A good rendari soldier never spoiled for a fight, but was always ready to finish one when it broke out.
Raymond wondered more often than not exactly how good of a Rendari soldier he could even pretend to be anymore, and in that exercise perhaps he and the painted stallion could share common ground. The may have been a far cry from calling himself an orphan, but he could never quite escape the heavy stole of what came before, of being a horse with neither name nor country, in whose heart the idea of loyalty seemed both sacred dream and the height of juvenile foolishness.
Careful, it’s been a short-lived position lately.
He quirked a brow, shamelessly wearing the chuckle that followed. Yeah, he might have said, you should have seen how short-lived Terrastella's Champion of Battle was, but he didn't. Instead, with a knowing tilt of his head and an almost lackadaisical sweep of his blade, "I try to be."
He did try, but perhaps in the grand scheme of things there would come a day when he would find himself glad that he was far more invested in Raymond the Ranger than the still-alien idea of Raymond the Regent. One of the two had survived a decade of hard time; the other earned his laurels by frightening a traumatized slave girl once.
"Is this what we're looking for?" the red stallion asked, approaching a rough edge gleaming amongst the rubble. As he kicked at it with one careful hoof, the luminous stone came tumbling free, sand and stone falling away into a yawning mouth where it had rested. Raymond frowned. "Huh. Interesting."
Raymond. "he's an outlaw loose and runnin'," came the whisper from each lip
"and he's here to do some business with the big iron on his hip."
Acton himself had never been much of a fighter. At least not in the good soldier, useful in a war sense. His brawls had always been back-alley affairs, chipped teeth and black eyes, the kind of scuffles that began over honor or territory or just a pocketful of signos.
Although there had been that tournament he’d won - but Rostislav had been imbibing at an impressive rate and that was just as the tower of the Night Court had begun to teeter and fall, so it had hardly been a typical situation. But who the hell cared if a fight was fair, as long as you came out on top?
Not that he had any intention of sharing of that with Raymond. He could guess how he’d end up if he ever faced a man like this. Getting beat to hell was a lot less sexy when it wasn’t Bexley doing it.
“Wise man,” he answered genially, nodding at the man’s chuckle even as his amber eyes flashed to watch the lazy movement of the blade. With a weapon like that, Acton didn’t think he would be careful. He didn’t think he’d have to be. Only a fool would fuck with a man who’d been born with a knife attached to his ass.
He did not offer anything else as they walked, instead only went with his gaze shifting constantly and curiously between the rubble and the red man. When Raymond spoke, Acton lifted his head and
drew alongside him. “Nope,” he said, “looks more like - shit.” He’d been about to conjure an image of one of the stones, but the sudden tumble-and-dust had startled him from his concentration, and now he skipped back a step. His nostrils flared at the cloud like a gasp from a grave-mouth that rose up toward them and was gone, and he blinked away a grain of dirt from his eye and stepped alongside the Regent.
Acton peered into that dark throat, where the light from the day puddled in and revealed a dusty stone floor. Carved marks were faintly evident, though he couldn’t see enough to make out what they depicted. “Huh,” he echoed, and with a glance at Raymond stepped smoothly inside, to be swallowed by black.
If wisdom was a measure of not getting eaten, then perhaps Raymond was wise. If it was a measure of how many mistakes he'd made without dying, then perhaps he was wise. But he didn't feel that way.
He'd walked through hell and come out singing, but that had only made him ruthless.
Raymond had no love of tight spaces, and when Acton slipped into the dark passageway he did not immediately follow. Even the walls of the Night Court made his skin itch the way a lion recoils from the confines of a cage. This was well beyond that - black, constricting, an unknown quantity of the sort that unsettles the most primitive edges of the brain. But the spotted stallion had proceeded, and short of entertaining the paranoia that he would wait there in the dark to kill his own Regent Raymond had no reason to linger, so he followed.
The hesitation had burned up only a moment of their time, and the passage opened onto a dimly lit chamber ripe with stale, still air. Shafts of light filtered in from a peppering of star-like holes bored into the ceiling, and motes of freshly-disturbed dust drifted lazily above the intricate rendition of a celestial map carved directly into the floor at the center of the chamber. The walls, only just visible in the dusky spaces beyond, seemed to be decorated with more of the same behind the rotten, tattered remains of old tapestries and rusted sconces. The echoes of ancient chants seemed trapped inside the very stone.
This was a place of worship, though for whom he could not say.
Perhaps there were none left who could.
"How good are you with Denoctean history?" the red stallion asked, eyes sweeping over and past Acton to the architecture beyond.
Raymond. and at his feet they'll cast their golden crowns
when the man comes around
