☼ RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN ☼רות "Origin splatter. Dark matter. / I interrogate myself to no end: / What do you remember? What / is good about gold & gods?"
I have been searching for the bangle for hours.
It isn’t quite a “bauble” to me. Still, I can’t bring myself to admit to caring more about it than any other piece of jewelry I own, even though I’m sure that - in spite of its typical place at the very back of my jewelry box - I do. That would be tantamount to admitting that I care something about her, and I know that I don’t, and I know that I should.
It’s not as though it matters, anyways. When she gave it to me, there was no meaning behind it; I don’t even know why I’ve kept it for so long. I tell myself that I have only continued searching for it because the incident itself offends my pride. That is probably not the truth, but else why should it matter any more to me than any other pretty, bejeweled object in my possession?
It is useless, probably, to go to Ishak over it; he has already said that he won’t help. This is precisely why I’m not going to Ishak over it. But I have tired of searching, for the time (it is beginning to feel futile), and, if I linger in place for too long, I run the risk of having to interact with other partygoers, nobles from Solterra and the other courts - of being a proper representative of the Ieshan house. I have no desire to do such a thing.
Ishak is in the courtyard. The artists that Pilate hired - or dragged directly out of the desert - have flocked around him eagerly, which I find distinctly unsurprising. His coat is usually painted; he would find his way over to them.
He is also, I suspect, one of the few people in attendance that can understand the painters through their thick, Solterran accents.
(I can’t say that I know what his accent would be like, if he weren’t mimicking or modifying it in some way or another; I have always imagined that it is rather thick, like these desert horses, but it is hard to say. That is another thing that I don’t know about Ishak that annoys me. I cannot even say that I know exactly what his voice should sound like.)
I watch the painters as they draw designs onto the dark canvas of his coat, careful to avoid the tattoos; he doesn’t want to hide them tonight, I guess. (I might have expected that he would - I don’t have the faintest idea of how many of the nobles at the party are his former employers. I try not to think about it.) Ishak is chatting with them cheerfully as I watch them from the opposite side of the courtyard, a pleasant (and, to me, businesslike) smile pulled across his lips. When I squint, I can barely make out some of them, though I can’t say that I’m sure what they are. They might simply be abstract patterns, though I’d have to stray closer to look.
When I do, finally (and only somewhat bitterly) approach him, they lift their eyes to me and murmur amongst themselves, but they don’t say anything loudly enough for me to hear it. It’s probably for the best. My hair has fallen almost entirely from the braids that he pulled it into earlier, and the pink flowers have nearly disappeared in a crush of dropped petals over the course of the evening. I don’t come close enough to invite them to paint on me, too - not that they would if I did -, but, from the distance between us, I can make out the designs that they’ve drawn into his coat. Elaborate. Distinctly folkloric, in most cases. (I think that I recognize some of the stories.) Some metallic, to nearly match some of the tattoos; some matte and blood-red, common enough for him in winter. If I weren’t so accustomed to the sight, I might call them striking - but I am.
I look down at him where he lies, the dark, disheveled strands of my forelock in my eyes or else sweat-stuck to my skin; Pilate would be horrified, if he could see, but I have been hunting for the bangle and helping every one of his ailing guests for the entire evening, and I can hardly bring myself to care. “Enjoying yourself?”
My tone is patently neutral.
(I’m not.)
@Ishak || it legitimately took an hour to find a title + quote for this post || here
HE FEEDS ME RED MEAT / HE WATCHES THE BLOOD POOL IN MY MOUTHlaughs at my red teeth❂please tag Ruth! contact is encouraged, short of violence
☼ ISHAK ☼اسحاق "oh, what would your mother say if she could see what we're doing now? / oh, what would your mother say if she could hear what we talk about?"
Evening is falling on the party, but there are plenty of flickering lights. (Some of it is candlelight, floated by bored children of harried servants. Some of it is magelight, you think anyway.) There’s sun enough still for the artists to move languidly. You know later they’ll need more light if they’re to keep painting.
“You’ll ask for us won’t you?
You smile and nod at the one you can see, reclined as you are so somebody else can get a better reach. (They’d just giggled when you’d asked their names, oh, four years ago, and ever since refused to say. To be fair, you hadn’t told them your real one til the twelfth time you’d seen them in a noble’s household.)
“Thank you,” says the one painting a stripe down your spine, “These city horses hear fight when we say light, I swear.”
After having had to hold a conversation with Pilate and all the other interactions you’ve had at this party, it is soothing to just exist. You still have a facade up, but it’s a different one. It’s not realer than the face you wear alone with Ruth— that’d be a misclassification.
You wouldn’t say it’s easier either.
Your voice is rougher when you talk with them, fellow desert children. They sound like you, like your parents did. Except, that’s not quite true is it? They sound like you, the way you do in your head. You sound like them, right now. But if you strip all the artifice from your voice, you know your accent isn’t nearly so thick. You have spent more of your life out of the desert than it.
The way you sound right now is as manufactured as any other way you can sound. It’s easier with Ruth. You’re not sure that’s your voice, either, but at least you don’t have to think about whatever effort you’re making.
“Painting over leg?”
“No, not tonight.”
They titter at each other. “Mystery Ishak, what’s wrong? We saw the man, too!”
“Yes, yes! Be careful, we won’t let you borrow our paint to throw in his eyes!” The lot of them laugh openly.
You make eye contact with one and roll your eyes. He shrugs back at you in a familiar see what I have to deal with? motion.
You hope to see them at another party in the spring. It’s not a season you’ve seen them working, but you know they’d do well with the greens you favor then. Stroke by stroke, they build art upon your coat.
You feel a stutter, and then a question, “You are aware there is a woman watching you? Pretty but plain, noble bearing but...off?”
“Oh, that’s just Ruth.” Not that Ruth is just anything, but she’d be harder to explain to them than to the fences you know.
“Oh ho! Just Ruth is coming, we promise to be quiet!”
They drop in volume, though one splits off to talk to another of their number lingering in the shade. They take turns, and you’re not sure how many are here. You are at least relatively certain they wouldn’t let an assassin hide among them without a courtesy heads up to you.
“Enjoying yourself?” Ruth says neutrally, looking down at you.
Ruth says most things neutrally, so you look at her. Her mane’s in disarray, and she’s sweaty. You wonder how many times she’s circled the house, how long she’s been looking. You didn’t expect her to care so much.
You feel a little guilty, but then again, you probably looked worse as you left the island
You smile at her because neither of you are any good at apologies, “As much as I’m capable of. By the way, they won’t bite if you step closer.”
You pop a grape in your mouth from a nearby plate. (Good for keeping restless bodies still and occupied, though the scattered smashed remains suggest even snacking wasn’t enough to keep some still. You suspect the artists of throwing them as much as their canvases.)
“Hypothetically,” you begin, “how attached are you to do no harm?”
You’re not certain it’s worth the effort regardless. One botched assassination attempt that was technically still successful is hopefully not worth the man’s time. When you last saw him he was something like seven sheets to the wind already, so you honestly doubt he even recognized you.
Still.
Useful information either way.
@Ruth | this post sponsored by dr.pepper ordered from dominos | “the waves” - bastille
☼ RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN ☼רות "when your mother reaches / out to you, when your mother / reaches out, when your mother reaches, when-"
I can’t make out what the painters are saying for their accents – and lowered voices -, but I hear Ishak say Oh, that’s just Ruth. It seems to amuse them. I can’t imagine why, but, by the time I’ve made it across the courtyard to them, they’ve quieted.
I glance at them briefly. I probably look apathetic, or else frigid – but I am too tired to put up pretenses with anyone else tonight. At my question, Ishak smiles up at me. (I do not smile back.) As much as I’m capable of. By the way, they won’t bite if you step closer. For all of Ishak’s complaining, I suspect that he has been enjoying himself quite a lot this evening. If nothing else, I’m sure that he likes the rumors.
I’ve never seen the appeal. Perhaps it is a consequence of having spent my life in the – admittedly muted, in my case – limelight, alongside most everyone I know, but I don’t care to know what people think of me, much less my entire family. The rumors about us amuse Ishak, however, and I tend to humor him. (It’s not as though I’ve ever been good at keeping him quiet, anyways.)
I ignore Ishak’s comment on the painters, and I don’t step any closer. “I know,” I say, flatly. (I do not know if Pilate would have hired them if they did bite, but, then, he might have simply thought of it as an elaborate party trick; that said, I’ve seen them before, on more than one occasion. I am not so sure that they have ever noticed me in kind.) That does not mean that I want to volunteer myself as a canvas. I know that artists are fond of having a plain canvas, and I am certainly plain, but I have no desire to have artwork made of me.
(I have always been an ugly paradox, one-part desperate to be seen, one-part wholly unwilling to make the effort to do so. At any rate, I am not Corradh, and I am not Ishak; I lack such flashy sensibilities. Any designs painted onto my coat would, I’m sure, feel arrogant and overdrawn on me.)
He tosses a grape into his mouth, languid as a cat; it is a violet arc to his lips. I think that there is something to be said about the sight of grapes on platters, especially at a party like this one, but I couldn’t tell you what it is. (Or maybe – it would just be hypocritical, coming from my mouth.) That is a second reason why I’m not willing to draw any further, regardless. There is spilled alcohol and paint and smashed grape splattered all across the courtyard floor, where the painters are working, and it wouldn’t do for me to look any more unkempt than I do already.
(Besides. I already spend most of my time with my hooves stained with one thing or another – antiseptic, or, more often, bits of gore and blood.)
It occurs to me that I don’t really know what to say to him.
He’s already refused to help me, and I don’t want to plead with him. (My pride would not allow it, and I am trying my best not to think about it, regardless.) We always have something to talk about, but we rarely argue. I think that we might have done it more often, when we first met, when neither of us really trusted each other at all, but we don’t argue very often now.
And we aren’t really arguing – but that is beside the point. Hypothetically, Ishak says, how attached are you to do no harm?
I decide that Ishak is drunk. Tipsy, at least. (Definitely has – something in his system, and it’s certainly not one of my brother’s drinks. Ishak is something of a snob over the strangest things.) Otherwise, he wouldn’t be talking about something like this, considering how many nobles at this party are sure to know about his prior occupation, and considering that he is normally evasive, at best, about his work as an assassin.
(Especially to me.)
I might be willing to disregard a few ethical scruples for Ishak’s sake, if he asked while he was in my good graces – but, at the moment, he isn’t, so, instead of answering, I tilt my head, and I ask, “Who did you see this time?”
I somehow doubt that I will be given a straight answer.
@Ishak || she's............................Salty. || here
HE FEEDS ME RED MEAT / HE WATCHES THE BLOOD POOL IN MY MOUTHlaughs at my red teeth❂please tag Ruth! contact is encouraged, short of violence
☼ ISHAK ☼اسحاق "oh, what would your mother say if she could see what we're doing now? / oh, what would your mother say if she could hear what we talk about?"
Ruth tilts her head, a show of inquisitivity, and asks, “Who did you see this time?”
You stretch a smile over your face. After all, it’s a funny story, isn’t it?
(It’s an ugly story, isn’t it? All your stories are. They are desperation and struggle and crime and a hard knot of shame. Most days you swallow it down, the bitter taste in your mouth, and some days you turn up in a new coat of paint like hiding your story from Ruth’s eyes will make it taste like citrus instead. Why do you care so much? You blame it on a habit of secrecy, treat your own self-awareness like a contract target.)
You stretch a smile over your face, and you say, “Did I tell you about the time I impersonated a painter?”
Of all the contracts you completed, it’s really the only you’d willingly consider spinning the tale out to Ruth.
(Of all the lights to paint yourself in, it’s the one you find the least shameful.)
You skip over the hours spent sketching, the realization you didn’t know how to even begin when it came to placing color on the canvas, the dripping fear down your back as you met eyes with your target and realized your tells were starting to show. You were so young.
“I botched the followthrough,” you begin, “Probably the closest call I had before meeting you; doused a guard in paint just to escape.”
You toss another grape in your mouth and take a steadying breath. You’re in the odd space between drinks when the buzz is wearing off and isn’t, where you’re just a little less tipsy as opposed to sober.
Your smirk’s almost real on this one, “It’s funny; I would have thought that client would have been long dead by now. That’s Solterran justice for you — retaliation.”
You’re well aware of the irony.
Still. What an ice water shock to see him among the land of the living. You really had thought he’d be ashes on the winds by now. To see him stumbling drunkenly through an Ieshan party… Brazen, really, is what it is.
Then again, you’re likely the only proof left that he was involved. Can a crime be too old for retribution? You doubt it; the scandal is what any good noble would want to avoid even more than other punishment. Motive enough to be concerned he might recognize you, might want rid of his last loose end.
On the other side of the equation, though, you’re situated next to an Ieshan. If even one step of dealing with you goes awry, he exposes himself to other potential scandals. Depending on how the winds of fortunes have blown for him, you may be too much effort. Too much risk.
You hate not knowing all the variables.
@Ruth | this post sponsored by rainbow kitten surprise and a sore throat | “the waves” - bastille
☼ RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN ☼רות "down to the root of the thing. / to the chromosomal confusion. / to the atoms that are made up, / the bone & flesh & tendons & / bloodshed."
The smile that coils across Ishak’s mouth is bitter. I don’t know if most people would notice (Ishak is good at pretending to be someone he isn’t, or something) – but when I look at the curl of his lips, and when I look at the hard glint in his eye, I know that it is wry. He is only smiling to fill space.
I don’t smile back. I’m sure that he isn’t expecting me to. Did I tell you about the time I impersonated a painter? Oh. This one, again. “You did,” I say, but I shift my weight from hoof to hoof and settle, because I know that he will retell at least a bit of the story regardless. It is the only assassination that he will tell me about, so I think that he likes to drag out the details as much as possible. “I botched the followthrough. Probably the closest call I had before meeting you; doused a guard in paint just to escape.” He tosses another grape into his mouth. I try not to find it distracting. “…did you finish the job or not?” I can never remember, or maybe I’m never sure; botched doesn’t mean that no one ended up dead, at any rate, and that is what I am asking. From the sound of things, he did. I feel like it warrants asking regardless.
The curve of his lips seems to sharpen like the edge of his knife; it’s more smirk than smile, now. Sometimes I consider how many people at these parties are Ishak’s former clients. I never pay enough attention – intentionally – to notice. I’m sure that I don’t want to, but sometimes I wonder what they think of me, with him trailing like a shadow in my wake almost anywhere I go. It’s funny; I would have thought that client would have been long dead by now. That’s Solterran justice for you — retaliation.
It’s best not to think about it. “Solterran justice catches the weak, the foolish, and the unprepared,” I say, coolly. In most of our history, the most powerful figures in our nation have been by far the most corrupt; if it were a matter of justice alone, no monarch would stay in power for long, nor any house. It’s ultimately an issue of cleverness, and of luck. “If I had to guess – your client is still alive because he is none of those things.” Even if I suspect, from Ishak’s question, that his former client is currently outrageously drunk. Perhaps he has friends – or family – in high places. At any rate, his presence alone suggests that it is more trouble than it would be worth to do anything to him, and, besides, I am no murderer.
(It would not bother me to murder, I suspect, but I don’t want to test the point and find that it is true; and, moreover, I am still cross with Ishak.)
There is one other thing, beyond the issue of the bracelet. I am not sure that Ishak and I are done quarreling – that this is some kind of peace offering -, but, if we are, I am sure that what I intend to do after the party will reignite his frustration. “Ishak. Have you seen Adonai?”
I ask like I don’t know where he is. I do – I picked him out when the party began, because I am tired of waiting for him to come to me. I don’t know when the idea of talking to my brother became so oppressive, so horribly distant, but I’ve grown tired of it.
I’ll find him tonight. It’s as convenient – and inconspicuous – a time as any; in fact, it might seem stranger if I didn’t see my brother, during an occasion like this.
@Ishak || I'd joke about RKS sponsorship but every Ruth post is actually sponsored by RKS so || here
HE FEEDS ME RED MEAT / HE WATCHES THE BLOOD POOL IN MY MOUTHlaughs at my red teeth❂please tag Ruth! contact is encouraged, short of violence
09-06-2020, 11:12 PM - This post was last modified: 09-06-2020, 11:30 PM by Ruth
☼ ISHAK ☼اسحاق "oh, what would your mother say if she could see what we're doing now? / oh, what would your mother say if she could hear what we talk about?"
“…did you finish the job or not?” Ruth asks, at the end of your tale.
It makes you pause a second, and you’re careful not to trip over the response. You’ve told her this one before, it seems, though you’ve drank enough to be a little foggy on the details. You could recast the lighting, an open opportunity to change your own history. Who would know whether it was you who dealt the killing blow?
Well, no, you can’t actually. Because you’ve already said followthrough and maybe Ruth didn’t catch the implication enough to avoid a need for clarification, but you don’t lie to Ruth.
(Maybe if you repeat it enough to yourself, it’ll even be true.)
“Yes,” you say simply, before you toss the grape in.
“Solterran justice catches the weak, the foolish, and the unprepared,”Ruth says. You can’t help but to think it’s a very Ieshan way of viewing things. All the strength, cleverness, and preparation in the world can’t save you from deviations. Of course, the same can save you, too. One man’s moment of luck, one woman’s swap in shifts… It matters little to you at this point, in a country with any real sense of justice you wouldn’t be here to sponge off the Ieshans anyway.
“If I had to guess – your client is still alive because he is none of those things.” She continues. You have nothing to say to that really; your interaction with the client was minimal. You met him, of course, but the details had all been handled by Elendra before her fall. You let the silence hang.
(You’ve got your answer, as flimsy as a spider’s web though it is. In this time, for this man, at least, Ruth won’t help you premeditate a murder. It’s comforting, almost.)
Ruth, though, has another topic on her mind. “Ishak. Have you seen Adonai?”
Walking among his collection of living statues, looking sick as usual... Yes, you have literally seen him.
“From a distance, though not for some time,” you trail off though as it occurs to you that there’s really only one reason for Ruth to search him out.
You wonder, absently, if Ruth has any idea she’s picked the perfect time. The idea of being sore with her for any longer is fatiguing on its own; you’d rather put the energy into hoping this doesn’t end horribly.
@Ruth | this feels….disjointed | “the waves” - bastille
☼ RUTH OF HOUSE IESHAN ☼רות "I'M GIVING MYSELF THE THIRD DEGREE: / When did you know? When did you / know for sure? / orphaned. burned abandoned. / when she calls me on the phone / sometimes her voice is very soft. / I lean into it, like a campfire flow / on an early summer night."
Yes.
I know that Ishak is ashamed of his history in the same way that I know that I don’t care about it; that is, about his history, and about his shame. If anything, I might say that there is something reassuring about his efficiency, much as I know that he would chalk it up to good luck – good luck gone bad when we met, but that is beside the point entirely.
When he admits to his own success, I simply watch him in the same neutral – apathetic – way that I always do. Still, when he tosses another grape into his mouth, my eyes do not move from his to watch the precise, violet arc of its form. (Somehow, the simple half-drunken toss of a grape seems sharp as a knife, when Ishak does it.)
I watch, too, when he doesn’t say a word to any of my remarks. Through what largely amounts to pattern recognition, the way that a zoologist might watch their subjects, I can guess at what Ishak is thinking with what I would like to imagine is some degree of accuracy. I am always less confident in my guessing when there is alcohol in his system, which disconcerts me primarily because it suggests to me that there are things that I do not know about Ishak, bits of him that I do not know nearly as intimately as I know my own mind. The thought of that rubs at me like sandpaper; but I don’t have long to consider it, because there is the matter of my brother to deal with.
(There is always the matter of my brother to deal with – if not one, then another. I like to think that the three of them constitute the majority of the trouble in our family, and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve thought that we might be better off without them, or with only one of them. Oh, I love my brothers, as much as I love anything-
but I don’t love anything much at all.)
Ishak has seen my brother. His eyes are duller than usually – still bright as chips of sky, but not quite as sharp. (I still think that he knows what I was thinking, but, if he does, he doesn’t feel like objecting. Most of the time, he would.) Beneath the bow of my lips, I drag my tongue across my teeth. I’ve barely drunk a drop – a sip of champagne, not prepared by my brother, enough to make me look presentable for a conversation with the members of one of the smaller noble houses. My mouth tastes sickly sweet regardless. “I’m worried,” I say, slowly, “that the party might be too much for his health.” That’s a lie, of course. I’m sure that Ishak knows it. I love Adonai, in the most technical, meaningless sense of the word – but that doesn’t mean I worry about him, or I care about him, or I might have intervened the moment he felt sick. This is, more than anything, a matter of pride.
I love my brothers – and I am better at lying than any of them, and my teeth, I’m sure, have grown twice as sharp in my mouth as even Corradh’s.
I straighten, slowly, a final crop of pink petals falling from my dark hair. They’ll be crushed underfoot like the grapes; like spilled wine. “I think,” I say, as I turn my back to him, “that I’ll find him, once the party is over.” My gaze drifts over the crowd languidly, cold as a mantid and just as aimlessly watchful. It is impossible to do anything in this house unknown. Even our private life, I think, is public as the news.
I look at Ishak, over my shoulder, and my lips lift up in the sickle-like curve of a smile that means nothing at all – because I am an Ieshan, even if I am the forgotten daughter, even within the confines of my own home. And then I am gone into the crowd, my dark form bleeding like stone into shadow, unadorned tresses not even so bright as the manor walls.
If there is one thing that I am as good at as lying, it is disappearing entirely.
☼ ISHAK ☼اسحاق "oh, what would your mother say if she could see what we're doing now? / oh, what would your mother say if she could hear what we talk about?"
You watch Ruth go.
She smiles, all pretense before she does. You certainly don’t begrudge it, though you know the partygoers would.
You watch Ruth go, and for a brief moment you’re alone with her parting remarks.
You run your tongue over your teeth, catching on grape seeds. It seems you’ve reached the moment you’ve both been waiting for, and the question is; who is the viper waiting to strike? The illness wracking Adonai has someone waiting on the other side, and they won’t be happy with Ruth interfering.
You feel a bit broken and worn in the repetition, for how long it’s been that you’ve been concerned. Were he any other you’d wish for a swift nosedive in condition, that he might pass before she could get the chance to involve herself. Yet, you know full well that she wouldn’t care if he wasn’t her brother, that it wouldn’t appear as a slight.
Even the servants gossip, now, about why she hasn’t been the one diagnosing at his bedside.
You try to turn your thoughts for a moment, wondering if Ruth ever found her missing bauble. It doesn’t stick.
The artists return, chittering away again, but you are noticing the way the night chill is falling. So you make your excuses and you drift off into the party again, looking for Ruth.
Smashed grapes and petals stick to your hooves as you go, party detritus almost impossible to avoid. You shiver and you hurry on inside.
(If someone asked, you wouldn’t call it an ill wind. If someone asked, you wouldn’t tell them how the thought tumbles around in your head.)
@Ruth | this is laaaaaaaaaaate and shoooooooooort, <3 | “the waves” - bastille
HE FEEDS ME RED MEAT / HE WATCHES THE BLOOD POOL IN MY MOUTHlaughs at my red teeth❂please tag Ruth! contact is encouraged, short of violence
